Trump Must Resign And everyone should say so. Noah Berlatsky Mar 24 Trump has disgraced his office and spews a firehose of daily high crimes and misdemeanors from his orange mouth orifice on the White House lawn like so much red, white, and blue bile. The examples are so manifest and prolific that it seems futile to even try to list examples, but just for starters —he has been held liable for sexual assault and has been credibly accused of raping a 13-year-old —he presided over and cosigned a mass genocide in shutting down USAID that is expected to kill 14-25 million people —he launched an illegal war of aggression in Iran and is illegally murdering people on fishing boats in the waters around Venezuela —he has created an armed, reckless, unaccountable right-wing militia which is terrorizing American cities and murdering their residents —he regularly launches disgusting personal attacks on those he considers his enemies, mocking their deaths, targeting them for racist smears; and using the full weight of the federal government to terrorize and immiserate them —his regime is an orgy of corruption and self-dealing Again, I could go on almost indefinitely. Trump is a moral black hole, a fascist, a would-be dictator, a determined ignoramus, and a greedy piece of shit. He demonstrates every day that he sees the presidency not as a sacred trust or as an opportunity for public service but as his personal piggy bank and grievance abettor. He is grindingly incompetent and grindingly malevolent, and he has no place near power of any sort. He should resign. And everyone—the public, the media, Democrats, Republicans, people who see him on the street—should demand that he do so. Resignation is a better than impeachment (for now) When you say “Trump would resign,” the immediate reaction is likely to be, “yeah, but he won’t, so what’s the point?” It’s true that Trump is very unlikely to willingly step down. But calls for resignation can be powerful in themselves if repeated consistently and forcefully. More, demanding Trump’s resignation solves a number of tactical and messaging problems which have divided and confused the broad opposition to MAGA in unhelpful ways. Democrats, and opponents of Trump in general, sometimes struggle to articulate a critique or a rejection of Trump that feels adequate to his abnormality and cruelty. Denouncing his policies or his statements, or casting votes against him, or doing any of the other things that you do in opposition in a democracy, all can feel like weak tea when the president is attempting to destroy democracy and the Constitution all day every day. In an effort to meet the moment, people in and out of office have cast about for various remedies. On social media you’ll often see Trump critics demanding the implementation of the 25th Amendment, which makes provisions for removing an incapacitated president from office. Many on the left—and some in congress—have also called for Trump’s impeachment. There are difficulties with each of these approaches. As political scientist Jonathan Bernstein points out, the 25th Amendment simply was never intended to remove a president who was alert enough to contest the removal. It’s supposed to deal with a president in a coma, and if your president isn’t in a coma, it’s pretty much useless. Impeachment, in contrast, is designed to deal with a president who keeps attacking the Constitution. But in a partisan era, it’s a dead letter if the president’s party controls Congress, as they currently do. Some argue that the Democrats should keep putting forward impeachment articles anyway to highlight the president’s crimes. Others believe that repeated failed impeachment attempts will simply embolden the president and make Democrats look weak without restraining him in any way. I’m more on the “let’s keep trying to impeach him” side. But I think you can disagree in good faith on the tactics here. The problem is that this good faith disagreement then becomes its own fight, and one where much of the attention gets shifted away from the guy whose evil you are supposedly trying to highlight. When Democrats don’t bring impeachment articles—or when they do and impeachment fails—many people are going to end up excoriating Democrats for being weak, or feckless, or insufficiently committed to defeating Trump. And I’m not against criticizing Democrats. But if the goal of impeachment is in part to highlight the unique, terrifying danger of Trump, and you spend all your time talking about how bad the Democrats are, then things have gone awry. Calling for Trump’s resignation, however, solves all these problems. Demanding a Trump resignation is the right thing to do, and it’s an easy thing to do. It requires no procedures, no legislative battles. It just requires stating the truth—that Trump should resign because he is an evil, cruel man who hates the Constitution. The responsibility to resign and show minimal respect for the Constitution is on Trump and only Trump—and every day he does not resign shows once again how much he hates America and all the people in it. “Trump must resign” is a clear moral statement, and it puts the onus to respond entirely on the most powerful, most evil person in the country, who refuses to fulfill any of his obligations, including the obligation to remove himself if he refuses to fulfill his oath. It’s straightforward; it’s clear; it’s a demand and an action that meet the moment. But will it work? Demands for resignation can provide a moral clarity that unites the opposition rather than dividing it. As a practical demand, though, is it just symbolic? Trump’s not actually going to resign, right? The answer there is that of course Trump won’t resign…unless he does. It’s worth remembering that no president has ever been removed from office by the impeachment process. But one president, Richard Nixon, did in fact resign in disgrace because of public pressure. Part of that pressure was from the impeachment process itself; Nixon didn’t want to face the House and then the Senate because he thought he would lose. For this reason, and many others, Democrats should definitely pursue impeachment if they have control of the House and/or (god willing) the Senate, because impeachment can put great pressure on the President. They should hold hearings into Trump’s misconduct (including the horrific accusations of rape) for the same reason. Demands for resignation, speculation about resignation, and framing resignation as the correct response to weakness and/or misconduct can also have their own logic, though—a logic which can rationalize and connect other criticism and create its own momentum. This is what happened with Joe Biden, whose low approval ratings powered calls for him to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, while those calls for him to drop out, and speculation that he might, fueled negative stories about his presidency, robbed him of support, and probably damaged his approval. Similarly, the New York Times’ relentless campaign against Harvard President Claudine Gay was focused on explicit calls for her to resign—the will she/won’t she question helped fuel more press coverage and more pressure, finally forcing her from office. Trump is a lot more powerful than the president of Harvard, and—unlike Biden or Richard Nixon—he’s largely indifferent to the fate of and the views of his own party. Pushing him to resign would be very difficult and would be a long and brutal campaign. But that’s all the more reason to start working on it as soon as possible. Whenever Trump does the awful thing of the day, Democrats, the media, random passersby, should all point out that this is more evidence that he is unfit, is violating his oath, and should immediately resign. What about J.D. Vance? One final concern for many might be that if Trump did resign, that would leave ghoulish Vice-President J.D. Vance in charge. Vance is a misogynist Nazi piece-of-shit. Trump is awful; how can we be sure that Vance would be better? The thing about Vance is that he was a vocal Trump critic until he realized that Trump was the route to power. He then abased and debased himself in praise of the Orange One. I think Vance’s conversion to evil was sincere in some respects. But his flexibility also suggests that he is able and willing to adapt to the political environment in a way that Trump is very much not. A world in which Trump has been forced to resign in disgrace is a world in which Trump’s presidency and policy program is widely recognized as a massive toxic failure. Vance in that situation will be pretty eager to distance himself from Trumpism and MAGA. This isn’t to say Vane would be a good president. He would be a horrific president. But when you win, you win, and political actors tend to have to adapt themselves to that win. Forcing a Trump resignation would be a massive win. The world and the country would be a better place for it, whatever awfulness Vance then brought to the table. It’s worth pushing for victory because (a) sufficient to the day is the evil thereof and (b) the evil thereafter is an evil which has to deal with the fact that you’ve crushed one evil already. And, you know, one big virtue of resignation is that everyone can do it. You can call for Vance to resign; you can call for RFK to resign; you can call for Sean Duffy to resign. They should all resign. We should say so, because it’s fun, because it’s righteous, because it’s true, and because it can, in fact, make the fascists cringe. Sometimes, even, maybe, it might make them resign.

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Why the Most Important Person in Your Company Probably Isn’t the CEO

We take far too many of the folks we work with and around for granted, and regularly fail to appreciate the contributions they make.

EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1

Mar 24, 2026

 

I’ve maintained for many years that until we outgrow the stigma that we’ve traditionally attached to vocational education—and unfortunately already passed on to the next several generations—we’ll be wasting the opportunity to direct millions of eager and energized young people into careers and opportunities that are appropriate for them and likely to offer them both job satisfaction and successful paths to a reasonable income and lifestyle. Four expensive years at a fancy liberal arts college and a mound of accumulated debt aren’t for everyone.

Jobs in the basic trades, such as plumber or an electrician, aren’t going away any time soon, offer union protection and benefits, and have established progress and advancement paths that plenty of “white collar jobs” no longer offer if they even still exist. I remind my friends all the time that my car mechanic works 9-to-5 with no after hours stress, makes more money than any recent liberal arts college grad, spends more time with a keyboard than a wrench, and—as the average age of cars on the road continues to lengthen—has pretty much locked-in employment for his lifetime because those millions of cars won’t fix themselves.

The average age of cars on the road in the U.S. has increased for the last eight years in a row and reached a record high in 2025 of 12.8 years, so the demand for skilled mechanics will only increase for the next decade or two. In addition, it looks like most of the major U.S. vehicle manufacturers are bailing on EVs, which were touted as easier and less expensive to maintain and repair, but which simply haven’t caught on with U.S. dealers, much less buyers.

But the facts alone won’t get the necessary changes made unless we change the attitudes of millions of snobs in this country who are giving our kids the wrong messages. We take far too many of the folks we work with and around for granted, and regularly fail to appreciate the contributions they make to our lives and businesses.

Anyone who’s worked in a busy restaurant knows that talented and professional waitresses can manage nut cases of all kinds just as well—if not better—than a shrink on a couch somewhere. And anyone who’s watched The Pitt knows that the nurses probably save at least as many lives as the doctors, and get little or no credit for it. It may be the only medical show where the main charge nurse plays a recurring and prominent role throughout each episode. This is the kind of messaging we need to have far more of in order to move the needle. No pun intended.

If you’ve ever walked into an office and found a receptionist who’s too “busy” to pay attention and acknowledge you while you cool your heels and feel like an imposition, it was probably a place that didn’t understand that receptionists are the face and front line of a business, and that you don’t get a second chance in this world to make a first impression. If you’re not eager to please, ready to help, on the case, and raring to go, you shouldn’t be at the desk.

All of which brings me to The Rhonda Rule. Years ago, in Chicago, I built and ran 1871, which was the Number 1 university-affiliated technology incubator in the world, with more than 500 startups under one massive roof. We hosted tech geniuses, hundreds of VCs and investors, foreign leaders, ambassadors, and other dignitaries, President Bill Clinton, many U.S. Senators and Congressmen (when those people still had working spines), and thousand of other visitors every month for a number of years. The place was huge, the energy and enthusiasm were through the roof, and the excitement was palpable. It was the best show in town, with Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel acting as a regular cheerleader. The receptionist at the front desk’s name was Rhonda.

Years later, as I travelled all over the world to meet with many of our diverse guests at their various venues and company sites, the first question they asked me was always the same. They asked if Rhoda was still there, and if so, they asked me to be sure to please say “hello” to her from them.

Rhonda was at 1871 for many years, and the impression she consistently made on these serious businessmen and women from around the world was the best sales tool for 1871 and the strongest single memory that these folks had of our entire institution. She never had less than a happy smile on her face. She never forgot a name. She treated everyone who came through that door exactly the same—as an honored guest who was welcome—and as a respected individual. What really came through the daily interactions was just how much she loved what she was doing. That warmth, openness and attention set the stage for everything at 1871 that might follow, and she did it with great style and made it always seem effortless.

Every job can be challenging and rewarding if you let your people make the job their own, encourage them to add themselves to the equation, and have them take control and ownership of the work. All work is creative if it’s done by someone thinking about what they’re doing instead of repeating a routine they learned from others in an uncritical stupor or following a set of rules and procedures that make no sense in the real world. Any job worth doing is worth doing well.

The real goal of every service business is to create the intangible but crucial feeling of being cared for and that’s the responsibility of everyone—top to bottom—working in the business. And sometimes, the measure of those feelings is not simply how you feel in someone’s presence, but how acutely you miss the person when they’re gone.

 

COLD-BLOODED CRETIN

 

COLD-BLOODED CRETIN Trump is once again trying to talk his way out of the latest violent episode in his miserable life D. Earl Stephens ✍️ Mar 23       After singlehandedly closing the Strait of Hormuz, destabilizing the entire world, and bringing about needless death and destruction, I see Donald Trump is contemplating surrender to Iran. Of course the man with the “best words”is not putting it quite that way this morning, because the man with the “best words” was working overtime, hands flailing away while playing his invisible accordion, as he tried his best to talk his way out of a catastrophic mess that was entirely of his own doing. After a weekend of golf, and bragging to guests on the patio of Mar-a-Lago about the size of the engine in his diesel-powered golf cart, Trump bloviated in that spoiled-snot, idiotic way Monday morning that at some point during his weekend of leisure we had “very strong talks” with Iran. Really, pal? “Very strong talks?” Oh, well, if they were “very strong” I guess that does it, and we can all relax now, and get on with our lives. Can we finally stop giving this supersonic moron a pass for his diarrhea of the mouth, and making up conversations that never happened? This has been going on for the better part of a decade, and we really need to circle back and decide again we have had more than enough of this, and simply have to get back to expecting more from a president. Trump opens his big, fat mouth, random words just fly out of it, and the press reports them unchallenged and almost completely without context. I wrote the book on it several years ago, and finally surrendered myself, because it was clear as day too many Americans were just fine with having a complete, dumb-shit for a president. I am way past sick and tired of these Americans, but more on that for another day. Trump is a stupid idiot, and is not only incapable of deep thought, but any thought. He is a hyena with a reusable “get out of jail free” card, who has been led around by his ridiculous, painted orange nose his entire miserable life through failed businesses, marriages and now presidencies. Only hours before telling the world about his fictional “very strong talks” with Iran, he was asked about the horrific collision at LaGuardia Sunday night, and he said this: “They made a mistake. It’s a dangerous business. That’s terrible.” “They made a mistake.” This is the nuclear-powered idiot who casually thrust the world into an unnecessary, intentional, catastrophic mistake that we will all be paying for for years, and long after he is blessedly gone. He has no idea what he is doing. Let me try that again: HE HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE IS DOING. This needs to be said over and over again. He is a failure of a man, who lost this stupid, senseless war the minute it started. Thousands of human beings are needlessly dead, among them school children, and members of our military, both of whom he could care less about. He treats them all like so many Big Macs to be devoured to feed his endless appetite for chaos, and affirmation he never got growing around people who loved him so much, they just couldn’t wait to kick him the hell out of their cavernous mansion because it wasn’t big enough to keep them all separate, and from killing each other. And when the real fighting started, he chickened out of that, too, because service to himself is more important than service to his country. Trumps don’t love this country, they feed off it. None of them serve. So Trump is surrendering today after his “very strong talks” because last week Iran used small, cheap weapons to blow up energy complexes in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. This is easy as pie, and was never given any consideration from the dry drunk and human oil slick, Pete Hegseth, who is leading a military that as a veteran, I still believe deserves so much better. The longer Trump’s idiotic, unnecessary war goes, the more damage will be inflicted on these gas and oil reserves that have a disgraceful and outsized impact upon world order. If only there were cheaper, safer options to oil out there … For its part, Iran has denied there were any talks at all this weekend, much less “very strong” ones, and will be content to wait out Trump and all those invisible voices in his head, until he has extinguished every bad option on his supersized menu. Here is the statement they posted on social media: “No negotiations have been held with the U.S. Fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets.” This was a senseless war, started by a complete sociopath and failure of a man, whose second term in office has been an authoritarian disaster area, and we will pay through the nose for both of these things for many years to come. Like this barbaric regime itself, nothing good was ever going to come out of this sad chapter of American history. But since very strong words carry the day in America these days, here’s a few more: Trump and his bloodthirsty regime can all go straight to hell.

 

KRUGMAN

 

 

Adventures in Fantasy Diplomacy Trump says he's negotiating with Iran. Iran says he isn't. Who are you gonna believe? Paul Krugman Mar 23 Another day in America’s self-immolation as a Great Power. More like this on my YouTube channel Transcript It’s Monday morning. Donald Trump has, at least for the time being, called off plans to bomb Iran’s civilian infrastructure. He has done so because, according to him, highly productive negotiations are underway involving the government of Iran, an invisible six-foot white rabbit, and his Canadian girlfriend. Hi, I’m Paul Krugman. What I just said is not strictly true, or it’s not all true. Trump did not say anything about the invisible rabbit or the Canadian, but the gist of it is true. He said that there’s highly productive talks underway. And shortly afterwards, the Iranian government and Iranian state media said, no, they aren’t. This is not happening. I’m not going to say that Iranian state media is necessarily a credible source, but the odds are that they are in fact telling the truth and the President of the United States is either lying or fantasizing or both. There’s really no reason at all to believe that anything like what he said is happening is in fact happening. Why do I say that, Aside from the fact that Trump has not exactly been truthful on a lot of things? But beyond that, there are three important reasons to believe he might be making this stuff up. First, he put himself in a very bad spot with his threat to commit a massive war crime if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz. and must be looking for a way out. Another president at another time might say that on careful consideration, We have recalibrated the policy or something like that. Trump doesn’t do that. Trump is always winning, never admits that he’s had a setback, never admits that he’s changed his mind. So saying that, oh, the Iranians have come to the table, probably big, strong Iranians with tears in their eyes, but anyway, that the Iranians have come to the table and that’s why we’re not doing what I said we would do is a very Trumpian out. Second, Why would the Iranians be making a deal at this point? We can talk a lot about how the war is going, but it’s pretty clear that as the Iranians are likely to see it, they’re winning. I mean, they’re not winning militarily, but that was never on the cards. They are, they have successfully turned what was supposed to be a lightning decapitation of their government into a protracted contest in relative ability to bear pain and all indications are that the Iranians are nowhere near cracking and all indications are that the United States, although obviously we’re not losing thousands of people, and we are having our whole life disrupted, but the American public really doesn’t like higher gas prices, does not believe Trump. The clock is ticking for Trump on this in a way that it is apparently not for the Iranian regime. So Iran has has the upper hand here. And very hard to see why they would be wanting to make a deal until they basically humiliated us substantially more. Finally, consider possible motives. Imagine that you were somebody close to Trump, somebody close enough to actually have an influence on his decisions as well as inside knowledge. Here’s what you could have done really just between last night and now. You could have sold a bunch of crude oil futures, at very high prices, Brent was over $112 over the weekend, then bought them back immediately after Trump’s announcement of triumphal progress, but before the Iranians said that is not happening. And you could have turned a very, very nice, very large profit. To say that insider trading might be driving U.S. policy would have been outrageous. in the past. Who thinks that that’s beyond the realm of possibility now? So all of this could be happening. Last point to make here. Think about how much America’s position in the world has been weakened, not just by apparent failure to subdue a fourth-rate power, but by the fact that everybody now knows that you cannot trust anything, cannot trust any promises the United States makes, you cannot count on the United States carrying through with promises, with threats, not just promises, but threats are also incredible in the sense of not being all credible, and that the default assumption should be that anything that this administration says is a lie. That is a really, really bad thing. That is, you know, influence in the world power is not simply a matter of missiles and bombs, although we seem to be running low on those too. It’s very much a matter of people taking what you say and what you promise and what you threaten seriously. And we are not ruled by serious people.

Donald Trump will turn U.S. airports into dystopian hellholes.

 

This week, Donald Trump will turn U.S. airports into dystopian hellholes. Long lines. ICE watchmen. Sudden arrests. Soaring prices. How Donald Trump's heavy hand will be visible in every terminal. Miles Taylor Mar 23 If you travel through an American airport this week, you may not recognize the country you’re in. Just know this: it’s all by design. Travelers at any major U.S. airport will soon feel like they’ve entered a foreign land. Long lines will snake out the doors. ICE agents will patrol the terminals looking for people to pluck out, arrest, and deport. And soaring ticket prices (in some cases, double or triple what they cost just a month ago) will hit travelers like a gut punch, giving them the kind of economic vertigo more commonly associated with countries suffering from runaway inflation. All of it will have a single source: Donald Trump. Indeed, the U.S. airport is about to become the most visible symbol of America’s speedy slide into autocracy. I’ll start with the lines. Since February 14th, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been operating without full congressional funding. Republicans cannot pass a DHS spending bill on their own (a remarkable failure for a party that holds majorities in both the House and Senate). Democrats have refused to supply the necessary votes until the administration agrees to some basic conditions to prevent DHS from becoming the centerpiece of a police state. Basic conditions. Democrats are not demanding the dismantling of ICE or a reversal of the administration’s immigration agenda, although personally I think they should. In fact, from a legal perspective, their demands sound almost meager. In exchange for their votes to fund DHS, they’re asking that ICE agents identify themselves when making arrests, that people detained be told why they are being arrested, that agents not kick down doors without Fourth Amendment warrants, and that individuals not be disappeared into a shadow network of detention facilities before their families or lawyers can locate them. In other words, Democrats are insisting that the federal government obey the U.S. Constitution. The White House has said “no.” Instead, Trump has chosen to make the standoff your problem. That is, if you have any plans to travel through a U.S. airport in the near future, the administration wants you to suffer. By design. The president of the United States is betting that you’ll be willing to forfeit your constitutional rights in frustration rather than deal with long lines at the airport and mounting flight cancellations. Seriously. And unfortunately, he may be right. Fifty thousand TSA workers — essential employees legally required to show up — have been working without pay for over a month. More than 400 have quit. And travelers at some of the nation’s busiest airports have been told to arrive as much as five hours early. The whole situation is expected to spiral further this coming Friday, March 27, when airport screeners are slated to miss their second paycheck. All of this is happening on purpose. The White House is hoping that by the time enough families are stranded in security lines with their luggage and screaming children, they’ll be angry enough to demand that whoever is “blocking” a deal just give in already! “Please,” they’ll shout to their representatives, “give Trump whatever he wants!” And what Trump wants is to keep doing what he’s been doing at DHS, including illegally jailing thousands and thousands of people, including American citizens, residents, visitors, and immigrants. The White House says it’s going to send DHS agents to the airports to try to alleviate the suffering. But as always, the president let his real intentions slip this weekend. Trump announced on Truth Social that, starting today, he would deploy ICE agents across U.S. airports to “do security like no one has ever seen before.” This includes patrolling terminals to identify people for “immediate arrest,” he said, if they’re suspected of not having lawful status. He told ICE to “GET READY.” Anyone who has closed their eyes to the president’s authoritarian crackdown is going to have a hard time keeping them shut if they have travel plans. It’s worth pausing here to note that the U.S. Constitution guarantees Americans the right to travel freely within their own country. It’s not a conditional right. It’s also not a “privilege” extended at the government’s discretion. Yet this week, the airports through which Americans exercise the right to freely travel will be patrolled by agents that the country has already seen brutally kill their fellow citizens, arrest lawful residents without any due process whatsoever, and disappear people into a secret network of detention facilities being constructed beyond public scrutiny. A year ago, most Americans could not have imagined this is what their country would look like. But that’s not all. The planes that U.S. travelers are boarding are fast becoming too expensive to afford, as prices surge and airlines consider scrapping routes altogether. The reason, again, is Trump. His war against Iran, which was launched without congressional authorization and which 92 percent of Americans believe should be ended ASAP, has sent global oil prices into a death spiral. Trump has tried to convince Americans that high prices are actually good for them. The airport, then, is where all of it converges this week. Terminals are about to become dystopian hellholes, symbolic of everything happening in the United States. Trump’s campaign to assert his power domestically, intimidate the political opposition, transform DHS into his secret police, ignore the law, and launch wars wherever he damn well pleases… will show up in the one place that’s already stressful enough to visit. More specifically, the long lines are his wager that he can frustrate you into surrendering your constitutional rights. The ICE agents — and the people plucked from the crowd in front of you — will be a reminder of who’s running this country and how the man in charges views his total authority. And the soaring prices will remain his unapologetic tax levied on the world for a war most of them don’t support. So here’s to hoping that the millions of Spring Breakers who pass through those terminals don’t just bury their heads in the sand when they get to the beach. If they do, they’ll come home without a democracy. Your friend, in defiance, Miles Taylor