"A New Birth Of Freedom" - The Great Task Remaining Before Us
Happy New Year All!
Morning everyone. It’s a new year. 2025 is behind us. Let’s be animated by those feelings of rebirth, renewal, and possibility that come with these early days of a new year, and commit to do everything we can to make 2026 a better year for our great country and our wonderful people - together.
We start this new year on a hopeful note, waking to a new mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, who was sworn in at midnight. Here is a clip of his swearing in:
We also start the this new year with a reminder of the hard work ahead of us - the ACA subsidies expired last night. Tens of millions of Americans wake up today with far more expensive health insurance and a dramatically weakened health care system. Republicans let these subsidies expire - and aggressively cut Medicaid and SNAP benefits - in order to pay for tax cuts to the wealthiest among us. In 2025 Republicans literally took from the poor and working people and gave to the rich. It is among the most shameful things an American political party has ever done.
The recent Congressional testimony of Special Prosecutor Jack Smith was released to the public yesterday. Here is how MeidasTouch summarized what we learned:
In his opening statement, Smith took direct responsibility for the decision to charge Trump, while placing responsibility for the underlying conduct squarely on the president.
“The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine,” Smith said, “but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts.”
Smith testified that his investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and obstruct the lawful transfer of power. He also said investigators uncovered powerful evidence that Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after leaving office, storing them at Mar-a-Lago in locations including a ballroom and a bathroom, and repeatedly obstructed efforts to retrieve them.
In its summary Meidas includes this portion of the written transcript:
The US Government announced yesterday that it had determined that Ukraine did not attack Putin’s residence this week. It is a further reminder that Putin is a malevolent liar, and our leader, who fell for the lie, is a dangerous fool.
The Wall Street Journal kicked off the new year this morning with a remarkable front page article about Trump’s clear phyiscal decline, "As Signs of Aging Emerge, Trump Responds With Defiance” (defiance and idiocy if I may say). Here’s a gift link, and an excerpt:
Trump, 79, the oldest man to assume the presidency, is showing signs of aging in public and private, according to people close to him. Yet he has at times eschewed the advice of his doctors and scoffed at the medical community’s widely accepted health recommendations, relying instead on what he calls his “good genetics.” Trump and his doctor say he is in excellent health, and aides say he maintains a vigorous schedule.
Trump gets little sleep and has recently struggled to keep his eyes open during several televised events in the West Wing. Aides, donors and friends say they often have to speak loudly in meetings with the president because he strains to hear. Aside from golf, Trump doesn’t get regular exercise, and he is known to consume a diet heavy on salty and fatty foods, such as hamburgers and french fries.
The large dose of aspirin he chooses to take daily has caused him to bruise easily, he said, and he has been encouraged by his doctors to take a lower dose. But Trump has declined to switch because he has been taking it for 25 years. “I’m a little superstitious,” he said in the interview.
“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” Trump said. “I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?”
Trump denied that he struggles to hear. He also denied falling asleep at recent White House events and said he has always gotten by on little sleep.
The president has sometimes described his medical care inaccurately.
Yesterday our movement ended the year with a major victory. From CNN -
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he’s withdrawing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland but left the door open to sending federal forces “in a much different and stronger form.”
His announcement comes after the US Supreme Court last week rejected his request to allow him to deploy the guard to Chicago to protect ICE agents as part of the administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.
“A New Birth Of Freedom” - The Great Task Remaining Before US
Let us start our new year by reflecting on some of the most aspirational and important words ever spoken by an American President, ones that will guide and inspire our work together this year. For what America needs now, perhaps, most of all, is what Abraham Lincoln calls for in his Gettysburg Address - “a new birth of freedom.” Let us make it one of our 2026 rallying cries.
Here is the extraordinary address:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Happy New Year all! We did a lot of good together in 2025, but wake today knowing full well that our most important work lies ahead - Simon
Dear Simon, your leadership in this community has been unparalleled and I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done and helped accomplish this far.
In America, such a decentralized modern society and the most culturally diverse nation in the world, against seeming odds, its resistance to Trump and the oligarchy like what we’ve seen come to fruition that continues to reinstate my innate cautious optimism.
Trump nor any MAGA acolyte (or worse) will ever become the lasting dictator many fear. We are not an immune nation and we are seeing, living proof of that now. However, America is a unique, complex nation which I’ve long felt would always officially and ultimately prevent from becoming a long lasting dictatorship.
Ironically enough, our greatest test towards that theory (and likely the last one for quite some time in my view) is that of Trump, an immature, flailing, extraordinarily vain, narcissistic 80 year old who is, always has been, and always will be his own worst enemy (which ironically is our greatest solace), destined to bring his cronies down with him, causing his movement around him to rise and fall all on his own accord even in spite of the enabling by those who have kept him afloat for far too long.
Yet, there is ALWAYS a breaking point! It is coming soon, we can all feel it. In the strangest way, we’re lucky the worst of our modern nation is a Trump figure and not that of a Hitler figure. Our nation will be the one who both let a Trump figure in but also cast a Trump figure out, nearly ensuring another one or worse will never rise to such levels of power again, certainly within our lifetimes.
As for Kamala, the one who got so close, and the one the nation unfortunately let get away, I don’t know where she ultimately lands, but I do know that she will land big regardless as she is far too prominent a figure to fade out (hopefully, perhaps at least as the next AG).
With that, I yield the floor to a healthy, healing, democratic, and happy 2026 amidst needed and hopeful change ahead. Love and light to you and your family. All the best to this community. Thank you for all you do. Happy New Year and forward we march 🥂✌️💕.
Malevolent…. Perfect description of Trump .. and extending it to Putin here. They both are malevolent and evil.
Tony Schwartz (wrote “Art of the Deal” for Trump) warned the nation in 2016 that Trump was both a “narcissistic sociopath” and “deeply mentally disturbed”