The Litter Bag Emperor

From Minnesota’s heartbreak to CDC collapse and National Guard janitors, America staggers on while even Alabama boos Trump and Marz reminds us teeth are enough.

Good morning! The day begins under a pall of grief. In Minneapolis, another school has joined the growing litany of places permanently scarred by gunfire, this time a Catholic school where children should have been memorizing spelling lists, not dodging bullets. The shooter’s social media trail, brimming with threats, should have set off alarms, but the FBI, gutted, defunded, and reassigned under Trump to chasing immigrants and sanitizing Epstein files, never picked up the signal. Predictably, the MAGA response was not to reconsider common sense reforms that eighty-five percent of Americans support, but to demand more National Guard at schools, as if camouflage fatigues and M-16s in the classroom will somehow create a safer learning environment than textbooks and counselors.

Meanwhile, the nation’s health defenses are in open revolt. Susan Monarez, the CDC director whose tenure was shorter than a summer intern’s, was shoved out for resisting RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine crusade. Monarez insisted she wasn’t leaving, a defiance that sparked mass resignations from veteran staff already demoralized by layoffs and the August shooting at CDC headquarters. FEMA, for its part, has been described by its own people as a rudderless ship, incapable of responding to disasters. Remember the hundreds of children swept away at the Guadalupe River in Texas? FEMA was ready, but Trump-loyal cronies blocked rescue approvals. In other words: the CDC is collapsing, FEMA is collapsing, and the Trump administration calls it a “perfect response.” The only thing functioning perfectly here is the conveyor belt of excuses.

And then there’s Washington, D.C., where “law and order” has been reduced to parody. After slashing a billion dollars from the city’s budget, Trump and his Republican enablers promised to restore it, never did, and instead called up the National Guard to show strength. With nothing left to do, these soldiers are literally bagging up litter. Imagine the world’s most expensive sanitation service: troops in combat gear stooping to gather candy wrappers. America once put men on the moon; now we put them on garbage detail in the capital. MAGA governance in a nutshell.

The public, even in deep-red strongholds, is noticing. In Alabama, Congressman Barry Moore, a dyed-in-the-wool MAGA running for Senate, was booed to his face for ripping away healthcare, destroying jobs, and torching the state’s future. The soundtrack of discontent is unmistakable. Trump’s latest Quinnipiac poll has him at 37 percent approval, his lowest yet, which is saying something. Fifty-five percent disapprove overall, sixty-seven percent disapprove of his Epstein cover-up, and nearly three-quarters of Americans wouldn’t trust Vladimir Putin to guard their recycling bin, let alone negotiate peace. The base is cracking, and the cracks are showing up where Trump once felt most invincible.

Abroad, the picture is no better. Trump’s Alaska tête-à-tête with Putin produced nothing for the United States except bad optics and a shopping list for Russia: new diamond trades, more oil sales, and expanded drone shipments to Moscow’s war machine. Japan canceled its trade meeting outright, telling Trump his imaginary deal wasn’t worth the airfare. India isn’t returning calls. Denmark is furious after catching Trump operatives running influence games in Greenland. Even Chuck Grassley, the ancient senator from Iowa, is muttering about how Trump’s tariffs are gutting farmers with fertilizer costs. The strongman optics dissolve quickly when even your allies won’t show up for the photo-op.

Closer to home, the absurd keeps pace with the tragic. In California, Republicans are pushing a “two-state solution” of their own: carving off the coastal cities from the rural interior to create a brand-new republic. Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher even invoked the spiritual Go Down Moses to demand Gavin Newsom “let my people go.” His proposed map would leave Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Sacramento in one state, while the Central Valley and Inland Empire would secede into a seventh-largest state of their very own. Newsom’s office called it a stunt, which is generous. At this point, “stunt” feels like the default mode of American governance, when it isn’t collapse or corruption, it’s vaudeville.

And so Thursday dawns in America: children dead in Minnesota, scientists fleeing CDC headquarters, soldiers in D.C. picking up trash, farmers crushed by tariffs, and Republicans in California rehearsing spirituals about secession. Abroad, our allies are walking out the door while Trump huddles with Putin to ensure Moscow’s oil keeps flowing and the drones keep buzzing.

The emperor has no clothes, but he does have a litter bag. And, apparently, a poll number that now sits lower than his golf ball in the Turnberry rough.

My co-editor has the simplest take. Marz is padding around while I work on a longer essay about America’s love affair with guns, and he insists that real dogs, and real men, don’t need AR-15s. Teeth, he says, are more than adequate. It’s hard to argue with him. In a country where soldiers in camouflage are bagging litter and politicians are quoting spirituals about secession, maybe it takes a dog to remind us what strength really looks like.