18 YEARS WITH THE ECHO!

Almost 18 years ago I wrote my first column for The Irish Echo. It concerned an official projection that in order to stay solvent Social Security benefits would need to be cut in 2034.

Back then in 2007 we were about to enter the Great Recession that would continue until Barack Obama brought some stability to the economy in late 2009.

 

Small wonder that the Social Security crisis of faraway 2034 was put on the back burner. We could all be dead by then. Some of us are.

 

But after two Trump administrations, with a Biden one in between, and a Covid pandemic, the latest projection is that we are now only 7 years away from what could well be a social Armageddon in 2032.

 

I sometimes wonder if I’m living in a different universe than the vast majority of American politicians and political commentators.

 

I appreciate a little titillation as much as the next person, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least that two American presidents had close relationships with Jeffrey Epstein. The rich, the famous, and the depraved often move in the same circles.

 

Nor does it surprise that almost every person I know above the age of 62 really depends on their monthly social security benefits.

 

Politicians and the chattering classes seem to believe that these benefits are the icing on every retiree’s cake; when in reality, that monthly SS bank deposit tends to be the main part of their cake.

 

In an economy where working people have been fleeced by high prices, rents, education and health costs, few have amassed much of a retirement cushion.

 

And yet when President Trump’s Big Bad Beautiful Bill was recently passed by both houses of congress, did you hear one mention of the coming Social Security reckoning?

 

I did – but it was the projection that tax breaks, new and old, had moved the SS date of reckoning up to 2032!

 

Indeed, there was scarcely a mention of the $3.4 trillion dollars addition to the national debt that the BBB Bill had bestowed upon us. 

 

There’s an old saying, “Each country gets the government it deserves.”  Americans voted for the King of Debt so we must accept the consequences.

 

However, I’m not sure how many of us realized we were also voting for a rubber-stamp congress only too ready to relinquish the power of the purse.

 

It’s hard to believe now that the US Federal Budget was not only balanced but delivered a surplus in the Clinton years between 1998 and 2001. That’s just 24 years ago.

 

With the current national debt over $36.2 trillion, when you add the $3.4 trillion cost of the BBB Bill, that will bring us within shouting distance of a $40 trillion debt in 2035.

 

And that’s at current interest rates with absolutely no room for any national emergencies over the next climate-changed 10 years.  All hail the glorious Republocrats!

 

The once debt-haunted Republicans have completely caved to their master in the White House, and does anyone believe that if the Democrats regain Congress in 2026 they will announce, 

“First things first, let’s come up with a credible plan to reduce this unsustainable National Debt!”

 

In the recent BBB Bill debates, the main argument seemed to be - we have to extend the tax breaks because the electorate doesn’t have the stomach to pay higher taxes.

 

Imagine if we ran our households like that?

 

But back to Social Security benefits! Unless we get our ship in order by 2032, many more millions of senior citizens will join those already mired in poverty. Is that the kind of America we wish to live in?

 

I don’t have any easy answers but here’s a gradual solution over 10 years that could return the Social Security Fund to some form of solvency by 2032:

 

Raise the taxable maximum amount of earnings from $176,100 to $250K.

 

Raise the current Social Security (FICA) tax rate from 12.4% to 13.4%.

 

Raise the full retirement age for Social Security Benefits from 67 to 68.

 

I know, that’s a lot of pain to go round. But we allowed the Social Security Fund to approach insolvency on our watch, we can begin to deal with it now or face a tsunami of pain in 7 years.

 

Oh, and one other small thing. Why not elect politicians who are more interested in saving Social Security than pontificating about conspiracy theories? 

 

You’ll have an opportunity in 2026. Use it! Time is tight.

ROCK 'N' ROLL NEVER FORGETS

With its working class roots and boozy background, rock ‘n’ roll often teeters on the edge of chaos and violence.  

Rock music, on the other hand - usually the popular music of the day - tends more towards the predictable and mainstream.

Having played both, I barely differentiated between them until I began to try and make some sense of a life spent in music.

Basically, rock ‘n’ roll is about sparking an interaction between band and audience that can take both beyond themselves. While rock music is putting on a show that you invite the audience to enjoy and participate in.

The differentiation can be applied to any kind of music. For instance, I might describe The Dubliners as a rock ‘n’ roll type of folk band and The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem as more from the rock end of that spectrum.

The early Dubliners were chaotic, strayed from a set list if there was one, drank copious amounts of alcohol, and interacted spontaneously with their audience.

Liam Clancy once told me that everything about his group was choreographed, down to the last yelp and joke. Each member had acting experience, they rehearsed their sets thoroughly, and would often perfect them in their dressing room.

They were instantly recognizable by their uniform of the Aran sweater, while The Dubliners looked as if they might have slept in whatever they were wearing, and probably did.

Both bands were brilliant on stage and you can trace the roots of most current Irish folk groups to one or the other.

Being strictly choreographed, the Clancy’s/Makem shows were well behaved; while there was plenty of alcoholic chaos and the occasional dustup at a Dubliners’ outing.

Both bands were political, but there was the little matter of the Irish Civil War between them. 

The Dubliners boasted a left-wing, urban antipathy to the Irish Free State government, while the Clancy’s/Makem tended towards a more general anti-British imperialist stance.

My own journey through Folk, Rock and the general kitchen sink of music, was definitely affected by the roiling elements of chaos, alcohol, and politics.

Wexford was a Labour town in the midst of a Fianna Fail/Fine Gael county. Though most people were Catholic and paid at least lip service to Rome, yet socialism had strong roots in the town.

 

Oddly enough, the songs of Stephen Foster were very popular in the working men’s pubs along the Main Street and the Quayside.

But if one were singing Old Folks At Home, “comrade” would be effortlessly substituted for such racial slurs as “Darky.”

At the age of 17, I was recruited to play bass in a band run by local maestro, Johnny Reck. Talk about chaos, we rarely rehearsed, and I had to learn bass while standing on one foot in the midst of near riots.

Why so?  Well Johnny promoted “young people dances” where testosterone and preening ruled without the restraints of official security, so when a cider brawl broke out – as it invariably did - bodies would come flying towards the stage, and one had to kick them away until the participants exhausted themselves. 

Johnny’s cardinal rule was that music must continue through all dancefloor battles and the stage be protected at all costs. This strategy ensured that violence would remain localized, courting and kissing could continue unabated, thus preventing “all hell from breaking loose.”

A true rock ‘n’ roll apprenticeship, yet it hardly prepared me for The Bronx. There in the boom-time 80’s and early 90’s chaos, alcohol, and politics ruled unrestrained, along with the seeming right of every punter to demand their choice of songs.

This presented no little problem, since Chris Byrne and I had decided that Black 47 would become an all-original-songs band as quickly as possible.

Not only did the patrons despise unfamiliar songs, some didn’t want to hear Reggae or Hip-Hop beats either. I guess those rhythms challenged some undefined color bar.

These patrons’ demands rarely occasioned intellectual debates, the besotted clientele would have already put in a full day’s work on a building site and could sling sacks of cement as casually as I could swing a guitar.

Yet I wouldn’t give back a minute of the experience. With new songs nightly ricocheting off the sheet-rocked walls of Bainbridge Avenue, you had to fight to survive, and your only weapons were a dogged determination and an unshakeable belief in the chaotic, boozy power of Celtic Rock ‘N’ Roll. 

LAWRENCE DURRELL - A NEGLECTED IRISH WRITER

We Irish tend to admire our writers. After all, it’s a lonely old job - long hours spent mooning into monitors, broken only by visits to the pub, occasionally enlivened by feats of slagging or bouts of fisticuffs.

Behan, Kavanagh, and Donleavy spring to mind, but wait a minute, should Donleavy even be classed as Irish. Well, yes, if we go by blood rather than place of birth.

Which brings me to a writer who vehemently claimed he was Irish, though usually pigeonholed as British, or at best a hapless colonial.

I speak of Lawrence Durrell. Born in India in 1912 to Anglo-Irish stock; upon the death of his father in 1932, the family moved lock, stock and barrel to England, a country that young Larry despised; in fact, he was known to call the imperial way of life “the English death.”

The Durrells were barely settled in Bournemouth when Larry prevailed upon his mother, family, and recently acquired wife Nancy, to move house once again to the Greek island of Corfu.

From then until his death in 1990, through four marriages, he spent most of his life in close proximity to the Mediterranean.

A man of great learning, Lawrence Durrell never took well to formal education and failed his university entrance exam; still, he was a prodigious writer, turning his hand to fiction, poetry, travel and history. One wonders when he had the time, given the four wives, love of conversation, tipple, friendship, mythology and travel.

I first noted him on account of his long friendship with Henry Miller. Durrell himself discovered the then unknown Bard of Brooklyn on finding a copy of Miller’s epic, Tropic of Cancer, in a public lavatory.

Durrell’s own masterpiece is a series of books called The Alexandria Quartet. Justine, the first book, is in his own words a “modern love story,” though whether it’s about the mysterious Jewish woman in question or the Egyptian city is often hard to decipher.

If Joyce had his Molly and Dublin, then Durrell had his Justine and the even more turbulent Alexandria. 

Dare I mention the two writers in the same breath? Both books are dense, though throbbing with life, love in its many forms, intrigue and general skullduggery.

Occasionally the Quartet even surpasses Ulysses, for when you begin Balthazar, the second book, you’re forced to call into question the “facts” you took for granted in Justine. 

By the end of the fourth book, Clea, you begin to wonder if indeed all life is a pilgrimage through a universe of mirrors.

The Quartet provides an added bonus: through quotes and his role in city lore you’ll become familiar with the lonely, probing verses of Constantine Cavafy, “the Poet of Alexandria.”

“Two for the price of one,” Pete Hamill, another Durrell admirer, once suggested. Jacqueline Kennedy too was a well-known devotee of the Durrell/Cavafy association.

Durrell’s stock has fallen somewhat of late, then again, his prose, byzantine plot twists, and overweening love of language is hardly suited to our texting times.

Perhaps it was the nature of his most creative era: the autocratic 30’s, war-scarred 40’s, empire- shattering 50’s, that led him to tunnel so deeply into Alexandria’s world of decaying beauty?

Durrell spent his later years in France where he turned his hand to the Avignon Quintet, no less, delving into the history of that medieval city and its relationship to the esoteric Knights Templar organization.

And what of his poetry? Under the undoubted influence of Cavafy, it gleams with clarity and is often touching.

His travel books are unforgettable and leave their mark. I first read Sicilian Carousel in the late 70’s and only fulfilled a vow to visit the island recently. Durrell’s knowledge of this oft-conquered, exotic island can add so much to the enjoyment of The White Lotus in its Sicilian season. 

Whatever you do, read The Greek Islands, Durrell’s 1978 coffee-table tome. He brings the many islands he has visited, or dwelt in, to life. An avid swimmer, he is no literary snob who frowns on packed beaches, for he generously excavates gods, poets and distinctive humans who once frolicked where tourists now braise themselves in the sun.

So welcome, Lawrence Durrell. We can use an Irish writer capable of transporting us into the heart of love, loss, life and antiquity in these unfocused days of stress and hysterical social mediating.

UKRAINE VERSUS VLAD THE IMPALER

Stefan Lutak was Ukrainian. He owned the Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Mark’s Place. Despite its name it was a beer-and-shot joint I stumbled into by chance after settling in the East Village.

The clientele was Ukrainian and didn’t care for strangers. A disapproving silence would attend my entry but after a while they got used to me. I liked the anonymity of the place and the prices.

Stefan told me he had played pro soccer in West Germany. Everyone had a story in the East Village of the 1970’s and I didn’t delve deeper.

One thing there was no doubt about – the local Ukrainians didn’t like Russians. They didn’t care for any empire, including Britain’s, and would occasionally congratulate me over some bombing in Belfast.

Much later on I played some gigs in the USSR, shortly before it collapsed, and witnessed first-hand the iron fist of that empire, so I celebrated with Ukrainian friends when their country gained independence.

Like most Americans I doubly celebrated the Ukrainian people’s resistance to Emperor Putin’s invading army over the last years; though the sheer scale of slaughter is staggering – over a million Russians and 400,000 Ukrainians dead or wounded.

The question remains, why doesn’t President Donald Trump share the same view? 

Doesn’t the man from Queens realize that if Putin does manage to subjugate Ukraine, he’ll then set about destabilizing Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and perhaps even Finland, in his zeal to restore the Grand Imperial Russian Empire.

Doesn’t he understand that Ukrainians have changed the very nature of modern warfare by their use of drones. He should, for when he rained down bombs and rockets on the Houthis in Yemen, he was soon forced to declare victory and skedaddle for fear of some US billion-dollar battleship getting blown out of the water by a Dollar General Houthi drone.

Leaving aside such treasured American values as freedom and democracy, think of the economics, Mr. Trump. There is so much to be learned from the Ukrainians and the Houthis that could lead to a slashing of American defense budgets. Advanced drone technology allied with AI will rule in the coming years no matter what you, or Hegseth and your other sycophants think.

But then, do you ever think? Or is life one big TV reality show – to be trotted out in neat chunks of blowhard fantasy week after week?

You disrupt the world’s economic system by slapping ridiculously high tariffs on China without ever considering that Comrade Xi controls 90% of the global supply of rare earth elements that enable cars to run and arms to function. Duh!

Didn’t one of your cabinet minions point out that little fact? Nah, they were too busy telling you how wonderful you are.

So now it’s back to square one in the tariff-bluster negotiations, and the ever astute Xi Jinping has your number. Luckily, you got out of the casino business or he could have really taken you to the cleaners.

All this talk about bringing back manufacturing, coal mining or whatever to the US is just that – talk! What young person wants to work in a factory - or even an office - when they can sit at home in their parents’ basement coding on their laptops, or dreaming of becoming an influencer – or even president.

Of course, there are people who would gladly work in factories or fields. But there’s not much hope in recruiting the undocumented with masked ICE patrols prowling Home Depot   ready to ship them off to rest homes in El Salvador or Sudan.

Not even 6 months into round 2 of the Trump regime and already Gaza is rubble, the Marines are on the streets of Los Angeles, Tehran and Tel Aviv are burning, Trump Family Inc. is cleaning up, Brian Wilson is history, and God Only Knows what plans Bibi has in Iran for an ever compliant US of A.

Stefan Lutik is dead a long time. Just as well. I wouldn’t be able to explain to him how an American president feels more comfortable propping up Vlad Putin the Impaler than supporting the freedom loving people of Ukraine.

 

Time for another beer and a shot in the ongoing fantasy of making America great again.

SIN É - SHANE DOYLE!

I was on the Union Square subway platform when I heard the familiar notes cascading off in the distance. With the arrival or departure of a train they would choke into silence. But I knew those notes and the choice of chords that anchored them, and as I strolled closer I remembered hearing them for the first time in Sin É Café.

A young man was rehearsing on the makeshift stage, picking at what seemed like random chords on his guitar, worrying them into shape. He finally settled on a sequence that pleased him and began to sing, quietly, to himself.

I vaguely recognized the Leonard Cohen song that has since become an anthem. Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah is now a standard, and 35 years later the busker in the subway was copying it note for note; it sounded as ethereal as when I first heard Jeff work on it.

It says a lot for Sin É - and even more for Shane Doyle - that Jeff Buckley and so many other artists found their way inside Shane’s bare-bones emporium on St. Mark’s Place.

I’m not sure there was even a sign outside the premises when I first discovered it in 1989, but I did notice a mention in the window that “Tea & Irish Scones” were available inside. So, I took a look.

The proprietors, Shane and his angelically handsome partner, Karl Geary, gave me the once-over too. We got talking about scones and Ireland, the price of turnips and whatever else was au courant in those days. Conversation tended to flow like water in Sin É.

I was trying to cut back on drinking and began frequenting this then dry hole-in-the-wall. Soon thereafter I came upon Jeff Buckley working on Hallelujah. It turned out he was the son of Tim Buckley, legendary for his ethereal voice and heroin habit. Father and son met but once.

Jeff was hard to ignore for he was tall and drop-dead handsome. Proprietor Karl Geary was no less stunning. I guess that was the reason the clientele of Sin É often tended towards young lonesome ladies.

Karl eventually took to the stage himself and wrote some beautiful songs – he is now a well- regarded novelist.

I don’t think Shane Doyle ever thought much about his own looks but he had charm aplenty, though he could be diffident and would sometimes retreat behind the counter to brew coffee and, no doubt, gather his thoughts.

 

He was not one of those in-your-face proprietors but when he turned his full attention to you he was very charismatic. 

He rarely spoke about himself, though I gathered that he came from a working class Dublin background. He was very curious about the world around him, and in particular of the show-biz and entertainment life.

His real genius, though, was that he appreciated musicians of all sorts, and in particular anyone who had made any kind of breakthrough in the artistic world.

He did not ask for auditions or audition tapes, instead he encouraged aspiring artists to just get up on stage and give their best. Those who showed any promise were added to a roster of hundreds.

Those who didn’t were treated equally well - given a cup of tea and a genuine thank you. In Shane’s recent New York Times obituary the names of the famous who gathered there: Sinéad, Bono, et al were trumpeted, but in truth everyone was welcome.

Black 47 even played a benefit for the legal defense fund of our friend Sean Mackin and nearly blew down the walls of this small space. All fine with Shane. He always appreciated a full house.

He had a sharp brain, unerring instincts for hospitality and publicity, and learned quickly how to work the entertainment business. He recognized that the agent, manager, A&R person were vital to any artist, and he didn’t hesitate to pick up the phone and let his contacts know when an emerging talent was performing in his sitting room sized cantina.

Sin É didn’t last forever. Rents rose, the nabe gentrified, and Shane moved on, a restless Dub forever seeking his particular grail.

But I still treasure that moment I heard Jeff Buckley magically transform Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah into a worldwide anthem in a bare-bones room on St. Mark’s Place called Sin É. 

THE STOLEN KISS THAT NEVER FADES

 What a blast to move to New York from  Wexford town - the size, the bustle, and the sheer moxie of the city, but also the originality and diversity of the music!

You could see and hear something different every night, often brilliant, usually thought-provoking.

 

Pierce Turner and I went out every night. The streets were our oyster. All you needed was the price of a tallboy and a stoop to perch on. New York provided the rest.

With time, Irish accents, and the acquisition of some much-needed chutzpah, we learned how to bluff our way into shows from CBGB to Carnegie Hall.

CB’s was easy. Turner & Kirwan of Wexford was the first band to play there. Owner, Hilly Kristal, had seen us fill the back room of the Bells of Hell, and hired us to play opening night at his new emporium on the Bowery. 

If you played CBGB and drew people, you were inevitably invited to gig at Max’s Kansas City on Park Avenue South, and that opened up the Mudd Club on White Street and Hurrah uptown.

Max’s was my favorite. If you played the upstairs room, then you were welcome to attend any night, as long as there was room – and there always was, as people continually came and went in search of friends or excitement.

Remember, there were no cell phones or texts – doormen and bartenders let you know who was there, who had been, and where they were heading.

The nights were long, closing time stretched past 4am, and if you were still standing, then the inevitable fashionable or seedy after-hours beckoned.

There was no sitting at home, staring into a screen, hoping for clicks or likes, just hot happening streets - sweaty or freezing - in the nightlife capital of the world. 

 

Your repeated presence granted you membership of the scene, and nights you were gigging you too became an act worth checking out.

Should you get a review or a mention in the Voice, the Post (particularly Page 6), the Times, or a myriad of magazines, so much the better; but remember, the media was also on the prowl looking for interesting content. Get a spin or two on WNEW, WLIR or WFMU, and you were really happening. 

You just had to have stamina, a thirst for adventure, and some form of originality that made you stand out - for better or worse.

There were fun nights too, and without cell phones and websites it was a lot easier to pull off the occasional scam.

One night in the late ‘70’s, Turner and I were invited to the Palladium by music insider Neil Stocker to see The Boomtown Rats on their first NYC appearance. The show was great, Geldof was in top arrogant form, when Stocker suggested we crash their party at the very toney One Fifth Restaurant in the Village. He called ahead from a pay-phone to say that the Rats were on their way.

On our arrival sporting our best Dublin accents, Stocker introduced us to the manager of One Fifth who insisted we try his new creation of Rat/Champagne and Guinness.

Our guests soon began to file in and wave to us as we imbibed pints of this magical mix. 

Soon the room was throbbing with the usual hangers-on and first-night scavengers, none of whom apparently knew the Rats or what they looked like.

Well sated from the Champagne/Guinness concoction, we were about to beat a retreat when the manager corralled us and declared, “Time to meet your guests.”

And so we three stood behind a velvet rope and accepted busses, handshakes and congratulations. Suddenly Debbie Harry materialized. She leaned into me smiling, and murmured in “Heart of Glass” tones, “You were wonderful on stage tonight.”

Someone pushed her from behind and she melted into my arms. I leaned closer and we kissed magically and without haste. Then she was gone, another face in a first-night crowd.

By the time Geldof arrived we had greeted most of his guests, and managed to stay a step ahead of him all that long night. My last sighting was of him surrounded by his handlers outside Studio 54 arguing with the puzzled bouncers that “The Rats have NOT been here already, we just stepped out of that bloody limo!”

Ah well, just another of those analog nights – long before the dawn of clicks and likes. But, oh, that stolen kiss still feels magical!

FROM HERBERT HOOVER TO DONALD TRUMP - TARIFF MASTERS

The word on the street in Queens was, “Donny couldn’t organize a two car funeral.”

Anyone could be forgiven one bankruptcy, but six was stretching a point. The guy couldn’t even turn a buck on his casinos.

And now he’s gambling that universal tariffs will bring the world to its knees. He may well be right – but at what cost?

Herbert Hoover was the last president to play the great tariff game. He too was hoping to protect and encourage American industries, but instead he turned a recession into a raging depression.

President Trump had no recession to grapple with. Less than 4 months ago he was handed a first class economy by President Biden.

Now, I’m no ageist, but why have we elected the two oldest American presidents?

Mr. Biden’s family and advisers had for long obscured his age issues, before all was sadly revealed in the presidential debate.

This led to the reign of an even older President Trump whose cock-and-bull ideas are matched only by his megalomania.

Did you catch any of a recent televised cabinet meeting? It would have put Mussolini to shame.

There sat The Donald, head nodding in sated appreciation, while cabinet members took turns eulogizing his “awesome first-100 days.” 

The only irony is that most of these sycophants will receive their pink slips in the course of this administration. Loyalty flows but one way for the man from Queens.

Not one speaker had the courage - or common sense - to question Mr. Trump’s inane belief that tariffs can eventually replace income tax in funding the US Government.

But given that the Trump cabinet is stocked with doting sheep, are we lost?

Far from it, megalomania to the rescue! Mr. Trump does not believe in taking any blame for his actions. See how quickly he folded when stocks, bonds and the almighty dollar shuddered on “Liberation Day.” A 90-day postponement of excessive tariffs was hastily called, and now it looks as though the EU will be forgiven their tariff negotiation transgressions.

And so the farce will continue, two steps forward, one step back like a drunken bridegroom adrift on the dance floor.

We, however, will be left to pick up the pieces. The trust destroyed by our president’s embarrassing behavior to friends and neighbors will not return automatically. Global economic slowdowns leave all sorts of scars.

Meanwhile, Canadians are boycotting US goods and forsaking their annual winter sojourns in the Sun Belt. Europeans too are steering clear of us – including the Irish. Soho boutiques, once awash with fashionable Chinese are feeling the pinch, and who’d want to be a foreign student, now that the Ugly American has been unleashed and is on the prowl for any hint of college dissent?

Stephen Miller’s “flooding the zone” strategy - government by executive order, attack dogs unleashed at all manner of “radical liberal” threats - is working for now. 

But judges are challenging many of these directives, and a constitutional crisis is on the way. 

Eventually the Supreme Court will have to choose between loyalty to Trump or the constitution.

It seemed for a moment that colleges and white shoe law firms were buckling under the bullyboy pressure, but Harvard and more principled lawyers have drawn lines in the sand against a presidency that Donald Trump has transformed into a weapon of grievance and revenge.

Americans will soon have to decide if due process is a bedrock of our constitutional democracy or are we willing to sacrifice it at the whim of a convicted felon?

One figure should not be forgotten - the national debt of over $36 Trillion. Most of the Trump Tax Cuts of 2017 are now up for renewal. The president is also proposing new fiscal enhancements, including no tax on tips. 

Over 10 years these gifts could cost $4.5 Trillion, less a hoped for $1.5 Trillion in cuts to current expenditures. The balance could add $3 Trillion to the National Debt.

A frightening thought, especially if interest rates should rise to counter expected inflation. What happened to the legion of principled Republican deficit hawks? Did Donald clip their scolding wings?

But ultimately President Trump’s fate may depend on more prosaic figures, like the price of eggs, gas or the cost of a new car, as the 2026 midterms loom closer.

In the meantime, keep your tattoos covered. You too might qualify for an extended vacation down in the Trump Due Process Hostel in sunny El Salvador.