How old is too old to govern? This isn’t really an essay about age. It’s an essay about succession, legitimacy, and whether democracies still know how to renew themselves before decline becomes spectacle. Complete with audio version. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

How do we decide who to trust again after the Trump era? Some flipped from fierce critics to loyal servants the moment power appeared. Others are now turning on the movement they once fed. Is redemption possible, or have some forfeited trust for good? open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

The pardon power was always a dangerous constitutional instrument; under Trump, it increasingly looks like a reward system for the well-connected. America deserves better. Read how loyalty and money buy absolution at the highest level. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Obama advises Dems to drop the seminar-speak, talk plain English. Great advice — until you hit voters who treat politics as tribal loyalty tests. Do we really have to 'dumb down' to reach every voter? open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

New studies show that New Orleans and the Southeast may ultimately become uninhabitable. Katrina wasn’t just a hurricane. It was a warning. Yet, millions of Americans still think reality is negotiable. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

The GOP has slipped $1B into a reconciliation bill for Trump’s ballroom. From private donors to public subsidy. Read or listen to the audio version of my new essay. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

America’s oil dependence is not a side issue. It’s the structure underneath the whole economy, and we are paying dearly for it. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

US debt just passed GDP. We're spending $1T/year on interest alone. No crash tomorrow. But we're borrowing to service the past, not build the future. How did painless politics create this trap? open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

The war is over. Except for the part where it isn’t. This isn’t victory or defeat. It’s something worse. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Just got my Trump passport. Aint’s she a beauty?

The Supreme Court has just undone six decades of progress in one swipe: majority‑Black districts from Louisiana to North Carolina are now on life support. This isn’t “refinement.” It’s restoration—with a new racial arithmetic and an old racial project. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Newsom showing once again how easy it is to troll a snowflake president.

We keep letting Republicans absolve Trump’s rhetoric while blaming Democrats for hatred and violence. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

We have a recurring sickness: genuine violence occurs, like at the Correspondents’ Dinner, and the machinery of media and politics immediately pivots to manufacturing spectacle. Tragedy sells, and we’re all buying. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Tucker Carlson’s shallow apology for backing Trump. He didn’t miss the warning signs—he sold them as virtues. Spare us the theater. While attention is fixed on a still-developing shooting story, Carlson is busy auditioning for absolution. The full takedown here: open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

The Senate has approved another $70 billion for ICE. They rejected funding for childcare, school meals, and healthcare in the same breath. Deficit panic is selective. Enforcement always gets paid. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

It wasn’t Trump’s prose. It was Michael Savage’s. Which makes it worse. Trump didn’t write the ugly immigrant manifesto. He endorsed it. Full essay → open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Texas now forces the Ten Commandments into every classroom. It isn’t heritage—it’s a state‑mandated devotional poster and a theocratic overreach over the First Amendment. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

The war was already a farce. Now he’s turning the ceasefire into a farce. Why Trump’s approach to Iran keeps collapsing under the weight of his own incompetence — and why the regime in Tehran is built to wait him out. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Is there anyone in media more contemptible than Sean Hannity? His “break” from Catholicism has less to do with doctrine than with Donald Trump. The result is a revealing portrait of faith shamelessly bending the knee to power. Read more here: open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

In a matter of weeks, Donald Trump has managed to give Americans a reason to root for Iran and atheists a reason to root for the Pope. Quite an accomplishment.

MAGA accuses the Pope of “selective outrage” for criticizing Trump’s Iran war while ignoring other global atrocities. They’re not just wrong; they’re doing exactly what they condemn. As guilty of selective hearing as they are of their own selective outrage. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

The viral “professor proves socialism fails” story has been circulating for years. The story is fake. The lesson is oversimplified. The willingness to believe it without question? That’s the part worth paying attention to. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Jesus memes? Attacking The Pope? The real question isn’t what Trump did. It’s why we can’t stop watching. We are not just living through the spectacle. We are spectators feeding it. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Trump’s incompetence was never the mystery. The real story is who chose to accommodate it—and why. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Trump males good on his threat to blockade the Strait of Hormuz.

America didn't lose Iran because we failed our war aims. We lost because Trump revealed his team doesn't grasp what made U.S. power persuasive. Not defeat. Erosion. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Trump says we won the war with Iran. So here’s the question no one seems eager to answer: What, exactly, did we win? An audit of claims vs. reality—and the answer is not flattering. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

The most revealing account yet of how the U.S. went to war with Iran shows something far worse than bad judgment. It shows a system that stopped thinking, or maybe never did. Here’s how it happened. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

A reader’s comment to my previous essay on Trump and war crimes inspired this postscript—a coda on silence, conscience, and what happens when power goes unanswered. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

If Trump commits war crimes, who enforces it? Who even cares? The answer may be worse than the question. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum quietly changed its own exhibits—scrubbing links about Naziism and racism in American history—anticipating a crackdown from Donald Trump. They weren’t order to do so. No order was needed. That’s the problem. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Trump’s ill-begotten Iran war remains chaotic, but what if something is underway behind the scenes that can be used for political advantage to deceive the American public? Beware the stage-managed triumph. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Trump says daycare, Medicare, and Medicaid are unaffordable. $1.5T for the military? No problem. Guns over butter isn’t hypocrisy—it’s a revealed hierarchy. My latest essay, updated. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Trump says daycare, Medicare, and Medicaid are unaffordable. $1.5T for the military? No problem. Guns over butter isn’t hypocrisy—it’s a revealed hierarchy. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Trump didn’t fire Bondi because she was awful (she was), but because she became a liability to his brand, and his midterm prospects. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Trump’s Iran speech tonight won’t reveal a plan—because there was never one. It will only confirm what we’ve known all along: this is a man‑child playing with the world’s most powerful military in a gas‑filled room. My new essay is online. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

The FUBAR Presidency Trump’s Iran war is a perfect case study in what happens when chaos is mistaken for policy. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Prediction Markets and the Normalization of Profiting From Trump’s Power open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

The Epstein files aren’t just about who’s in them. They’re about why we still don’t have all of them. When power controls the clock, truth becomes negotiable. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Trump burns $2B/day on his war of whim. Russia & Iran sell oil at double pre-war prices. America gets the bill. They get rich. It is economic vandalism framed as strength. My latest essay. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

It’s not what Donald Trump said about Robert Mueller. It’s the silence from his supporters that made it cost-free. If this doesn’t cross the line, there is no line. And if there’s no line, stop pretending you have standards. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

We keep trying to “solve” the Middle East. That’s the problem. It’s not broken. It’s a system—one that turns every solution into the next crisis. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

The guy who swears he alone can fix everything just broke the global economy and made America radioactive to its oldest friends. No plan, no clue, just a one-man wrecking crew convinced his own chaos is genius. brucemaiman.substack.com/p/trump-ego-...

Trump outs dying congressman's terminal diagnosis for rally applause: 'I liked him + needed his vote.' Same guy who mocks Newsom's dyslexia now strip-mines a colleague's deathbed. Perfectly legal. Utterly grotesque. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Trump's descent into unhinged rage accelerates as allies begin to reject him. The unraveling will be televised. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

The FCC is threatening broadcast licenses. When a government threatens the press for criticizing its war policy, it’s no longer complaining about “bias.” It’s testing how much intimidation the First Amendment can survive. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Can what a young psychicatrst saw at Nuremberg happen here? Ironicallly, the people screaming ‘we want our country back’ are the biggest reason that dystopian nightmare might happen. New essay. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Wars are not won with slogans. They’re won with strategy. Trump’s Iran war has plenty of the first and very little of the second. Call it, "The War of the 6 C's" open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...

Trump once promised he’d end America’s endless wars. We now find ourselves in another one, quickly heading into FUBAR territory. The real winners? Autocrats, oil markets, and political insiders. open.substack.com/pub/brucemai...