THE WORST OF THE WORST, PAID FROM YOUR TAX DOLLARS

Garrett Graff knows what happens to law enforcement agencies that grow too fast.

I spent nearly five years reporting heavily on the decade-long epidemic of corruption that paralyzed the Border Patrol after its ill-conceived Bush-era post-9/11 hiring surge.... The Border Patrol’s hiring surge doubled the size of the force in just a few years, from about 9,200 to 18,000, a move roughly equivalent to (but still less than!) what we’re about to see happen with ICE....

As CBP’s then-commissioner, Gil Kerlikowske, told me back in 2014, “Law enforcement always regrets hiring quickly.” Anyone familiar with policing can rattle off the police hiring surges that inevitably led to spikes in corruption—including mistakes like the 1980 Miami police hiring surge and the infamous Washington Metropolitan Police class of 1989, when Mayor Marion Barry tried to increase the police force by nearly half in a single year. Both agencies saw widespread corruption problems that took years to fix.

All of this happened with the Border Patrol. CBP and the Border Patrol hired cartel members and even a serial killer—and put them out in the field with inadequate training and supervision....

As I totaled up in 2014, “there were 2,170 misconduct arrests of CBP officers and agents—ranging from corruption to domestic violence from 2005 through 2012—meaning that one CBP officer or agent was arrested every single day for seven years.” Even by 2017, a decade after the hiring surge, CBP was still seeing an agent or officer arrested every 36 hours....

Now we’re about to repeat all of those mistakes with ICE — and with CBP all over again.

I think the results could be even worse than Graff imagines.

Graff is correct when he says that we should expect "a tidal wave of applicants who are specifically attracted by the rough-em-up, masked secret police tactics, no-holds-barred lawlessness that ICE has pursued since January." But the problem isn't just a wave of applications by testosterone-poisoned men -- it's that we can expect the Trump administration to exhibit a bias toward hiring the most toxic applicants.

Remember, the president and his party find police brutality delightful and believe that attempts to hold officers accountable are a liberal plot to undermine law and order.

Since the beginning of his first term, Trump has publicly glorified police brutality, directly encouraging officers to behave more violently than they already do, and making it one of his biggest laugh and applause lines at rallies.

“When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just seen them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice,’” the then-president told assembled law enforcement, at a speech he delivered on Long Island, New York, in 2017. “When you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over [their head] ... ‘Don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody, don’t hit their head.’ I said, ‘You can take the hand away, okay?’”

Trump continued: “I have to tell you, you know, the laws are so horrendously stacked against us, because for years and years, they’ve been made to protect the criminal. Totally made to protect the criminal. Not the officers. You do something wrong, you’re in more jeopardy than they are.”

On the campaign trail last year, he flatly said that it shouldn't be possible to charge police officers with crimes:

"We're going to give our police their power back," he told rallygoers in Waukesha, "and we are going to give them immunity from prosecution."

In other speeches, he described brutality as a solution to crime:

Former President Donald J. Trump mused on Sunday about “one really violent day” as an answer to what he has described as a plague of unchecked property crime in American cities.

“One rough hour — and I mean real rough,” Mr. Trump said. “The word will get out and it will end immediately.”

... He has in the past ... called for the summary execution of shoplifters....

In May of this year, it was reported that the Trump Justice Department would no longer hold police departments accountable for brutality in several cities:

The Trump administration has said it will roll back Biden-era police reform efforts in cities where there has been controversy over high-profile police killings and brutality.

The US justice department said on Wednesday it would dismiss oversight agreements reached with the police departments in Louisville, Kentucky and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

It will also be scrapping investigations into police constitutional violations in six other cities, including Phoenix and Memphis.

It isn't just Trump. In 2021, when police misconduct was under scrutiny in New York City, Florida governor Ron DeSantis gleefully offered incentives to NYPD officers who wanted to work in Florida. And, of course, many figures on the right -- Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene -- have demanded a pardon for Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd in 2020.

I suspect that the administration will be predisposed to hire cops who claim they've been persecuted by "the woke mob." I don't think the administration will merely fail to screen them out -- I think it will be eager to have them on the team.

*****

Graff notes that the hiring spree will be primarily for balaclava-wearing goons:

... compared to the rest of the bill, there’s only the most modest of modest increases to the number of immigration judges in the country — a rise from 700 to 800, an increase so out-of-scale to the problem that we could have used those extra 100 to work through the existing backlog from the Biden years. If the Trump administration had any plan to balance civil rights and due process with its giant new hiring and construction spree, it would be also tripling or quadrupling or quintupling the new immigration judges. The fact that it's not makes clear that the Trump administration, DHS, and DOJ have no intention of normal due process.

Your right-wing relatives will respond to this by saying, "Due process is for citizens only," even though the Constitution says nothing of the sort. If they really believe that, ask them what they think happens in this scenario: A tourist from France arrives in New York and kills someone in a hotel room in Manhattan. Do the authorities arrest the culprit and send him off to an overseas torture prison without a trial? Of course not. He gets a trial in a U.S. court conducted under U.S. law. He gets due process. Now what if he's a teenager who overstayed a tourist visa and is illegally working at a bar? Same deal -- he gets a trial. No goon squad. No torture prison. At least how we do things now. You shouldn't have to be a citizen to get due process. But more and more immigrants won't get it.

APPLICATION-GHAZI IS STEVE BANNON'S "ANCHOR LEFT, PIVOT RIGHT" ALL OVER AGAIN (updated)

Semafor reports:

The afternoon before a long holiday weekend isn’t always the best time to drop a major scoop. But the New York Times did not want to wait to publish its story about Zohran Mamdani’s application to Columbia University in 2009, in which the paper reported that the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor then identified his race on a form as both “Asian” and “Black or African American.” Mamdani is of South Asian ethnicity and was born in Uganda.

The story, published late last week, came as the result of the release of hacked Columbia University records that were then shared with the Times. The paper believed it had reason to push the story out quickly: It did not want to be scooped by the independent journalist Christopher Rufo. Two people familiar with the reporting process told Semafor that the paper was aware that other journalists were working on the admissions story, including Rufo, a conservative best known for his crusade against critical race theory.

Mamdani, when he applied to Columbia, had lived in America for most of his life, so "American" was accurate. He was born in Africa and lived there until age 7, so "African" was accurate. And if checking those boxes seems deceitful, it didn't work -- Mamdani wasn't accepted at Columbia, even though his father was teaching there, and would go on to attend Bowdoin College.

The Times story originally said,

The data was shared with The Times by an intermediary who goes by the name Crémieux on Substack and X and who is an academic and an opponent of affirmative action. The Times agreed to withhold his real name.

An updated version of the story now says that Crémieux "provided the data under condition of anonymity, although his identity has been made public elsewhere. He is an academic who opposes affirmative action and writes often about I.Q. and race." Crémieux is actually just a graduate student, and he was identified as a white supremacist and eugenicist named Jordan Lasker in a Guardian story published in March. He appears to be an online friend of the Times story's lead author, Benjamin Ryan:

And if you're wondering about his pseudonym...

We can theorize about why the Times is open to publishing barely relevant information derived from a data hack and traceable to a white supremacist -- but why was this being peddled to the Times in the first place? Why not just let Chris Rufo, an "independent journalist" with a wide following, publish the story himself?

The whole thing reminds me of the saga of Steve Bannon and Clinton Cash. Years ago, Bloomberg's Joshua Green wrote about how Bannon used the Times:

... he’s devised a method to influence politics that marries the old-style attack journalism of Breitbart.com ... with a more sophisticated approach, conducted through the nonprofit Government Accountability Institute, that ... partners with mainstream media outlets conservatives typically despise to disseminate [its] findings to the broadest audience. The biggest product of this system is ... the bestselling investigative book, written by GAI’s president, Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash...

The reason GAI does this is because it’s the secret to how conservatives can hack the mainstream media. [Breitbart's Wynton] Hall has distilled this, too, into a slogan: “Anchor left, pivot right.” It means that “weaponizing” a story onto the front page of the New York Times (“the Left”) is infinitely more valuable than publishing it on Breitbart.com...

Once that work has permeated the mainstream—once it’s found “a host body,” in David Brock’s phrase—then comes the “pivot.” Heroes and villains emerge and become grist for a juicy Breitbart News narrative.

Rufo doesn't care that the Times published the story first. He's not competing for scoops because his main goal is to inject right-wing poison into the discourse.

But now the poison has a New York Times pedigree, so it's deeper in the bloodstream, which is what Rufo and the other far-rightists involved in this saga want.

*****

AND: There was this in 2023, when Chris Rufo and others declared war on the president of Harvard, accusing her of plagiarism and eventually (with the help of The New York Times) driving her from office:

And here's what the squeeze looked like:

articles about Claudine Gay and her various "scandals" were top 5 featured stories on the New York Times homepage Dec 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 22, 25 and her firing is the now their top story. There is simply no way this is proportionate, sober or reasonable coverage

— Adam Johnson (@adamjohnsonCHI) January 3, 2024

That's the formula.

I'M (MILDLY) CONCERNED ABOUT MUSK'S AMERICA PARTY

Is this a good thing for opponents of Donald Trump and the Republican Party? I'm not sure:

Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and the country’s biggest political donor, said on Saturday that he would create a new political party....

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Mr. Musk wrote on X, his social media website, on Saturday. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”

It's probably not worth worrying about, because Musk doesn't seem to be doing it in a serious way:

Mr. Musk ... had not filed paperwork as of Saturday evening for the new party, though he added in a separate post that the America Party would be active in elections “next year.” No immediate signs suggested that Mr. Musk was working to establish his party quickly. Any new entity would be required to be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission.

Mr. Musk has spoken with friends in recent days about his plan for a political party and what it would take to accomplish it, according to a person briefed on those conversations. The discussions have been more conceptual than pragmatic, the person said.

He hasn't taken any of the practical steps he'd need to take to get the project off the ground. This doesn't count:

But what if he does it? The most optimistic way of looking at the project is also the most simplistic: Musk became a Republican and a Donald Trump fan; Musk now wants to start a political party using his great wealth; therefore, Musk's candidates would split the Republican vote and help Democrats.

But we see what happens to Republicans who challenge the God Emperor: they instantly become pariahs within the GOP. It's already happening to Thomas Massie, one of the two House Republicans who voted against the Big Beautiful Bill (he also co-sponsored a bill that would have required congressional authorization for an attack on Iran):

Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky risks losing his seat in Congress amid his battles with President Donald Trump, according to a new poll.

Polling from Kaplan Strategies found that Massie was unpopular among Republican voters and would lose more support if Trump endorsed a primary opponent....

The poll of 368 likely GOP primary voters found that 19 percent said they planned to vote for Massie in the 2026 Republican primary. If Trump endorsed a primary opponent, the proportion of people voting for Massie would drop to 14 percent.

The poll also showed that 23 percent of respondents viewed the representative favorably, while 62 percent viewed him unfavorably.

Massie was primaried in 2020, 2022, and 2024, but he won all those primaries with more than 75% of the vote. He won approximately two-thirds of the vote in the 2020 and 2022 general elections, and was seen as so unbeatable in 2024 that he didn't even have a Democratic challenger. But now he's an unperson in the GOP.

The same is true of Musk, as YouGov found shortly after he and Trump started feuding:

Republicans sided with Trump by a 71%-6% margin. That 6% is lower than the percentage of independents (8%) and Democrats (11%) who side with Musk.

I'm not saying that engaged, well-informed Democrats would defect to America Party candidates. I'm saying that less-committed Democrats and moderate independents who frequently vote Democratic might be more likely to defect than Republicans. Remember, the Democratic Party needs self-identified moderates in order to win. Far more Americans identify as conservative than liberal:

An average of 37% of Americans describe their political views as “very conservative” or “conservative,” 34% as “moderate,” and 25% as “very liberal” or “liberal.”

Full story: https://t.co/WdgWywJxbR pic.twitter.com/O5nN4urmri

— Gallup (@Gallup) January 22, 2025

Yet electorally we're a 50-50 country. That means that Democrats do better with self-styled moderates than Republicans do.

Remember No Labels? Pollsters in 2023 found that a No Labels candidate took more votes away from the Democratic presidential ticket than from Trump. America Party candidates could do that, too.

On the other hand, Musk's candidates will probably be bog-standard Republicans on most issues. They'll be hardcore on budget deficits, and almost certainly opposed to higher taxes on rich people. Maybe they'll accept the existence of alternative energy. Candidates with that profile might cut into the GOP vote.

But it could be pointless to take this seriously. Even if the highly distractible Musk follows through, he'll have a hard time finding appealing candidates who are willing to burn their bridges to the GOP in what they assume will be a losing battle. So this will probably fizzle out like No Labels.

Musk is starting us off with low expectations:

One way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts.

Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 4, 2025

Would Musk pick races Democrats could win, and then serve as a spoiler? That's possible. Would Musk try to unseat far-right Freedom Caucus members who yielded to pressure from Trump, even though they're mostly in deep-red districts and are thus unlikely to lose? Also possible.

Will Musk realize that he can't effortlessly gain leverage over the entire Congress and bail on the entire project? That's quite possible. I think the most likely outcome is that he'll abandon the project. He might well engineer a rapprochement with Trump and the GOP by 2026. But if he does what he's promising to do now -- a big if -- there's a chance it could help the Republican Party.

IF THIS POLL IS CORRECT, ALLIGATOR AUSCHWITZ IS NOT POPULAR

A few hours ago, on the subject of immigration, Axios published a Republican press release disguised as a story:

The MAGA movement is reveling in the creativity, severity and accelerating force of President Trump's historic immigration crackdown.

... Once-fringe tactics — an alligator-moated detention camp, deportations to war zones, denaturalization of immigrant citizens — are now being proudly embraced at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

It's an extraordinary shift from Trump's first term, when nationwide backlash and the appearance of cruelty forced the administration to abandon its family separation policy for unauthorized immigrants.

The breathing gets especially heavy when the discussion turns to the new detention facility in Florida:

Driving the news: Trump on Tuesday toured a temporary ICE facility in the Florida Everglades dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," where thousands of migrants will be detained in a remote, marshland environment teeming with predators.

MAGA influencers invited on the trip gleefully posted photos of the prison's cages and souvenir-style "merchandise," thrilling their followers and horrifying critics.

Pro-Trump activist Laura Loomer drew outrage after tweeting that "alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we get started now" — widely interpreted as a reference to the Hispanic population of the United States.

I get the feeling that Trumpworld sees the facility as an 80-20 issue in their favor -- of course Americans will revel in the idea of detainees being surrounded by deadly predators! -- because Republicans find the idea unusually delightful. But if the first polling on it is credible, the facility isn't popular:

If the numbers are right, only 26% of independents approve of the facility (while 53% disapprove).

And younger people are particularly skeptical.

No surprise there. Young people -- and I think this includes the podcast bros who voted for Trump -- a far more accepting of a multi-ethnic America than their elders, and thus don't automatically respond well (as many old people do) to the idea of darker-skinned immigrants being detained in these dangerous and dehumanizing conditions. Joe Rogan, who connects with the bros even though he's not young himself, has criticized the Trump crackdown, on the grounds that most of the detainees are just people trying to earn a dollar:

Joe Rogan: "It's insane. The targeting of migrant workers, not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers showing up on construction sites and raiding them." pic.twitter.com/r04H8zA2hk

— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) July 3, 2025

I also believe that Lock lawbreakers up in the most dehumanizing conditions imaginable is a policy idea that appeals much more to older Americans than younger Americans. Older people lived through the high-crime era that ended in the early 1990s, and many of us bought the argument that the solution to crime was extraordinarily long sentences and brutal supermaxes.

To younger Americans, I suspect that the Florida facility seems baroque and absurd, more like an incarceration site in a torture-porn movie than an appropriate place for the government to detain people. Are wise adults actually solving problems here, or are they just doing this because it's sick fun for them? And are we really doing this to people because they're undocumented gardeners or construction workers, while child molesters and murderers are in normal prisons?

It's quite possible that Trumpworld doesn't care what the public thinks, as long as the MAGA base is (deliriously) happy and the policy doesn't make voters angry enough to reject the GOP. But Democrats should do further assessments of public opinion on this subject. Like the roundups, the facility might really look like the wrong remedy aimed at the wrong people. Democrats might be able to take advantage of that.

FOR OUR ENEMIES, THE LAW

Happy (?) 4th. Now that the big bill has been rubber-stamped by Congress, here are some stories you might have missed about the Trump regime siccing the law on people Trump doesn't like.

First, the Los Angeles Times reports:

A local activist who handed out protective face shields to protesters last month during demonstrations against the Trump administration’s chaotic immigration raids was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday.

Alejandro Orellana, a 29-year-old member of the Boyle Heights-based community organization Centro CSO, faces charges of conspiracy and aiding and abetting civil disorder, court records show.

According to the indictment, Orellana and at least two others drove around downtown L.A. in a pickup truck distributing Uvex Bionic face shields and other items to a crowd engaged in a protest near the federal building on Los Angeles Street on June 9.

Prosecutors allege Orellana was helping protesters withstand less-lethal munitions being deployed by Los Angeles police officers and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies after an unlawful assembly had been declared.

So it's illegal to protect your face from rubber bullets and tear gas?

I guess so.

Asked how handing out defensive equipment was a crime during a news conference last month, [U.S. attorney Bill] Essayli insisted Orellana was specifically handing out supplies to violent demonstrators.

“He wasn’t handing masks out at the beach. ... They’re covering their faces. They’re wearing backpacks. These weren’t peaceful protesters,” he said. “They weren’t holding up signs, with a political message. They came to do violence.”

In the new American order, words don't mean what you think they mean.

Essayli described anyone who remained at a protest scene after an unlawful assembly was declared as a “rioter” and said peaceful protesters “don’t need a face shield.”

In fact:

A Times investigation last month highlighted incidents in which protesters allege Los Angeles Police Department officers fired rubber rounds and other crowd control munitions without warning in recent weeks, causing demonstrators and members of the media to suffer broken bones, concussions and other forms of severe harm.

And now for some electoral activity the Trump regime is attempting to criminalize:

Senior Justice Department officials are exploring whether they can bring criminal charges against state or local election officials if the Trump administration determines they have not sufficiently safeguarded their computer systems, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The department’s effort, which is still in its early stages, is not based on new evidence, data or legal authority, according to the people, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. Instead, it is driven by the unsubstantiated argument made by many in the Trump administration that American elections are easy prey to voter fraud and foreign manipulation, these people said....

Conspiracy theories about the security of election machines ... were thrust into the mainstream after the 2020 election, when allies of Mr. Trump espoused spurious theories, claiming, with no evidence, that machines were hacked by foreign adversaries, some with ties to long-deceased dictators.

... Mr. Trump ... stated a desire to criminally prosecute state and local election officials while he was running for office in 2024. And Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration, also pushed for using the Justice Department to prosecute election officials.

Will honest election officials be prosecuted by the regime? Could legitimate election results be overturned? Sure seems that way.

And I guess this is a consequence of 9/11, but your electronic devices are an open book to the regime:

United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is asking tech companies to pitch digital forensics tools that are designed to process and analyze text messages, pictures, videos, and contacts from seized phones, laptops, and other devices at the United States border....

CBP has been using Cellebrite to extract and analyze data from devices since 2008. But the agency said that it wants to “expand” and modernize its digital forensics program.

... Cellebrite ... can sort images based on whether they contain certain elements, like jewelry, handwriting, or documents. It can also go through text messages, as well as direct messages on apps like TikTok, and filter out messages that mention certain topics, like evidence obstruction, family, or the police. Users can also unveil photos “hidden” by a device owner, make social maps of friends and contacts, and plot the locations where a person sent text messages....

Legally, CBP has the authority to search anyone’s phone at the US border without a warrant. If a person refuses to hand over their password, US citizens can remain in custody temporarily, but can’t be denied entry. However, non-citizens may be denied entry if they refuse.

If border patrol officers have the password to someone’s phone, they can conduct a “basic search” and manually scroll through the phone on the spot. However, officers may then choose to download the entirety of a phone's data, or keep it to conduct an “advanced search,” at which point digital forensic tools like Cellebrite may be used.

All this makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

CBP is allowed to conduct fishing expeduitions, an abuse the Fourth Amendment was meant to prevent. And in the hands of the Trump regime, the only reason for the search might be political disrespect for the King.

Dreaming up new ways to criminalize opposition to Trump is an emotional satisfying pursuit for Trump's top aides, so expect additional inventive forms of repression in the future.

PUT REPUBLICANS ON THE CLOCK

Soon Republicans will pass their big bill. I understand why they think they can cut Medicaid and other programs while avoiding severe electoral consequences:

At the core of Republicans’ sprawling domestic policy package is an important political calculation. It provides its most generous tax breaks early on and reserves some of its most painful benefit cuts until after the 2026 midterm elections.

On Medicaid specifically:

Republicans have pursued more aggressive changes to Medicaid, which helps low-income and disabled Americans obtain health insurance. The bill would require most adults with children age 14 or older to obtain work in order to qualify for aid, while restricting the ways that many states have financed their Medicaid programs.

The new Medicaid work rules are scheduled to take effect after the midterm elections, but the deadline is considered tight by many current and former state officials, given the enormous demands the policy offloads onto state governments to develop new systems for tracking work hours and exemptions for millions of beneficiaries.

A subsequent group of cuts kicks in starting in 2028. But let's just concentrate on the 2026 cuts. I will quote the much-despised Ezra Klein because he explains them vividly:

The way Medicaid has to save money is that somebody who would have gotten treatment for cancer, for C.O.P.D., for an aching back — whatever it might be — will now either not go get that treatment or somehow this person who was on Medicaid and was poor enough to qualify for Medicaid is going to pay for it some other way.

The federal government is implementing an onerous set of paperwork and reporting requirements where, if people who are already poor, sick or otherwise disorganized cannot or do not abide by them, when they get sick, they will not be able to get chemotherapy — or they will have to go into medical debt to get chemotherapy.

Like — why? So I can get a tax cut?

But these changes are delayed until after the midterms, so how do Democrats run against them?

Here's an idea idea I got from watching Season 4 of The Bear.

In The Bear, financial backer James "Cicero" Kalinowski places a countdown clock in the kitchen of the restaurant, as a warning to everyone working there of when the money will run out unless the restaurant's commercial prospects improve.

I think Democrats should make videos and ads that include a clock counting down to when the Medicaid changes start to kick in. Democrats should tell voters that Republicans delayed these changes in order to deceive them. Voters should think of them as a ticking time bomb.

This wouldn't be the first use of countdown clocks in American politics. There's been a National Debt Clock in midtown Manhattan since 1989. Cable news likes countdown clocks, for everything from potential U.S. debt defaults to minor-party presidential town halls.

Ordinary Americans would understand this. Democrats should do it. There might be better ways of conveying the changes that are coming, but this could do it.

WHY THE BILL IS HARD TO KILL

I know you'll say there's no reason to pay attention to an Ezra Klein podcast, especially when his guest is Matthew Yglesias, but I've read the transcript of this one and it got me thinking about the Democrats' failure to stir up more anger about the Republicans' big bill. (To be fair, I think Democrats have stirred up a great deal of anger, though clearly not enough to kill the bill altogether.)

Klein thinks it's been hard to get Americans to focus on the bill because it's complicated. He compares it to some of President Biden's bills. Yglesias agrees -- and I think they have a point. (Klein is in bold below.)

I have this view that these massive omnibus bills have become harder for people to talk about because there’s just too much going on in them. I think this is actually a problem for Build Back Better, which Democrats had trouble messaging and getting people to think about because it just did 80 different things. I think it was a little bit true with the Inflation Reduction Act....

I think the analogy to the Biden-era megabills is a good one.

At the time, Democrats were claiming to believe that if people were paying a lot of attention to the contents of Build Back Better, they would love it and that there would be this outpouring of public enthusiasm. They were struggling to get attention for a bill that was a very miscellaneous hodgepodge of things.

I would say that’s probably working in Trump’s favor right now. People are having trouble getting their minds around an initiative that’s not very popular.

Eight years ago, Democrats were able to focus the country on Obamacare repeal in a way they haven't been able to focus the country on this bill. Yglesias thinks that's partly because Trump made Obamacare repeal personal, and isn't doing the same thing now.

During the A.C.A. repeal fight, Trump really pivoted his messaging — talking a lot about the need to get it done and staging big, splashy events with House Republicans. He believed, as presidents tend to ... that if a president talks a lot about something, it will make people want to do what the president is saying. But all the evidence shows that’s not true.

I think Trump is wisely not talking about this....

Trump is "wisely" not talking about this in the sense of "It's wise for him to shut up if he wants to win." That makes sense to me.

But Democrats could focus voters if they tried. Klein says:

... I’ve been thinking about how unbelievably uninspired the Democratic messaging is on this. When I was preparing for this conversation, I was watching Chuck Schumer — or Hakeem Jeffries on the House floor, holding up an Elmo puppet.

Whether or not the C-SPAN messaging is good or bad, it’s just not the kind of thing that breaks through. Democrats have a lot of money in their campaign accounts.

You could imagine really slick videos where you’re doing the man-on-the-street thing with people who use Medicaid in very Trumpy districts: talking about what Medicaid means to them, what it’s done for them and how they would feel if it were slashed to the bone or at these rural hospitals.

I’m not saying everything would break through. But it doesn’t seem impossible to me that, if you had millions of dollars to message things, you could come up with something that would dramatize what is happening here in ways that might get some attention.

Yglesias says:

I think a big problem is that the Democratic Party is leaderless at the moment. The leadership they have is held in low regard by their own voters.

But the immigration messaging that's broken through hasn't come from leaders. Chris Van Hollen isn't a leader -- he's just a little-known senator who changed the conversation by demanding to see a constituent in El Salvador. The Democrats who've been arrested or detained aren't in leadership. They're just people who stepped up and did something galvanizing.

Yglesias and Klein have the absurd idea that Zohran Mamdani should lead the charge against the bill. Yglesias says:

I think a great thing for Zohran Mamdani to do would be to spend some time talking about a big consensus issue.

It's a "consensus issue" because the entire Democratic Party opposes the bill. Klein thinks this is a great idea:

... it’s obvious to both of us that it would be more meaningful for the 33-year-old assembly member who won a New York mayoral primary to really engage on this Medicaid bill than for all of the Democratic politicians who actually hold office and might have a vote. [Laughs.]

There’s something about the way attention does not accrue to power that’s really interesting. Hakeem Jefferies can’t get people to pay attention to this, and he’s the minority leader in the House.

I agree with you: Zohran Mamdani could.

Why should Mamdani do this? He's not in Congress. He's not running for Congress. He is running for an office he's likely but not guaranteed to win. He's busy right now! Someone else in the Democratic Party needs to fight this fight.

It doesn't have to be the most charismatic person in the party. Senator Van Hollen isn't charismatic. Nor is Senator Alex Padilla, who was manhandled and handcuffed at a Kristi Noem press conference. Brad Lander, who was arrested in New York, is famous for not being charismatic like Mamdani.

But the immigration protests are inherently more compelling because they're responses to cruel acts happening now, not in the future. I don't know what would be analogous in this situation. And if the specific way people will lose Medicaid coverage is their failure to keep up with onerous paperwork requirements, it's hard to identify obvious future victims, the way we could with Obamacare repeal -- after all, in theory every Medicaid recipient could dot all the i's and cross all the t's every month.

It's hard to fight Trump this time around. Everything he's doing is awful, so it's understandable that Democrats want to fight it all. Yglesias says:

We had these nationwide “No Kings” protests that were very successful and well organized. It got attention, and there were good visuals. Those could have been “No Medicaid Cuts” protests, but they weren’t.

There was plenty of anger about the Medicaid cuts at the No Kings protests, and at every other big demonstration I've attended. But there's so much else to be angry about.

Trump's people aren't doing all the other things as "distractions." They're evil, and they want to do many, many evil things. They've recognized that doing many of them all at once makes each of them harder to fight.

We need a creative Democrat or two able to craft a response to the Medicaid cuts that focuses America's attention. This doesn't have to be done by leaders or stars. But it's hard. And maybe the public simply won't be able to focus until the cuts are real.