In the world of polite discourse, few subjects are more inviting than debating someone who proposes a “simple solution” to a complex problem. More often than not, these easy answers come from those on the right. But sometimes they originate with equal certitude from the idealistic left.

In an effort to take a break from the never-ending dystopia of Trumperama, I sifted through some of my old bookmarks and came across a 2012 piece from the now-defunct Gawker, which J.D. Vance’s mentor, tech bro Peter Thiel, put out of business. Headlined “There’s a Simple Solution to the Public Schools Crisis,” the piece was paired with the image you see above. You get the idea. If you give wealthy people no alternative, they’ll have to enroll their children in public schools. There is a certain logic to this which I will get to later, so bear with me.

The column also spawned several lively Reddit threads, one of which can be found here.

Disclosure: I started my career as an English and theatre teacher in private schools and attended them earlier as a student and, while my two children are products of our local public schools, my expertise in public schools is limited. Perhaps as a result, it’s hard for me to tell whether the author is serious or whether he’s just engaging in a polemical exercise. Let’s assume for the moment that it’s neither a performative display nor satire. After all, the author, John Cook, is now deputy investigations editor at the Wall Street Journal, so I think it’s fair to assume that he’s a serious person.

Cook wrote the piece during a contentious and ongoing teacher strike in Chicago, where approximately 26,000 faculty and staff walked away from their jobs, resulting in a seven-day shutdown of the city’s schools, a vast system serving some 350,000 students.

Cook correctly points out that the city’s wealthy elite, including then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, sent their kids to private schools, and so these upper-income residents were scarcely inconvenienced by the shutdown. Likewise, Emanuel’s former boss, President Barack Obama, had sent his daughters Sasha and Malia to the fancy Sidwell Friends School in Washington.

So Cook is correct that wealthy urbanites don’t have much of a stake in the quality of the public schools in their communities, and so consequently those schools remain “terrible,” as Cook described Chicago’s. So what’s the best solution?

There is one simple step that would go a long way toward resolving many of those issues: Make all schools public schools.

There are a number of problems with this approach, which Cook acknowledges would be “a radical and highly disruptive step.” But Cook argues that the idea of banning private schools — which in England are perversely called “public schools” (go figure) — has been in serious debate in the United Kingdom for decades.

In the United States, the federal government would have to step in and, in effect, nationalize the nation’s independent schools. Or individual states could do the same. This would involve not only the seizure of private property belonging to nonprofits, but the property of independent school systems belonging to churches and religious institutions, an ownership block making up at least 75% of the nearly 30,000 private schools in the U.S.

Religious schools would no doubt challenge the seizures on constitutional grounds, and they would have a powerful case. The First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause prevents the government from interfering with or prohibiting an individual’s right to practice their faith freely so long as the practice does not run afoul of “public morals” or a “compelling” governmental interest.

Those who want to ban private schools would have to hang their hats on the “compelling government interest” language, but it’s hard to believe that the U.S. Supreme Court would rule in their favor. And I don’t see how eminent domain precedent would apply either because seizing all private schools would be a sweeping move far exceeding the scope of, say, taking privately-owned land for a park or a new city hall.

I’ve long argued that school choice would make public schools better because they would have to compete against their independent competitors, which typically pay their teachers less but get better results. That said, so-called private-school “voucher” programs are not perfect.

For example, I firmly believe any voucher program should be means-tested and delivered on a sliding scale. School choice should not be a vehicle for wealthy people to get taxpayers to pay for their kids’ private schooling.

It would behoove public schools to occasionally be more responsive to market demands. As a case in point, look no further than the way some public school systems in the United States responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Public school districts with strong teachers unions — mostly those in the northeastern U.S. and on the west coast — were slow to reopen fully with in-person learning, even though there was never any real evidence that schools were super-spreader environments.

For example, the board of education in the Massachusetts public school district I was covering at the time started off the 2020 school year in September with a remote learning program, with an announced transition to half the students coming in for in-person learning during the first half of the week, with the other 50% coming to campus for the second half of the week.

But under pressure from the powerful teachers union, the district decided against that arrangement and began the year in remote-learning-only mode, which is ineffective for most students, especially those with special needs. This was good for the teachers but bad for the students who have no union to look out for their interests.

In contrast, private schools in the area resumed hybrid and in-person learning much quicker. After all, if private schools stayed with remote-learning for long periods of time, parents could quite reasonably demand tuition refunds that could result in a budget crisis with faculty lay-offs. For obvious reasons, public school teachers had no such fears. Parents and taxpayers would just have to take it on the chin, even as their children suffer.

It’s also worth looking at other nations around the world to determine how many allow private education. With the exception of North Korea and Cuba (virtually the last bastions of totalitarian communist rule), all nations allow some form of private schooling, even China. These nations vary from light regulation (as is the case here in the U.S., where private schools have 10% of the market) to tolerance of private education, but with prohibitions on for-profit schools (Finland, China).

Finally, Cook rolled out this old chestnut:

Billionaire wise hobbit Warren Buffet once told school reformer Michelle Rhee that the easiest way to fix schools was to “make private schools illegal and assign every child to a public school by random lottery.”

Of course, you could say that about a lot of things. If rich people were forced by law to take the subway to work, public transportation would surely improve by leaps and bounds. If the wealthy were compelled to dine at soup kitchens, the less fortunate would eat better.

Americans have a longstanding aversion to the government (federal or state) telling them what they can and cannot do even if they’re not actively harming anyone else. That is not likely to change anytime soon.

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When does armed conflict become a “quagmire?” That word, so often used to describe difficult and extended military operations, is increasingly surfacing in connection with Donald Trump’s self-described military “excursion” into Iran and the Persian Gulf region.

Judging by the latest column from a prominent neoconservative thought leader, I’d say the time has come for using that pejorative term (“quagmire,” that is). Journalist and author Robert Kagan has solid neocon credentials. Writing in the Atlantic, Kagan recently published a thought-provoking piece headlined Checkmate in Iran: Washington can’t reverse or control the consequences of losing this war (paywall).

[Kagan’s piece is behind a tight paywall at the Atlantic, but I have obtained a PDF. If you’d like to see it, send me an email at cowgillbr@gmail.com]

If, like me, you needed a helpful reminder of what exactly a foreign-policy neocon is, here is a good definiton from Merriam Webster:

… a U.S. conservative who calls for the assertive promotion of democracy and national interest in international affairs including through military means

As MW also helpfully adds that, “Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony.”

In other words, neocons are not shy about using the might of the U.S. military to promote America’s economic and foreign policy interests. So however much the Trump administration might like to place a conveniently dovish label on him, Kagan is no shrinking violet.

Kagan was a strong and vocal supporter for invading Iraq, an action I opposed. Quoting Kagan’s piece extensively, national security analyst Joe Cirinci (see below) reminds us that Kagan believed, as did the Bush 43 administration, that invading Iraq “would strengthen Israel, create a string of pro-American democracies in the region and ensure American dominance for generations to come.” Sound familiar?

Strategy & History

America's Strategic Defeat in the Persian Gulf

Robert Kagan was a vocal advocate for invading Iraq. He wanted the Iraq War to be the beginning of serial regime-change in the Middle East. He believed that it would strengthen Israel, create a string of pro-American democracies in the region and ensure American dominance for generations to come…

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23 days ago · 20 likes · 7 comments · Joe Cirincione

But Kagan isn’t similarly bullish about Trump’s feckless move on Iran. While describing the initial 37-day bombing campaign as “devastating” and “effective,” decapitating much of Iran’s leadership and “destroying the bulk of its military,” Kagan surmised that the attacks “couldn’t collapse the regime or exact even the smallest concession from it.”

Now the Trump administration hopes that blockading Iran’s ports will accomplish what massive force could not. It’s possible, of course, but a regime that could not be brought to its knees by five weeks of unrelenting military attacks is unlikely to buckle in response to economic pressure alone. Nor does it fear the anger of its populace. As the Iran scholar Suzanne Maloney noted recently, “A regime that slaughtered its own citizens to silence protests in January is fully prepared to impose economic hardships on them now.”

And Kagan isn’t alone. Writing this week in the Washington Post (gift link), former Trump national security adviser John Bolton echoes many of Kagan’s sentiments.

“President Donald Trump is caught in an Iran war trap of his own making. He has for weeks been all-too-visibly eager for a deal allowing him to declare ‘victory’ for … something.”

Bolton correctly notes that before launching the strikes, Trump never clearly explained to the American people why they were necessary, did not brief members of Congress, or consult with key U.S. allies in NATO, and the Persian Gulf, nor other nations in Asia such as China that depend of oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.

It should be disclosed here that Bolton, a sharp Trump critic since leaving the administration, has also been indicted by the Trump “Justice” Department, if you want to call it that, for mishandling classified documents. The ultra-hawkish Bolton also served in the Bush 43 administration as ambassador to the United Nations, where he drove establishment UN diplomats to distraction with his hawkish views and confrontational style.

Not to be outdone, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, which was also broadly supportive of Bush’s Iraq misadventure, weighed in on the subject with a highly skeptical editorial, Iran Thinks Trump Is Bluffing (gift link), postulating that Iran just might outlast Trump.

By clinging to the cease-fire through it all, Mr. Trump sent the wrong signal. Iran’s regime clearly thinks it can outlast a President who no longer wants the fight … The problem is that he is under pressure, and everyone knows it. Why else is the President now talking about pausing the gas tax?

And, the editorial board adds, the Iranian clergy “thinks it can absorb economic pain from the U.S. blockade longer than Mr. Trump can tolerate higher prices for oil and petrochemicals.” Bingo! So long as that perception exists, we will remain in a stalemate.

Yes, on an almost daily basis, the Iran operation looks increasingly like the dreaded “quagmire” — a word so fraught with reminders of Vietnam and Afghanistan that the administration bristles at its use. Indeed the war is proceeding poorly enough that “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth takes umbrage at any criticism, once again threatening Sen. Mark Kelly, this time for divulging “classified information” on munitions depletion. Sorry Pete, but Kelly merely repeated what you had said in an open Senate committee hearing. Hegseth had questioned whether Kelly had violated the oath he took as a naval officer by disclosing the information, and vowed to look into the matter further. Harassment, pure and simple.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say Old Kegsbreath is trying to distract us from something he’d rather we revert our eyes from — such as the embarrassing stalemate of his Pentagon’s operation against Iran. But I know better than that …

Conspiracy theories are inevitable

The recent “assassination attempt” on Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner has spawned the inevitable gossip about whether it was an authentic effort to kill the president or something more.

By my count, Trump has been the target of three assassination attempts, more than any other president. During his brief term in office, Gerald Ford was attacked but unharmed in two separate instances by would-be female assassins.

Only one attempt on Trump’s life occurred while he was president. The most recent — in the Washington Hilton, the scene of the attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life in 1981 — happened only last month. Two others, one in Butler, Penn., and another in Florida, occurred while he was a candidate for a second term as president.

There are odd inconsistencies in both the attempt in Washington and the one in Pennsylvania. In a strange twist of public opinion, some of Trump’s supporters, both past and present, are convinced the two incidents were staged (gift link), presumably for Trump’s own benefit.

A new survey by NewsGuard found that “nearly one third of Americans (30 percent) believe that at least one of the three attempts on President Donald Trump’s life over the last two years was staged.” This percentage includes the one in eight respondents who identify as Republicans.

NewsGuard's Reality Check

30% of Americans Think At Least One of the Trump Assassination Attempts Were ‘Staged’

Welcome to Reality Check, NewsGuard’s nonpartisan newsletter that tracks the false claims and conspiracy theories that shape our world — and who’s behind them. Please support us by becoming a premium member or sharing our work…

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24 days ago · 47 likes · 20 comments

The official version of the incident in Butler, Penn., is the one with the most holes in it. For example, we know precious little about the young shooter, Thomas Crooks, whom sharpshooters quickly shot dead. Why did the Secret Service allow Trump to get back up on his feet only a few seconds after the shots rang out? Why did the agents comply when Trump said “I need to get my shoes?” Why did they allow him to stand up and pose for the cameras and pump his fist while chanting, “Fight, fight, fight?”

Why did Butler Memorial Hospital decline to release any details of Trump’s treatment beyond saying he was treated and released? The bullet was said to have grazed Trump’s right ear, causing blood to streak across his face. Considering the fact that cartilage does not grow back, why is there no scarring on that ear?

According to journalist Jonathan Karl in his book Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America, at the hospital Trump was quick to ask his aides how the shooting had been publicized, asking “How is it playing on TV” and rhetorically adding that “We’re going to make some big news, aren’t we?”

In and of themselves, none of these questions proves anything, but if you want to go down the rabbit hole, check this out:

You Have the Right to Remain Mouthy

Chat GPT Analyzes Trump’s Alleged Assassination Attempt

I’m not the author on this one, but I was fascinated by what I read. I had to share this with Y’all. It’s lengthy, but worth the read. The author’s name is Aaron Manley Smith…

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a year ago · 10060 likes · 1775 comments · The Mouthy Renegade Writer

The author, Aaron Manley Smith, asked ChatGPT, the now-ubiquitous AI chatbot, the following question regarding the now-iconic image below: “Does this look more like a wound suffered from an AR-15 grazing or theatrical make-up, quickly applied?

Buckle-up because it’s a long and wild ride!

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In the dumpster fire that is the presidency of the current occupant of the Oval Office— replete as it is with overseas wars, incompetent actors and naked corruption — oft overlooked is the conspicuous legacy Donald Trump is creating and the months and years the next administration will have to spend on dismantling it.

It was a scenario America’s founding fathers never envisioned: a president who wakes up every morning and promptly asks himself, “What can I slap my name on today?”

Like most autocrats — actual and aspiring — Donald Trump understands that the road to exerting maximum power and authority is to establish an aura of ubiquity and inevitability. He did it repeatedly in his quest to dominate the real estate industry, even though many of those buildings with his name on them were owned by others who placed his brand on them as part of licensing deals with Trump himself.

We continue to see it every day in his efforts to brand Washington with his name at the expense of others. The Kennedy Center is now the Trump Kennedy Center. We also have the Trump Institute of Peace, Trump Accounts, Trump RX, Trump class battleships, and a triumphal arch on the other side of the Arlington Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial (the “Arc de Trump”). Trump has also signaled he that wants Washington Dulles International Airport and Penn Station named after himself.

In addition, he has signaled his intent to place his signature on the nation’s currency — a first for a U.S. president. He has even unfurled a banner containing his image — Saddam Hussein-style — on the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington:

Nowhere is this level of vanity better exemplified than in Trump’s White House “ballroom” project. Though early reports indicated otherwise, the president now denies the nearly-90,000-square-foot White House addition would be named after himself. Dear readers: we are forgiven for being skeptical.

To make matters worse, Trump initially insisted his Marie Antoinette ballroom would be paid for not with taxpayer dollars but with private donations. I’m not sure which is worse: a cash-strapped federal government paying for his $300 million vanity project; or private donors footing the bill while expecting favors from the president in return.

But after the recent attempted shooting of the president during the White House Correspondent’s Dinner at the Washington Hilton, Sen. Lindsey Graham and other congressional sycophants have called on their colleagues to fund the entire ballroom project for “security” reasons. Now another group of Republicans have, according to the New York Times (gift link), “inserted $1 billion for White House East Wing security enhancements in the immigration enforcement funding bill they hope to rush through Congress this month, setting up a political fight over a ballroom that President Trump has said would be financed with private money.”

The above list of vanity projects is no doubt incomplete. But I’d venture to say Trump’s desire for ubiquity — and perhaps even immortality — is one of the factors that will lead to his demise. Political leaders at the highest levels have enormous egos. Successful politicians, however, manage to hold their egos in check, and will even admit to some mistakes. Trump does neither. He learned that strategy a long time ago from his mentor Roy Cohn who, among other things, was the ruthless chief counsel to the notoriously red-baiting smear artist Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

So after he’s gone, what becomes of the Trump-branded projects bearing his name but paid for with taxpayers dollars? There are as yet no reliable estimates, but to give you a taste of the expense in government rebranding exercises alone, changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War has been estimated to cost as much as $2 billion. So unbranding the countless other Trump vanity projects will likely cost taxpayers billions more.

This is, of course, to say nothing of the billions in grift the Trump family has scored over the years, resulting in policies that favor those who support the family bribery business (see this handy list from Open Secrets).

Finally, the question all good-government advocates are asking: Is the Trump family profiting off of his harebrained war on Iran, which has cost a minimum of $25 billion to $50 billion in the short term — and likely closer to $1 trillion in the long term? The answer is that nothing is sacred to these people. From a Gemini summary (including source links):

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump signed a partnership deal with Powers, a Florida-based drone manufacturer, to sell interceptor drones to Persian Gulf states. This occurred as these states were under Iranian attack and dependent on U.S. military support … while Powers is also competing for a share of $1.1 billion in Pentagon funding allocated for domestic drone production.

And there have been credible allegations of insider trading. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and market analysts have noted suspicious spikes in oil futures trading just hours before Trump made major announcements regarding strikes or ceasefires. Were Trump’s nepo-babies in on it? I’d stake my life on it.

Trump’s obsession with branding everything in sight with his name surely has its limits. At this writing, it looks like the unnecessary war he started with Iran has resulted in a stalemate, and that a new proposal, laughably enumerated in a terse one-page memorandum, would largely return us to the status quo before Trump started the bombing. Would Trump want to channel Seinfeld and put his name on a pointless boondoggle? A war “about nothing?” Don’t bet on it.

* * * * *

P.S. This is the first column I have published in this space since Feb. 14. For various reasons related to my ongoing recovery from a broken hip, I just haven’t felt up to it. But we have returned for the warmer months to Connecticut from Texas and I’ve decided to start writing again. Many thanks to those readers and subscribers who have encouraged me to get off my lazy ass.

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File this one under “columns I didn’t really want to write.” After all, I take a back seat to no one in condemning extremist groups. But I have to hand it to QAnon, the far-right cult of conspiracy mongers that originated in 2017. Among other unlikely conspiracies, QAnon “falsely [claims] that ‘a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media,’” according to a 2023 report by The Human Rights Research Center.

The conspiracy alleged by QAnon is vastly larger than the one run by Jeffrey Epstein, but at least one major similarity is striking: the group claims the cabal is run by high-profile members of just about every prominent sector imaginable. However, they’re not all Democrats, as the Trump-worshipping QAnon alleged.

Though the group also got a lot of names wrong in identifying the participants in the cabal, it is undeniable that lots of higher-ups in the worlds of Hollywood, tech, higher education, politics and media were connected to Epstein, some of them right up to the moment he allegedly hanged himself in a New York City jail cell while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Here’s a handy list from the BBC of high-profile people connected to Epstein.

And here’s a good Q&A on QAnon in the New York Times from September 2021 (gift link)

What Is QAnon, the Viral Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory?

I fully admit that I’m one of those inveterate skeptics who dismissed the elite sex trafficking ring promulgated by QAnon as a figment of the fevered imagination of lunatics who had way too much time on their hands. Boy, was I wrong.

Life imitates fiction

Fast forward nine years. We are learning on an almost-daily basis new names connected to Epstein and his chief deputy, the convicted British sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Many of them have high name recognition, though it is not clear how many were clients who sexually assaulted the girls and underage young women under Epstein’s thumb.

Some, including Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, might have been initially drawn to Epstein because it was well known that he was quite adept at matching major donors with causes. Others, no doubt, succumbed to Epstein’s charm, his wealth and the euphoria gained from associating with someone who is so well connected.

MAGA Nation complains — often loudly — that the Biden administration failed to release the Epstein files when it had the chance. The reason some of the files from the case have finally been made public is that during the early years of the Biden administration, the Epstein case was still an open investigation — thanks in part to the excellent investigative reporting by Julie K. Brown (see above) — so the evidence had remained sealed until Maxwell’s appeals were exhausted and the Trump administration closed the investigation in July 2025. Congress then began debating the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which it passed and was reluctantly signed into law by President Donald Trump in November.

Since then, Trump’s Justice Department has been slow to release the voluminous files, frustrating members of Congress who want the truth exposed. The process has been so slow and error-prone that many, including myself, think the administration is in full protection mode.

Trump and Epstein were close friends, though Trump insists he broke off the friendship in the 2000s when he learned that Epstein was “a creep.” Only Trump loyalists believe that. At best, Trump knew what Epstein was doing and looked the other way. At worst, he was an active participant in the sexual abuse. After all, Trump himself started a Miss Teen USA beauty pageant and has bragged about walking into the dressing rooms of startled contestants “to inspect them” while they were in a state of undress. Is it really a stretch to think he would sexually assault one of them?

Yes folks, we are looking at a cover-up. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who until recently served as Trump’s personal attorney, traveled last year to Florida to interview Maxwell and got her to say she never saw Trump engaged in any wrongdoing. Citing unspecified “security concerns,” Blanche then had her transferred to a much more comfortable minimum-security prison in Texas, where she remains to this day. Virtually any other prosecutor would recuse himself from working on a case involving a president he had recently represented in private practice, but as we know from experience, the Trump administration considers ethics to be a mere inconvenience — and a minor one at that.

Under the guise of exercising caution, the Justice Department has been slow in releasing the files and therefore in violation of the deadline imposed by the Epstein Files Transparency Act signed by the president himself. Government lawyers have indeed been careful to exclude portions that implicate the boss, but failing to redact the names of victims including, in some cases, publishing their personal cell phone numbers, “email addresses and nude photos in which the names and faces of potential victims could be identified.” A cynic might say those acts were intentional, both to protect the president and to send a warning to victims to be careful not to implicate him.

But the most appalling episode in the whole charade was the appearance this week by Attorney General Pam Bondi before the House Judiciary Committee. Bondi, who bragged a year ago that the Epstein files were “sitting on my desk right now to review,” refused to answer questions about the investigation and instead, armed with opposition research prepared in advance by her staff, repeatedly attacked and taunted her questioners. In every way imaginable, Bondi acted like a defense lawyer. Perhaps worst of all, she refused to apologize or even to console the Epstein victims in the room, only pausing briefly to glance at them and to remind everyone that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at $50,000 — whatever that means.

And then, there are Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s lies about his relationship with Epstein. And of course, let us not allow Lutnick’s dishonesty to obscure the president’s own lies about what he new about the convicted sex trafficker.

Okay, I’ve just about had it. Writing this column has caused puffs of white smoke to come out of my ears. With apologies to Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan and Warren Harding, the Trump administration just might be the worst ever. The only question I have is after Trump is gone, how long will it take to get back to normal? Or will Trump have permanently shifted our norms to the point of no return?

I guess it depends on who succeeds him. But I can tell you one thing: this unaffiliated voter will be supporting Democrats up and down the line. This nation is in desperate need of oversight of the executive branch. If Dems take over the House, as seems likely, expect select committees to be formed on a slew of Trump-related matters, including bribery, abuse of power, violating the constitution and the emoluments clause, and exceeding his constitutional authority by a wide variety of actions.

Some observers, including GOP Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, have described the Epstein scandal as potentially bigger than Watergate. They might be right. Who will be this administration’s John Dean?

P.S. If you only read one commentary on Bondi’s appearance, let it be this one from Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick. Colin McEnroe explains why you should read it better than I could:

Pam Bondi Is Not Practicing Law

… the attorney general’s performance was an hourslong spectacle enacted solely to highlight who lives above the law and who must beg it for scraps.

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SAN ANTONIO — What began as an unusual Saturday morning here — preparing to survive a winter storm in central Texas — has turned into a grim situation in Minnesota, where federal agents shot and killed a man whom they were attempting to subdue on a Minneapolis street.

Here is a video of the disturbing incident:

This is the third shooting by federal agents since the Trump administration sent them in earlier this month — the most recent case being the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent. So, two of the three shootings has resulted in death.

The killing this morning has prompted outrage in Minneapolis, which has effectively been under federal occupation since December.

As I wrote on Facebook this morning:

The Department of Homeland Security claims the man, whom they labeled a “domestic terrorist,” was shot after he approached officers with a handgun and “The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted.” But the video shows the suspect already on the ground with half a dozen agents attempting to subdue him when one of them fired what appeared to several shots. What kind of threat did the suspect pose at that point that would justify that many shots?

Please forgive me for being skeptical of DHS. It has a history of putting out false information on its domestic operations. As I write this, Gov. Tim Waltz is speaking, calling for a locally-led investigation and prosecution of those involved in the homicide. After Good was killed, the federal government said it would not investigate the agent who pulled the trigger, and that local authorities had no jurisdiction.

The president, if you want to call him that, responded with his usual poisonous rhetoric (and a photo of the dead man’s gun, which I have omitted for brevity).

“They think they can provoke us by upending the peace,” Waltz said, “Well, they’re dead wrong.

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They say eternal optimists view the world through rose-colored glasses. Few Americans view their country that way anymore. I’d argue that we are beyond rose-colored’s flip side (pessimism), having regressed to cynicism and a profound distrust of “the other,” aptly summarized by Google’s Gemini chatbot as:

We are at a dangerous crossroads, with the majority of Americans viewing the world through their own eyeglasses. The color of those glasses is largely determined by political persuasion and, it seems, through what we see in our social media feeds.

My colleague Rex Smith, the retired former editor of the Times Union of Albany, wrote about the phenomenon this week, using the term “perception bias,” and aptly quoting legendary musician Paul Simon’s hit “The Boxer”: “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

THE UPSTATE AMERICAN

Seeing the reality of the tragedy in Minnesota

Was it a hawk or a tree branch? What we see often depends upon what we imagine to be true. (Photo by Hunter Masters on Unsplash…

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5 months ago · 8 likes · 3 comments · REX SMITH

Journalists and their editors are trained to beware of perception bias, not only in their sources but in their own reporting. Alas, sometimes we fail. But I digress …

Nowhere is the phenomenon of perception bias more obvious than in the recent killing this week of Renée Good at the hands of a masked ICE officer on a Minneapolis street.

The reaction from most observers is akin to the highly subjective inkblot test of the sort created by Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach.

Americans would like to think that at our core we believe in certain shared values such as those enshrined in the Declaration of Independence: “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

But if my social media feeds are any indication, it is clear that Americans who view the same video footage of that violent Minneapolis death come to completely different conclusions based on their political predispositions. If you’ve been following this story, you know exactly what I mean.

As I write this, I’m trying mightily to put aside any perception bias I might have. But that’s a steep hill to climb when you look at the various horrifying videos of the incident.

The supporters of Good that I ran across online, mostly those on the left-of-center or even far left, immediately seized on the killing, calling it a “murder” or an “execution” by out-of-control ICE agents whom they view as storm troopers and masked intruders working on behalf of a president who despises progressive Minnesota.

Supporters of law enforcement and the man who sent them to Minneapolis, Donald Trump, were similarly reflexive. They supported ICE and turned the dead victim into a political provocateur trying to run over the ICE agent later identified as Jonathan Ross. The difference, of course, is that the Trump administration has a much larger megaphone. But with that louder voice comes a responsibility to exercise restraint.

Unfortunately, the reaction of various members of the Trump administration was, to put it bluntly, outrageous. Early on and without having all the facts, Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem said Good was deliberately trying to run over the officer and had committed an act of “domestic terrorism” by “ramming [ICE agents] with her vehicle.” Noem’s spokesperson claimed several ICE agents were injured — a claim not since repeated and unsupported by any video evidence I’ve seen:

Not to be outdone, Trump vomited forth on his social media platform, the ironically named “Truth Social,” calling Good “a professional agitator” who “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense,” adding for good measure that “it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital.” Yah, it’s hard to believe Ross is alive. The man walked away.

Not to be outdone, Vice President J.D. Vance took to the White House briefing room podium to berate the news media for coverage that was not to his liking. But more significantly, he blamed the victim, calling Good’s death “a tragedy of her own making” and characterized her as “a victim of left-wing ideology.”

I don’t care which party our government officials belong to, but good leaders don’t jump to conclusions in the face of tragedy. They regret the loss of life, appeal for calm and announce that a fair and impartial investigation is underway.

But this is not what Trump wants. He continually seeks to divide us. He and Stephen Miller are trying mightily to foment civil unrest, perhaps because it gives them a permission structure to further restrict our liberties.

Why in recent weeks has Trump ramped up controversial moves that prompt protest across the nation? From his imaginary drug war and subsequent invasion of Venezuela, to his stated intention to annex Greenland, to his threats to intervene in Iran’s civil unrest, to his saber-rattling against Colombia, to the deployment of squads of ICE officers to cities run by Democrats, he is effectively acting as a political arsonist — a sort of Al Sharpton writ large.

Consider what is likely Trump’s biggest concern in 2026: the real possibility that Democrats will regain control of the House of Representatives. If that happens, the House will ramp up its oversight responsibilities. Various committees will launch endless investigations, members of the administration will be subpoenaed and compelled to testify under penalty of perjury.

I would not be surprised to see articles of impeachment drawn up, a possibility that Trump himself has raised. He certainly has given a would-be Democratic Congress plenty of impeachment material to work with. And there is the real possibility that impeachment proceedings, which are merely political exercises, could unearth enough evidence to result in a grand jury investigation and indictment on actual criminal corruption charges.

Unless something drastic happens, odds are very good that Republicans will lose control of the House and, as a result, Trump’s life will be utterly miserable. How can the president stop this? I’ll tell you how.

Light so many matches that dozens of protests are started in city streets across the country. Plant some agitators among the crowds so that the seeds are sown for widespread violence. When that happens, declare martial law or invoke the Insurrection Act and, using ICE and other agencies as his personal police force, cancel the elections or postpone them indefinitely.

I know. I sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist but at this point nothing about Donald Trump would surprise me.

My brief take on the incident itself

Most of you have probably seen the various videos captured by onlookers and by ICE itself through officer body cams. After watching them several times, I’d say the offending officer could make a case for firing the first shot that went through the front windshield, though even then, he would have a lot of explaining to do.

But then firing two rounds through the driver-side window at point-blank range was savage and inexcusable. Ross was clearly under no threat at that point and was acting out of spite, as he clearly demonstrated when he could be heard saying, “Fucking bitch” after killing her. Besides, as almost any cop will tell you, don’t approach a vehicle from the front and don’t shoot at a moving vehicle because if you incapacitate the driver, you will then have a driverless car.

This is what happened to Good’s car after she was struck in the head and rendered unconscious. Fortunately, Good’s Honda Pilot did not strike any people when it veered off to the side of road and violently rear-ended a parked vehicle on the other side of the street. Ross’ actions caused more harm and potential for harm than anything Good did.

Let’s see how the investigation plays out, but I would not be surprised to see Ross indicted on criminal charges, unless of course the Trump Justice Department refuses to do so for political reasons, or a judge or grand jury determines that Ross’s actions are covered by qualified immunity (police do not have absolute immunity from prosecution for their actions). Interestingly, two Democratic congressmen have proposed a bill to strip ICE agents of qualified immunity.

P.S. Here is a Facebook post I put up yesterday that has sparked some interesting conversation. Click on the image to see the full post.

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Early this morning the president of the United States, deploying at least 150 aircraft, ordered military strikes on the Venezuelan mainland resulting in the capture of that socialist nation’s president, Nicolás Maduro, who was promptly flown out of the country, along with his wife Cilia Flores. US Attorney General Pam Bondi has said Maduro will be soon appear in a federal court in New York and charged with, among other things, “narcoterrorism,” whatever that is (hint: it’s a bullshit term invented to stir your emotions).

In a news conference this morning, Trump shocked me — which is difficult given his propensity for outrage — by announcing that he would run the South American nation until “a transition can take place.” He did not specify who that new leader might be except to rule out Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who last year won the Nobel Peace Prize coveted by Trump himself. The president added that the US would also take over Venezuela’s massive oil production.

So I think it is fair to ask what on earth is going on here? Did Trump’s supporters vote for this? As the BBC has noted, “Trump, a sharp critic of the US invasion of Iraq, now seems to be in the business of nation-building — and dealing with the consequences of American military action.”

Trump is also subject to the old Pottery Barn rule cited by Gen. Colin Powell, George W. Bush’s secretary of state during the Iraq invasion: “If you break it, you own it.” Accordingly, Trump refused to rule out boots on the ground and seemed to have no timetable or tangible goals beyond subduing the country, seizing its oil production and jailing its corrupt ex-leader.

So it is now patently obvious that this action has nothing to do with democracy (and yes, by all accounts, Maduro is an illegitimate ruler). Nor does it have anything to do with stopping the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. After all, if removing Maduro for allowing the cartels to export drugs into the US was the goal, Trump would not have pardoned ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence for his help in moving tons of cocaine into the United States. The ex-president is also the brother of convicted drug trafficker Tony Hernández. No surprise there.

You can bet your life that Orlando, using the millions of dollars in cash he made from some of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking organizations in the western hemisphere, bought his way out of jail in a way that benefitted Trump and his family. Crypto tokens, anyone?

So what is the end game here? I can only surmise that the goal is to control the flow of petroleum to the benefit of the United States. We don’t really need the black gold, but Cuba’s largest source of oil is Venezuela. Could Trump bring the communist regime in Havana to its knees by stopping the flow of oil to the island nation? Would Russia and Mexico try to fill the void by selling more oil to Cuba?

Who are the largest buyers of Venezuelan oil? China takes about 80% of Venezuela’s oil exports. Cuba is believed to cover 40-50% of its import deficit with Venezuelan oil. What would happen to Cuba if that oil stopped flowing from the south?

And what are consequences on the world stage? Might other superpowers interpret this move as a declaration of territory? What moral standing to we have to scold Russia for invading Ukraine? What do we tell China when she seizes Taiwan?

A thought from the left:

From the right, at least from what I can tell, most Republicans are falling in line, with the exception of the libertarian wing, which includes Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Rand Paul, both of Kentucky. As for MAGA, they too seem to be mostly uncritical of the move, with the exception of renegade former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had already broken with Trump over other matters, including the Epstein files:

Click here to read the rest. Crazy Marge does have a point …

So now we’re in a situation fraught with unknowns. And we are led by a 79-year-old president who in the past has been critical of the sorts of actions he has just taken and whose supporters have family members who are likely to pay the price if Trump’s actions turn even deadlier.

Weapons of mass destruction, anyone? Where is George W. Bush when you need him?

Where satire meets reality:

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Imagine for a moment that you live in a country in which a veteran voicing a simple public truth risked incurring the wrath of a embarrassed president who would then use the courts and the military to threaten you with prosecution.

Until recently, I figured such an outrage could only happen to someone who lived in a banana republic or toiled under a military autocracy. Tinpot dictatorships such as Iran under the Shah, Somoza’s Nicaragua and Idi Amin’s Uganda come to mind.

But in Donald Trump’s America, it can happen as surely as the sun sets. Trump and his supporters profess to love the Constitution. Truth be told, however, they love portions of that founding document but have no patience for other parts of it.

With few exceptions, they are absolutists on the Second Amendment’s right “to keep and bear arms.” They also claim to be avid supporters of the First Amendment’s free-speech protections.

But the current imbroglio over Sen. Mark Kelly’s video on illegal orders has unmasked MAGA as fair-weather free-speech advocates. They talk a good game about the First Amendment, but when they hear speech they consider to be appalling, they seek reprisals, often through government action that runs directly counter to free-speech laws grounded in the constitution.

In case you missed it, Kelly, along with five other Democratic members of Congress with military and national security backgrounds, produced a video advising current members of the military that they “can refuse illegal orders.” See below:

The lawmakers added that, “This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens” and “that the threats to our constitution aren’t just coming from abroad but from right here at home.”

That statement is an opinion — albeit one I happen to agree with. The assertion about unlawful orders, however, is a fact supported by military law. Members of the military are only required to obey lawful orders and have a duty to disobey orders that are “patently illegal,” such as those that violate the constitution or international law. Carrying out a patently illegal order can lead to criminal liability. Think Nuremberg and “I was just following orders.”

How do they know if an order is illegal? They can consult a military attorney. Members of the Judge Advocate General Corps, known as JAG lawyers, are steeped in military law and provide legal counsel to officers and enlisted personnel. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Trump administration has fired the Air Force, Army and Navy‘s top judge advocates, making it harder, no doubt, for active military to seek counsel.

In a normal world, this video would scarcely be controversial, especially the words about not obeying orders that run afoul of military or civilian law. But Trump lashed out at the six lawmakers, laughably insisting the video was “seditious,” and a crime “punishable by death.”

Trump’s idiocy was bad enough, but Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth wanted to get in on the comedy sketch, so he threatened to prosecute Kelly, who is 61 and a former astronaut. Secretary “Kegsbreth” vowed to investigate “serious allegations of misconduct” and threatened to court-martial Kelly.

“It is right out of the playbook, you know, the playbook of authoritarianism. That’s what they do. They try to suppress speech,” Kelly told Jimmy Kimmel. “Every one of us has First Amendment speech rights, and I think the president is infringing on those and he is sending, he is sending a pretty strong message. You do not want to cross him, and your loyalty should be to him. It should not. It should always be to the Constitution.”

There can be only one reason Trump and Hegseth lashed out in such a high-decibel display of indignation and hectoring: that video really stung them. It was a political stunt of the highest order but it also had an important message that needed to be shared.

Having said that, it would have been a good idea for Kelly et al to have cited some specific examples of unlawful (or potentially unlawful) orders that members of the military would be wise not to obey.

It is widely assumed, however, that Kelly and his colleagues were referring to dozens of recent air strikes against small vessels off the coast of Venezuela that the Trump administration claims are full of drugs and drug dealers headed to the U.S., thereby justifying the strikes as a matter of self-defense. However, the administration has provided no evidence that those on the targeted boats are trafficking in drugs. They have laughably labeled the targets as “narco-terrorists.” No, they’re not terrorists. Unlike terrorists, drug traffickers have no political goals. They’re in business to make money.

But I digress. The bombings themselves are of questionable legality. The Trump administration’s list of rationales for the strikes are inconsistent and appear to shift every time they’re asked about them. Congress was never formally consulted and never authorized the strikes. But that’s par for the course. Under Republican control, Congress has essentially abdicated its responsibility for oversight of the executive branch out of fear of Trump, though that could be changing if, as expected, Dems seize control of the House in next year’s midterm elections.

And there is this:

Trump’s attacks used to pack a punch. Now they’re a gift. -James Pindell, Boston Globe

» [The Globe has a tight paywall. If you’d like to read it, email me at cowgillbr@gmail.com and I will send you a PDF]

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, already rumored to be considering a presidential run, instantly gained the national limelight in a way few Democrats can manufacture on their own. After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested Kelly should be court-martialed, Kelly appeared across cable news to tell his personal story as a veteran, a pilot, and an astronaut. If he wants to test the waters for 2028, Trump may have just given him the kind of launch money can’t buy.

So true. Money couldn’t buy this kind of publicity, especially if you’re a senator and a veteran looking to replace Trump as commander-in-chief. I mean, really, who would you rather have taking that 2 a.m. phone call?

More longing for the ‘good ole days’

Get a load of this:

[click on the image for NYT gift link]

Transportation Secretary and NASA administrator Sean Duffy (the Trump admin likes to have its staff hold multiple titles; ask Marco Rubio; he’s got three of ’em) has begun what the New York Times calls a “civility campaign” aimed at getting air travelers to travel back in time and dress more formally. The idea is that maybe travelers will be nicer to each other and on-board disputes, along with occasional acts of violence, will die down.

I recall the first time I ever experienced flight. In sixth grade, my class took a trip to Washington, DC. This was in 1969, when travelers wore jewelry and happily donned suits and dresses for air travel, which in those days was, adjusted for inflation, much more expensive than it is now and (thanks to price controls) unavailable as a travel option for much of the middle class.

Of course, in those days, almost every flight of moderate duration included a hot meal. There were always plenty of “stewardesses,” as flight attendants were then known. These women (there were no men that I can recall) looked like beauty queens. They were required to wear pillbox hats, remain single, and retire early — heaven forbid they appear less desirable to male business travelers on the prowl. They were often forced to resign if they got married. Thankfully those days are over. There is more equity in the flight attendant business, but the experience of being an airline passenger has gotten worse.

Except in first class, meals seem to be a rarity these days. Cancellations and delays are legendary. Labor problems are nearly constant. Depending on the airport, getting past TSA can be incredibly time-consuming and invasive. Want to breeze through the checkpoint ahead of the great unwashed? Give money to the government by purchasing a TSA Pre-check card for $85. Most recently, air travel reached new levels of misery when the government shutdown prompted the cancellation of an average of 2,000 flights a day, and forced thousands of air traffic controllers and TSA agents to work for weeks without pay.

If Duffy really wants passengers to be more civil towards airline staff and towards one another, perhaps he could embrace some consumer-friendly measures to make the experience of flying more pleasant and hold the airlines accountable for poor performance?

Instead, the Trump administration has sided with the airline industry and opted to gut several airline passenger protection measures proposed under the Biden administration. But hey, if we take Duffy’s advice, at least we’ll be well groomed when we miss our connecting flights or fume while filing a missing baggage claim.

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Unless you’ve been living on another planet for the last 10 hours, you no doubt realize that it was quite a night for Democrats. These were not midterm congressional elections — those come in 2026 — but the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey have sent a message to the powers-that-be (namely Republicans) that they’d better focus on issues that matter if they want to avoid a wipeout in the midterms one year from now.

Democrats produced a clean sweep in Virginia, where voters also had the distinction of voting in the first Muslim woman, Lt. Gov.-elect Ghazala Hashmi, to statewide office in the U.S. And not only did Democrat Abigail Spanberger flip the governor’s mansion from red to blue, winning by nearly 15 points, but the Democratic candidate for attorney general, Jay Jones, still managed to pull out a six-point win over his Republican opponent even after the surfacing of text messages in which Jones fantasized about the violent death of a senior Republican leader in the state legislature.

In the New Jersey governor’s race, Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a sitting congresswoman, bested former state lawmaker Jack Ciattarelli by the unexpected margin of 13 points. And of course, in perhaps the most closely watched New York City mayoral race of all time, Democratic Socialist Zorhan Mamdani, who is also a Muslim born in Africa, crushed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

And as a counterweight to electoral mischief in Texas, California voters approved a ballot measure pushed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom (a likely presidential candidate) that will redraw the state’s congressional districts in an effort to flip as many as five districts from Republican to Democrat.

What exactly are we to make of this off-off-year election in which record or near-record turnout made for solid victories for Democrats? First, you’d have to think that Dems are on a path to retaking the House in 2026 midterms. However, the elephant in the room for Republicans is President Donald Trump.

In the run-up to the election, Trump’s approval ratings were stuck in the high-30s to the low-40s, dreadful by any measure.

What has caused this seismic shift in party support? Take your pick from a buffet of unsound policies and bad decisions from Trump: self-defeating tariffs that are likely illegal and cause inflation and hardship; masked, jackbooted thugs in city streets indiscriminately inflicting harm on people of color; unprecedented abuse of the pardon system (including the recent pardon of a money-laundering convict who had invested $2 billion in a cryptocurrency firm partly controlled by the Trump family) and countless examples of the president citing nonexistent emergencies to exert imaginary powers.

And on top of all of this, we have a trove of presidential corruption and grift as naked as Lady Godiva. The most recent example is the above referenced crypto-scam, but it goes much deeper. Find out more here:

Pepperspectives

Trump's Top 10 Grifts as President

“Autocracy, Inc.”—the title of Anne Applebaum’s book—tells the story in two words. A core element of autocracy is corruption…

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a year ago · 153 likes · 8 comments · David Pepper

These problems have grown beyond the executive branch. Former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger once said (and I’m paraphrasing because I can’t find the exact quote), “The founding fathers anticipated a character like Trump would come along. What they did not expect is that Congress would so willingly give up its power.”

Congress’ complete abdication of responsibility might be yet another factor in why Democrats had a very good night in 2025, and might have an even better night in 12 months when every member of the House of Representatives is up for reelection, as badly needed congressional oversight of a corrupt administration remains missing in action.

Heck, right now the federal government itself is shut down. Moreover, for all practical purposes, Congress is out of session because the Republican Speaker of the House is afraid to swear in its newest Democratic representative and is terrified his members might have the votes to release all the information Congress has on convicted sex trafficker, and former Trump best friend, the late Jeffrey Epstein.

I don’t want to over-interpret what happened last night either. Democrats in New York also elected a Democratic Socialist as mayor. The Republicans are desperately trying to make Mamdani, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders the face of the party. “Communists,” they are called.

If you think Mamdani really is a communist dressed up in socialist garb, watch comedienne Desi Lydic’s interview with a real New York communist:

Further reading from Nicholas Grossman, political science professor at the University of Illinois:

Arc Digital

Democrats Sweep 2025 Elections, 2024 Narratives Crumble

The 2025 elections went very well for Democrats, and pro-democracy Americans more broadly. Each state and local race had its own dynamics, but the overall picture is a repudiation of Donald Trump’s presidency. The popular energy displayed in large No Kings protests…

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7 months ago · 14 likes · Nicholas Grossman

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Typically, explicit claims of credit by politicians for good deeds are relegated to campaigns for office. Not so in our current climate. The man who thinks he runs the country singlehandedly is bragging again.

To his credit, President Donald Trump’s personal involvement in negotiations regarding the Israel-Hamas war has resulted in a long-needed ceasefire between the two parties, which have been at war ever since Hamas, based in Gaza, staged an attacked on a nearby Israeli music festival two years ago, resulting in the deaths of nearly 1,200 people, including 38 children.

But on X, members of MAGA Nation have been falling all over themselves praising Trump for brokering a “peace deal.” To wit:

No, Trump has not brokered a “peace deal.” Trump has negotiated a fragile ceasefire. An actual peace treaty would be a much greater accomplishment. This apparent cessation of hostilities, while admirable, is nowhere near the level of the Camp David Accords, or the Paris Peace Accords ending the Vietnam War.

If Trump can broker a lasting peace treaty, then he will deserve that Nobel Peace Prize that he reportedly covets. Is it just me or does anyone else find it ironic that Trump, the developer from Queens who rails against “elites” from Manhattan and other progressive enclaves, craves recognition from perhaps the most elite collection of people on earth: the Nobel Committee?

P.S. I actually agree with Trump supporters who say that if President Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize, then Trump deserves one, too. Obama did not deserve the prize he received early in his first term when he had yet to achieve anything noteworthy. If you read the Nobel Committee’s justification for the award, “Inspires Hope for a Better Future,” Obama won the prize largely for his potential, not any greatness real or imagined.

Cuomo vs. Mamdani

As I write this, I’m watching a rebroadcast of this week’s New York City mayoral debate (see the full replay above). Two of the candidates are familiar over-the-hill characters who have been fixtures in New York politics for at least a couple of generations: Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, who seems to be the perennial Republican nominee. A third, Zohran Mamdani, easily beat Cuomo for the Democratic nomination, forcing the disgraced ex-governor to run as a independent.

Mamdani, who turns 38 today, has been a state assemblyman for five years but otherwise has never held a real job. He is a self-described “democratic socialist” who counts the cranky but affable Bernie Sanders as a role model. Both Sliwa and Cuomo are running what amount to “stop-Zohran” campaigns.

Mamdani’s ideas appeal to a certain segment of the electorate but from my perch two hours to the north, most of them seem like pie-in-the-sky stuff, including:

• Free city bus passes for all

• City-owned and -operated grocery stores

• Rent control

• Cutting police department budgets in favor of soft policing:

Mamdani has since disowned his call for defunding the cops and later said he would apologize to the NYPD for calling the department racist. Does that mean he no longer thinks the men and women in blue are racist, or is this one of those cases where the politician hedges with “I apologize if anyone was offended?”

Two of his ideas simply don’t work. Rent controls make it far less attractive for would-be landlords to invest in properties. They actually have the effect of reducing the housing stock. Furthermore, “rent stabilization,” as Mamdani calls it, will devalue every rental building in the city that is subject to the controls. That means their tax assessments will have to be lowered, too, which means the assessments of other commercial and residential properties will have be raised to compensate for the decline in revenue. Either that or other unspecified taxes will have to be raised. Pick your poison.

As for city-owned grocery stores, the underlying assumption is that the city government can undersell the private sector and thus bring down prices. But profit margins for groceries are already razor-thin — in the range of 1% to 3%, according to trade industry experts. So the only way to undersell the private sector would be to lose money, unless Mamdani wants to buy at a volume greater than the large supermarket chains — in which case the city will also have acquire and run large warehouse operations.

Of course, Mamdani’s promises, if they’re ever realized, will necessitate a lot more revenue, so he has proposed a rise in the city income tax rate on millionaires and a hike in the corporations tax — both of which would require approval from state lawmakers. This could prove difficult because Gov. Kathy Hochul has already insisted that she will not approve the necessary tax increases for the $10 billion in new spending Mamdani proposes (ironically, the governor of the state of New York seems to have more authority over the city of New York than the mayor).

At any rate, outside of his state assembly post, Mamdani has never held a real job or run anything. How he and his supporters think he can manage a city with more than 300,000 employees and a $117 billion budget is beyond me. If Mamdani wins — and at this point it seems likely he will — New Yorkers should brace themselves for a shitshow of unrelenting incompetence. Needless to say, I hope I’m wrong …

Happy No Kings Day

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans took the streets today for a national “No Kings Day” protest against the corrupt administration of the aspiring autocrat, President Donald Trump. The above video started as a live stream of a regional demonstration on Boston Common courtesy of NBC Boston.

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of these nationwide displays of disgust with the nation’s thief-in-chief is the reaction earlier this week of Republicans in Washington to the protests. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and other Republicans have branded the protests “hate America rallies” that would draw “the pro-Hamas wing” of the Democratic Party and “the antifa people.”

Johnson is careful with his words, so this was no slip of the tongue. I can’t speak for the rest of the country but at the No Kings rallies I have attended in the past, in Berkshire County, Mass., and in Connecticut’s Northwest Corner, I have seen no pro-Hamas signs. Aside from placards attacking the Trump regime, the most common items held in the hands of protesters are NPR totebags.

The offensive language coming from Johnson’s mouth no doubt signals the level of concern Republicans have about Trump’s underwater approval ratings, currently at 44.2%, according to polling analyst Nate Silver:

Silver Bulletin

How popular is Donald Trump?

🕒 The latest on Trump’s approval rating…

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8 months ago · 812 likes · 174 comments · Nate Silver and Eli McKown-Dawson

Rising inflation, senseless trade wars, the government shutdown, the dismantling of federal agencies, fear of war in the Middle East and in the Carribean, along with appalling images of jackbooted thugs manhandling people of color on city streets, have no doubt contributed to Trump’s poor approval ratings. Well, duh …

And think about this: Unless he kicks the bucket, we’ve got almost three and a half years left of Trump’s depravity. We will survive this man. Aside from the Trump family, the only people who will benefit from his rule are the Heritage Foundation, billionaires and mental health professionals.

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I have to hand it to the Trump administration. It is a source of endless material. For a columnist, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. For the nation, however, it has become a curse — the political equivalent of a virulent affliction working day and night to wreck our national health.

The administration’s rush to suppress free speech marches on apace. In the wake of the assassination last week of conservative thought leader Charlie Kirk, the Trump administration and the Federal Communications Commission have moved to threaten the interests of the parent company of ABC, which produces the Jimmy Kimmel Live show that was recently “suspended indefinitely” by the network

Kimmel had the audacity to say something about Kirk’s fans that they and agents of the federal government didn’t like. They claim, falsely I would say, that Kimmel said MAGA was itself responsible for Kirk’s death — when in fact the jailed suspect is not MAGA.

If you look carefully at Kimmel’s words, that’s not what he said at all. Here’s what Kimmel said (and I have embedded the full video of his comments below in case you have not actually seen the clip:

We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, the White House flew the flag at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president was taking this.

As you can see, nowhere did Kimmel say that any of Trump followers were behind Kirk’s murder. He said (and I’ll paraphrase) that MAGA Land quickly tried to blame others for it. I can vouch for that. When the story broke, I spent a good deal of time on Twitter/X. MAGA types were furiously lurching from tweet to tweet immediately accusing others of responsibility. “They” was the operative pronoun used, even though there was only one shot fired and no evidence of a conspiracy at the time.

In retrospect, it appears MAGA was terrified that, as rumored online, the assassination might have been the result of a bitter internecine dispute between Kirk and the notorious racist and anti-Semite influencer Nick Fuentes, whose followers are known as Groypers. In other words, right-on-right crime. This erroneous theory was also spread by some progressive groups.

Turns out that the accused, Tyler Robinson, was the child of a Republican mother and father, both Mormons and regular churchgoers. According to his mother, Robinson had become increasingly left-leaning in his politics lately and his lover was formerly a man who was actively transitioning to female. In a word, he had become radicalized.

But Kimmel’s words were quickly twisted — or perhaps in some cases, genuinely misconstrued — as blaming MAGA for the assassination. There were calls for Disney (parent of ABC) to fire Kimmel. Rather than stand by their man, Disney suspended his show “indefinitely.”

Turns out Nexstar, one the largest owners of local ABC affiliates, has a proposed $6.2 billion merger to acquire a similar company. The merger needs approval from the FCC. After the Kimmel kerfuffle, Nexstar promptly announce its station would no longer carry Kimmel. It was an obvious attempt to curry favor with FCC chairman (and shameless Trump ally) Brendan Carr, who had already threatened to take action against Disney over Kimmel’s speech. The very right-wing Sinclair, the largest owner of ABC affiliates in the country, not only announced it would discontinue Kimmel’s show and demanded an apology from him, but urged the FCC to take further unspecified actions in the Kimmel matter.

Want to know more about Sinclair? See John Oliver’s hilarious take on the company. Note: HBO Max, where Oliver works, is a cable/streaming network — not over-the-air, and therefore not regulated by the FCC:

But it gets worse … much, much worse. Carr’s demand that Disney take action against Kimmel came with a grave caveat: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Those were words, thundered the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, “that could have been uttered by a New Jersey mob boss.”

“That’s right out of Goodfellas,” added the former Trump hater-turned-MAGA man, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

The Trump administration had previously used the same tactics against CBS, which had a merger with Skydance pending FCC review and several months ago announced this would be the last season for Late Night, whose host Stephen Colbert regularly skewers the president.

Trump had previously sued CBS over a 60 Minutes interview last year with then-Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris that he said was selectively edited. The lawsuit was grossly frivolous (all 60 Minutes interviews are edited) but CBS did not want to take the chance on a negative merger ruling from the FCC, so the company settled the suit and wrote a check to Trump for $16 million. Yes, the president extorted $16 million from a private media company, and the $8 billion merger was approved and closed.

“We’re in the midst of a massive shift in dynamics in the media ecosystem for lots of reasons, including the permission structure that President Trump’s election has provided,” Carr told CNBC. “And I would simply say, we’re not done yet with seeing the consequences of that shift.”

Chilling words but there’s more: asked if the FCC would target NBC late night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, Carr said on CNBC: “We’ll see how this plays out.” Hah. Now he suggests he is taking a passive role and letting fate have its way. Perhaps an overcorrection for the mob language?

As the WSJ reminds us, the Trump administration has also “squeezed liberal law firms” to do Trump-approved pro bono work, while investigating Biden-era prosecutors who brought cases against Trump, such as the stolen classified documents case. And let us not forget Trump’s war against higher education.

The legendary Michael Eisner, former longtime Disney CEO, weighed in:

Thankfully, there is at least a smidgeon of humor to be found amid the grift, corruption, grift and malicious actors. Remember when a baker in Colorado used his religious beliefs to justify refusing to bake a custom cake for a gay couple’s wedding in 2012? Conservatives rallied around the Masterpiece Cakeshop case as an important marker of religious freedom.

Now Trump attorney general Pam Bondi is threatening criminal charges against an Office Depot employee who refused to print flyers publicizing a vigil for Kirk in Michigan. The employee was fired for failing to serve the customer, but that didn’t stop Bondi from massaging MAGA’s political erogenous zones.

P.S. For more on the corruption and grift:

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It should go without saying that political violence is part of the fabric of America. It’s one of our darkest vices. For all our pieties about freedom and civil debate, violence based on policy differences has been a way of life here for centuries: from the Revolutionary War, to the near-genocide of the American Indian, to the Civil War, to the civil rights movement to the attempted assassinations of politicians too numerous to mention, too often we have failed to settle our differences peacefully.

My first exposure to such inhumanity was on Nov. 22, 1963, when I was a first-grader in Dallas. Our school let us out immediately after President Kennedy’s death was announced at 1:30 p.m., even though Lee Oswald had not yet been captured and had just gunned down a Dallas police officer only a mile and a half from our school in Oak Cliff. My dad’s uncle was a shift supervisor for the Dallas Police Department and called us with regular updates. Two days later, our family watched in horror as Oswald himself was shot and killed in the basement of the downtown Dallas police station on live TV. On the 50th anniversary of the assassination, I wrote about it for CTNewsJunkie.

The murder yesterday of conservative commentator and organizer Charlie Kirk near Provo, Utah, is perhaps the latest reminder that America has yet to outgrow its propensity for political violence, though I should caution that, as of 5 p.m. today, we do not yet know the shooter’s motives. It’s possible — though unlikely — the gunman had a personal grievance against Kirk unrelated to the politics of either man. But that hasn’t stopped the finger pointing on social media. “They” is the word many conservatives are using online to describe Kirk’s killer, even though at this writing no suspect has even been arrested.

Though I had my differences with him on policy (e.g. LGBTQ rights, MLK/civil rights, the 2020 election, gun control, vaccine requirements, Jan. 6, abortion rights), I do respect Kirk’s ability to form a grassroots organization and develop a large and devoted following. And more than anything, I respected his right to speak without being shot at, no matter how wrongheaded he may be.

It is worth noting that after resolving to get to the bottom of the Jeffrey Epstein matter — and demanding the release of the documents related to the case — Kirk recently announced (presumably under pressure) that he was done with the matter:

I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm gonna trust my friends in the administration.

Really? “Trust” a man who, evidence strongly suggests, was for years involved sexually with underage girls and is now trying mightily to cover it up? That pretty much tells you all you need to know about Kirk. He talks tough but if his standing with Trump is on the line, he will turn his tail and flee. Ironically, on this issue anyway, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert have more integrity. Editor’s note: Hell hath officially frozen over; I gave all three of the worst members of Congress a pat on the back.

Longtime Democratic strategist Paul Begala said it best recently on CNN when he quoted the great poet W.H. Auden’s September 1, 1939, so titled after the first day of World War II when Germany invaded Poland:

We must love one another or die.

Suggested additional reading:

Why Charlie Kirk Mattered So Much to the Right -Will Sommer, The Bulwark

Three Months, Two Political Killings: The Poison in Our Politics -A Mighty Girl (Thanks Bridget!)

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You might have seen mention of it in news reports or on social media. This holiday marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which caused $125 billion in damage along the Gulf Coast. It was the most damaging tropical cyclone in history, adjusted for inflation.

I’d been in New Orleans on a business trip only a few months earlier. I stayed at the Sheraton on Canal Street, across the street from the French Quarter, where I met a donor, the legendary Louisiana shipping magnate Donald T. “Boysie” Bollinger, and asked him for money for his son’s school.

Fortunately, the Quarter did not flood (and after a couple of drinks, Boysie wrote me a nice check), but in the wake of Katrina’s devastation, I could only watch in horror on television at the widespread human suffering, while the Sheraton appeared to be overrun by looters.

You may recall that various agencies charged with disaster relief and rescue performed poorly, ultimately resulting in the resignation of Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Michael D. “Heckuva Job, Brownie” Brown, who had almost no experience in emergency management. The poor response reinforced the importance of staffing organizations like FEMA with seasoned professionals, not hacks, political cronies and assorted hangers-on. Because, you know, lives are actually at stake.

Now imagine if, two decades later, a major hurricane struck our coast, or an army of twisters tore through Tornado Alley. Would FEMA be able to respond? The agency is currently in turmoil. And many of the Brownie-inspired, post-Katrina reforms at the agency are being rolled back by the Trump administration.

After signing a letter critical of the cuts and the agency’s leadership, 30 FEMA employees were put on leave by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (thinly qualified herself), who recently appointed as acting FEMA head David Richardson, a weapons-of-mass-destruction specialist who was not even aware that the U.S. had a hurricane season. Richardson was preceded by another acting FEMA head, a former Navy SEAL who had no state or local emergency management experience. As the Wall Street Journal reported:

The agency has been plagued by a wave of high-level departures. MaryAnn Tierney, until recently the acting No. 2 official at FEMA, resigned in late May, stating in a message to staff, “Everyone has a line, and I have reached mine.” … [Richardson] has expressed surprise in meetings at the scope of the agency’s mission, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

How exactly would a weak government disaster relief agency react to a major catastrophe? What if Hurricane Erin, a Category 5 storm with sustained winds of 160 mph at its peak, had slammed into the southeastern U.S. coast earlier this month instead of turning north? I think we all know the answer to that question. The response to the disaster would be a disaster of its own.

Thank goodness that did not happen and thank goodness we are not yet in the crosshairs of another pandemic because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is arguably in even worse condition.

As you might imagine, much of the turmoil and mass resignations at CDC were prompted by the ghastly vaccine hostility and poor management skills exhibited by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Not only is Kennedy a vaccine skeptic, but he has lied about being one. He once told PBS’s Amna Nawaz that “no vaccine” is safe and effective and that vaccines are the “only medical product … that is allowed to get a license without engaging in safety tests.” During his abortive independent presidential bid, Kennedy was confronted about the statements by CNN’s Kasie Hunt and denied making them. Hunt would have none of it — and she had receipts.

Dozens of senior officials at CDC, including the new director pictured above, resigned last week in protest over Kennedy’s vaccine policy overhaul which they warned could lead to resurgences of deadly and preventable diseases. And it’s possible the worst is yet to come, with additional staff likely to leave and a crisis of credibility unfolding.

Per the Washington Post (gift link):

Under the Trump administration, the agency has slashed billions in funding, shed hundreds of employees and rolled back programs to help Americans quit smoking and to prevent infant and maternal deaths, including support for monitoring sudden unexpected infant deaths. Funding for programs to prevent drowning, youth violence and sexual assault is in limbo, while they are under review by the U.S. DOGE Service.

And here is the money quote from Allan M. Brandt, a public health historian at Harvard:

I never have seen an instance of an advanced, affluent country with among the finest scientific resources and leaders in the world be under assault, not from small pockets of the public or people who have unusual beliefs, but from the government itself. This has just been radically unprecedented.

And here’s a terrific piece in the Bulwark on one scientist’s experience at an agency in crisis:

The Bulwark

This Is What—and Who—We’re Losing in RFK’s Purge

UNTIL THIS PAST THURSDAY, Demetre Daskalakis was in charge of the CDC’s division for immunization and respiratory disease—making him, arguably, the federal official most directly and singularly responsible for issues rela…

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9 months ago · 666 likes · 106 comments · Jonathan Cohn

Are gay marriages not even safe?

Back in June, the Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly to call for the overturning of the Supreme Court ruling from 2015 that essentially legalized same-sex marriage. The Baptists no doubt felt emboldened by the high court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and the right to an abortion, in 2022.

One of my greatest disappointments of the last several years is that I’ve alway thought the high court should be in the business of granting additional rights rather than taking them away. The current court appears happy to do the latter.

The topic hits home because it could impact my daughter’s marriage.

Beware the DEI police

When I point out the absurdity of the Trump administration’s war on DEI policies (diversity, equity and inclusion), I’m often asked why I care because it doesn’t really affect me, a straight retired white guy.

Here’s an example of how it does. When Verizon tried to acquire Frontier, the company currently wiring large portions of Connecticut (and other states) with fiber-optic broadband, the FCC told Verizon it would need to halt all DEI practices. The giant corporation complied because it did not want to risk its $20 billion acquisition, and the FCC gave approval.

But individual states also had to approve the merger. As it turns out, California, where Frontier has a very large presence, has a law “that requires regulated utilities to maintain an active DEI plan for suppliers. No DEI plan, no merger approval,” reported Hearst Connecticut’s Dan Haar.

The issue is quietly playing out in the courts. Meanwhile, Frontier is running out of the money needed to maintain the networks it has built out, including in my neighborhood. Verizon is a much larger company with the means to operate the network and keep it going for decades.

I was thinking of switching to Frontier. A comparable plan is about half the price of what we pay Comcast each month, but I am not about to do it if I don’t know whether I can depend on Frontier’s network going forward.

Thank you, Donald Trump.

MAGA needs to consult its beloved Holy Book

Oh and in case you did not think MAGA is a cult that has taken over the federal government, behold this. It was enough to rankle the feathers of Jeff Jacoby, the house conservative on the Boston Globe editorial page.

This is some Kim Jong-Un/Saddam Hussein-level idolatry here — and in honor of Labor Day, no less. And in case you were wondering whether it was real, Grok (Elon Musk’s AI chatbot) confirms:

I’ve seen interviews with devoted MAGA types who profess to be devout Christians. Well, they need to reread the Bible (or perhaps read it for the first time). It states unequivocally that idolatry is a sin. Where? Here is an exhaustive list, starting with Exodus 20:3-6:

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

That is all. Have a nice evening. -TC

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I refrain from writing for a few weeks and what happens? After bombing Iran, President Donald Trump veered the other way and decided to become a peace broker in a different war. He called for a “summit” in Alaska between him and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin with the goal of ending the deadly armed conflict between Putin’s invading army and Ukraine.

Before leaving for the former Russian territory, Trump talked tough, insisting he would push for a ceasefire and warning of “severe consequences” if Putin would not agree to it. But the leader of the free world reverted to TACO mode (Trump Always Chickens Out).

When Putin refused to stop the bombing, Trump took to the podium in Anchorage and said little about the issues that divide them. Later, he acted as if a ceasefire wasn’t even necessary in order to achieve a peace agreement.

Think about the implications here. A madman ruler, who also happens to be an accused war criminal, insists he should be able to continue to bomb civilian targets (as recently as yesterday), kill people with reckless abandon, and kidnap thousands of Ukrainian babies while negotiating for “peace?”

Now Trump is talking about getting Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy together for another summit. I can’t imagine that happening while Putin continues to send missiles into high-rise apartment buildings in Kiev.

The whole spectacle was a national embarrassment. With American warplanes respectfully roaring overhead, a wanted war criminal was welcomed onto U.S. soil and strode with the applauding American president on a red carpet literally rolled out from Putin’s plane by kneeling soldiers of the United States Air Force. Decent people everywhere had to stifle their gag reflexes.

Finally, make no mistake about it. If indeed serious talks take place to stop the fighting between the warring nations, they will not be “peace talks.” They will be negotiations on the partitioning of Ukraine (with guarantees against Ukraine joining NATO) in a way that rewards a monster. Welcome to the new world order.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not rooting for Trump to fail. As Hillary Clinton said, in the very unlikely event that he succeeds in getting a peace treaty that results in Ukraine getting it seized territory back, then he should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

And meanwhile, Trump has succeeded in getting us to look at the shiny object. No one is talking about Epstein anymore.

Tough days to be a teacher

As a recovering high school English teacher and private school development officer, I still follow trends in education. And I have to say that currently few of them are very encouraging.

Here’s a doozy: while I was living in San Antonio earlier this year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bill requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom in the state. Under the new law, no other similar posters, such as codes of ethics from other religions, may be displayed.

The bill advanced by the Texas legislature was especially brazen considering that a similar law in Lousiana was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge last year.

It’s a clear violation of the establishment clause in the Constitution. Supporters of the law are technically correct that the phrase “separation of church and state” is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Those words were written by Thomas Jefferson, who was not a framer of the Constitution because he was serving as ambassador to France at the time. Otherwise, you know he would have been in Philadelphia.

The Constitution does, however, explicitly prohibit the establishment of a state religion or the government practice of favoring one religion over another, and it is plain to me that posting the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom to the exclusion of similar documents of other faiths is a clear violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

While in Austin on a business trip more than 20 years ago, I walked along Congress Street to peek at the State Capitol where I stumbled onto this:

Like the recent classroom requirement, this public display of the Ten Commandments was challenged in court as unconstitutional, but unfortunately in 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the plaintiffs by a margin of 5-4. The new Texas law was also struck down yesterday (free link) as unconstitutional by a judge in that state, but expect an appeal to the SCOTUS.

Woke is not ‘OK’

In related news, have you ever considered teaching in Oklahoma? Good. Neither have I. But if you know of someone who is interested, let them know about a new law requiring select candidates for public school teaching job in the state to answer questions intended to screen out “woke indoctrinators” with left-wing views. Candidates from New York and California are the only ones who will have to take the test.

Per the Washington Post (free link):

The test’s 50 questions will cover topics about U.S. government, religion and gender, according to examples shared by the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters (R). Teachers unions have criticized the move as a political stunt that will discourage applicants as Oklahoma faces a teacher shortage.

A politician performing a political stunt? I can’t believe it. This is one of the problems with putting ambitious politicians in charge of public schools. Walters, who is also running for governor, proves the old adage that politicians do little but look toward the next election.

Plus, Walters has no idea how much diversity of thought there is in a state like New York. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul only won her 2022 election by 6.5 points — the closest margin since 1994. Look at how many counties went for Hochul’s Republican opponent, former Congressman Lee Zeldin:

One of my favorite readers of this column can confirm that once you get outside NYC and New York’s other cities, the political landscape changes considerably. A social studies teacher at Plattsburgh High School will probably have a very different worldview than one at the Bronx High School of Science. But never mind. New York is an attractive target for politicians and their supporters who’ve never spent much time there, and Walters know his audience.

In other news …

I agree with my colleague and fellow Wesleyan alum Paul Starobin above.

BTW I’ve encountered Trump supporters on X who think California Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to copy President Donald Trump and benefit from the president’s success as an internet troll. I’ve tried to explain to them that no, Newsom is mocking Trump by beating him at his own game by posting feigned rants in SHOUTY CAPS and using Trumpian language.

I’m not sure Newsom is the best candidate Dems could put forward to challenge whomever ends up in 2028 as the aspiring Trump successor in the GOP, but Newsom and his team are certainly good at this.

P.S. I apologize for not publishing for almost two months. I just haven’t felt up to it until now. I am very slowly making progress in my recovery from the broken hip I suffered in a fall on a North Carolina tennis court in January.

My goals is to publish every week. Wish me luck …

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If there was ever any confusion as to whether we are on a war footing, those doubts were dispelled last night when President Donald Trump ordered a devastating bombing strike against military targets in Iran, specifically its nuclear development facilities.

The strife between Israel and many of its Islamic neighbors is, of course, nothing new. After all, since its founding in 1949, the Jewish state has conducted mostly defensive military operations in neighboring states, including Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Gaza.

On rare occasions, it has struck at more distant foes, as when, under cover of darkness, Israeli fighter jets mounted a brilliant sneak attack against a nuclear plant in Iraq in 1981, doing the world a favor by dealing a blow to that nation’s goal of developing a nuclear weapons program.

Unless you live in Shangri-La, you’re probably aware that Israel’s latest major military action is targeted at Iran, which in is also an old foe of the United States. In short, Israel is trying to destabilize the Islamic state, effect regime change and eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.

To that end, over the past few weeks, Israel staged a series of targeted attacks, decapitating the Iranian military by destroying much of its air defenses, killing several top generals and, using a top-secret “special weapon,” knocking off nine of Iran’s elite nuclear scientists as they slept in their beds. How do you run a war when your key strategists and technical brains are among the casualties, and when repelling Israeli air strikes is limited?

It goes without saying that the world would be a safer place if Iran never gets ahold of nuclear weapons. The tricky part for the U.S. is determining to what extent we should get involved. The U.S. had publicly acknowledged that it had battleships in the Mediterranean helping Israel shoot down incoming ballistic missiles. Until last night, America had avoided direct involvement in the war.

Israel would love to do what it did in Iraq and take out Iran’s most important nuclear development facility, but they did not have the weaponry to accomplish it because the key Iranian project is buried about a kilometer beneath a mountain outside of Teheran. Only the U.S. possesses so-called bunker-busting bombs that are theoretically capable of penetrating such depths. And even then, it’s not clear whether the bombing sorti would be effective. The Pentagon did not say whether nuclear facilities had been destroyed, opting instead for the vague language of inflicting “severe damage” to those targets. This suggests that they don’t yet know the precise extent of the destruction.

This was the key question facing Trump as he weighed whether or not to escalate the conflict by having the U.S. military engage directly in the dispute. After all, it’s one thing to order a U.S. Navy destroyer, from the safety of the Mediterranean, to knock down incoming Iranian missiles aimed at Israel, but quite another to command a B-2 to drop several of the most deadly non-nuclear bombs in existence on a sovereign nation that has not directly attacked us since seizing the United States Embassy in 1979 and holding dozens of Americans hostage for months on end.

Three other important points I’d like to make. First, from a strictly political standpoint, it has been fun to watch a schism develop among members of the Orange Rage Machine, to the extent that anything arising out of armed conflict can be considered joyful.

As you may recall, a substantial percentage of Trump’s working-class “America First” supporters are reflexively isolationist, exhausted as they are by the numbers of friends and family members who have been sent off to Iraq, Afghanistan and — before that — Vietnam, only to lose their limbs or their lives. USA Today describes it as a “civil war,” while Reuters characterized it as an “uproar from MAGA base.”

That schism is most colorfully illustrated in this exchange between media influencer Tucker Carlson and Sen. Ted Cruz:

My guess is most of the dissenters in MAGA Nation will come around because conformity is important if the Orange Rage Machine is to be sustained. Besides, where else will they go?

The second question is how will the Islamic Republic of Iran respond? There are various U.S. military bases in the region, including Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. For obvious reasons, those facilities are on high alert for the foreseeable future, and attacks on them by Iran would generate very unpleasant reprisals

Iran could opt for something generally disruptive, such as a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open sea. Roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil travels through that artery. There is no way Iran could sustain a blockade for an extended period of time, but it might be able to do so long enough to disrupt oil supplies, cause a spike in energy prices and perhaps even — dare I say it — inflate the cost of eggs.

That would surely spell political problems for Trump. And we know there is nothing he hates more than unhappiness among his core group of supporters. At one point during his third run for president, for example, Trump bragged to supporters in Alabama about taking the COVID vaccine.

The response was a chorus of unrest and even some boos. To my knowledge, he has never mentioned the vaccine again. Operation Warp Speed was the lone bright spot in Trump’s otherwise erratic and bizarre response to the pandemic. And Trump is too fraidy-scared to raise the topic.

Thirdly, it is important to note our history with Iran. In 1953, the U.S. helped overthrow Iran’s elected leader. Per the Washington Post:

Against the backdrop of the Cold War and Britain’s frustration over Iran’s nationalization of a British-owned oil company, the CIA backed a clandestine operation in 1953 with the British that helped the Iranian army topple the country’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh.

In his place, Washington helped to reinstall exiled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, an autocrat who was sympathetic to Western interests and virulently anti-communist. His rule lasted until the 1979 Iranian revolution, but Alvandi said the coup remains a “touchstone” of modern Iranian nationalism.

After the Shah fled the country in 1979 to avoid being overthrown and lynched, he sought medical treatment in the United States, which prompted the 444-day seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran. The two nations have had no formal diplomatic relations since then.

P.S. There is also the matter of proceeding with this bombing raid without congressional approval. I agree with my friend Liz Frey:

There is also the possibility of a terrorist response from Iran. Attacks on our embassies, waves of suicide bombings in the U.S. Don’t let your guard down, my friends.

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It almost seems irrelevant at this point, as it seems we are ultimately headed toward a cashless society, but leave it to the otherwise objectionable Donald Trump (or someone feeding him MAGA-pleasing ideas) to come up with an executive order I can get squarely behind.

Trump has directed the Treasury to stop minting new pennies. How did he get this great idea? It looks like he saw it on a social media post by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. While the post appears to have since been taken down, CNN quoted it as saying, “The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced.”

The depth of such idiocy is difficult to fathom. As per the Associated Press:

The U.S. Mint reported losing $85.3 million in the 2024 fiscal year that ended in September on the nearly 3.2 billion pennies it produced. Every penny cost nearly $0.037 — up from $0.031 the year before.

So it costs nearly four cents to manufacture a coin that, by itself, can buy you nothing. In what world does that even remotely make sense? Canada, which has its own currency that is nonetheless modeled after ours, eliminated the penny in 2012.

So what happens if you’re paying in cash, standing at the register and your order comes to $11.57? I say round it up to $11.60. Or better yet, have brick-and-mortar retailers price all items so that all of them end in a zero or a five. Common sense tells us they will simply round up to the next number divisible by five. Retailers and consumers will simply get used to it, and no one will be poorer for it.

According to Money Magazine:

Today, the practice of rounding up or down to the nearest 5-cent increment when paying with cash has become as ordinary to Canadians as being a fan of ice hockey.

Or, I might add, pouring brown gravy over your french fries — one of the many pleasures, along with the “all-dressed” Montreal hot dog, I discovered while frequenting diners in that wonderful nation.

Objection to the penny is not new and has even embedded itself into pop culture. Remember Sam Seaborn, the White House deputy chief-of-staff character in the popular series the West Wing? Bursting forth with facts that remain relevant 20 years later, Seaborn even raised the matter of the environmental hazards associated with the production of the annoying brownish coin.

Compounding the problem is no one actually uses pennies. At most, we hold onto them — not to use them to buy stuff but to turn them in for more practical purposes.

From the New York Times “The Morning” newsletter from last September:

We mostly just store them. The 1-cent coins are wherever you’ve left them: a glass jar, a winter purse, a RAV4 cup holder, a five-gallon water cooler dispenser, the couch. Many of them are simply on the ground. But take it from me, a former cashier: Cashiers don’t have time to scrounge on the sidewalk every time they need to make change.

As CNN also noted, last year a New York Times Magazine piece (gift link) argued that the failure to nix the worthless coin perhaps reflected deeper problems in the federal government:

The necessity of abolishing the penny has been obvious to those in power for so long that the inability to accomplish it has transformed the coin into a symbol of deeper rot.

In that piece, former President Barack Obama was quoted as saying 11 years ago that the continued existence of the penny is “a good metaphor for some of the larger problems” of the U.S. government. “It’s very hard to get rid of things that don’t work.” That last sentence of Obama’s is a perfect example of that “deeper rot” referenced above.

Would eliminating the penny require congressional approval? That appears to be a gray area, but probably only if Congress or individuals objected and challenged the order from the executive branch. That’s what happens with most of Trump’s other executive orders.

For once, it’s nice not to have to excoriate the president in my lede. Not that he actually deserves the reprieve, but …

Is cheating in academia the new norm?

The subtitle of this secondary post asks a very important question for anyone who cares about the integrity of learning and credibility of everything from a high school diploma to a Ph.D. dissertation.

If we are to believe what we hear and read from people who have spent time in a modern classroom or studied this issue, the answer to that question in this era of artificial intelligence (AI) is very likely yes: academic cheating is now the new norm. What can we do about it? From the look of things, it feels like very little. For educators and administrators, it could be a matter of simply managing the decline.

A few days ago, I saw an interview on Morning Joe with journalist James Walsh of New York Magazine. Walsh penned an eye-opening piece headlined “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College; ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.” For the uninitiated, Chat GPT has been a boon to the cheating industrial complex, enabling students to input a little data and get an entire essay ready to copy and paste.

If you run into paywall problems accessing the New York Magazine piece, try this archived version (the Wayback Machine saves everything, but it will load slowly).

Walsh talked to dozens of AI experts, admissions professionals, professors and students about how commonplace the use of artificial intelligence has become in everything from college application essays to term papers. Click on the image below to see Walsh being interviewed on MSNBC:

Here are some takeaways:

• In January 2023, just two months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a survey of 1,000 college students found that nearly 90 percent of them had used the chatbot to help with homework assignments.

• It isn’t as if cheating is new. But now, as one student put it, “the ceiling has been blown off.” Who could resist a tool that makes every assignment easier, seemingly without much in the way of consequences?

• But school administrators were stymied. There would be no way to enforce an all-out ChatGPT ban, so most adopted an ad hoc approach, leaving it up to professors to decide whether to allow students to use AI.

So here we are. Technology has made cheating as simple as a few keystrokes and the click of a mouse — and no one seems to know what to do about it. Educators are getting better at detecting AI use, but plagiarism via Chat GPT is harder to prove than the pre-AI days.

When I was in college, I knew some students who lifted entire paragraphs from books in the library. I knew others — needless to say, they had more money than I had — who paid others to write term papers for them or who sent away via mail order for pre-written term papers on various subjects. If the professor knew you well, s/he might suspect cheating but in the 1970s, it would be hard to substantiate.

Cheating remained difficult to prove during my ensuing teaching career (1982-96), but when internet access became more common in the 2000s, teachers who suspected plagiarism could perform a web search for similar or identical language that might have been grabbed by swindling students.

Those days are gone because it appears that AI uses unique language in response to student queries. In many cases, AI can even be used to write code, so this variety of digital cheating isn’t limited to the humanities, though common sense tells us it would probably be more difficult to accomplish in the sciences.

I’m not sure there’s anything that can be done to stop AI cheating. If I were still teaching English to high schoolers, I would simply give more in-class tests that required handwritten responses. That might mitigate some of the damage.

Here’s one college administrator’s take:

How to Stop Students From Cheating With AI: Eliminate online classes, ban screens, and restore Socratic discussion as education’s guiding model -John J. Goyette, Wall Street Journal (gift link)

The grift continues

Among the many available, here are a couple of recent examples of the Trump grift that I couldn’t resist mentioning:

As you might recall, Trump is suing CBS for $20 billion over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris which he claims was “selectively edited.” The suit is absurd on multiple levels, including the fact Trump cannot plausibly demonstrate that he was harmed because he won the election, the full transcript was posted on CBS.com in February, the entire video is on the 60 Minutes YouTube channel and news outlets edit interviews all the time anyway.

Will CBS settle anyway? They just might because its parent company Paramount is seeking a merger with Skydance Media. Guess who will need to approve that move: the Federal Communications Commission, led by Trump’s handpicked chair, Brendan Carr. When Trump took office for his second term, Carr announced CBS would be investigated for the Harris interview. Yah think maybe he had a conversation with the grifter-in-chief? Would Trump even go so far as to offer Carr a piece of the action?

So here’s what Trump is doing. He’s using the power of the presidency to extort money from a private company for his own gain. If CBS hands over a good chunk of change to the president, you can be certain that the merger will be approved. Oh, and who knows what kinds of “gifts” he might be extorting from heads of state in return for lowering or eliminating tariffs (hint: see below)?

Judging from the recent resignation of 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens, citing encroachments on his journalistic independence, it seems pretty obvious at this point that CBS is going to cave.

This action is entirely consistent with Trump’s history of efforts to control what news organizations report, but this time he will likely walk away with millions or billions. It’s such a great scam that it’s a wonder no president has thought to use it before.

The next one is a doozy. In a journalistic tour de force, the New York Times sent reporter Damian Cave and photographer Linh Pham to the other side of the world to investigate something suspicious.

Gift link below:

Why Vietnam Ignored Its Own Laws to Fast-Track a Trump Family Golf Complex, New York Times

It turns out that while the Vietnamese government is negotiating a trade deal with the Trump administration, it has been expediting a proposal from Trump’s business for a $1.5 billion golf complex outside the capital city of Hanoi. At the same time, according to the Times:

… Vietnamese officials have waved the development along in a moment of high-stakes diplomacy. They face intense pressure to strike a trade deal that would head off President Trump’s threat of steep tariffs, which would hit about 30 percent of Vietnam’s exports.

This is the kind of greed and naked self-dealing, that if executed by Obama, Hillary or the so-called “Biden crime family,” would result in endless investigations by special select committees in a Republican controlled House of Representatives — to say nothing of articles of impeachment. Chants of “lock them up” from the Orange Rage Machine, as I half-affectionately call MAGA Nation, would be deafening.

If I were a political consultant, I would urge Republicans who make a habit of rushing to Trump’s defense to tread very carefully. You don’t know where the bottom is.

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Never to be outdone by himself, President Donald Trump has scaled new heights of shameless grift. I try not to get too worked up over every outrage — manufactured by him for effect (making the libs cry), or simply committed out of gilded greed and depravity.

But in a normal world, his latest self-dealing stunt would, if carried through to its conclusion, warrant impeachment as a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution prohibiting federal officials from accepting gifts, titles, or emoluments (advantages or benefits) from foreign governments without the consent of Congress. In a stunning and disgraceful scheme first reported by ABC’s Jonathan Karl:

… the Trump administration is preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar -- a gift that is to be available for use by President Donald Trump as the new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation …

The jumbo jet from the Qatari royal family is estimated to be worth about $400 million and has been described as a “flying palace.” Trump would then use the jet, said to be only 13 years old, as the new Air Force One until his term as president ends. At that time, the jet would begin the process of becoming the property of Trump’s presidential library foundation.

Let’s just call it what it is: a bribe. There would be no other reason for the Qatari government to donate a jet of this size and opulence. The royal family will obviously expect a return on an investment of that size.

Ethics aside, Qatar is essentially a feudal monarchy heavily influenced by Sharia law, a repressive version of Islamic law. Qatar is a political and financial supporter of Gaza and its overlord Hamas, the terrorist group that launched the deadly attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. As you might expect, Qatar has a poor human rights record — and Trump has extensive business interests in the region, especially with Saudi Arabia, which borders Qatar.

And as Newsweek has also reported:

At the end of April, The Trump Organization announced a new $5.5 billion Simaisma development of a luxury golf resort north of Doha [the Qatari capital]. The development will include Trump-branded beachside villas and an 18-hole golf course.

I sense an unease even among Trump supporters and MAGA Nation. The president has even lost far-right provocateur Laura Loomer, who branded the Qatari monarchs “jihadists in suits.”

As for the president, here is his defense:

“I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’ But it was, I thought it was a great gesture.”

Right, given the circumstances — namely that he will never be held accountable — he would indeed be stupid not to take the bribe.

Accepting the aircraft on behalf of the nation would be on thing. But giving it to his own charity is naked corruption that will likely go unpunished on account of 1) he won’t be impeached because Republicans control Congress and 2) since the flying palace will belong initially to the federal government, Trump can declare that he accepted the gift in his official capacity as president. Presumably that will be enough to get him off the hook because the Supreme Court famously ruled last year that presidents and former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts they took while in office.

And get a load of his reaction when asked about it by reporters:

What a country!

Additional reading on Substack:

The Jim Acosta Show

Air Grift One: Trump Floats His Latest Scam

For months, Democrats have been looking for a path out of the political wilderness. One side wants to be aggressive and hold boisterous rallies, host town halls in GOP districts, and interrupt presidential speeches. The other, famously espoused by the likes of James Carville advises patience to give Trump the time and space to fall flat on his face, all…

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a year ago · 792 likes · 64 comments · Jim Acosta

The Bulwark

A Garish, Outlandish, Stunningly Corrupt Act

Happy China Trade Thaw Day to those who celebrate! The United States and China agreed overnight to suspend many of the tariffs put in place after Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day,” which had ground trade between the two nations to a virtual standstill. “The consensus from both delegations is that neither side wanted a decoupling,” Treasury Secretary Scott…

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a year ago · 506 likes · 267 comments · William Kristol, Jonathan Cohn, and Jim Swift

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Since I last deigned to write about our world on March 21, a lot has happened. As is now par for the course in a Trump administration, the news proceeded — and continues to proceed — at a dizzying pace.

I don’t want to lead with it, so an update on my health can be found below, near the end of this column.

As we approach the 100-day period of his second term, President Trump’s insane and empty-headed trade war has continued, but he has zigged and zagged so many times that it’s hard to keep up with what’s tariffs remain in effect and which he has abandoned. Here’s a pretty good two-minute summary. He seems to have lifted some sanctions and imposed some new ones, and in the process has rattled the markets, causing nerves to fray for anyone, such as yours truly, who has a stake in the equities markets.

But beyond the obvious, what has Trump accomplished in his first 100 days? As the Washington Post reports, it’s a mixed bag:

It’s doubly difficult to keep track of Trump’s accomplishments because of his shifting explanations of previous promises made. During the campaign, he promised, for example, to end the war between Ukraine and Russia within 24 hours of his inauguration, if not sooner. Now he says he was exaggerating for effect or — get this — he was just joking.

But here is an undercovered story that has captured my imagination, highlighted recently in the WaPo, though available through many other sources. It concerns Trump’s involvement in a get-rich-quick crypto currency scheme.

In an executive order posted on March 6, Trump claims he wants to create a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that will treat bitcoin as a reserve asset and a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile, positioning the United States as a leader among nations in government digital asset strategy.” So what appears to be a personal enrichment scheme is disguised as good public policy and has the imprimatur of the U.S. government.

If you don’t understand what cryptocurrency is, you’re hardly alone. Indeed, I’ve struggled with it for years. Here is a nice succinct explanation from the Reserve Bank of Australia:

Cryptocurrencies are digital tokens. They are a type of digital currency that allows people to make payments directly to each other through an online system. Cryptocurrencies have no legislated or intrinsic value; they are simply worth what people are willing to pay for them in the market.

And for your convenience, here is an AI-generated bullet-point summary of the WaPo story:

And get this: In addition, the top 220 Trump coin holders will be rewarded with a private dinner with the president at one of Trump’s many golf courses.

Think about this for a second: if you buy crypto from Trump’s project, you can gain direct access to him. Lots of politicians engage in pay-to-play schemes but they generally keep them under wraps, lest they suffer the shame of being discovered as a crook. But Trump is a vulgarian; he doesn’t care about such niceties.

The dinner promotion “creates the specter of a pay-to-play deal” for wealthy spenders eager to bend the president’s ear, one ethics expert told The Post. “He’s actually selling access, personal access, to him and to the White House if people invest in this meme coin, which really has no intrinsic value,” added another.

Here’s a discussion on the topic between The Bulwark’s Sam Stein and business and finance journalist Ben Walsh:

I echo the sentiments of my social media friend, the very level-headed journalist and fellow Wesleyan alum Paul Starobin:

“This is like handing him a brown paper bag full of cash,” added Jonathan V. Last of the Bulwark.

“When did it become OK to sell shit out of the White House?” one commenter asked rhetorically.

But we really should not be surprised. This is what Trump does. In the words of his confidant Steve Bannon, Trump “floods the zone with shit” so that we either can’t keep track of his corruption and lies or, in effect, it simply becomes normalized.

Worth reading:

Legal experts say Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency raises questions about ethics and secrecy -Politifact

Cowgill health update

Once again, I apologize for the lack of activity on this platform. As I posted (see below) shortly after being discharged from Duke Regional Hospital after three weeks that included major hip replacement surgery and intensive in-patient physical and occupational therapy, I’ve rarely felt up writing about anything.

As I have told some of my closest friends and family, my progress has not been what I had hoped it would be more than three months after the surgery. Much of the lack of progress has to do with a little known muscle in the buttocks, the piriformis.

At one point in my recovery — likely when I seemed to be improving and became overconfident — I pulled that muscle. This proved to be a tipping point. One of the keys to recovery from total hip replacement is to rebuild the lost muscle mass in the pelvis and buttocks areas.

During surgery some of the muscle mass is removed so that surgeons can access the area, install the new hip, apply the cement and install the hardware with screws. Yet more muscle mass is lost through the inevitable atrophying that occurs when the glutes are used less frequently.

At any rate, it is very difficult for me to build muscle mass in that region when a key muscle is pulled and is quite painful to flex. It also makes walking normally a painful task because when I try to lift my surgical leg as I do my other leg when I walk, it creates more pain in the piriformis. So too often I walk by slightly dragging my surgical leg. Yuk. All of this is complicated by sometimes severe (and unexplained) nerve pain in my nonsurgical leg.

To make matters worse, it’s painful to sit for anything but the briefest of periods. This makes writing a challenge. As I type this, I’m standing at the kitchen counter in our San Antonio apartment. Hah. You know something’s not right when you can stand longer than you can sit.

But I have a new physical therapy team at the San Antonio Orthopaedics Group that is focusing on that muscle, and I’m optimistic that I will regain most of my physical prowess and stamina. So with a new outlook, now is a good time to start writing again.

I’m hopeful you’ll hear from me again soon. Meanwhile, thanks for reading, subscribing and supporting me!

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I’ve always been amused by supporters of President Donald Trump who take extraordinary offense at harsh disapproval of their guy. Sometimes critics of the 47th president’s words are so caustic and the tone so overwrought that members of MAGA Nation are at a loss to defend him.

So they came up with a dismissive term to fend off the Trump haters: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). The term is said to have its roots in a 2003 column by the late conservative writer and psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer, who offered it as an explanation for reflexive opposition from the left to just about anything then-President George W. Bush said or did.

More than 20 years later, it remains a clever slight of hand. It’s as if Trump supporters are saying, “There’s nothing wrong with Trump. If you don’t like him, there’s something wrong with you.” In other words, Trump supporters are trying to discredit his critics by branding them as unable to critique Trump’s actual policies (e.g “he was joking” or “they’re just mean Tweets … get over it, snowflakes”) Evidence be damned, MAGA types insist Trump’s detractors react emotionally rather than rationally.

Popularity of the term among Trump supporters reached such a fever pitch that one knuckle-headed Minnesota state senator even introduced a bill to classify TDS as a mental illness. It failed and the lawmaker was later arrested for allegedly soliciting a minor for prostitution.

As Trump’s bizarre and erratic second term unfolds, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that not only is TDS a lazy man’s counterpunch to Trump’s critics, but that even if during Trump’s first term some of their emotional opposition to the Orange Rage Machine seemed overwrought, Trump’s actions over the course of the last eight weeks have demonstrated that their fevered resistance was entirely justified.

As some have predicted, Trump’s second term will be far worse even than his first. Consider this partial list of actions Trump has taken, or has promised to, and how he has fared:

Trump has started a bizarre trade war that will spike inflation, rattle the markets and, many economists believe, spark a recession. How ironic since he campaigned aggressively against his Democratic opponent last year, citing at every turn, “runaway inflation.”

He has turned Canada from our closest ally on the planet to a nation that looks like it’s in a hostage tape. Not only has he proclaimed he’d like to turn our neighbor to the north into the 51st state, but he has branded a trade agreement he himself signed with Canada six years ago as “unfair.” Furthermore, he has also talked of a strategic U.S. takeover of Greenland and retaking the Panama Canal by force if necessary.

In order to placate his wealthy donors (and perhaps himself as well), he is pushing to make permanent the tax cuts passed in his first term. At the same time, he has deputized the world’s richest man to fire — randomly, it seems — tens of thousands of federal workers he deems unnecessary. So our fiscal crisis is so grim that we must visit agencies and fire government workers willy-nilly, or things are so fiscally rosy that we deserve more tax cuts? I’m confused.

But worse of all, in his second term Trump has hired only loyalists to be in his administration, not people with any expertise in how the government works. The goal seems to be to destroy as many of our institutions as possible and upset the world order: harass and sue media outlets for unfavorable coverage; call for the impeachment of judges whose rulings harm Trump; cut off federal research funding for “woke” elite universities; seek revenge against law firms that represented his adversaries; help dictators by dismantling the Voice of America; abandon natural allies like Ukraine in favor of murderous autocrats like Putin; and pardon violent criminals who beat up police officers at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Speaking of VOA, in case you haven’t see it, the Wall Street Journal eddy board penned an outstanding editorial on the subject of defunding VOA and other voices like it:

A U.S. Retreat in the War of Ideas (gift link)

As one commenter on my post put it:

Of course, Reagan, whom Trump supporters insist they love, would see it differently. As the Journal points out, Reagan understood soft power and the power of ideas, whereas Trump understands those concepts about as well as your average mob boss.

And there is Project 2025, the radical right-wing blueprint by The Heritage Foundation for a second Trump term. The Trump campaign disavowed it before the 2024 election, but the ousted director of Project 2025 said Trump has implemented the program “beyond my wildest dreams.” Fittingly, the architect of Project 2025 is now Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Most disturbing of all is that Trump has begun to defy the courts, as when a federal judge recently ordered him to turn around two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members. As I have written before, the courts are our last line of defense:

While this list above is not even half of the outrage, it is fair to say that TDS, as Charlie Sykes has written, has proved to be “prophetic.”

To the Contrary

TDS Turns Out to Have Been Prophetic

“To introduce a tariff bill into congress or parliament is like throwing a banana into a cage of monkeys. No sooner is it proposed to protect one industry than all the industries that are capable of protection begin to screech and scramble for it.” …

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a year ago · 882 likes · 203 comments · Charlie Sykes

Sykes continues:

So, I have to ask what remains of the GOP:

You elected a convicted felon to the most powerful office in the world — broadly immune from accountability, and literally above the law in his official duties. WTF did you think would happen?

So I have to ask those who continue to support this man: do you think the half of the country that dislikes Trump still suffers from TDS? Are you having second thoughts about that branding? You ought to.

P.S. I’m still making progress in my recovery from a broken hip but my main obstacle to writing is the inability to get comfortable while sitting. I’ve lot so much muscle mass and fatty tissue in my buttocks that sitting feels like bone on seat. That explains my infrequent dispatches. I’ll try harder. Meanwhile, if any readers have suggestions, I’m all ears.

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Call it the law of consequences, unintentional or not. But this tiny international community on the US-Canada border has seen life at its public library rattled by the changing of the guard at the White House some 600 miles to the south.

The Haskell Free Library, which straddles the international border between Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec, is a majestic stone and brick building of Victorian design. The building also includes a small opera house and was built deliberately on the border at the turn of the last century by the Haskel family of Vermont, in order to emphasize the closeness of those living in the two communities. I first learned about this historic building in the late 1970s when I was living in Quebec, about 20 miles to the north, on a student visa.

The Haskell is not the only building in the are bisected by the border. Some industrial buildings, an apartment building next door and several residences, known as “line houses,” have a footprint that includes both nations. There are customs and immigrations stations on I-91 and on the main thoroughfares, but on several side streets there were no barriers at all and local residents could come and go as they pleased, though if they crossed the border they were technically required to proceed to the nearest border station and check in. That all changed after 9/11. The two towns still share a water system and their fire departments often give mutual aid in emergencies.

I visited the Haskell in September 2019 on my way to a college reunion in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and asked one of the librarians to explain more of the history of the place. Inside, for example, black electrician’s tape marks the border because if a mishap such as a slip-and-fall accident occurs, different insurance companies will handle the claim depending on which side of the building it happens on. The building has also served as a site for international reunions in which the participants’ ability to travel between the two nations is restricted, though the practice is now officially prohibited in the library. When I left the Haskell, a US Border Patrol agent was watching me from his vehicle on the Vermont side.

The library has also seen its share of international intrigue. About 15 years ago, smugglers tried to traffic firearms from Vermont into Quebec by hiding guns in the Haskell’s bathroom to be picked up by accomplices on the Canadian side. But considering its unique positioning, the Haskell has remained remarkably non-controversial since its opening in 1904.

That is, until recently when a Trump administration official visited the library to taunt lookers-on and make idiotic claims. Former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, the highly under-qualified fabulist (did she or did she not meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un?) who now serves the Trump administration’s Secretary of Homeland Security, walked into the library last month, not long after a nearby border patrolman was fatally shot. She wandered over the black tape into Canada, spoke of that country as being the “51st state” and blurted out “USA number one!” Read the full story in the Boston Globe.

“It was shocking,” said Sylvie Boudreau, president of the library’s board of trustees told the Montreal Gazette. “She repeated it two or three times.” Boudreau characterized Noem’s behavior as “abnormal” and “a provocation.” The Daily Beast called it “a bizarre stunt.”

Given their repeated attempts to defund libraries and control what reading material librarians purchase for the libraries they work in, one might be tempted to ask, “What is it with libraries and the political right in this country?”

It’s one thing to politicize libraries — and to be fair, the left does it on occasion, too, sometimes labeling any scrutiny of their collections as “book banning,” for example. But causing an international incident in a community whose most celebrated asset is international kinship, is beyond the pale.

Go back to Washington, Secretary Noem. Or better yet, go back to your South Dakota ranch and shoot some dogs. You seem to enjoy it as much as sucking up to your boss.

Can the Musk-Trump bromance survive?

This is a question many have asked but watch this conversation between Charlie Sykes (formerly of The Bulwark) and Jonathan Martin of Politico. Sykes thus characterized the spectacle: “It's like watching an impending clash between racing trains overflowing with clowns wearing bright red bonnets festooned with ferrets.”

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