My readers asked me to provide talking points and framing for the current news. This is my first attempt to deliver! Here is what to say about Trump’s unprecedented corruption, Supreme Court rulings, Epstein files, dangerous heat, Iran, primary elections, and more. And also, what to not talk about!
Voters are pissed at everybody in Washington. They have finally figured out that the lack of economic fairness that causes their cost of living to far outstrip their income is not due to natural market forces, but to corruption, which they define as, not just self-enrichment, but the total capture of our government by “Big Money,” especially “Big Tech.” Corruption is system-wide, but this administration is doing it out in the open and taking it to unprecedented levels. At this point, virtually all their attempts to demonize immigrants and trans people and their attacks on voting should be seen as desperate attempts to avoid being held accountable for soliciting and taking bribes in exchange for government actions, insider trading and even culpability in a massive child sex trafficking ring.
NOTES: Everything below is free to use without attribution, as is, or translated into your own voice. The goal is to get the ideas out there! I am trying to write in words that would be natural to say to a neighbor over the fence. Remember: never use acronyms and don’t use words together that we don’t want associated with each other.
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What’s Happening: Trump’s financial disclosure forms, released Tuesday, show that he has raked in more than $2 billion since he retook office, mostly in cryptocurrency dealings.
What to Say:
They say the only use for cryptocurrency is hiding payments for crimes. Looks like the President has been using his crypto business to get paid off for selling pardons, dropping fraud investigations, approving monopoly mergers, and basically selling every Presidential decision to the highest bidder, even if it puts our national security at risk. The mega-rich have always used their wealth to get preferential treatment, but this is on a scale we have never seen before. When the Supreme Court gave Trump total immunity for crimes committed in office, they opened the floodgates. There’s nothing left of our government but swamp!
What to Do: AMPLIFY IT. Every time you see any story on this topic, don’t just like it. Restack it, share it, do whatever you can to drive it up to the top of the algorithms. Wherever possible, connect this to the bigger picture perception of corruption as making our government serve the rich instead of us, which is why the economy has become so completely broken.
Where to Read More:
Trump’s income topped $2 billion in 2025, boosted by crypto, coin ventures, The Washington Post, June 30, 2026
Trump Pulled In at Least $2 Billion After Returning to the White House, The New York Times, June 30, 2026
What’s Happening: The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Trump in Trump v. Slaughter. Now he can fire the heads of formerly independent agencies at will.
What to Say:
The heads of federal agencies used to be able to say “no” to the President or anyone else without risking being fired. Federal agencies are supposed to keep us safe, to make decisions based on science, and treat everyone equally. Now, thanks to this Supreme Court decision, they can be fired if they don’t do political favors for the rich and powerful. From now on, we won’t know if our food and drugs are safe, or if we can hold a bank responsible for defrauding us, or if someone is being prosecuted for political reasons, because the decisions are being made, not based on the facts, but on who is bribing Trump or just whatever fool idea he has got in his head today. This Supreme Court is corrupt as hell and needs reforming, big time.
What to Do: AMPLIFY AND FRAME IT. Share this story as widely as possible, but be aware that the typical reader may not already know that Presidents don’t have total authority over executive branch agency heads, and they may not know why that matters. Use this opportunity to let people know how federal agency independence is critical to keeping us safe and maintaining the principle of equal treatment by our government, and to normalize the idea of Supreme Court reform.
Where to Read More:
Outcry over supreme court decision to grant Trump power to fire agency chiefs, By Michael Sainato, The Guardian, June 29, 2026
“The Court’s decision effectively eliminates government by professional civil servants who do their best to implement the law with government by henchmen and lackeys who will do whatever Dear Leader wants.”
What’s Happening: A record shattering heat wave is moving over the Midwest and East Coast all this week, and experts say it would not be possible without global warming. Meanwhile, Iran continues to assert authority over the Strait of Hormuz.
What to Say:
This heat is f*ing ridiculous. This never happened when I was a kid, at least not like this. The weather is, like, “Yo-Yo-ing” up and down and it’s freaking me out. We need to switch to unlimited clean energy as fast as possible and get the weather back in some kind of balance.
Besides, if Iran can jack up the prices of gas and everything else in this country just by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, we’re being held hostage by our own dependence on oil! I heard that Spain has so much solar power that they’re literally paying people to take it off their hands. My friend bought a plug-in electric car and he says he can drive the equivalent of a full tank of gas for $2. Two freakin’ dollars’ worth of electricity!
What to Do: AMPLIFY AND FRAME IT. It’s our job to put the destabilization of our climate at the top of the news cycle. We should like and share every story that associates extreme and dangerous weather with the increasingly unstable climate, and frame the costs associated with it as a form of climate disaster tax. Also, with Iran, we have an excellent opportunity to reframe renewable energy as the only path to energy independence and energy security and highlight the threat that fossil fuel dependence poses to our national security and to prices across every sector of the economy, including the cost of food increasing due to drought.
Where to Read More:
Europe’s Heatwave is Political, By Grace Blakely, Substack, Jun 27, 2026
Dangerous combination: Over 175 million facing record heat into the weekend, By Jennifer Gray, Miriam Guthrie and Jonathan Erdman, The Weather Channel, July 1, 2026
Iran Just Taught the World a Dangerous Lesson, By Edward Fishman, The New York Times, June 19, 2026
Too much of a good thing? Spain’s green energy can exceed demand By Guy Hedgecoe, BBC News, June 2024 (There are more recent articles complaining that the cost of electricity has become so low in Spain that investors are pissed off, but they are largely behind paywalls.)
What’s Happening: Journalist Katie Phang won her lawsuit and now Todd Blanche has to cough up the Epstein files that they have been hiding, specifically the records of the interviews of the 13-year-old who credibly accused Trump of sexual assault. Meanwhile Todd Blanche is trying to get confirmed as the Attorney General.
What to Say:
I seem to remember that a bill was passed in Congress and signed by the President requiring them to release all the Epstein files, unredacted, by December 19th of last year. Now we find out that they have been hiding records, and lots of them, including the records of four interviews of a 13-year-girl who credibly accused Trump of sexual assault. If there is nothing to hide, why do they keep hiding them? No wonder Trump is trying so hard to keep us all distracted. Now he wants his personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, the same guy who got Gislaine Maxwell a spot in a country club prison in exchange for who knows what, confirmed as Attorney General. This is disgusting. I want it all out in the open and I want people put in prison. (Real prison, not this country club sh*t.)
What to Do: AMPLIFY IT. Every time you see any story on this topic, don’t just like it. Restack it, share it, do whatever you can to drive it up to the top of the algorithms. Wherever possible, connect this to the bigger picture that Trump us trying to distract us with spectacles and attacks, to avoid being held accountable.
Where to Read More:
What’s Happening: Candidates running on economic populism and fighting corruption (some of which are running under the Democratic Socialists of America label) have won primaries in New York and Colorado, leading some older centrist Democrats to freak out.
What to Say:
It seems pretty clear that voters want people in office who will fight corruption in our government, stand up for working people, make our lives more affordable, and make government actually work again (like Mamdani is doing in New York). It doesn’t really matter how they are labelled.
Republicans are the boy who cried wolf. They have been calling us all socialists for decades. Nobody cares. They just want someone who will look out for them, not just the rich.
What to Do: MUTE IT. This is “inside pool” and is framed as evidence of “Democrats in disarray.” In in-community discussions, you can use this as an opportunity to emphasize that voters are responding positively to economic populist candidates, but avoid blanket criticism of other Democratic elected officials. We still need them elected or re-elected and many of them are progressives! Wherever possible, do not associate the term “Democrats” with the term “Socialists.” We’re not against it, but now is the time for persuasion, so downplay it where possible. We can educate people after November.
Where to Read More:
Voters are angry with Washington, and other takeaways from the Colorado primaries, The Washington Post, July 1, 2026
“My advice to Democrats upset about Mamdani’s win is simple: stop worrying about labels and start worrying about people’s bills. If we become the party that can look a working family in the eye and say, “Yes, your rent will go down, your wages will go up, and your debt burden will shrink,” we will earn back their trust. If we don’t, they will keep looking for leaders who will — no matter what name those leaders run under. James, it’s still — perhaps more than ever — the economy, stupid.”
It’s the Next America, By Robert Reich, July 1, 2026
“These new young Democrats have also won because they inspired armies of young activists to knock on doors and work the phones for them. They didn’t rely on big money; they relied on big excitement.”
Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism! Please let me know what you think of this format in the comments below!
In solidarity, always,
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Contact me at antonia@antoniascatton.com or (202) 922-6647
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