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First, pretend you’re part of the Great American Wad.
And that you live on a diet of Donald Trump, Costco hot dogs, pharmaceutical commercials, and a breakfast cereal containing enough sugar to stun the Loch Ness monster. Along the highway, a billboard advertises a lawyer whose slogan is, Just Because You’re Guilty Doesn’t Mean You Did It.
To target relief right at the source, an American rock balladeer, Warren Zevon, prescribed a dose of Lawyers Guns and Money. And that, as a result, your teeth have become wobbly. Or possibly your brain. It is hard to tell these days, especially when both are rattling around inside your head like loose change in a clothes dryer.
The country got them. Look what happened.
Now imagine it is October 2026. The midterm elections are approaching. Your country is preparing to exercise its most sacred democratic privilege: choosing which collection of expensively dressed strangers will spend the next two years on cable news explaining why nothing can be done.
This is America, the magnificent republic of the perpetually aggrieved, where every grumble deserves a lawyer, every lawyer deserves a television appearance, and every television appearance becomes grounds for another grievance.
At the center of this racket is Trump, a man who has turned the American courthouse into a ballpark where every defeat demands another game, and the umpire gets sued.
Trump has litigated ABC, CBS, BBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and assorted institutions accused of mistreating his reputation. The lawsuits have produced settlements, dismissals, and continuing legal battles. Nobody has determined whether the president's reputation is a fragile national treasure or a demolition derby operating without insurance.
Meanwhile, his Justice Department has filed 31 federal lawsuits against 30 states and Washington, D.C., demanding sensitive voter-registration information, according to a University of Wisconsin Law School tracker updated Oct. 21.
Thirty-one. Not the total number of Trump lawsuits, mind you, but merely one species in a flourishing legal ecosystem. There is no reliable tally combining his personal lawsuits with every administration action against perceived enemies. The distinction matters, even in a country allergic to distinctions.
In Alaska, the voters have not yet spoken, but the lawyers have arrived to correct them.
Republican Senator Dan Sullivan faces a close contest with Democrat Mary Peltola. Another candidate, Daniel Sullivan Jr., has a similar name. For this offense against political convenience, Trump's Justice Department wants a federal court to block certification if the incumbent narrowly loses. Trump ordered the lawsuit himself. "I'm the one that said do it," he said.
Election expert David Becker called the intervention unprecedented, noting that Washington has no authority to dictate Alaska's certification. The lawsuit came 11 days before Election Day, before a single ballot had been counted.
There is an old hunger among powerful men to own not merely the land and the labor but also the judgment of those who live upon it. In Alaska, that hunger has put on a lawyer's suit.
MAGA calls it election integrity. The voters might reasonably wonder when their votes became the problem.
And all this as Americans prepare to vote on Nov. 3.
The spectacle is propelled by social media rage, lubricated by non-disclosure agreements, and accompanied by political consultants whose moral convictions change more frequently than the latest iPhone, with considerably less improvement.
Consider the ordinary American caught in this political threshing machine.
Trump has always understood the value of those being threshed. "I love the poorly educated," he once declared. He also boasted he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue without losing a voter. A remarkable expression of faith in the American electorate, or at least its capacity for absolution.
But these folks are not stupid. Nor are they saints. They are tired, frightened, funny, occasionally cruel, often generous, and capable of extraordinary kindness when nobody is filming.
They are the people democracy was supposed to serve.
Instead, they have become spectators at a national nervous breakdown with corporate sponsors.
Republicans warn Democrats will dismantle America. Democrats warn Republicans are dismantling it already.
Billionaires finance the shouting and the platforms carrying it. Somewhere, a political strategist has discovered that fear polls three points better than hope and costs less to manufacture.
The tragedy is not that Americans disagree. Disagreement is the locomotive of democracy. The calamity is that disagreement has become an industry, with franchises, subscription packages, and a legal department.
The lawsuit is its perfect product.
Warren Zevon once pleaded for "lawyers, guns and money." In Trump's America, the lawyers have arrived, the money is flowing, and nobody seems worried about the guns. (Since the beginning of 2025, America's schools have witnessed 45 shootings, leaving 24 dead and 73 injured, according to Education Week's K-12 School Shooting Tracker.)
Trump's defenders will argue, with historical precedent, that the powerful have long turned courts and guns against their enemies. All the more reason not to turn that machinery into a personal amusement park.
"I'm the innocent bystander," Zevon sang. Washington's motto: nobody owns the rubble, but the wrecking crew has been promoted to management.
And yet, beneath the clutter, America continues.
There is something touching about this stubborn persistence.
Beyond the shouting, Americans still have mortgages and root canals.
On Nov. 3, they will be asked to vote.
And now the Russians are back, poisoning the American well with counterfeit news and AI-generated lies about Democratic candidates. They have learned something useful about America: you needn't destroy a democracy when its citizens can be persuaded to do the work themselves.
The republic has not quite collapsed. But its teeth are coming loose.
And somewhere in the heavens, Zevon's old lyric sounds suspiciously like today's news.
"How was I to know she was with the Russians too?"
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