So Many Criminals

We need something like a war crimes tribunal when Trump is gone. 

To try the ICE agents (almost all of them) who broke the law, the military personnel who carried out unlawful orders to commit war crimes, to try everyone who enriched themselves with insider trading and by taking bribes, to punish the crimes committed by corrupt conservative SCOTUS justices in accepting bribes, to punish the Trump 2.0 officials who participated in defying court orders, to punish those who were deliberately indifferent to suffering at immigration detention centers, to punish Elon Musk and everyone else involved in illegal conduct a DOGE, to punish Trump family members who illegally represented the U.S. government (and themselves) in diplomacy without Congressional approval, and on and on and on.

Replacing MAGA

The MAGA Republican Party is horrifically bad. Weimer Republic Nazi party bad. Cambodian Communist party bad. Iranian government of 1979 bad. George Wallace bad. Less sane than the John Birch society. More criminal and less moral than Al Capone. Proven to be absolutely incapable of governing competently.

While the Democratic Party in the United States is a big tent party, MAGA has left a Democratic Party which was already straining to find common ground for its immensely ideologically diverse coalition ripping at the seams, which has produced a lot of unproductive infighting.

This is not good for America. A country with only one viable political party capable of governing is not a healthy democracy.

In the British Commonwealth, there is a concept called a "loyal opposition". A loyal opposite disagrees on lots of important policy issues with the party or coalition that it opposes, but in not an existential threat to the government it is seeking office in, and shares fundamental process and normative values with the party it opposes that are ultimately more important that its policy disagreements with the other party or coalition that it opposes.

Our current election laws, as a practical matter, lock the U.S. into a system with two dominant political parties in any one political jurisdiction at one time. But that doesn't mean that it isn't possible to have a different pair of political parties in one state from another state, and it doesn't mean that it isn't possible for one of those two dominant political parties to be replaced with a different dominant political party.

This has happened several times in U.S. history, most recently when the Republican Party replaced the Whigs, which collapsed around 1860. It has happened in other countries, like Canada, with similar electoral rules, too.

The U.S. is engaged in an experiment along those lines this year in the Nebraska Senate race, in a deep red state that no Democratic Party candidate had any chance of winning, but which is a state that is also not happy with the way MAGA Republicans are running our country. The Democratic Party declined to field a U.S. Senate candidate in that race to clear the way for a center-right independent candidate, Dan Osborn, to run against a GOP nominee who would toe the MAGA line. 

If he is elected in November, he surely won't be a reliable party line vote for the Democratic Party, but he will also be willing to stand up to the insanity of Trump 2.0 when it goes beyond favoring partisan policy preferences to undermining the previously shared foundations of our political system. He won't embrace blatant corruption. He won't support gross incompetence. He won't be a friend of Putin. He won't agree that pedophiles and fraudsters should be protected. He won't try to undermine the rule of law. He won't lie about things that are obvious lies to everyone who hears them. He will understand that there were no air bases in the Revolutionary War. He will understand that the U.S. did not have diplomatic relations with the classical Roman Empire. He will not try to impose tariffs on islands inhabited entirely by penguins. He won't fall asleep in the middle of important meetings. He won't support the violent overthrow of free and fair U.S. election results. He won't completely disregard science. He will provide people with conservative political views who aren't evil or stupid, and don't want the United States to become a failed dictatorship an alternative that they can stomach.

Will he win? 

Who knows? The polls are all over the place in this race (according to the New York Times):

But the vast majority of candidates running for statewide office without being either major party's nominee has no chance of winning at all and would face a complete blow out. But he's been within the statistical margin of error of the Republican or winning in four of the seven general election polls conducted in the race. The only poll conducted since May (about three weeks ago) put him in a tie with the Republican, when the Republican was favored by 16 percentage points in one poll at the end of May. 

Maybe other deep red states can follow suit. Maybe if enough people like him start winning elections, they can band together and form a new political party that is conservative without sharing the worse vices of MAGA Republicans.

Nebraska might be a special case. Its unicameral state legislature is nominally non-partisan, and that might influence the political attitudes that voters have towards independent candidates.

But it is also possible that a lot of red state voters, despite being poisoned by anti-Democratic party rhetoric so deeply that they can't bring themselves to support a Democrat, and holding only moderate views, would support a center-right party not unlike the one that the GOP used to be, over the far-right party that the GOP has become.

Indeed, the mere existence of a credible threat to their re-election from the center instead of the left could be enough to give the GOP in red states like Nebraska to moderate its positions in a way that they didn't need to when it was certain that a Democrat couldn't win in their state, no matter how despicable the candidate running for the GOP.

And, this isn't just about getting the GOP itself to be more moderate (or better yet, replacing the MAGA GOP with a center-right party that is capable of governing sensibly and supports some shared fundamental values that used to be shared across the political spectrum).

It is also about making the Democratic party less of a herd of cats in places where it does have a chance of electing people to public office.

There are lots of pretty conservative people who hold their noses and vote Democratic, and try to influence the Democratic party in their direction, because the MAGA GOP is an existential threat to them personally, or because the MAGA GOP is not a recipe for securing a tolerably functional government.

There are cattle ranchers and food company executives out there who recognize that a healthy food inspection system is good for business, and that high tariffs, sky high diesel and fertilizer prices, and buying tainted meat from Argentina in deals that even the Secretary of Agriculture knows nothing about, are not good for business. So, MAGA may not be right for them. But that doesn't mean that the agree with much of the Democratic Party platform, and trying to make everyone happy just isn't possible.

There are wealthy doctors out there who are economically conservative and socially moderate rather than liberal, who still have no patience for a MAGA regime that is anti-vax, that votes to shut down rural hospitals, that orders the CDC to fake data on measles deaths, and encourages people to eat beef tallow to be more healthy.

There are cold war veterans out there who don't like having a President who cozies up to Russia and North Korea and China. They aren't impressed with a President who runs such a loose ship that destroyers go a week without power in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, that sailors on aircraft carriers don't have adequate food or working toilets, that commissaries on military bases have spoiled food because their freezers don't work, that military family members and people who risked their lives to be translators for U.S. troops are being deported for no fault of their own to places where they face serious risks of harm, that service members are being ordered to commit war crimes, and that sycophants are promoted while seasoned generals and admirals are purged. Those things don't make you proud of your country.

There are probably plenty of god and country conservatives who are absolute disgusted with the way that Trump has held cage fights on the White House lawn, demolished half the White House, put his scowling image on everything like some third-world dictator, told obvious lies to their face, disrespected veterans, shown not a scintilla of understanding of the Bible, blasphemously portrayed himself as Jesus, mocked disabled people, engaged in rampant infidelity with multiple wives and mistresses, corruptly enriched himself and his family, engaged in insider trading, been convicted of crimes, raped children, paved over the White House rose garden, shown utter ignorance of basic facts in his public speeches, encouraged and promoted immoral aides, and been embarrassed by him falling asleep at important meetings and shitting his pants at public functions, even if they agree with him of many economic and social issues.

There are states like New Mexico which by all race neutral economic and social indicators looks like a red state, where a lot of people are very conservative in their political views, but where they won't support Republicans for office, because MAGA Republicans show open contempt and hate for Hispanics and Native Americans who make up a huge share of the state's voters, President Trump demonizes them, and MAGA thinks that Native Americans and partially Native American mestizos should be deported despite having ancestors who have lived there since long before their land was part of the United States.

There are plenty of Muslim voters who are as socially conservative as the average Evangelical Christian and who are economically moderate at most, who can't in good conscience vote for the GOP because Republicans consider them terrorists and want to actively persecute them, so their stuck in the big tent Democratic Party instead. Many Black Evangelical Christian voters are in a similar boat.

The far right extremism and just plain mendacity and incompetence of MAGA Republicans is probably going to get a lot of Democratic candidates who wouldn't have a chance running against a center-right GOP elected to Congress in two months, in what is likely to be a blue wave election (knock on wood). But a country with only one functional major political party isn't a healthy democracy.

If someone launched a center-right party in the U.S. called, for example, the "Conservative party", it could and should have a good shot at replacing the MAGA Republican party in the U.S. And, that may be the only solution, because the MAGA Republican party may at this point, after more than a decade under Donald Trump's thumb as a cult of personality for him, be beyond saving as an institution.

I'd rather live in a country with two viable reasonably functional political parties than one that's a lost cause and the other that's become a tent where it is very hard for everyone to fit comfortably. But until MAGA is replaced, or the election system is reformed to be a proportional representation system, this is the situation we have to live with and try to make work as best we can.

The Trump Executive Order Renaming Lake Ontario Is Illegal

Trump has claimed that he can rename Lake Ontario unilaterally with an Executive Order. Google Maps is obeying it. But, of course, like so many of his other Executive Orders, this one is illegal because it contradicts a binding treaty with Canada.

The Executive-Judiciary Interface In Undermining The Rule Of Law

One of the most distinctive features of Trump 2.0 has been the breakdown of the rule of law. The administration has routinely ignored the law and settled interpretation of existing law in a wide variety of domains.

It has enacted illegal tariffs, it has denied due process to immigrants, it has deported immigrants to countries to which they have no connection, it has illegally impounded Congressionally appropriated funds, it has conducted the Iran war without complying with the war powers act, it has illegally and in violation of international law bombed suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific and killed survivors of its attacks, it has unlawfully meddled in state election processes, it has fired government officials whom Congressionally enacted statutes don't allow it to fire, it has pardoned January 6 insurrectionists, it has corruptly allowed officials to benefit personally in monetary terms from their offices, it has openly admitted to denying FEMA disaster relief based upon how states have voted in recent elections, it has brought sham criminal prosecutions of political opponents, and so on.

Trump 1.0 was odious, incompetent, dishonest, and violated some political norms and legal rules, but shows much less disregard for the rule of law and for well-established political and legal norms.

What changed? How will that affect future administrations?

A lot of the change can be fairly attributed to the courts, especially lower court judges appointed by Trump and the U.S. Supreme Court, which attained a conservative majority and an ultra-conservative plurality under Trump 1.0, consistently letting Trump circumvent rulings against him personally, and against his administration, made by lower courts and non-Trump appointed judges (including many judges appointed by Republican Presidents in prior administrations).

The U.S. Supreme Court's decisions to grant Trump expansively Presidential immunity from criminal liability for his official or arguably official acts (even if they are clearly ultra vires), and to interpret the insurrection clause out of the 14th Amendment, were some of the earliest and most damaging of its steps down this path.

Yes, the U.S. Supreme Court hasn't given Trump a complete blank check in Trump 2.0 to be a dictator, largely because the non-ultra conservative justices and the liberal justices on the Court has sometimes formed coalitions to block the ultra-conservative agenda. But this hasn't been consistent enough to discourage mischief in the executive branch.

Of course, the Republican controlled Congress also hasn't pro-actively intervened, but as some justices on the Supreme Court such as Gorsuch are starting to acknowledge, while Congress has significant power to deny funds to the President, Congress has very little capacity to pro-actively contradict or restrain a President inclined to ignore it.

The relative irrelevance of Congress has also been illustrated by Trump 2.0's heavy reliance on executive orders to act, rather than Congressional legislation, despite the fact that Republicans hold majorities in both the House and the Senate, and despite the fact that past precedents have pretty well established that the filibuster in the Senate is a voluntary restraint that the Republican Senate majority has afforded to the minority, and not a legally binding barrier to action, and despite the tight hold that Trump has acquired over the Republican party, effectively turning it into a MAGA party.

So, the existence of a GOP trifecta has, in practice, been less important to the disappearance of the rule of law than judicial and especially U.S. Supreme Court, connivance in facilitating unilateral illegal actions by President Trump (in a highly partisan fashion that it did not afford to President Biden).

Indeed, if anything, the Republican majorities in Congress have been more even handed in protecting the limited rights of the minority Democrats in Congress on a non-partisan basis, than SCOTUS has been in its rulings, many of which simply can't be explained by anything but partisan bias.

Mad Kings

According to tradition, the Roman Republic was preceded by the Kingdom of Rome from 753 BCE to 509 BCE (244 years spanned by just seven kings).

The Roman Republic had lasted for about 482 years after it began with the establishment of the Roman consulate in 509 BCE. 

The first Roman emperor, Augustus, took office in 27 BCE. Tiberius, the second Roman emperor, who took office in 17 CE was reputedly mentally ill, although less flamboyantly that two of his three successors. Caligula, the third Roman emperor, took office in 37 CE. Nero, the fifth Roman emperor, took office in 54 CE.  Two later emperors before the split and then fall of the Roman empire were also considered mentally ill: Commodus who took office in 177 CE and Elagabalus who took office in 218 CE.

The Roman Empire split between the Western and Eastern (Byzantine) empires in 364 CE (391 years after the Roman Empire was established), and the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 CE (112 years after the split).

According to Google AI (I'm feeling lazy today):

The most notable and documented "mad kings" include:

• King Charles VI of France (1368–1422): Often called Charles le Fou (Charles the Mad), he suffered from manic episodes and the infamous "glass delusion," where he believed he was made of brittle glass and wore iron rods in his clothing to prevent himself from shattering. [1, 2]
• King George III of Great Britain (1738–1820): Known as the monarch who "lost America," George III suffered from prolonged bouts of mental instability—long thought to be porphyria—which caused him to experience severe logorrhea and depression, eventually necessitating a regency. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845–1886): Famously dubbed "Mad King Ludwig," he was deeply eccentric, neglecting state affairs to focus entirely on building extravagantly expensive, fairytale-style palaces (such as Neuschwanstein Castle) before being declared insane. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• King Christian VII of Denmark (1749–1808): Suffering from severe mental illness and paranoia, his inability to govern left his kingdom in the hands of various regents and his royal physician. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• Tsar Ivan IV of Russia (1530–1584): Better known as Ivan the Terrible, his early, capable rule slowly devolved into legendary paranoia and violent, sadistic outbursts later in his life, particularly following the death of his first wife. [1, 2, 3]
• King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (634–562 BC): Often considered the original "mad king," the granddaddy of Babylonian rulers was struck down by a seven-year descent into animal-like insanity as recounted in the Book of Daniel.

In addition to some other European and Middle Eastern mad kings, there are at least two notable ones from Japan (a list that surely omits notable mad Chinese emperors):

• Emperor Yōzei (陽成天皇, Yōzei-tennō, 869–949, ruled 876–884) was described by the 14th-century historian Kitabatake Chikafusa as affected by madness, killing people and animals without reason. His unstable and violent behavior prompted his advisors to force his abdication in 884.^[29]
• Emperor Taishō (大正天皇, Taishō-tennō, 1879–1926, ruled 1912–1926) of Japan, had a variety of neurological disorders, which though at least partially physical in origin incorporated psychological elements as well. Discussion or criticism of an emperor, including that of health issues, remains a controversial subject in Japan for cultural, political, and religious reasons and is referred to as the Chrysanthemum taboo.^[30][31][32]

The United States of America will have persisted for 250 years from its self-declared birthday of July 4, 1776, in a few weeks. Mad kings were a problem that the Founders were familiar with at the time that they drafted the current U.S. Constitution (which took effect in 1789 and added the Bill of Rights in 1791). Indeed, this clear and present danger is the source of some of the emphatic anti-monarchy provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

Probably the most similar historical figures to Trump 2.0 are Nero and Caligula, although there are other somewhat similar examples from European and Asian monarchies.

There is great fear that President Trump signals the end of democracy in America, if not actually on his watch, but showing the way to, and heralding, its end. Then again, while some mad kings were followed by more sane monarchs, others were followed in fairly short order by the demise of the monarchy's power, or its abolition entirely.

Trump's Many Wars

Trump has declared wars on small boats in international waters in the Caribbean and the Pacific, claiming that they are drug boats, without proof, claiming a right to kill the people on them, contrary to international law.

Trump invaded Venezuela and seized its leader.

Trump has involved U.S. military forces in striking a Mexican cartel chief, leading to a bloodbath there.

Trump has unilaterally made strikes on Iran.

Trump has now deployed the U.S. military in Ecuador.

Trump is trying to impose an oil embargo on Cuba.

Trump deployed the National Guard to peaceful American cities.

Trump has deployed ICE as his private secret police to lawlessly terrorize American cities with scant regard to what they are actually legally authorized to do.

Trump has deployed U.S. forces to interdict Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers trying to evade sanctions arising out of the Ukraine War. The Ukraine war itself is ongoing and Trump and blown hot and cold on it, prolonging the war by giving Putin hope.

Trump has threatened, but not yet struck, Greenland, Canada, and Panama.

And, while only metaphorical, Trump has declared trade wars on the entire world.

In most of these cases, Trump hasn't had even a whisper of Congressional authorization or legal authorization to act. The uses of force (and the tariffs) have violated domestic and international law. 

Four Years Of War

Tuesday is the fourth anniversary of the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine, that started on February 24, 2022, after an eight year respite following the Russian seizure of Crimea and Russian allied sympathizers trying to join Russia in parts of a couple of the far western provinces of Ukraine that were most ethnically and linguistically Russian.

Russia thought it would have a quick and easy triumph, just as it had had in Crimea in 2014. It didn't. 

* It has had 1.2 million casualties (including wounds not mortal, captured soldiers, and desertions), which is more than the size of the entire Russian Army it started with, and the losses have extended to officers and even the highest ranking generals. About 325,000 of them were killed.

* It is losing soldiers as fast as it can draft them, at a rate of about a thousand soldiers a day. It is replacing a large share of its seasoned soldiers with green conscripts that are ill-trained, ill-equipped, and ill-treated.

* The vast majority of it tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, and the like gone. It's soldiers are resorting to using museum pieces and horses. Ukraine's estimates (below) may be slightly high, but they've largely been born out by third-party assessments. Here is there assessment as of yesterday:

Russia's losses in this war have been greater than all but a handful of entire military forces in the world, and greater than the entire amount of its ground forces and ground force equipment that was in active service four years ago.

* It's military tactics sometimes seem similar to the inability of World War I generals to recognize the futility of their approaches, trying the same things over and over to abject failures.

* Its Black Sea fleet suffered heavy casualties and neutered.

* Its air forces have suffered not insignificant losses.

* Its supplies of advanced drones and guided missiles has thinned.

* After the early part of the first year of the invasion, its territorial gains have been minuscule, and have come at immense cost in troops lives and equipment. The most recent assessment I could easily find was as of February 11, 2026:

Since Feb. 24, 2022: Russia: +29,210 square miles. 13% of Ukraine. (Area roughly equivalent to half the U.S. state of Illinois).

Total area of all Ukrainian territory Russia presently controls, including Crimea and parts of Donbas, Russia had seized prior to the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022: Russia: +45,835 square miles. About 20% of Ukraine. (Area roughly equivalent to the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.) . . .

In 2025, the average monthly rate of Russian gains was 171 square miles. . . . 

According to RM’s measurements, using ISW data, Russia captured 2,171 square miles—about 0.93% of Ukraine including Crimea—in 2025.

Russia still controls less Ukrainian territory than it did in August of 2022, six months into the war.

Russia has gained 5,200 square miles of territorial control since November 2022, its low point in this four year long war. This is an average gain of 133 square miles a month in a war where it is currently experiencing 30,000 casualties or so per month.

* The territory taken, which was home to the strongest political opposition to Ukraine's government, has strengthened the political backing of Ukraine's government in the territory it still controls. And, Russia has alienated former pro-Russian Ukrainians in territory it does not control.

* Crimea was mostly as a summer resort for Russians and had been a key Black Sea fleet military base for Russia. It is neither of those things now.

* Its oil and gas infrastructure has been seriously ravaged. Its ability to sell its oil and gas abroad is also increasingly restricted.

* Its transportation infrastructure, especially en route to the front and to Crimea, has been seriously damaged.

* It has been isolated internationally and the restrictions have tightened, while the world, and especially Europe has embraced it. It has failed to win military support from any countries except North Korea and Iran. China and India have remained lukewarm towards it.

* It's oligarchs have been pinched and looted as sanctions.

* It's domestic economy has again been squeezed out for military demand.

* An estimated 7,254 Russian civilians have been killed.

* It's best and brightest young men have fled abroad to avoid conscription and likely death or disability in the process. 1,000,000 (0.7% of Russia’s 2022 population) left Russia for economic or political reasons in the first year of the full-scale war. Between 15% and 45% of those who had left have returned since then, so, between 550,000 and 850,000 people have not returned to Russia.

* It has withdrawn from other international military commitments, for example, in Syria (whose regime fell), and in a strip of land in Moldova.

* NATO has expanded and grown stronger.

* It's European neighbors have built up their own military might and military solidarity, at the same time that Russia's military might is a shadow of what it was four years ago.

* It has relied heavily on more or less random attacks with long range drones, glide bombs, and missiles on civilian targets of little tactical value that violate intentional laws of war. Ukraine's air defenses have been about 89% effective, which means that strikes do get through regularly and cause damage, but the air defenses make it about 9 times more expensive for Russia to do so than it would be without them.

In January 2026: 

Russia fired: 

* 4,838 drones

* 14 ballistic missiles

* 61 cruise missiles 

Ukraine intercepted: 

* 4,120 drones (718 not intercepted)

* 1 ballistic missile (13 not intercepted)

* 38 cruise missiles (23 not intercepted)

* Ukraine has proven to have more military industrial capacity, more allies, more competent troops, and more of a capacity to learn and change their tactics and technologies.

* Ukraine has managed to strike both military and economic targets deep in Russia, but has done so without indiscriminately harming civilians.

* Russia has found that its immense nuclear arsenal has been challenging to turn into practical military gains.

This isn't to say that Ukraine has won. It has had about 600,000 military casualties (including wounds not mortal, captured soldiers, and desertions), of whom about 120,000 have been killed, and lost lots of military equipment too (although Ukraine has faired better at replenishing its equipment losses). An estimated 15,954 Ukrainian civilians have been killed (from the same source).

The vast majority of harm to civilians and the civilian property has been on its territory. 

It has lost significant amounts of territory. Millions of Ukrainians have been internally displaced or have become refugees. As the New York Times explains:

At the start of the full-scale invasion, excluding regions that were already occupied by Russia, it had a population of perhaps 36 million people, according to Tymofii Brik, a sociologist and the rector of the Kyiv School of Economics. (Other estimates tend to be higher.) Since then, Brik says, six million have been displaced inside the country and some four million — mostly women and children — have left Ukraine. More than 100,000 Ukrainians, troops and civilians, are estimated to have been killed. Millions of people live under occupation in areas Russia controls.

Ukraine's whole existence has become an existential fight for survival every day, with intense uncertainty.

But, at best, the Russo-Ukrainian war has been a stalemate for the last three and a half years, and Russia's military capacity to challenge anyone is profoundly depleted.

Russia's leaders have seized on the war to exert greater control on its people in an authoritarian style, but the cracks are showing.

The feckless "leadership", or lack thereof, by Trump and the Republicans in Congress has helped encourage Putin and extended the war, given Putin hope that his unilateral adventure unknown outside his inner circle until it happened, can prevail, at least into a treaty that leaves Russia better off. They have also cratered NATO.

The MAGA-GOP Coalition Is Falling Apart

 

Trump's decade plus old hold on the GOP is slipping, because Republican political leaders they know that their prospects in the midterms look apocalyptically bad as a result of his actions over the last year.

Disgust and Horror Overload

This is just from this week and only captures about half of the miserable awful things that happened. It is one nightmare after another. Sometimes you just have to hang on and hope that the situation resolves, doing what you can, but recognizing that it is a collective effort.

Trump's Misguided Battleship Program

 

The centerpiece of the Trump administration’s revamp of the U.S. Navy is the largest surface combatant America will build since World War II.

The U.S. Navy will buy two new “battleships” as part of the “Golden Fleet” effort, President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan announced Monday at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump said the Navy will start by purchasing two ships and eventually purchase 10, with a goal of 20 to 25 in total for the class with the start of construction planned for 2030.

From USNI. 

Battleships were retired from the U.S. Navy for a reason. The reason hasn't changed, although this is a "battleship" more in name than in fact. 

The last U.S. battleship, the USS Missouri (BB-63), left active service when it was decommissioned on March 31, 1992, after serving in World War II, the Korean War, and the Gulf War, and is now a museum ship in Pearl Harbor.

Battleships were large, heavily armored surface combatants built around multiple very large unguided slug throwing naval artillery guns (up to 16" diameter rounds). The problem was that they were sitting duck targets that could be defeated with modern munitions despite their heavy armor, and had only short range with low accuracy. Guided missiles which had longer range, greater accuracy, and didn't require so much bulk, replaced them.

Nuclear missiles were placed on nuclear submarines which were more stealthy and less vulnerable to counterattacks. 

Every other navy in the world, except Russia, which has one "cruiser" along these lines, has also learned this lesson and many world navies don't even see much use for larger surface combatants like destroyers and cruisers, largely limiting themselves to frigates, air independent diesel coastal submarines, and corvettes.

Trump's proposed nuclear missile carrying "battleship" with 35,000+ tons, about the same number of cruise missiles as existing destroyers and cruisers, a vaporware rail gun, two 5" naval guns, two vaporware large laser guns, four defensive laser guns, about eight air defense guns, and a helipad propelled by a diesel engine isn't what the U.S. navy needs. A price wasn't announced but it would be in the double digit billions per ship.

The last attempt to build a railgun centered ship, the USS Zumwalt destroyer, was an epic failure.

In the end, the Navy will spend lots of money over the next three years (at most) on R&D that will be abandoned when Trump leaves office or dies, if not sooner. 

This "battleship" also is ill suited for the conflicts and likely naval adversaries that the U.S. may face in the coming decades. It isn't suited for a war with China over Taiwan or the waters near the Philippines, for naval conflict with Iran near the Persian Gulf, with Russia, or with North Korea.

The Shutdown Continues

The federal government shutdown is on day 26, the second longest of all time, and the record holder for person-days of federal employee furloughs. Trump has accounted for a majority of all days that the government has been shut down for all time.

Trump has literally demolished the East Wing of the White House to put up a ballroom (all contrary to federal law regarding how that is done).

SNAP, a.k.a. food stamps, will be shut off on November 1, 2025, out of Trump's spite because there are contingency funds in place to keep it going longer.

Trump continues to deny everyone federal disaster aid.

Trump continues to illegally murder people in boats in the Caribbean, ostensibly because they are dealing drugs, but that isn't grounds for summary execution, the basis for doing so hasn't been substantiated, and Congress hasn't authorized it.

ICE is ignoring the law and court orders in Chicago. On the bright side, someone stole two National Guard tanks in Memphis.

The No Kings Protest on October 18, 2025 extended to large attendances even in deeply red places. About 8.1 million people nationwide participated.

In a political stunt to celebrate the Marine Corps. birthday, they fired artillery rounds over Interstate Highway I-5, where some rounds exploded prematurely over the highway.

Charlie Kirk's wife appears to be deeply connected to kidnappings of Romanian children for adoptions when she was 17 years old in an activity that Trump apparently played a part in funding.

The National Young Republicans Group's racist, pro-Nazi, pro-rape group chat was exposed. The group also stiffed venues where it held events of tens of thousands of dollars more than once.

More than a third of ICE applicants can't pass basic physical fitness tests. About half of them can't pass a basic, open book test, on the part of immigration law that they need to know and the 4th Amendment.

The Toronto Blue Jays are in the World Series.

Trump increased tariffs on Canadian imports by 10% because he didn't like a truthful TV ad playing recordings of Ronald Reagan explaining how bad tariffs are.

Trump is ramping up dubious criminal prosecutions of his political opponents using illegally appointed attorneys in the Justice Department's U.S. attorneys' office.

Trump appears to have received more than a billion dollars of illegal personal gain from his office already since January 20 when he was sworn in.

Trump illegally tried to conduct layoffs during the government shutdown, which a judge halted.

Republicans are refusing to swear in a newly elected Democrat to the house from Arizona because they don't want to release the Epstein files and don't care about the continuing government shutdown.

All of this just scratches the surface of the horrible news that rains down every day.

Could The Military Remove Trump In A Coup?

The number one trigger for military coups is the military not getting paid, which the U.S. is doing right now. And, when Trump has called up the national guard, he has done so for time periods one day short of what is necessary for them to receive full compensation for being called up. VA spending has also been slashed.

Corruption and incompetence are also major factors. But you have to go back to Andrew Jackson to find a President who rivals Trump 2.0 in those dimensions. It doesn't inspire confidence to talk about conflicts between Albania and Azerbaijan, or a European country and Cambodia. His dementia is apparent and was on full display at his unprecedented speech to all generals and admirals.

Humiliation and disrespect for the military can be factors, and Trump has shown both towards soldiers, and in particular, POWs and military casualties. The meeting of all generals and admirals where Trump, a repeat draft dodger, and a Fox News commentator, calling them out for being fat and woke, didn't help.

The meeting, met by stony eyed silence from the assembled military brass to the last man, also potentially broke down the single biggest barrier to a military coup in the U.S., which is the collective action problem of figuring out which officers are on your side. This is why numerically smaller militaries are much more likely to carry out coups. But by showing unanimity of distaste for Trump, he may have inadvertently overcome some of that barrier.

There are other signs that the military has distaste for Trump. For his birthday Army parade in D.C., he wanted a communist style show of force and got a boring historical display. Morale was brought very low when the National Guard gardened and cleared trash when occupying D.C. The National Guard has not been effective in L.A. or Chicago or Portland or Memphis at reducing crime and multiple judges have held that Trump is illegally deploying the military. But when rule of law is the only thing keeping the military subordinate to the civilian government of the U.S., Trump's flouting of the rule of law undermines that singular force. The military didn't get involved in January 6 and like most law enforcement is probably dismayed by the January 6 pardons. Trump's rogue attacks on "drug dealing" boats in international waters in the Caribbean without legal authority is another example.

The military has spent a lifetime opposing enemies like Russia, and supporting traditional allies, but Trump has turned that on his head, making war with NATO, coddling Russia, envying North Korea, threatening Greenland, Canada, and Panama.

The idea that an armed public discourages tyranny behind the Second Amendment is empirically not true historically, and obviously not true now. Gun owners in the U.S. today, not only aren't resisting tyranny, they're the ones welcoming it.

Is a coup likely? Probably not. But it is more likely now than at any other point in U.S. history.

Catholic Opposition To Trump 2.0

 

In and of itself, this is a relatively minor incident in the overall sweep of Trump 2.0 politics. But Catholics are the largest voting block in the U.S. and if the Catholic church is seen as in opposition to the Trump administration, the electoral impact could be great.

The Shutdown

We are at 14 days of the shutdown (the third time that the government has shut down while Trump was President, including the longest shutdown ever). On Friday, it will surpass the 2013 shutdown during the Obama administration. A week from tomorrow, it will surpass the 1995 shutdown from the Clinton Administration. And, there is no end in sight.

The Democrats are holding out of restoring Medicaid cuts and Affordable Care Act tax subsidy cuts (not healthcare for illegal immigrants or rampant trans surgery as false GOP talking points suggest), which were including the the Trump budget to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

The fact that the Republicans haven't gone nuclear to end the shutdown shows that GOP support for those cuts in the Senate is tepid.

The foreseeable Affordable Care Act tax subsidy cuts were an important reason that I decided that I needed to seek employment with an employer who provided a group healthcare plan, rather than continuing to be self-employed.

The Tide Is Turning In Ukraine's Favor

The Ukraine War seems to have reached a turning point. Ukrainian attacks on the Russian oil and gas infrastructure, and on coal and natural gas fired electrical power plants, often deep inside Russia, are having an impact that ordinary Russian citizens can no longer ignore. And, when Russia can not longer supply oil and gas to Western Europe, European resolve to take a firm stand against Russia strengthens.

In a few cases, strikes deep in Russia have been carried out by Ukrainian special forces acting in concert with domestic minority nationalist groups, raising the specter of a Russian civil war, or at least a renewed insurgency at a time when it's military is stretched thin to beyond a breaking point.

Russia is almost completely out of heavy armored vehicles and has dramatically reduced artillery resources. Russia is still suffering about 30,000 casualties a month, a rate at which it can just barely replace the soldiers it's losing with green conscripts.

Russia's provocation of NATO countries from Poland to Hungary to Denmark is driving these countries in Europe to vigorously prepare for war and take more aggressive measures against it.

Russia is deploying huge numbers of drones, missiles, and glide bombs to Ukraine at unsustainable levels, but many of these are intercepted before they can do harm, and those that done usually result in modest Ukrainian civilian casualties that incited outrage, but have little military effect and have not broken Ukraine's spirit. And, those attacks are unsustainable because Russia's capacity to procure new drones and missiles, and the replace its military equipment losses is far lower than that of Ukraine and its Western allies.

And, while Trump's America has been a feckless ally to Ukraine, it also hasn't turned out to be the solid supporter of Russia that Putin had hoped to receive.

It isn't over, but the tide has turned definitively in favor of Ukraine.

Not All Hope Is Lost (Yet)!

Keep fighting!

Every week (there are rare days of respite) there is news so bad that I vacillate between outrage and despair over the future of our country.

On the other hand, while we have plummeted into a less free semi-democracy, and plenty of irrevocable damage has been done, we aren't yet beyond a point of no return.

The government shutdown demonstrates that Congress can do something. And, with the "nuclear option" well-established in the U.S. Senate now, the fact that the filibuster hasn't be abrogated to end the shutdown means that there is at least some tacit dissatisfaction with the administration among some Republicans in Congress, even if they are too cowardly to translate that into a roll call vote against the President.

While SCOTUS has frequently shut down lower court checks on Trump's assault on the rule of law, the lower federal courts and litigation of blue states has slowed the process down and put serious friction in the way of his bid to become a dictator.

Attempted military occupations of L.A., D.C., Chicago, and Portland (OR), have had far less shock and awe that Trump hoped. His birthday parade flopped and his rally of generals and admirals likewise demonstrated that while the military may reluctantly obey their commander in chief, that he does not have firm control of, or the loyal and enthusiastic support of, the military.

Trump's aggressive secret police style ICE tactics have undermined public backing for his immigration policies, which were a key factor in getting him and the Republicans in Congress who only have a razor thin majority as it is in the House and in the Senate, elected.

Now that the rich have gotten their tax breaks, they don't need him nearly so badly any more, and are shifting to worrying about whether his bad economic policies will deny them any profits to evade taxes on at all.

We are thirteen months away from the midterm elections, at a time when Trump's popularity has plummeted to record lows and where Democrats are vastly over performing in special vacancy elections. GOP gerrymanders are getting a response from Blue state counter-gerrymanders. And, the cost the GOP risks when it grasps for more Republican districts is that those districts may become less safe and flip as public opinion turns against Trump (primarily among disappointed Republicans and independents who voted for Trump).

It is dim, but there is still some light at the end of the tunnel.

The Complicated Story Of MAGA Politics

The modern Democratic party operates to a great extent like politics is supposed to work in Civics 101, and follow on political theory says that it is supposed to. It has found policies, that its leaders believe are good ones for the nation, that can unite a diverse big tent coalition. Democrats believe that government can be a force for good and want to use it the implement policies that make the world a better place. They go to great lengths to demonstrate with evidence that their policies do indeed do so. They aren't saints, but they also view stupidity, bad character, and malice in their leaders negatively and are generally happy to cast out leaders who demonstrate those traits.

The Republican party, in living history, was a pretty similar organization and movement that assembled a different bundle of policies to unite a different, smaller tent coalition.

But, that Republican party is almost gone and rapidly dissolving, even though most of its top leaders got their political start in that party.

The MAGA Republican party and movement, in contrast, is something else entirely. It absolutely still has its roots in the pre-FDR solid south Democratic party, in the Dixiecrats, and in the post-Southern strategy anti-civil rights Republican party. But unlike the Republican party that preceded it, it doesn't fit the Civics 101 model.

MAGA Republicans don't accept a lot of the bipartisan consensus about many aspects of policy making and governing that preceded it. It is isolationist. It is anti-trade, anti-immigration, anti-NATO, and unconcerned about alliances with foreign dictators. It has no respect for expertise. It doesn't think that government does anything good (and is oblivious to the benefits that its members receive from government), so it isn't troubled by having the government run by incompetent fools. It has strong authoritarian leanings, no commitment to democratic ideals, and little concern for the rule of law. It sees power as a tool to utilize to fight culture wars and its political opponents, rather than as a means to advance the greater good

Republican political leaders know perfectly well that most of President Trump's executive branch appointees, like RFK, Jr., are incompetent idiots whose only redeeming quality is their momentary personal loyalty to Trump. Most of them are also well aware that many of the policies that Trump is pushing for are objectively bad ones.

Then why do these Republican leaders back Trump anyway?

They can read the room. They know that they face mafia style backlash from Trump if they cross him. They also know that their not terribly bright constituents in the MAGA base firmly support Trump (or at least have until very recently within Trump's second term when they've discovered personally, the hard way, how bad his policies really are) seeing any deviation from Trump's agenda as a betray of Trump's MAGA base including them. The MAGA base also sincerely believe in a lot of the misguided elements of Trump's agenda because unlike most Republican leaders, they don't know any better.

Billionaires and the political representatives of many big businesses also know personally well that Trump is a horrible person who supports mostly bad policies who is basically trying to destroy the federal government from the inside. But, for them, the immense tax cuts that Trump has delivered to them, and the dismantling of federal laws and regulations that cost them money have seemed worth it to them so far.

The conservative leaning members of the college educated upper middle class, who used to work in think tanks formulating conservative policies that they thought furthered the national interest on a basis similar to that of their liberal peers, who served as senior civil servants, and served as professionals in roles that either supported conservative economic and religious interests, or were at least apolitical, meanwhile, have abandoned the Grand Old Party in droves, some to be unaffiliated politically, some to be libertarians, and some to become "moderate" and "neo-liberal" Democrats. Fools loyal to MAGA and Trump's cult of personality, and powerful hypocrites, have rushed in to fill the vacuum that they upper middle class conservatives left behind.

The agenda of Trump and his MAGA cult of personality isn't sustainable. But it wasn't really meant to be. The objective of MAGA is to burn it all down, and to entrench far right cultural dominance and political power now, knowing that in the long run, the democratic process and respect for the rule of law and settled political norms, run fairly, will undermine those objectives.

Destruction can be accomplished more quickly than building something that works. So, it doesn't have to last long. And, if the MAGA base comes to realize that the face eating leopard they supported ate their faces once the damage done is irrevocable, that's their tough luck in the eyes of the billionaires and far-right cranks who actually benefit from its agenda. By then, if the MAGA agenda is successful, they will have dug the United States (and even the larger world) into a hole that will be very hard to get out of again.

The system struggles to stop them. Trump has installed enough people loyal to him that share his far from the mainstream agenda in key institutions like the U.S. Supreme Court, the military, and senior government offices that he wasn't supposed to be able to oust and oust, and key policies that he wasn't supposed to have the legal right to control, that the systems and people designed to stop him aren't doing their jobs. The system wasn't designed to to stop a President who had no respect for his oath of office, no commitment to the good of the nation, no respect for the rule of law, and immense political power arising from a base brainwashed by decades of lies from clergy, Republican political leaders, and cynically manipulative conservative mass media outlets that jettisoned their journalist ethics long ago.

Of course, the willingness of the MAGA base to be manipulated and accept these lies didn't come from nowhere. It isn't that information that reveals that these are lies isn't available. It isn't that members of the MAGA base unanimously agree that Trump has good character.

They are motivated to accept a false worldview because the last half century of American progress has left them behind and greatly diminished their socio-economic status in relative terms. They are willing to take the gamble of destroying the system because of they feel that it has done nothing for them, and that they have no prospects of improving their lot within it.

Most of them made a bad bet. Trump's agenda will leave them worse off and reveal to them that they actually did have something to lose in the system that they are trying to destroy. The policies that they thought were the problem aren't the source of their dismay. Their future prospects within the system that they support destroying were better than they believed them to be. But, now that they've made that bet, a psychological unwillingness to admit that they've been duped and made a mistake, and the fact that much of the damage to both the system and the political process has already been done, makes remedying their mistake difficult.

The situation could still be turned around: If enough of the MAGA base is disillusioned fast enough. If enough old guard Republicans and conservative judges who are hypocrites wake up to the fact that the end game isn't a good one before it is too late. If Trump dies or implodes (which is a bet the left is trying to make by pushing the Epstein files issue) and no successor to Trump as the leader of the MAGA movement arises. 

But if it is turned around, the most likely failure mode for MAGA will be a dramatic collapse of the entire political movement. It will look like an economic bubble popping. It will look like the sudden death of the Whig party in favor of the new Republican party shortly before the Civil War. It will look like the collapse of Naziism at the end of World War II, or the collapse of the Soviet Union. It will look like the post-Herbert Hoover Republican Party of the 1930s. It might even look like the French Revolution with guillotines and all.

There isn't much room for a middle ground business as usual alternation of power at the margins at this point.