Centrist ‘NYT’ Columnist Calls for ‘National Uprising,’ Making Gavin Newsom Look Like a Weak Baby

Barf Bag: It's a cold day in hell when David Brooks seems more radical than the governor of California.

By Susan Rinkunas  |  April 18, 2025 | 4:57pm
Photos: Getty Images Politics
Centrist ‘NYT’ Columnist Calls for ‘National Uprising,’ Making Gavin Newsom Look Like a Weak Baby

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Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) has once again opened his big mouth and let more dumb things fall out. In recent weeks, Newsom, who’s considered a 2028 presidential candidate, has welcomed far-right figures like Steve Bannon on his new podcast and said that the infinitesimal number of trans kids participating in school sports is “unfair.”

Now he’s acting like it’s savvy not to be furious about the U.S. government disappearing people to a foreign gulag without due process—a vile practice that has thus far been deployed against immigrants, but could very quickly come to threaten the rights of U.S. citizens as well.

Yes, we’re talking about the effective kidnapping of hundreds of immigrants who were sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador without a single court hearing, including the mistaken deportation of Maryland dad and sheet metal worker, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The White House admitted that Abrego Garcia was removed from the U.S. in March due to an “administrative error”—but has still done a full fascist smear campaign to keep him there. On Wednesday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) flew to El Salvador to check on his constituent and try to secure his release. (Van Hollen finally met with Abrego Garcia on Thursday evening, but the country is refusing to release him.)

Also on Wednesday, Newsom announced that California was suing the Trump administration over its tariff policies, claiming the White House has no legal authority to unilaterally impose taxes on imports. When reporters asked him to weigh in on Abrego Garcia’s case, he gave a pathetic response.

“This is the distraction of the day. The art of distraction,” Newsom said. “This is their 80-20 issue, as they’ve described it,” referring to polling. He said the Trump administration needs to abide by court orders and then added, “It’s exactly the debate they want, because they don’t want this debate on the tariffs; they don’t want to be accountable to markets today.”

This is weak baby shit. Yes, it’s important to talk about how Trump is cratering the economy. But the disappearance of a person with legal protection against deportation is not a “distraction,” though perhaps Gavin is just mad that his little lawsuit isn’t the biggest news of the day. And on the public opinion of it all, people probably support deporting immigrants who have been convicted of violent crimes, but that’s not what’s happening here. People were snatched off the street and shipped off to a detention facility in another country without a single day in court, and in Abrego Garcia’s case, the government admitted he should never have been on the plane. If Newsom can’t summon the courage to rail against this constitutional crisis, he doesn’t deserve to be president.

Meanwhile, longtime New York Times columnist and reactionary centrist David Brooks wrote an op-ed on Thursday that made Newsom look even more feckless. It’s titled: “What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.”

Brooks is mostly concerned about the attacks on universities, law firms, and global alliances, and does not mention the deportations or even the tariffs. But his conclusion is that, to prevent Trump from amassing even more power, the country needs to unite and engage in mass protests. He calls for a “comprehensive national civic uprising” comprised of “Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement.” I won’t give him too much credit here since he also criticizes the massive crowds Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) are attracting as “partisan rallies” that “make this fight seem like a normal contest between Democrats and Republicans.” Well, how else does he think any national uprising will start without the partisans first taking to the streets?

David Brooks headlines, 2020-2025

— David Sirota (@davidsirota.com) 2025-04-18T01:25:46.227Z

Brooks writes that this movement should include “lawsuits, mass rallies, strikes, work slowdowns, boycotts and other forms of noncooperation and resistance.” He concludes by saying that “Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” That last bit is a popular protest chant and also a paraphrase of the Communist Manifesto, in which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.”

Yet Gavin Newsom is waving away the literal chains the Trump administration is putting on immigrants’ bodies. It’s a cold day in hell when David Brooks seems more radical than the governor of California.

Trump-related barf:

  • White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt held a disgusting press briefing on Wednesday where she trotted out the mother of a woman murdered by an El Salvadoran fugitive as if it were somehow justification for the U.S. not bringing back Abrego Garcia, a man who had no involvement in that horrific crime. [CBS News]
  • Leavitt is also doing weird things with money in the campaign account from her failed Congressional run? [NOTUS]
  • Some undocumented immigrants are rightly afraid to file their taxes because the IRS might give their information to ICE. A tax policy organization estimated that even 10% fewer undocumented people paying taxes would mean a decrease of $9.5 billion a year in tax revenue. Business genius! [NBC News]
  • When Trump found out that shadow president Elon Musk was set to join a Pentagon briefing about China, he angrily canceled it, reportedly saying: “What the fuck is Elon doing there? Make sure he doesn’t go.” An anonymous official claimed this was about ethics because Musk does a lot of business in the country. Sure buddy. [Axios]
  • The president, an alleged fighter against antisemitism, has yet to reach out to Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) after a man set fire to the Governor’s mansion on the first night of Passover, hours after the family hosted a Seder.[Philadelphia Inquirer]
  • Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C., Ed Martin, appeared on Russian state media more than 100 times between 2016 and 2024. [Washington Post]

Non-Trump barf:

  • Whiny little bitch Mark Zuckerberg reportedly offered $450 million to the Federal Trade Commission to drop its antitrust case against Meta and they said no. They wanted $30 billion?? [Wall Street Journal]
  • DOGE lackeys reportedly threatened a whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board by taping a threatening note to his door that “included sensitive personal information and overhead photos of him walking his dog that appeared to be taken with a drone.” [NPR]
  • Florida First Lady and rumored gubernatorial candidate Casey DeSantis is in hot water over her charity called the Hope Florida Foundation. The group allegedly sent $10 million to organizations that shunted the money to campaigns opposing a constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana, which failed in November. [The Guardian/Tampa Bay Times]
  • Lol: After Trump pulled the nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to serve as United Nations Ambassador because they were concerned about losing her House seat, Stefanik is now considering a run for governor. [NBC News]

This has been your weekly Barf Bag, thanks for reading! 

 
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