GOP enthusiasm is flagging; now is the time for Democrats to "pump up the volume."

February 26, 2026

Friday counted as a relatively slow news day. In the “before times,” it would have been the news equivalent of a 1,000-year flood event. Now, it is cause for a brief newsletter and a weekend devoted to more productive activities than dwelling on the news, such as protesting and venturing gingerly onto sidewalks still slick with melting ice while basking in a surprise February warm spell.

[Update: After I wrote and recorded this newsletter but before I hit “send,” I received a NYTimes report that the US and Israel had bombed Iran. Little else is being reported at this time.]

First, a reminder that I will return to my regular livestream slot on Saturday, February 28, 2026, at 9:00 a.m. Pacific / Noon Eastern. Submit questions on this form.

To the extent that there is a throughline in Friday’s news, it is that the Republican Party has become the antithesis of the party it was a decade ago. Trump has gutted the party of its commitment to free markets, small government, states’ rights, cooperative international engagement, and adherence to the Constitution.

Trump’s populist base rejects most of those principles, but there is enough of the “old Republican Party” still standing in the American electorate to make Trump’s heavy-handed, interventionist style at home and abroad a vulnerability for Republicans in 2026 and 2028. The “old guard” Republicans aren’t going to vote for Democrats, but they might stay home—hence the “lack of enthusiasm” among Republican voters identified in polling this week.

So, let’s quickly run through the actions of the Frankenstein’s Monster that has replaced the Republican Party.

Trump suggested (again) that he would seek a third term as President. In doing so, he is undermining his possible successors and confusing his base. Trump isn’t going to run again. He might tease a complicated scenario where he ascends to the presidency by filling vacancies, but such talk simply weakens the other Republican candidates.

Former President Bill Clinton testified before the House Oversight Committee and received warm, bi-partisan praise for his cooperation with the Committee. The Hill, Bill Clinton gets bipartisan praise for cooperating in deposition on Jeffrey Epstein. Gosh! It’s almost as if all those conspiracy theories Republicans have promoted for decades about Bill and Hillary Clinton weren’t true.

The Pentagon declared war on the AI company Anthropic by simultaneously demanding that Anthropic provide its AI software to the military without restrictions and prohibiting all American companies that do business with Anthropic from contracting with the Pentagon.

The one-two punch seems designed to force Anthropic out of business because it will not agree to license its AI model for use in “mass surveillance of American citizens” and “autonomous operation of weapons systems.”

Anthropic has staked out a responsible position that should be followed by all other AI companies. Oddly, one of the other major companies, Open AI (ChatGPT) has managed to impose the “no mass surveillance” and “no autonomous weapons” conditions in it contracts with the Pentagon. See Axios, Pentagon approves OpenAI safety red lines after dumping Anthropic.

So why are Hegseth and Trump hellbent on destroying Anthropic? Because Trump wants to be the King and Decider of American Business.

If there is a silver lining to this story, it is that tech workers at rival companies in Silicon Valley and Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) are lining up to support Anthropic. See Silicon Valley News, Anthropic sees support from other tech workers in feud with Pentagon.

The heavy hand of the government telling Anthropic that it must sell its product to the government or risk losing all customers who have Pentagon contracts is nothing less than the government seizing control of the means of production. In quainter times, such tactics were known as fascism or socialism, something that Republicans previously opposed. “Free markets” were the touchstone of Republican economic theory. Now, the touchstone of Republican economic theory is “whatever Trump wants.”

We saw the “whatever Trump wants” brand of economics at work in the Sky Dance Media bid to take over Warner Bros. Until Friday, there was a bidding war between Sky Dance (controlled by Trump-friendly billionaires, the Ellisons) and Netflix. But after the CEO of Netflix met with Trump on Thursday evening, Netflix dropped its bid for Warner Bros. See WSJ, Six Months, 9 Offers and $81 Billion. How Hollywood’s Nasty Takeover Was Won. (“Shortly after photographers snapped Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos leaving the White House, the company announced that it wouldn’t match Ellison’s latest offer . . .”)

No source is claiming that Trump told Netflix to drop its offer. He didn’t have to. The administration had launched an antitrust investigation into Netflix’s bid. No such investigation was directed at Sky Dance. Instead, David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount (owned by Sky Dance) was the guest of Republican lawmakers at the State of the Union address.

It is difficult to imagine a scenario that seems more heavy-handed and interventionist. The government—Trump—decided that the conservative billionaires controlling Sky Dance would gain control of an asset that includes CNN and CBS. CBS has been brought low in a matter of months, becoming a mouthpiece for the Trump administration. CNN will not be far behind.

Republicans in Congress are fine with this outcome because it means—in their misguided view—that they are “winning” the culture war for control over the media. They are wrong. They are destroying everything they touch because viewers are voting with their feet. CBS News just had its worst ratings month in decades since replacing Nora O’Donnell with a MAGA-curious anchor. See Daily Beast, MAGA-Coded Anchor Tony Dokoupil Scores Lowest Ratings of the Century for CBS News.

Rebecca Solnit noted on Bluesky that Heather Cox Richardson “has similar numbers” to CBS “with less overhead and immeasurably more principle.” First, ouch! Second, one of the most important American broadcast news sources for the last century is about to be overtaken by a single author on Substack.

I don’t mean to take anything away from HCR, but CBS had a century head start! You really must work hard to blow that kind of an advantage. But Trump, Bari Weiss, and the Ellisons are doing their best to reduce CBS to an appendage of the White House press office.

The point is that Trump is attempting to act as the dealmaker for all of American business. The problem is that Trump is becoming increasingly unpopular. When Trump picks “winners,” they have the stench of Trump all over them. The Ellisons have placed a huge bet on the politics of a small portion of the American electorate. They are likely to regret their choice to side with Trump sooner rather than later. No one wants to watch “state t.v.,” which is what the Sky Dance conglomerate is quickly becoming.

Two more quick notes to show that Trump’s GOP is the opposite of what many Republicans signed onto in the 1990s and 2000s.

Trump is trying to obtain the entire voter data files from a half-dozen states. Predictably, voters are queasy about the Trump administration having their voting data. That unease extends to Republicans—maybe even especially Republicans. See Talking Points Memo, Even In Trump Country, State Election Officials Buck DOJ’s Latest Attempt to Seize Voter Rolls.

And then there is the fact that the Trump administration is forcing companies to sue the administration for tariff refunds. See The Guardian, Trump administration warns tariff refund process ‘will take time’. Per the Guardian, Trump claimed on Friday that the Supreme Court surely could not have intended for the government to return the illegal tariffs. There are now several hundred lawsuits by US companies that paid illegal tariffs. The administration’s refusal to return the tariffs quickly is adding insult to injury for many of America’s largest corporations.

Concluding Thoughts.

I could go on, but you get the point. Trump has turned the Republican Party into a vassal state of the Trump Organization. When we protest, vote, run for office, canvass, phonebank, and text, we must remember that there are tens of millions of Republicans who do not recognize what their party has become.

While it may be unrealistic to hope that we can convince most of them that their support for Trump was and is a mistake, we can take advantage of their feelings of dismay and betrayal. Their enthusiasm is flagging. Now is the perfect time for us to crank up the enthusiasm among Democrats.

Pro-democracy protest photos

[Send photos to rbhubbell@gmail.com. Include city and state. No photos of minors.]

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Photos from today’s Face Down Fascism demo in Berkeley, CA

Happy Hour Visibility Brigade was out in Lexington, MA

DE-ICE Hanscom. Lincoln, MA. 2/27/26

Riverton, NJ, Visibility Brigade. Our one-year anniversary is tomorrow.

Gorman Overpass in Howard County, Maryland, over the VERY busy I-95

Weekly Visibility Brigade where the Minuteman Bikeway crosses Rt. 95/128 in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Protesters in Sheffield, MA; weekly Friday protests on Route 7, oldest town in the Berkshires

Beacon, NY

Silver Spring, MD

Tacoma, WA Bi-monthly protest

Olathe, Kansas, 127th and I-35.

Boston Bridge Brigade

Rochester NY Visibility

Pivoting from our focus on ICE this week. The proposed BWCA mining legislation is abominable. Democracy Bridge meets every Thursday on the 42nd St bridge over I-35W. dmbr.org