When George Washington was exiting the presidency in 1797, he delivered his Farewell Address to the nation. He didn’t deliver it as a speech; rather, newspapers printed it, and, in some cases, it was read to the public by officials. In it, Washington warned of “foreign entanglements.”

When Dwight Eisenhower left office in 1961, he warned of the growth of the “military industrial complex.” I watched his address with my father on our small, black and white television.

Wednesday evening, five days before leaving office, President Joe Biden delivered his Farewell Address. In it, he also issued a warning. His was a warning of “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people.” He said:

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power… Social media is giving up on fact checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.”

As if to prove his point about social media, at the very moment he was delivering those lines, Steven Cheung, Donald Trump’s new Director of Communications, and Karoline Leavitt, his incoming Press Secretary, were sharing posts on X that Biden’s address was pre-recorded (it was not), because his staff did not trust his ability to deliver a live presentation. Neither Cheung nor Leavitt could resist the temptation to get in one more cruel, knife-twisting lie. When these folks were children, they probably cut the legs off frogs to ogle and laugh at what happened when the little crippled critters tried to jump. You might want to remember this, because these are the people who will be briefing the White House press corps every day for the next four years.

Regardless of the puerile instincts of the Trump team, President Biden’s warning about the rise of the ultrawealthy should be heeded.

Federal Reserve data show the wealthiest 0.1% of the country hold more than five times the wealth of the bottom 50% combined.

Here is a chart from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors depicting Americans’ wealth growth since 1989. As you look at it, keep in mind that the very tiny, hard to see, yellow bottom group represents the total wealth owned by the bottom 50% of American households. The darker green section immediately above the yellow is the wealth owned by the 50th to the 90th percentiles. The light blue, light green, and dark green at the top represent everyone in the top 10%.

To make things even clearer, I have taken data from the first quarter of three years, 1990, 2000, and 2024. I have split the data into two categories, household income and household wealth, because income is what is earned in one year, but wealth is the accumulated money and assets amassed over time. For income distribution I have compared the top 1% to the bottom 60%; for the wealth calculation, I compare the top 1% to the bottom 50%. Here is what those data show:

As you can see, since 1990, the top 1% now has 50% more of the nation’s wealth than it had in 1990 and 37% more of its income. Conversely, the income and wealth of the comparison groups has been declining for nearly 35 years.

Drilling down even deeper, and mindful that Inauguration Day in 2025 also falls on the Martin Luther King national holiday, I examined wealth owned by Black people in America since 1990.

According to the 1990 census, approximately 12.1% of the US population was Black. According to Federal Reserve data, they owned a ridiculously disproportionate 4% of the nation’s wealth at the time. By 2024, the Black population had increased to 13.7%, but their share of the nation’s wealth had declined even more, to 3.3%. There are wealthy Black Americans, but their numbers are few. What would Martin Luther King be saying about this? More to the point, what would he be doing about it?

If nothing is done about this long-term trend in wealth distribution, it will continue, and, make no mistake about this — it will get worse. Right now, with Donald Trump’s embrace of (should we say conquest of?), America’s oligarchs, you would likely not lose money betting on the trend to continue for at least four years. At some point, however, Americans will have to decide if this is the picture of wealth distribution in the nation they want. If that happens, will the situation have grown so dire it will be beyond reversing?

Last Sunday, on CBS’s Sunday Morning, Leslie Stahl interviewed Jamie Diamond, CEO of JP Morgan, probably the most successful and influential bank in the nation. Stahl asked Diamond his thoughts on the current chasm existing between the top 1% and the rest. He replied he did not have a problem with the wealth growth of the 1%, but he regretted the bottom 30% did not similarly benefit. Swell.

I have only one question for the remarkably capable Mr. Diamond, one I wish Ms. Stahl had asked: What are you going to do about it?

Yesterday, the nation got a glimpse down the Washington, DC, rabbit hole, when the Senate Armed Services Committee held its confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense.

What we saw was performative Kabuki theatre at its finest. Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) and his staff orchestrated the hearing to leave no doubt that Hegseth is their guy. In his opening statement, Wicker called today’s Pentagon “sclerotic” and said Hegseth “will inject a new warrior ethos into the Pentagon, a spirit that can cascade from the top down.”

The theme of the day might well have been that “warrior ethos.” Hegseth used the term in his opening statement and at least six other times when answering Committee Members’ questions. I stopped counting after six.

In fact, watching this greased skid performance, one could be forgiven for thinking Hegseth was actually auditioning for King of Sparta. At the top of his five pillars necessary to “bring the warrior culture back to the DoD” were “lethality” and “war-fighting.” The three-letter word, war, was the chorus to every verse sung at yesterday’s Hearing.

According to Hegseth, to restore a lost “war-fighting” mentality requires rebuilding the military, re-establishing deterrence, and restoring that frequently mentioned warrior ethos (and, quite frankly, after hearing that vague term throughout the Hearing, and, remembering my time as an infantry Officer, who served in Vietnam for a couple of years, I still don’t know what he meant — makes me think of someone salivating for a fight).

It is customary for nominees to meet with Committee Members prior to their Confirmation Hearings. This time was different. Although he met with every Republican committee member, the only Democrat he would grace with his presence was the Ranking Member, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI).

Reed is an interesting man. A graduate of the Military Academy at West Point, Captain in the 82nd Airborne Division, Platoon Leader, and Company Commander, he later taught for several years at West Point, before resigning and running for Congress. Maybe we should ask him what he thinks of all this “warrior ethos” stuff.

Another leitmotif sung over and over again at yesterday’s Hearing concerned Hegseth’s personal life, specifically allegations of alcohol and sexual abuse. The nominee’s universal response to these questions was that they were all part of a “smear campaign” from “anonymous sources.” This, despite the Democrats saying they actually have the names of accusers, but could not provide them, because the accusers feared retribution. They know what happened to Anita Hill and Cristine Blasey Ford.

Hegseth was also peppered with questions about his public comments that women should not be allowed in combat and that they have made the armed forces “less effective” and are an “unhelpful distraction.” Claiming that combat readiness can be negatively impacted if standards are lowered to accommodate women, he gave the example of a fully-filled, 100-pound, combat ruck (rucksack) weighing 100 pounds whether a woman or a man is carrying it.

When I was deep into Army training, I saw many other trainees, all of them male, wash out because they couldn’t manage the physical requirements. I’m sure the same thing now occurs with women going through the rigorous training the Army requires. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be there trying, though. Some will succeed; some will not. Just like the men.

Democrats on the Committee were understandably upset they never got to meet privately with Hegseth, as their Republican colleagues had. During her questioning, Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), a former military officer and a victim of rape, as well as someone whose vote was in question, told about the “very direct discussion” she had with Hegseth in their private meeting. Immediately after the Hearing, she issued a press release announcing he has her vote, which likely was never in doubt, anyway.

On the other hand, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was nearly apoplectic in her questioning, complaining about his refusal to meet with her privately so she “could ask the same questions” Senator Ernst had had  the opportunity to ask. I could have told Senator Gillibrand it wouldn’t have mattered, but she probably knows that all too well.

Although we didn’t learn much at Pete Hegseth’s Hearing, there are two things about which I am certain: first, unless something unforeseen and huge happens between now and the full Senate voting on his confirmation, he will be the next Secretary of Defense; second, during the next four years, something will happen, something big — it always does —  that will test the extent to which a Secretary Hegseth is up to the job.

How does that make you feel?

By now, it has become clear to anyone paying the least attention that the apocalyptic fires ravaging southern California have caused nearly incomprehensible human and property damage. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Governor Gavin Newsome told NBC’s Jacob Soboroff, “Just in terms of cost, these fires will be the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history.”

The insured losses from last week’s fires may exceed $20 billion, and total economic losses could reach $50 billion, according to estimates published by JPMorgan on Thursday.

Those losses would far exceed the $12.5 billion in insured damages from the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85, displaced more than 50,000 people, and destroyed around 18,000 structures. Until now, that was the costliest blaze in the country’s history, according to data from Aon.

Caused by a poorly maintained Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) transmission line, the Camp Fire caused the massive PG&E company to declare bankruptcy.

Thus far, no one knows the exact cause of the current inferno, but humidity of 8%, hurricane force winds of up to 100 miles per hour sweeping down LA’s canyons, and a single spark could easily account for the horrific devastation.

Sunday’s 18 minute interview with NBC’s Soboroff showed a leader at the top of his game. Newsom’s humanity was on full display as he sought to reassure Californians, especially Angelinos, as well as the rest of the nation, that the state’s resources and response are equal to the immensity of the task.

Watch the full interview, and you’ll see what I mean.

During the interview, Newsom described his conversation with President Biden. Newsom asked Biden for the federal government to cover 90% of the state’s costs; Biden replied he’d authorize 100% for six months. Soboroff asked about conversations with President-elect Trump. Newsom said he’d publicly asked Trump to come to California to view the damage. As I write this on Monday, Trump has yet to respond.

This is a disaster where all who can, should help. If you choose to contribute, you can donate through the Red Cross website or by scanning this QR code.

Thank you.

It’s been an interesting week in America, chock full of news guaranteed to titillate even those who don’t routinely pay attention.

During this week, we saw America say a graceful goodbye to its 100-year-old, 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter. That was the nicest thing about the week.

During this week, we also saw the 45th, and soon to be 47th, president officially designated a convicted felon, the first president ever to swan dive into that particularly deep, stink-filled hole. Naturally, with his usual bluster, he draped the whole thing with a Trump-monogrammed, victory, whitewashed toga, saying on Truth Social (what an oxymoronic name):

The Radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, unAmerican Witch Hunt. After spending tens of millions of dollars, wasting over 6 years of obsessive work that should have been spent on protecting New Yorkers from violent, rampant crime that is destroying the City and State, coordinating with the Biden/Harris Department of Injustice in lawless Weaponization, and bringing completely baseless, illegal, and fake charges against your 45th and 47th President, ME, I was given an UNCONDITIONAL DISCHARGE. That result alone proves that, as all Legal Scholars and Experts have said, THERE IS NO CASE, THERE WAS NEVER A CASE, and this whole Scam fully deserves to be DISMISSED. The real Jury, the American People, have spoken, by Re-Electing me with an overwhelming MANDATE in one of the most consequential Elections in History. As the American People have seen, this “case” had no crime, no damages, no proof, no facts, no Law, only a highly conflicted Judge, a star witness who is a disbarred, disgraced, serial perjurer, and criminal Election Interference.

OK. I cut it off there, but there was more, and I’ll spare you that.

For the record, Judge Juan Merchan, in sentencing Trump to nothing, said that Trump’s only reprieve from punishment was his looming presidency: “Donald Trump, the ordinary citizen, Donald Trump the criminal defendant, would not be entitled to such considerable protections.” Merchan probably issued his ruling while holding his nose.

Merchan said the law required him to issue an “unconditional discharge.” This is not an exoneration or a dismissal. Merchan was firm that Trump’s jury conviction on 34 counts of falsifying records stands. He is, and will remain, a convicted felon.

During this week, we have also seen horrific fires engulf Los Angeles and beyond. The fires have killed at least ten people thus far, as well as destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. And into this horrendoma parachuted convicted felon Donald Trump to blame the whole thing on Democrats and Governor Gavin Newsom (whom Trump labels “Newscum” — how clever he is, isn’t he? He makes a schoolyard bully look like Mother Theresa).

Trump claims Newsom diverted water necessary to fight the fires to save an endangered fish, a smelt. That’s sort of accusing Newsom of murder. Totally untrue, of course. There’s plenty of water to fight the fires, but because of electrical power outages (caused by the fires), there is not enough pressure in some water hydrants, and some of those couldn’t pump at all. It seems to me that everyone is doing the very best they can to fight this historic conflagration, and they deserve support and thanks. Doesn’t matter to what’s-in-it-for-me Donald.

Also during this week, we saw the official and peaceful transfer of power in a joint session of Congress, although it might only have been peaceful because the Democrats lost and the MAGA Republicans won — the same folks who lost four years ago, and we know what happened then.

Finally, during this week, we were treated to a vaudevillesque, Donald Trump press conference from his tromp l’oeil, faux-luxurious Mar-a-Lago, the place where he packed away in bathrooms and ballrooms all the high security files he stole from the White House when he left in 2021.

For a man who doesn’t drink, Donald Trump is acting more and more like a guy on a barstool talking gibberish to anyone who’ll listen. His press conference was a good example. Delivered in what can only be described as a bastardized form of stream of consciousness that would have made William Faulkner cringe, he circled around broad policy points without ever landing on one, which is pretty much his usual modus operandi. Along the way, he continued his more or less constant attack on America and what it has become over the last four years, in his befuddled opinion. We all know that at some point in late January or early February he will declare the ship of state turned around, sailing in the right direction with wonderful results, and all because of him. He is as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow.

And, just to show what a tough guy he is, at the mid-point of his presser, he flew off into his own twilight zone, waxing ineloquent about using America’s armed forces to conquer Greenland, the Panama Canal, and maybe even all of Canada. What’s next? The planet Venus?

But I don’t want to end this event-filled week on a downer. Oh, no. I have an announcement to make. I have been offered a job! A very, very, VERY BIG ONE!

A wonderful Team Trump lady named Mary, who may or may not exist, wrote me to say that the big boss himself WANTS MY HELP! Get ready, now — I have been asked to become an Official Trump Cabinet-Level Advisor. And, yes, you read that right.

Don’t believe me? Think I’m just bragging? Au contraire. Here’s my invitation to the big dance:

The “he’s very smart” Elon Musk will probably be sitting next to, or at least, near me at a highly polished table conducive to the gravity of the advice we’ll be giving.

At this point, I’m just waiting for my briefing folder and plane ticket to DC. I wonder where I’ll be sitting for the inauguration?

What a week! My life is now complete.

Today, at Washington’s magnificent National Cathedral, America stopped for just a moment to witness the State Funeral for Jimmy Carter, the 37th President of the United States.

His was a presidency badly misunderstood during his time in the Oval Office, but over the years, historians have re-examined his accomplishments and awarded them high marks.

Don’t believe me? While president, Carter created the Departments of Energy and Education. Conservatives seethe at each, and each is now in jeopardy, but both have furthered the nation’s interests by combating the effects of climate change and educational inequality. He was the first president to attempt any of that.

Carter was also the first president to not only acknowledge, but also do something about climate change. In addition to creating the Department of Energy, Carter created the first national energy policy that included conservation, price controls, and new technology.

He installed solar panels on the roof of the White House, which Ronald Reagan promptly removed. The solar panels may have been a bit of a gimmick, but Carter was serious about America’s energy trajectory.

Although he did not get credit for it, he successfully negotiated the release of the Iranian hostages, a release that happened minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Reagan, who did nothing to deserve it, was the political beneficiary of this achievement, as he was for Carter’s successful efforts to lower the high inflation rates of the mid-1970s.

The Carter Administration negotiated the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the Panama Canal Treaty, which, with Donald Trump’s ascendancy, is also in jeopardy.

Carter also personally and successfully negotiated the Camp David Accords between Anwar Sadat, of Egypt, and Menachem Begin, of Israel. To this day, that is the only real peace treaty ever achieved in the middle east. And for it, Sadat was assassinated, but the treaty he signed lived on. At today’s funeral, Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s Chief of Domestic Policy, described how for thirteen straight days Carter personally drafted treaty proposal after treaty proposal for Sadat and Begin to ponder.

Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. When Carter was awarded the prize in 2002, Gunnar Berge, the Nobel Committee Chairman, said he should have won it with Sadat and Begin. Perhaps he should have won two, one for the Camp David Accords and one for his post-presidency.

Today’s eulogies were both moving and enlightening. Carter’s grandson, Jason, describing  the Carter Center’s successful effort to eradicate from Africa the parasitic guinea-worm disease, said, “Before he took it on, guinea-worm disease killed three and a half million people a year. Last year, the number was 14. He didn’t do that with medicine; he did it with better water management in tiny 600-person villages.”

Growing up deep in the Jim Crow south, Jimmy Carter was elected Governor of Georgia in 1972, succeeding the axe-handle-wielding racist Lester Maddox. He immediately set civil rights as a cornerstone of his administration, blazing a trail that has now led Georgians to elect Raphael Warnock the state’s first African American U.S. senator, as well as the first African American Democrat elected in the entire South.

Ninety-two-year-old Reverend Andrew Young delivered today’s penultimate eulogy. Carter appointed Young to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Young was the first African American to hold the position. It was Andrew Young who described one, small moment in Jimmy Carter’s life that struck a chord with me. Carter was a Naval Academy graduate, and, when he first got to Annapolis he learned that the Academy had also enrolled its first black midshipman. Carter asked if he could be that midshipman’s roommate. “As a minority himself, Plains, Georgia, being only 20-25% white,” Young said, “he thought he might be able to make things easier for his classmate.”

That small moment of moral generosity seems emblematic of Jimmy Carter’s entire time on earth.

Requiescat in pace.

In revolutionary France, public executions were entertainment events. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens created Madame Defarge and memorably described her blissfully knitting beside the guillotine as its blade drops on another aristocrat’s neck.

In the centuries spanning pre-civil rights in America, crowds would gather  to watch, or even  participate in, racist murders, many of them communal lynchings.

Some people have always had an atavistic need to torment other human beings, and some people have always had a ghoulish desire to watch them do it.

On 22 December, this was on full and monstrous display in New York City, specifically on a stationary F Train in Brooklyn’s Coney Island station. A homeless woman, 57-year-old Debrina Kawam, was sitting on the train, apparently sleeping, when Sebastian Zapeta-Calil  walked over to her, took a lighter from his pocket, and  set her on fire. Her clothes instantly ignited, and, screaming, she began to burn.

Zapeta-Calil watched her burn for a while and then, unsatisfied, took off his jacket to fan the flames.

An undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, Zapeta-Calil was deported in 2018 and later reentered the US illegally, according to federal immigration authorities. This is his first arrest in the U.S. He has told the authorities he has no memory of the attack, as he was intoxicated at the time. That seems to defy credibility.

In high school, Ms. Kawam had been a cheerleader with what her classmates called a “million-dollar smile.” She had hopes of becoming an airline flight attendant. That never worked out, and, after a number of setbacks, she wound up homeless on a New York F Train in late 2024 waiting for her rendevous with a horrid destiny.

Zapeta-Calil and Ms. Kawam were apparently total strangers. When he boarded the train in Queens, she was already on it, and they rode the same train for the long journey to its terminus in Coney Island, an official told reporters. Homeless people often ride the trains as far as they go in New York City to keep warm in the winter.

You might think from reading this that the burning lady and the arsonist man were the only people there. You’d be wrong. There were a number of people on the platform — as well as two police officers — none of whom moved one inch closer to help. CCTV video shows one of the police officers glancing at the burning woman but making no move to help her; his partner  strides in the other direction, speaking into a walkie-talkie without slowing down in the face of the F Train immolation.

Eventually, police officers appeared with a fire extinguisher to douse the flames, but by then Ms. Kawam was long dead.

In addition to failing to aid the victim, Police didn’t even detain Zapeta-Calil, who stood right there in front of them. He wasn’t arrested until hours later in another subway station. For some reason beyond me, a Police Department spokesman later commended the officers on the platform for doing their job “perfectly.”

And how do we know all this? Because the patrons waiting for their trains, rather than trying to help, decided instead to become Steven Spielbergs and film the event on their phones.

Ms. Kawam died in unimaginable agony. She was burned to such an unrecognizable state it took nine days to identify her by analyzing fingerprints, dental information, and DNA evidence.

And lest you decide to quickly move on from this tragedy, I thought it might be helpful if you could put a face to the unfortunate lady. Here is her high school photo from 40 years ago showing so much hope and promise. The girl next door. America’s sweetheart.

The story of Debrina Kawam calls to memory one of the most notorious crimes in New York City’s history. It happened in 1964, and it is the story of 28-year-old Kitty Genovese, a bar worker, who was on her way home from work at 2:00 AM, on 13 March, when she was approached by a man named Winston Moseley, who was waving a knife at her. She ran, screaming, but he caught her in her apartment’s entryway, where he raped her three times and then stabbed her to death. After her murder, the nation learned that 38 people, most of them neighbors, saw or heard what was happening, yet did nothing to help. No one called the police. At Moseley’s trial, prosecutors called five of the neighbors to testify. All said they saw or heard the attack, but none seemed to think what they were actually seeing or hearing was really something terrible that was actually happening. Besides, it wasn’t their business.

What have we become that we can let a person burn to death in front of us, or suffer rape and stabbing death without lifting the proverbial finger to help?

Psychologists attribute this to the Bystander Effect. In the late 1960s, John M. Darley and Bibb Latané (1968) initiated an extensive research program on the “bystander effect.” In their seminal article¹, they found that any person who was the sole bystander helped, but only 62% of the participants intervened when they were part of a larger group of five bystanders.

The more witnesses, the less likely any one person will intervene, as the Kawam and Genovese cases demonstrate.

In Ms. Kawam’s case, police and New York train riders have offered their own ideas for why no one tried to help. They told reporters it’s a matter of the subway system being a dangerous place where you must never make eye contact and at all times keep your head down. But all the gruesome videos of this obscenity that were posted on social media — most of which have now been deleted — suggest there could not have been many downed heads.

Perhaps we have simply become a society of Madame Defarges. If cell phones had existed in 1964, I have no doubt there would have been quite a few videos of the final minutes in the life of Kitty Genovese.

__________________

¹ Darley J. M., Latané B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 377–383.

Yesterday, we saw something we haven’t seen in eight years — the peaceful transfer of power. Vice President Kamala Harris, showing the grace that characterized her campaign, recorded the 2024 electoral college votes before a joint session of both houses of Congress. Unlike four years ago, nobody objected, nobody had to hide under benches, nobody had to run for their life, nobody died.

And unlike four years ago, when members of the Trump Administration made things as difficult as possible for the Biden transition team, Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s highly capable incoming Chief of Staff, has reported the utmost cooperation from the outgoing Biden team. One wonders how January 6th, 2025, would have unfolded had Trump lost and Harris won.

It is all preparing the way for the billionaires to be front and center, rather than in their usual roles of the guys pulling the strings behind the curtain. This is in stark contrast to their immediate reaction to the insurrection attempt four years ago.

As Josh Marshall wrote yesterday in his Talking Points Memo:

The now incoming President led a criminal attempt to overthrow the republic to reverse the outcome of an election he lost. One has to peel back so many layers of time to remember that a good percentage of corporate America announced at the time that they would stop backing members of Congress who had supported the effort by refusing to vote to certify the results of the election, a boast that required cutting off support to the bulk of congressional Republicans.

Well, that moral stance didn’t last long, and to see how far in the rear of the democracy battle corporate America has retreated, one only need look at Ann Telnaes, the only female editorial cartoonist to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the Reuben Award, the highest award a cartoonist can earn. Only two other cartoonists have ever done that.

A few days ago, Telnaes quit her job with the Washington Post, because editors had killed this cartoon lampooning America’s oligarchs, which included her boss, Jeff Bezos:

Telnaes has been creating magnificent editorial cartoons for the Post since 2008, and, as she wrote yesterday:

I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.

The job of the political, or editorial, cartoonist is to afflict the comfortable — quickly. What  takes me 800 to 1,000 words to say, persuasively I hope, people like Ann Telnaes can illustrate in the blink of an eye.

The pathfinder of political cartoonists was Thomas Nast, who, between 1857 and 1887, drew approximately 2,250 cartoons for Harper’s Weekly. Nast stuck his sharply pointed pens deep into the eyes of the high and mighty from the Civil War, through Reconstruction, and all the way to the Chinese Exclusion period.

When Nast died in 1902, the New York Times eulogized him as the “Father of the American Political Cartoon,” an honorific bestowed in no small part for Nast’s biting political caricatures of William M. (Boss) Tweed who ran New York City’s Democratic political machine at Tammany Hall.

The cartoonists who came after him, all the way to Ann Telnaes, have carried the baton he passed with scathing grace.

And they stick together. Immediately following Telnaes’s resignation, her friends began to pour it on. Here’s an example, published yesterday by Steve Brodner, the first artist to be inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame:

Here’s another, by Emma Cook:

Ironically, spiking the Telnaes cartoon may have caused it a far wider distribution than if WAPO’s editors had just let it run.

Because political cartoonists can connect so viscerally with the public, theirs is sometimes a dangerous life. During the 1930s, German Jewish cartoonists took their lives in their hands by skewering Nazi bigwigs. You could tell they were successful, because so many had to flee the country.

In the present time, we should not forget that today is the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo murders. On 7 January 2015, in Paris, two French-born Algerian Muslim brothers, Saïd Kouachi and Chérif Kouachi, targeted the employees of the French satirical weekly magazine in a terrorist attack. The brothers killed twelve and severely injured eleven.

Political cartooning can be a risky business.

Meanwhile, back here in what Ronald Reagan, in his farewell address, called the “shining city upon a hill,” the fun is about to begin. Trump’s cabinet picks will begin their confirmation process. As if we didn’t know already, we are soon to confirm just how much spine Republican senators have. Can they actually stomach the likes of retribution-minded Kash Patel leading the dedicated men and women of the Justice Department; accused sexual predator and beer-quaffing Pete Hegseth, running the Defense Department, the largest department in all of government; Bashar al–Assad and Putin buddy Tulsi Gabbard, overseeing America’s secrets as Director of National Intelligence; and Bobby Kennedy’s son and John Kennedy’s nephew, the vaccine-denying, loopy-thinking Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., making health care decisions for the nation?

Many of us were glued to our screens as we watched the House Special Committee investigate and get to the truth of the insurrection of January 6th, 2021, a day of infamy. But the hypocrisy and lies we are about to witness as these unqualified and dangerous people worm their way through to their new jobs will be an even better show not to be missed.

Ann Telnaes and friends are going to have a field day. If only it really mattered.