In many of the websites that I read, I come across repeated articles with headlines that suggest that Trump is unraveling because he is mentally and/or physically falling apart or that his cult following is defecting. They warn that one or other impending event is going to finally cause the collapse. These headlines have become so common that I have stopped clicking on them because they seem to be largely wishful thinking. Until I see some very tangible evidence that this is the case, I tend to ignore such teaser headlines.

This kind of thing is not only on the left-liberal end of the political spectrum. Neoconservative Bill Kristol is someone I despise. He was one of the key people who urged the US to invade Iraq as part of the imperialist neoconservative ambition to take over Iraq. Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia as outlined in their manifesto Project for a New American Century. But he and some other neocons have become, for various reasons including Trump’s campaign promise to avoid further foreign entanglements (which he seems to have forgotten), opposed to Trump and he says that the way Trump is behaving with respect to the Epstein files shows that he has something to hide and is feeling cornered.

Trump really does not want those files released. He knows it’s not going to be so easy for Attorney General Pam Bondi to refuse to release them, or to release them only selectively. Such an effort would be very difficult to cover up, and would lead to further controversy.

The prospect of either the files’ release or further disputes about their release will hang over Trump for quite a while. That makes it all the more likely that a cornered and angry Trump will lash out not just in speech but in deed, with deployments of ICE and the Border Patrol to additional cities, with an attack on Venezuela, with further attempts to purge the military, and with new moves to intimidate dissent and attack opponents.

Presidential panic isn’t pretty. It’s also a danger to the republic.

In 1974, as the Watergate crisis came to a head, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger ordered military leaders that he be informed of any attempt by the Nixon White House to give unauthorized orders to military units. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger also tightened the reins on foreign policy decision making. They both worked with White House chief of staff Al Haig and to some degree even with Vice President Gerald Ford to contain the effects of Richard Nixon’s panicked meltdown.

Needless to say, Pete Hegseth is no Jim Schlesinger, Marco Rubio is no Henry Kissinger, Susie Wiles is no Al Haig, and JD Vance is no Gerald Ford. We have a president in panic surrounded by weaklings who will submit to his diktats and sycophants happy to egg him on. And so we enter a period more dangerous than the last months of Nixon.

While I would like to see what the Epstein files to be released on December 19th have to say, I am not sanguine that it will contain any bombshells. The reason is that the attorney general Pam Bondi, who has control of the files, is very much a Trump lackey and she will make sure that if there is any seriously damaging information about Trump or anyone close to him in them, she will remove or redact that on the grounds that there is an ongoing investigation that should not be prejudiced. This will then be followed by yet another round of wrangling to get more information released, followed by court cases.

I think that it is undoubtedly the case that support for Trump is eroding as some of his supporters are wising up to the fact that he does not care for them at all and that they have been used for his personal enrichment and aggrandizement. But many of them are still loyal, even if they suspect that they have been had. It is hard for people to accept that they have been duped by a conman. For some of them, the final straw might be if, as seems likely, he and Republicans do not come up with a way to prevent people’s health care premiums skyrocketing at the end of the year as a result of the budget deal that ended the shutdown.

Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced premium tax credits are set to expire at the end of this year. Enhanced premium tax credits were introduced in 2021 and later extended through the end of 2025 by the Inflation Reduction Act. The enhanced tax credits both increased the amount of financial assistance already eligible ACA Marketplace enrollees received as well as made middle-income enrollees with income above 400% of federal poverty guidelines newly eligible for premium tax credits.

Since the introduction of the enhanced premium tax credits, enrollment in the Marketplace has more than doubled from about 11 to over 24 million people, the vast majority of whom receive an enhanced premium tax credit. If enhanced tax credits expire, many Marketplace enrollees will continue to qualify for a smaller tax credit, while others will lose eligibility altogether and be hit by a “double whammy” of losing their entire tax credit and being on the hook for rising premiums.

Since 2014, the ACA has capped how much subsidized enrollees pay for their health insurance premiums at a certain percent of their income, on a sliding scale, with the federal government covering the remainder in the form of a tax credit. Enhanced tax credits work by further lowering the share of income ACA Marketplace enrollees pay for a plan. For example, with the enhanced tax credits in place, an individual making $28,000 will pay no more than around 1% ($325) of their annual income towards a benchmark plan. If the enhanced tax credits expire, this same individual would pay nearly 6% of their income ($1,562 annually) towards a benchmark plan in 2026. In other words, if the enhanced tax credits expire, this individual would experience an increase of $1,238 in their annual premium payments net of the tax credit.

This, more than the Epstein files, is the time bomb on the political calendar. While Trump and the Republicans have spoken breezily about having ‘ideas’ for a substitute health care plan or ‘concepts’ for a plan, it is clear that they do not have any concrete plan. The best and most cost-effective one would be the Medicare for All plan proposed by Bernie Sanders but that is bitterly opposed by the parasitic health insurance industry and has been portrayed by the right as ‘socialized medicine’ and thus, by definition, is unthinkable, however good it might be.