Easy Sunday: Be prepared. Things might work out OK

"You say you'll change the Constitution, well, you know
We all wanna change our head
Don't you know it's gonna be alright, alright, alright"

     John Lennon, "Revolution" 1968

Democrats are worried sick about the state of the country.

Trump isn't just breaking norms. He is breaking laws, and bragging about it. He is flouting the Constitution, and bragging about that, too. Democrats are looking up German history and trying to decide if this is 1932, or if we are past that already, 1934.

Democrats think they have an ace in the hole to protect America against its worst impulses: Trump is going to crash the economy. When that happens, his popularity will wane and Republican representatives and senators will stop quaking in fear and rediscover their principles.

Democrats have that moral quandary: Is it OK to wish the economy sputters, with all the human pain that means, if it results in ending Trump's assault on the Constitution?  Trump's trade policies are sowing the seeds of his own destruction, right? 

I suspect not. Trump has ambitions, not principles. He wants to be on Mount Rushmore. He wants to be praised. He has a powerful gift for a politician in a democracy. He wants desperately to be popular. 

He doesn't really care about tariffs, and he is already pausing and backing away from them. He has done irretrievable damage to the U.S. brand and reputation as a reliable partner -- and that matters long term -- but in the short term Trump will claim to having made other countries knuckle under, but active trade will be restored. There is a simple reason for that: Trade makes people happier and wealthier. It is the equilibrium state and market forces will push people back toward it. Trump will eventually do what makes economic sense.

The galling truth for Democrats is that Trump inherited a strong and resilient economy and Trump will take credit for it. Face that reality. 

Unemployment is low.

Retail spending is strong and trending up.

The inflation trend line is down.

The problem for Democrats is that what President Biden and candidate Kamala Harris said about the economy was true, but people didn't believe it. Things are pretty good overall. Joe Biden could not sell strength and optimism and vitality. He didn't look or sound the part. At best he projected experience, or at least stability, but not vitality.

Trump -- for all his corruption and lawlessness -- does project can-do strength. He projects energy. Evil energy, to be sure. But energy.

And since he wants to be popular he is not going to persist in tanking the economy. Democrats don't have that ace in the hole.

Democrats need not fear prosperity. They can stop Trump and his assault on norms and the Constitution. Trump is exhausting, and the public tires of Trump.  And Democrats can take a page from Trump and do popular things and stop doing unpopular things. 

   ***Stop defending and minimizing an unmanaged border. Even first and second generation Hispanics want a secure border. Be the border-enforcement party. Do it right, but do it.

   ***Stop making race central. Even a majority of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans and others are uncomfortable with race-based attention. Martin Luther King was right: content of character, not color of skin.

   ***Stop pretending sex isn't pretty darned real. Democrats don't need to attack non-typical gender expressions -- live and let live, be who you are -- but don't deny the lived experiences of most people, which is that boys and girls are different in some pretty spectacular ways.

   ***Don't bash wealth and act as if is the enemy. Most people would like to be wealthy. It is why people buy lottery tickets. It is why people work hard and save and invest. It is why people sacrifice to send their kids to college, so their kids might be prosperous. Talk about, and advance policies, that enable people to get ahead.

People voted for Trump only because Democrats were stuck defending unpopular policies. This is politics in a democracy: Give people what they want.

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That "process" nuisance.

"IF LIBERALS WON'T ENFORCE BORDERS, FASCISTS WILL"
          Headline to an article by David Frum, April, 2019 in The Atlantic

It wasn't as if progressive Democrats weren't warned.  

There was a failure of process.

David Frum was writing at the high-water moment of social justice consciousness. It was the year when the seeds were sown that created the backlash against that bundle of attitudes and policies, ones that Trump condemns as DEI and "wokeness," ones that Trump is now reversing. 

I counted about 16 serious candidates who showed up in Iowa and New Hampshire to speak at events in 2019. It was a heady time. The public was tired of Trump. There was no limit to how not-Trump a candidate could go. Whatever Trump said, do the opposite, and do it louder and stronger. I was there to watch Democratic candidates jostle to get to the left of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders' people were calling Warren a capitalist, corporation-loving sellout. 

Liberal advocacy groups were busy shaming people who failed to adopt the dream-positions of the organizations' most zealous people. This is when Democrats who wanted credibility on climate had to condemn fracking, oil and natural gas drilling, oil pipelines, exporting oil, using oil domestically, natural gas heating and cooking in homes. Anything less, and one was a sellout. Same thing on abortion; be an absolutist or be a disgusting woman-hater. Identity-essentialism became required orthodox thinking, so race explained all outcomes; a candidate who looked to individual merit, effort, or circumstances was failing to understand "intersectionality" and was therefore an apologist -- indeed a promoter -- of racism. Shame!

Does this all sound extreme and overblown? It does, because it was. And in that mix, Democrats looked with horror at the racist dog whistling and policies of then-President Trump to secure the border. In this do-the-opposite-of-Trump era, every Democrat except Joe Biden raised a hand saying that they would decriminalize illegal entry into the country.

Biden was elected in 2020 but then adopted the policies of "immigration progressives" who thought immigration enforcement was unjust per se. Biden let people seeking amnesty game a badly-broken system, which amounted to an immigration free-for all. Democrats made a fatal mistake. 

I have shown a version of this graph before, but do it again because it shows a problem ignored for almost four years, and then the effect of Trump's intervention. The high values on the right are 200,000 new people a month entering the country illegally during Biden's term of office. Then Trump shut that down.

The numbers have consequence because Trump is seen to have solved a problem that Biden -- and therefore Democrats generally -- did not solve. That makes Trump popular with the public. Americans will ignore some errors and rough edges in how something is done, if it is done on behalf of getting a problem solved. 

Trump wrote this Truth Social "truth" last night, complaining about process.

My greatest worry about Trump is his lack of respect for the processes of law. Legal process protects us from tyranny and corruption. Our system of laws is the "secret sauce" that allows our economy to thrive. I fault Trump and I fault his Republican enablers, the representatives and senators who know better, but are letting Trump do what he wants because what Trump is doing is decisive and popular with the GOP primary voter. 

I also fault Democrats. Biden failed to defend legal process on the border. It was obvious that the asylum system was not working and that catch-and-release wasn't working.  This wasn't a secret and it wasn't just a short-term blip. Biden let a problem grow and fester. It was lawless. A lawless, unaddressed problem created a situation where the public tolerates a lawless autocratic president to deal with it. 

I don't excuse Trump. He is dangerous. He is re-shaping our Constitution. But there is a lesson here for Democrats: Obey and enforce the laws.  Don't excuse scofflaws who are "on your team." It sets a bad precedent. Worse, it makes a dangerous man like Trump popular when he fixes the problems that Democrats let happen.

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Medford School Board candidate: Erik Johnsen

This morning Erik Johnsen called me.

He is a candidate for the Medford school board.

He said my post yesterday about the Medford school board election indicated my orientation toward stability and continuity. He said that continuity had its place -- and certainly collegiality on a board does -- but that the Medford school board needed to press reset.  He said he is a sensible, responsible change agent.

Erik Johnson is a candidate for Position Three.  The school board chair Cynthia Wright, is running for re-election in that position. Another candidate, Taryne Saunders is as well. My post yesterday warned that Taryne Saunders presented herself as a disrupter, both at school board meetings and as a candidate at public events. I did not want her to win. Neither does Erik.

I decided to give him an opportunity to present his case.

Here is a statement from Erik Johnsen

 

Dear Peter and the readers of the Up Close blog,
 
I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the state of the Medford School Board race.  Based on your post from May 15, 2025, it is difficult to debate or offer counter-points to an anonymous “Bill,” and his stated preferences.  But as someone actually IN the race, who knows the people and issues that are at play, I thought I could help share some valuable perspectives to your readers.
 
Peter’s stated preference is for stability and low conflict.  Stability is generally a good thing to have in an organization, but significant change rarely comes from the status quo. The fact is that the Medford School District’s enrollment has been on a steady decline since COVID, and the only explanation offered by the district is declining birth rates. There is some truth to that, but that is not the whole truth. Migration in and out of the area can be a factor, and I personally know a great number of families who have chosen to leave the school district in favor of home school, private schools, and neighboring districts. Our community is telling us we need to do better, and voting with their feet.  We need to answer the call, and I personally do not believe the status quo will allow that to happen.  In terms of low conflict, the current board has been “anything but,” and that ultimately comes down to board leadership.  As a retired superintendent recently told me: “every problem that exists is actually a leadership problem.”
 
As a first time candidate, I will make note of an interesting observation for your readers.  For a non-partisan race, many casual observers and voters tend to revert to a very right vs left lens of this school board race. Those concerns have been further stoked by public comments from MTN Church and the Oregon Education Project, many months ago. It does not seem to me that their stated objectives have received the organizational support they had hoped for. For people who do follow school district issues and politics, the real divide seems to be a split on the school board, and there is a lot energy being spent trying to figure out which “camp” each of the candidates are in. Having gotten to know Angela Zbikowski and Sandra LaNier McHenry over the last few weeks, I would like to emphatically state that we are NOT playing that game.  Personally, I am seeking to build bridges with everyone, and I see no need to burn them down before I even get on the board and have to start working with people. If you would like to see positive things get done for kids, I would suggest rejecting the typical right vs left lens, and the lens that seeks to put board members in certain “camps,” and vote for the folks to have mastery of the issues, and the professionalism to work well with everyone. That is the only way this school district is going to get stuff done for kids.

 

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Shakedown

Trump to Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman:
          “I like you too much.”



Trump to Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates:
          “You’re a magnificent man.”


If you are a mob boss selling "protection," you don't hide it. You display it.

Same with an American president.

The first Trump impeachment was a kind of proof-of-concept experiment. It demonstrated that Americans didn't really care very much about a president doing quid pro quo extortion for political benefit. Oh, Democrats cared, but they cared because it was partisan and Trump was obviously guilty and they thought guilt mattered. Republicans said what Trump did wasn't that bad. Nothing to get impeached over.

Remember: Trump told Ukraine President Zelenskyy that Trump would release appropriated funds for weapons for Ukraine's defense if Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine was investigating Hunter Biden. Just announce it. No need to do it. That would give third-party credibility to the charge the Trump campaign was making, saying Hunter Biden was a corrupt part of the "Biden crime family." 

Theoretically -- in the abstract -- voters should have been appalled. They weren't. Trump's extortion did not take place in an arena of good vs. bad. It took place in what voters now view as the "swamp," where everyone uses leverage and influence for personal advantage. The Democratic case was muddled because Democrats were averting their own eyes from Hunter Biden's influence peddling. 

That set the stage for what we see in Trump's second term. There is no pretense by Trump. There are deals to be made. Transactions. These are as clean and upfront as any commercial transaction -- a gasoline customer getting a fill-up. Those aren't complicated by nuance or values or history or alliances. You want $50 of gasoline, pay $50 and get gasoline.

The media and the American public are attuned to signs of guilt or shame. We know when a politician tries to avoid the hard question. We watched Kamala Harris struggle to avoid saying that Democrats would not outlaw very late-term abortions. She said they are rare. She said they are extreme cases. She said the question was unfair. We got the message: She feels guilty about the answer, that, yes, sometimes late abortions happen and that Democrats defer to the woman and the doctor on that.

Trump is oddly honest-appearing. He is a straightforward liar, appearing wholly convinced of what he says, so he isn't really lying. Just telling his truth and he is okay with himself. He is saying that, sure, he is getting a palatial plane, and that it is greasing the wheels of other deal-making, both public with arms purchases, and private with real estate developments for the Trump Organization. He is proud of it. Trump isn't avoiding the quid pro quo. And since he doesn't act guilty or ashamed, it must not be wrong.

Trump is showing with actions that he will do business with friends and will make trouble for enemies. People were shocked that President Richard Nixon had an enemies list and that he tried to get the IRS and Justice Department to investigate people on the list. Trump does not silently whisper to agencies that he is unhappy with Chris Krebs, his former head of cybersecurity. Krebs frustrated Trump by reporting that his investigations showed no sign of material fraud in the 2020 election. Trump didn't want to hear that. MAGA voters don't want to hear that. So squash the little truth-teller. Trump signed an executive order siccing the government on Krebs and his current employer. He wants Krebs imprisoned, or at least dangerous to befriend or employ. Trump is sending a message to every past and present employee. If you make trouble for Trump, he will get you. 

And he is telling businesses and governments worldwide, that if you are nice and make gifts, contribute to his campaigns, buy his cyber "collectable" coin, agree to do pro bono legal work for him, then he will make it worth your while. 

What took place in the Middle East was advertising the new reality. 

Whatever high-sounding, American-exceptionalism, human-rights-valuing postwar "bear any burden, pay any price" talk by JFK, or any "last greatest hope of mankind" talk by Ronald Reagan that used to be part of the soft-power story of America is over. Finito! This is the new America. A realistic America, where engagement with America is a series of deals, and Trump is in the middle of all of them. 

At home or abroad, it is the same deal: Make Trump happy, and good things will come your way. Don't disappoint him.

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Medford School Board

     "A group is trying to take over the Medford schools. I'm trying to stop them, and just elect people who want good schools."
          Neighborhood door-walker

That is the message of a door-to-door campaign volunteer meeting voters in East Medford. 

Walking door-to-door during a special election campaign is both frustrating and enlightening.

Frustrating, because the door-to-door canvasser -- let's call him Bill -- knocked on 70 doors this week and discovered that not a single person he spoke with had a clear idea who was running for school board, and what the issues were, if any.

Illuminating, because Bill said he met friendly people happy to visit about the state of the country, of whom about a third said they expected to vote in this local election even though they didn't know much.

The special election elects candidates for the library district, school board districts, the transportation district, the community college district, fire districts, and more. Ballots were mailed two weeks ago. They are due by May 20.

A voters pamphlet, with a short statement of candidacy by each candidate, is sent to every household about the time that ballots arrived. It is also available online. Here is mine, in Jackson County. Click.

Bill, the neighborhood door-knocker, has no special relationship to the candidates he was hoping would win. He had met them at candidate forums. He told me they seemed "normal," "intelligent," "well-intended." He put them in a general category of "responsible public-spirited citizens" -- the sort of people he thought would hire a reasonable new school superintendent to replace the one who resigned amid the growing culture war disruptions taking place at school board meetings.

Bill's favored candidates are Angela Zbikowski, Sandra LaNier McHenry, and Cynthia Wright.

Bill sees the disruption at school board meetings as part of the larger, populist war of opposition to professionalism and expertise, whether about vaccinations or education. There is a national movement to remove material that acknowledges past prejudices against Native Americans, Blacks, Asians, and other non-White people from libraries and curriculum. It is why baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson and the Black Tuskegee Airmen got scrubbed from federal websites. It isn't that Jackie Robinson and Black pilots did not exist. It is that recognizing that they overcame prejudice puts the White Americans who supported slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and broken treaties with Native Americans in a bad light. Students might feel less patriotic. White students might get a sense that they benefited from privilege. 

So, who does Bill hope does NOT win election?  

In Position One, Curt Ankerberg is well known locally. His voters pamphlet reflects his opinionated pugnaciousness. Less well known, but more potentially disruptive than Ankerberg, is another former office-seeker, Logan Leverette Vaughan. Running in the same position is Cheyla Breedlove. Her voters pamphlet statement leaves unacknowledged that her husband, Donovan Donnally, is also a candidate for the school board in Position Two. They are a mini voting bloc. Both Breedlove and Donnally received close questioning at a candidate forum, with questions designed to tease out to what degree they intended to bring a Christian nationalist agenda to their potential board service. They are widely suspected of that intention, but they answered questions carefully, saying that they respected a separation between church and public education. Bill heard them and doesn't believe them.

In Position One, there is a safer, better alternative to those candidates: Angela Zbikowski. She is the one Bill recommended to his neighbors.

In Position Two, Sanda LaNier McHenry is a candidate and the alternative to Donnally, so she is the one Bill recommended as the better choice.

Position Three has three candidates. Taryne Saunders also attended that candidate forum I attended. She presented herself as the angry outsider, someone whose comments at prior board meetings got her banned from the meetings. She said her removal was unjust. Her voters pamphlet language emphasized "working with," but her tone at the forum -- and her past behavior -- suggests she intends to be a disrupter.

There are two alternatives to Saunders in Position Three. Erik Johnsen is recommended by the Medford Education Association -- the teachers union -- and Cynthia Wright, a long-established veteran of the school board. Bill's own orientation is toward continuity and stability and attention to the task of hiring a new superintendent, so he prefers Wright. 

Bill's preferences may not be the same as other local readers. People who want a real shakeup, one that redirects the Medford schools toward MAGA culture wars, and perhaps a surprising out-of-right-field new school superintendent, would probably do best to do the opposite of Bill. Voters who think that school board meetings would profit from continued disruption and conflict might choose to vote for Curt Ankerberg or Cheyla Breedlove in Position One, Donovan Donnally in Position Two, and Taryne Saunders in Position Three.

I personally am looking for stability and low conflict. I don't want school libraries and curriculum whitewashed. I don't want police to need to be stationed at school board meetings to keep order. 

Like Bill, I voted for Angela Zbikowski, Sandra LaNier McHenry, and Cynthia Wright.

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Palace in the Sky

The Qatari jet was too good to resist for Trump.

The issue is too good to resist for Democrats.

Watch out, Democrats. This is a trap. 

First, let's start with the obvious: Donald Trump is enthralled by the Qatari jet. It is what he loves. Gold colors on the wall, gold fixtures, sparkly lighting. The jet has the sumptuous oriental sultan look. It is how he outfitted his apartment in Trump Tower, what he did decorating the Trump Taj Mahal casino, and it has the look of his personal spaces at Mar-a-Lago. Lots of gold. Of course Trump could not resist.

And it was a deal -- better yet.  It is a thank-you gift!  He wrote: "Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country."

Trump is surrounded by enablers and yes-people, so he did not get warned off of this. His attorney general, Pam Bondi -- formerly a paid lobbyist for Qatar -- compliantly gave Trump legal cover. Trump did what Trump does: sell it by positioning himself as powerful, smart, and doing good for America, and position Democrats as stupid and crooked.

The whole thing looks terrible to anyone outside of the Trump MAGA bubble. It makes the USA look tawdry. It advertises that the USA is a corrupt pay-to-play government. The fact that Trump is so comfortable with quid pro quo transactional cronyism blinds him to the greater optics.

But fellow Republicans aren't blind. Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham are publicly throwing shade on the deal. So is The Wall Street Journal -- now a reliable voice of constraint on Trump --  but so is the New York Post, the Murdochs' downscale MAGA cheerleading outlet. 

Trump has the salesman's gift of knowing when a product is so bad that even a master sales pitch won't work. He sells, then responds to customer cues. Remember: He tried selling Trump Steaks. What is important to notice is that he stopped when customers wouldn't buy them. His "Liberation Day" tariffs scared the bond and currency markets, so he called for a pause. Same with the stock market, now rebounding as Trump backs off his tariff plans. Trump responds to market cues.

Trump will reverse himself on the jet, possibly today, but more likely, I suspect, after he lets Democrats overplay what they see as a too-good-to-miss opportunity. The palatial jet issue is as irresistible to Democrats as the jet itself was to Trump. Democrats see that it reveals Trump as a sucker for the baubles of the obscenely rich. It contradicts the Trump brand by showing him to be dependent on the charity and gift-giving of wealthy patrons, and therefore weak, not strong. Trump looks like the kept woman. Melania, not Donald. And Qatar is a problem. Qatar is not a friend. They are supporters of Hamas and other terrorist groups. This is not "free." They want something. 

The grift of this jet is tiny compared with the multi-billion-dollar grift of Trump's crypto meme coin. That is a pay-to-play opportunity to send tens, maybe hundreds, of billions of dollars to Trump. That one has a fig leaf of deniability. Wealthy individuals, businesses, and foreign countries are making investments in crypto money Trump invented from thin air.  Investments, not bribes.  Wink-wink. All perfectly legal. 

The jet is a shiny distraction. Democrats will rush to condemn it and make a big show. Then Trump -- as with Trump Steaks and abortion bans and China tariffs -- will say "nevermind." That will position Trump as Mr. Clean, Mr. Self-Sacrifice, the president who didn't do the smart, good-deal thing because crooked Democrats complained. Democrats will be left holding an empty bag.

Trump has been selling the idea of his personal sacrifice since 2015 and he is still at it, with this posted on Truth Social yesterday.  

Trump will let the Qatari jet opportunity drop. He will suffer along in the current Air Force One. 

Meanwhile, billionaires who want to drive up the price of the Trump crypto coin are free to do so, then be hosted as VIPs at Mar-a-Lago.

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Measles

Vaccinating children against communicable disease is the single most cost-effective thing we can do to improve Americans' health and save lives.

Some people don't vaccinate their kids.

The national argument over funding Medicaid brings attention to the cost-effectiveness of health care. What really works to make people healthier or save lives?

Childhood vaccinations.

I encountered this data on the same day that oregonlive.com, the 21st century version of Oregon's flagship newspaper, The Oregonian, carried a story revealing the data from the Oregon Health Authority on childhood vaccination rates in Oregon. It lists and maps every school. The information is searchable by county and by manipulating the map. Click

Oregon law requires school children to be vaccinated. The law allows people to get an exception to that requirement if necessary for medical or religious reasons. The trend line of vaccinations is down, and is now widely below the presumed "herd immunity" level. The herd does not make one immune; immunity is a misleading term. The rarity of the disease in an immunized herd means that one is unlikely to encounter the pathogen. One isn't immune. One just doesn't happen to catch it. 

Traditionally vaccination refusal had been left-coded, with very few people declining vaccination based on a post-hippie, natural foods, natural herbs and alternative medicine, anti-establishment, back-to-simplicity orientation. Leftist home schoolers. Raw milk drinkers. Technology-avoiders. People who are very suspicious of politics, especially the major political parties.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made sense to that group. He is now a bridge to right-coded vaccination refusers, and he makes sense to them, too.  Again, they are anti-establishment, home-schooling, anti-drug-company, pro-natural herbs and alternative medicine, suspicious of health "experts," and opposed to compulsion. They have a lot in common with left-coded vaccination opponents.

They would be distinguished from left-oriented vaccination refusers by the bumper strips on their car (Trump vs. "Coexist") and which school curriculum they choose, a Christian one with strict discipline or a Montessori or student-directed one emphasizing natural curiosity, self-expression, and independent exploration.

The Oregon Health Authority list shows that schools with large broad-based populations approach 95 percent vaccination. North Medford High School, with 1637 students has a 95 percent vaccination rate. South Medford High School with 1649 students has a 96 percent rate. But left-coded specialty schools, for example the Butterfly House Montessori, has only a 67 percent vaccination rate. Ashland, an upscale college town, is a blue island in otherwise reddish-purple Southern Oregon. Its Bellview Elementary School has only 84 percent vaccination, its middle school has 87 percent and its high school has 82 percent vaccination.

Right-coded schools show a similar pattern. Grace Christian School has 78 percent vaccination rate. Knox Classical Christian Academy has a 66 percent vaccination rate. 

Those universal childhood diseases were universal because they are highly contagious. Vaccination cannot be truly universal because a few people cannot get vaccinated because they are too young or because of some immunity problem that keeps the vaccination from working. Their protection would be the herd, if people who could be vaccinated would consent to it. 

But the issue runs up against an American value of body autonomy, one voiced by the abortion choice movement on the left and the MAGA anti-Covid-mandate right. What is good for the community as a whole -- near-universal vaccination -- runs contrary to the right of people to say no for their own private reasons. The most likely consequence of refusing vaccination is that one's child gets the disease. Some will be hospitalized. A few will die. There is some rough justice here: FAFO. Fool Around and Find Out. 

Their deaths will not have been in vain. It will be a body language message to their community. Currently, in some communities, vaccination is a close decision. Maybe yes. Maybe no. Dead and disabled people -- like victims of polio I encountered in my youth -- were an unmistakable message that vaccinations against communicable diseases were a good thing. Getting vaccinated was an easy decision for me and my parents.

We are a victim of our prior success with most communicable diseases. They are still rare. Covid deaths were a blurry, unclear message. The people who were most vulnerable were elderly and sick, and the deaths of those people weren't an enormous shock. Everyone dies. They died a little earlier than they otherwise would have.

The death and disability of young people is a different matter.  We may need a few conspicuous victims to change attitudes. I regret this, but it is one of the consequences of the diminished respect for government institutions, including ones that address public health.

Experience is a hard, cruel teacher, but some will learn from no other.

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