Correspondent Scott Pelley focuses on President Trump’s use of executive orders to target major law firms he accused of “weaponizing” the justice system against him. 

The report highlights interviews with legal professionals, including Marc Elias, who compared Trump’s tactics to mob intimidation and described the executive actions as retaliatory and harmful to the legal profession. 
60 Minutes, CBS

In an interview aired today on NBC News’s Meet the Press, reporter Kristen Welker asked President Donald J. Trump if he agreed that every person in the United States is entitled to due process.

“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump answered.
Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American

In the dark corners of America’s halls of power, something sinister is unfolding. Attorney General Pam Bondi has just launched an assault on one of the most sacred pillars of our democracy: the freedom of the press. And make no mistake, this isn’t just another policy change. It’s a deliberate strategy straight from the dictator’s playbook.
Thom Hartmann, The Hartmann Report

This morning the Bureau of Economic Analysis released a report showing an abrupt reversal in the U.S. economy. The shift is the first time in three years that the economy has contracted. The slump appears to have been fueled by a surge in buying overseas goods before Trump’s tariffs hit.
Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American

How do we sell tax increases? We should talk about services instead of taxes. Talk about how rural counties receive more from the state than we pay – a lot more – and that cuts will hit us first and hardest.

Don Schwerin, chair, Washington State Democrats Ag & Rural Caucus

Episode Seven of the podcast “Concrete Mama” includes an eye-opening summary of new programs enthusiastically embraced by inmates, staff, and administrators at the Washington State Penitentiary.
Walla Walla County Democrats

Rosalia Manuel had worked for McDonald’s for more than 20 years when she was suddenly fired in 2022. Until then, she had been considered “the best employee,” she said, and had worked her way up to shift manager at a location in Saratoga, California. It was a role she took seriously.
Bryce Covert, The Nation

If you eat, you should understand how your food is grown, processed, transported, and marketed. You may be shocked by the impact the foods you eat have on our environment.

Two films are now available on Amazon Prime that will help you understand this important topic: Kiss the Ground and Common Ground.
Walla Walla County Democrats

The emergency is here. The crisis is now. It is not six months away. It is not another Supreme Court ruling away from happening. It’s happening now. Perhaps not to you, not yet. But to others. Real people. We know their names. We know their stories.

The president of the United States is disappearing people to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists. A prison known by its initials — CECOT. A prison built for disappearance.
Ezra Klein, The New York Times

Jo Ellen Grzyb, a member of this Substack community, noted in response to one of my posts that she’s seeing a lot of the phrase “courage is contagious.” She mentioned Bernie, AOC, Cory Booker, Tim Walz, Jasmine Crockett, and Elizabeth Warren. She’s right. And in these darkening times, this contagion is critically important.
Robert Reich, Substack

Last week I posted Part I of a primer on financial crises. Although the post was motivated by the wild market action after Donald Trump unveiled his Rose Garden tariffs, it was getting too long, so I promised to address current events today. To be honest, I was also hoping that the situation would become clearer after a week.
Paul Krugman, Substack

Our Policy Briefing presenter, Nancy Hirsh, knows energy. She heads the NW Energy Coalition. To level the playing field, Nancy will brief us on climate change and Washington’s staged phase out of fossil fuels.
Don Schwerin, Ag & Rural Caucus

America has periodically faced great national tests. The Civil War and Reconstruction. The Great Depression. McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Jim Crow and the civil rights movement. And now we face another great test — of our Constitution, our institutions, our citizens — as President Trump ignores courts and sabotages universities and his officers grab people off the street.
Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

Last week was a scary time in U.S. financial markets, and the danger may not be over.

I’m not talking about stocks, whose fluctuations often tell us nothing at all. What had me and others rattled were developments in bond and currency markets. And the dollar went down against other currencies even though interest rates went up.
Paul Krugman, Substack

The Trump regime is on the cusp of a showdown with the Supreme Court. Depending on what the Court does and how the regime responds, it could openly become a dictatorship two ways
Robert Reich, Substack

“Democracy is not a spectator sport.”
That truism has been repeated by notables from Gen. Jim Mattis to Barack Obama to George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state. But it’s fitting that the person credited with first saying it was a private citizen whom nobody particularly remembers.
Timothy Noah, The New Republic

Let’s talk about the moment Donald Trump blinked. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t a tweetstorm or a rally rant. When the tariff threats that had the world on edge—125% on China, 25% on Canada’s autos, a global trade war in the making—suddenly softened. And the reason?
Dean Blundell, Substack

Chris Murphy, the junior senator from Connecticut, has tirelessly argued that unless the Democratic Party broadens its coalition with a primarily populist economic message and takes risks to oppose the destruction of democratic institutions, it will fail to mobilize popular support, continue to lose elections, and squander (as in Hungary, Turkey, and beyond) democracy itself.
David Remnick, The New Yorker