Tag Archives: Richard Nixon

Atlantic: Trump Might Be Losing His Race Against Time

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The president is gambling that he can consolidate authority before the public turns too sharply against him.

President Donald Trump is worried that Attorney General Pam Bondi is moving too slowly to prosecute his political adversaries on fake charges. Trump has good reason to be concerned. He is carrying out his project to consolidate authoritarian power against the trend of declining public support for his administration and himself. He is like a man trying to race upward on a downward-moving escalator. If he loses the race, he will be pulled ever deeper below—and the escalator keeps moving faster against him.

Autocracies are headed by one man but require the cooperation of many others. Some collaborators may sincerely share the autocrat’s goals, but opportunists provide a crucial margin of support. In the United States, such people now have to make a difficult calculation: Do the present benefits of submitting to Trump’s will outweigh the future hazards?

As Bondi makes her daily decisions about whether to abuse her powers to please Trump, she has to begin with one big political assessment: Will Trump ultimately retain the power to reward and punish her? It’s not just about keeping her present job. On the one hand, people in Trump’s favor can make a lot of money from their proximity to power. On the other, Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, served 19 months in prison for his crimes during Watergate. If Trump’s hold on power loosens, Bondi could share Mitchell’s fate.

Trump’s hold on power is indeed loosening. His standing with the voting public is quickly deteriorating. Grocery prices jumped in August 2025 at the fastest speed since the peak of the post-pandemic inflation in 2022. Job growth has stalled to practically zero.

Almost two-thirds of Americans disapprove of higher tariffs, Trump’s signature economic move. His administration’s attack on vaccines for young children is even more unpopular. This year has brought the highest number of measles cases since the Clinton administration introduced free universal vaccination for young children in 1993. Parents may be rightly shocked and angry.

Shortly after MSNBC reported that Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, had accepted $50,000 in cash from FBI agents posing as businessmen last year, allegedly in exchange for a promise to help secure government contracts, the pro-Trump podcaster Megyn Kelly posted, “We DO NOT CARE.” This kind of acquiescence to corruption has been one of Trump’s most important resources. But the American people become a lot less tolerant of corruption in their leaders when they feel themselves under economic pressure. As of early August, nearly two-thirds of Americans regarded Trump as corrupt, 45 percent as “very corrupt.” More than 60 percent think the Trump administration is covering up the Jeffrey Epstein case. Almost 60 percent regard Bondi personally responsible for the cover-up.

The MAGA project in many ways resembles one of former businessman Donald Trump’s dangerously leveraged real-estate deals. A comparatively small number of fanatics are heart-and-soul committed. Through them, Trump controls the Republican apparatus and the right-wing media world, which allows him to do things like gerrymander states where he is in trouble (50 percent of Texans now disapprove of Trump, while only 43 percent approve) or wield the enforcement powers of the Federal Communications Commission to silence on-air critics. But overleveraged structures are susceptible to external shocks and internal mistakes.

Trump in his first term mostly avoided screwing up the economy. His trade wars with China triggered a nearly 20 percent stock-market slump in the fall and early winter of 2018. Trump retreated, and no recession followed the slump until the COVID shock of 2020. But in his second term, Trump has jettisoned his former economic caution. The stock market is doing fine in 2025 on hopes of interest-rate cuts. The real economy is worsening. The percentage of Americans who think the country is on the “wrong track” rose sharply over the summer. Even self-identified Republicans are now more negative than positive.

The souring is especially bitter among younger people. More than 60 percent of Republicans younger than 45 say things are on the wrong track, a 30-point deterioration over the three summer months.

Trump has a shrewd instinct for survival. He must sense that if he does not act now to prevent free and fair elections in 2026, he will lose much of his power—and all of his impunity. That’s why he is squeezing Bondi. But for her, the thought process must be very different. Trump is hoping to offload culpability for his misconduct onto her. She’s the one most directly at risk if she gives orders later shown to be unethical or illegal.

The survival of American rights and liberties may now turn less on the question of whether Pam Bondi is a person of integrity—which we already know the dismal answer to—than whether she is willing to risk her career and maybe even her personal freedom for a president on his way to repudiation unless he can fully pervert the U.S. legal system and the 2026 elections.

Trump Might Be Losing His Race Against Time
The president is gambling that he can consolidate authority before the public turns too sharply against him.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/trump-bondi-edva/684292

CNN: Trump claims he can do anything he wants with the military. Here’s what the law says

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Having rebranded the Department of Defense as the Department of War, the president is going on offense with the US military.

Donald Trump has foisted National Guard troops on Washington, DC, and Los Angeles. Other cities are on edge, particularly after he posted an apparently artificially generated image of himself dressed up like Robert Duvall’s surfing cavalry commander in “Apocalypse Now,” a meme that seemed to suggest he was threatening war on the city of Chicago.

Trump later clarified that the US would not go to war on Chicago, but he’s clearly comfortable joking about it. And he’s of the opinion his authority over the military is absolute.

“Not that I don’t have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States,” he said at a Cabinet meeting in August, when he was asked about the prospect of Chicagoans engaging in nonviolent resistance against the US military.

He’s reorienting the US military to focus on drug traffickers as terrorists and told Congress to expect more military strikes after the US destroyed a boat in the Caribbean last week.

All of this projects the kind of strongman decisiveness Trump admires.

A lot of it might also be illegal.

A ‘violation of the Posse Comitatus Act’

US District Judge Charles Breyer ruled this month that Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth committed a “a serious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act” when they deployed federalized troops to Los Angeles over the objections of the state’s governor and mayor.

The Posse Comitatus Act was passed by Congress in 1878 as Southern states worked to oust federal troops and end Reconstruction. Questions over how and whether troops can be used to enforce laws goes back to the pre-Civil War period, when federal marshals sought help from citizens and militiamen in recovering fugitive slaves and putting down the protests of abolitionists, according to the Congressional Research Service.

It is not clear why Trump has not yet, as he has promised, called up the National Guard to patrol in Chicago, but he may be waiting for the Supreme Court, which has been extremely deferential to his claims of authority, to weigh in on a preliminary basis.

Trump has more authority to deploy the military inside Washington, DC, which the Constitution says Congress controls. But Congress has ceded some authority to locally elected officials in recent decades. DC’s Attorney General Brian Schwalb has sued the Trump administration over the deployment.

Testing the War Powers Act

Trump’s strike on a boat in the Caribbean is also on murky legal ground.

After Vietnam, Congress overrode Richard Nixon’s veto to pass another law, the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires presidents to notify Congress within 48 hours of a military strike. And Trump did do that, at least his third such notification since taking office in January. Trump also sent notifications to Congress about his strike against an Iranian nuclear facility and Houthi rebels who were attacking shipping routes.

The Reiss Center at New York University maintains a database of War Powers Act notifications going back to the 1970s.

Cartels as terrorist organizations

In the notification about the Caribbean strike, Trump’s administration argued that it has declared drug cartels are terrorist organizations and that he operated within his constitutional authority to protect the country when he ordered the strike.

Strikes against terrorists have been authorized under the catchall vote that authorized the use of military force against Islamic terrorists after the 9/11 terror attacks.

But Congress, which the Constitution puts in charge of declaring war, has not authorized the use of military force against Venezuelan drug cartels.

Lack of explanation from the White House

Over the weekend, CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen reported that the Pentagon abruptly canceled classified briefings to key House and Senate committees with oversight of the military, which means lawmaker have been unable to get the legal justification for the strike.

Many Americans might celebrate the idea of a military strike to take out drug dealers, and the administration is clearly primed to lean on the idea that the cartels are terrorists.

Here’s a key quote from CNN’s report:

“The strike was the obvious result of designating them a terrorist organization,” said one person familiar with the Pentagon’s thinking. “If there was a boat full of al Qaeda fighters smuggling explosives towards the US, would anyone even ask this question?”

Few details

It’s not yet clear which military unit was responsible for the strike, what intelligence suggested there were drugs onboard, who was on the boat or what the boat was carrying.

“The attack on the smuggling vessel in the Caribbean was so extraordinary because there was no reported attempt to stop the boat or detain its crew,” wrote Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal advisor now at International Crisis Group for the website Just Security. “Instead, the use of lethal force was used in the first resort.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US could have interdicted the boat and made a legal case against those onboard, but it decided instead to blow up the boat. The notice to Congress makes clear the administration will continue with other strikes.

War crime? Vance doesn’t ‘give a sh*t’

“The decision to blow up the boat and kill everyone onboard when interdiction and detention was a clearly available option is manifestly illegal and immoral,” Oona Hathaway, a law professor and director of the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School, told me in an email.

The view of the administration could be best summarized by Vice President JD Vance stating that using the military to go after cartels is “the highest and best use of our military.”

When a user on X replied that the extrajudicial killing of civilians without presenting evidence is, by definition, a war crime, Vance, himself a Yale-educated lawyer, said this:

“I don’t give a sh*t what you call it.”

That’s not an acceptable response even for some Republicans.

“Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?” wrote Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky in his own post on X. “Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation?? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”

Congress has power it likely won’t use

Congress has the power to stop Trump’s campaign against boats in the Caribbean. The War Powers Act allows lawmakers in the House and Senate to demand the president seek approval before continuing a campaign longer than 60 days. But that seems unlikely to occur at the moment.

After the strike against Iran earlier this year, Paul was the only Republican senator to side with Democrats and demand Trump seek approval for any future Iran strikes.

During his first term, seven Republicans voted with Senate Democrats to hem in Trump’s ability to strike against Iran after he ordered the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. But there were not enough votes to overcome Trump’s veto that year.

Trump’s authority to use military force without congressional approval of the Caribbean operation technically expires after 60 days after he reports on the use of force, although he can extend it by an additional 30 days, although he could also declare a new operation is underway.

The use of these kinds of tactics has likely been in the works for some time.

In February, Trump designated drug cartels, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as foreign terror organizations. In April, CNN reported the CIA was reviewing whether it had authority to use lethal force against drug cartels.

But the military strike against the alleged cartel boat happened as part of a broader campaign against Venezuela, including positioning US ships, aircraft and a submarine in the Caribbean, according to a CNN report.

Trump may have campaigned as a president who would end wars, but he’s governing like a president who is very comfortable using his military.

Analysis: Trump claims he can do anything he wants with the military. Here’s what the law says | CNN Politics
Having rebranded the Department of Defense as the Department of War, the president is going on offense with the US military.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/10/politics/venezuela-trump-military-strike-war-powers-explainer

HuffPost: Look What Donald Trump Has Done To The Oval Office

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Trump has taken an unusually personal interest in redecorating the iconic seat of the American presidency.

In the words of White Stripes singer Jack White, “It’s now a vulgar, gold leafed and gaudy professional wrestler’s dressing room.”

For decades, every president has made the Oval Office his own.

John F. Kennedy specially chose a rug in Harvard crimson, although he did not live to see its installation. Richard Nixon’s office featured a navy rug with gold stars, accented by gold curtains. Jimmy Carter surrounded himself with warmer, more natural shades. George H.W. Bush opted for powder blue as both a floor and window treatment.

The presidents have chosen different sofas, different coffee tables, different books for the shelves, different knick-knacks for the tables and paintings for the walls.

But none have had the aesthetic impact of President Donald Trump.

In his second term, Trump has endeavored to leave a more lasting footprint on the White House by drawing on his long career in real estate development. He paved the Rose Garden’s grassy center, erected two enormous flag poles and revealed plans to build a large ballroom on the East Wing to host events.

Trump’s Oval Office, though, has been the site of the most striking transformation so far.

The iconic space has been positively drenched in gold — curtains, of course, but also vases, frames, trophies, platters and vast amounts of gilding, including shiny curlicued moldings that ensure no part of the wall is left blank. This style is either Rococo or decidedly not Rococo.

An ivy plant that had adorned the Oval Office fireplace for over a half-century was replaced by lifeless objects. (The Washington Post figured out the ivy had been relocated to a greenhouse for safekeeping.)

Trump, it seems, has cast aside norms in decorating just as quickly in his second term as he has cast aside norms in governing. Anyone familiar with Trump Tower in Manhattan or his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida will not be surprised to see the full extent of his changes to the Oval, given his instinct to gild the properties that bear his name.

But that is also why his changes rub some people the wrong way. The White House — the People’s House — is not Trump’s own. First families may make changes to the residence to make it feel more comfortable during their stay, but the Oval Office is not part of a Trump-branded enterprise.

In the words of White Stripes singer Jack White, “It’s now a vulgar, gold leafed and gaudy professional wrestler’s dressing room.”

….

Look What Donald Trump Has Done To The Oval Office
Trump has taken an unusually personal interest in redecorating the iconic seat of the American presidency.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-oval-office-gold-gilding_n_68910956e4b06ab33893e975

Associated Press: Trump’s rhetoric about DC echoes a history of racist narratives about urban crime

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President Donald Trump has taken control of D.C.’s law enforcement and ordered National Guard troops to deploy onto the streets of the nation’s capital, arguing the extraordinary moves are necessary to curb an urgent public safety crisis.

Even as district officials questioned the claims underlying his emergency declaration, the Republican president promised a “historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.” His rhetoric echoed that used by conservatives going back decades who have denounced cities, especially those with majority non-white populations or led by progressives, as lawless or crime-ridden and in need of outside intervention.

“This is liberation day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump promised Monday.

As D.C. the National Guard arrived at their headquarters Tuesday, for many residents, the prospect of federal troops surging into neighborhoods represented an alarming violation of local agency. To some, it echoes uncomfortable historical chapters when politicians used language to paint historically or predominantly Black cities and neighborhoods with racist narratives to shape public opinion and justify aggressive police action.

April Goggans, a longtime D.C. resident and grassroots organizer, said she was not surprised by Trump’s actions. Communities had been preparing for a potential federal crackdown in D.C. since the summer of 2020, when Trump deployed troops during racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd.

“We have to be vigilant,” said Goggans, who has coordinated local protests for nearly a decade. She worries about what a surge in law enforcement could mean for residents’ freedoms.

“Regardless of where you fall on the political scale, understand that this could be you, your children, your grandmother, your co-worker who are brutalized or have certain rights violated,” she said.

Other residents reacted with mixed feelings to Trump’s executive order. Crime and homelessness has been a top concern for residents in recent years, but opinions on how to solve the issue vary. And very few residents take Trump’s catastrophic view of life in D.C.

“I think Trump’s trying to help people, some people,” said Melvin Brown, a D.C. resident. “But as far as (him) trying to get (the) homeless out of this city, that ain’t going to work.”

“It’s like a band-aid to a gunshot wound,” said Melissa Velasquez, a commuter into D.C. “I feel like there’s been an increase of racial profiling and stuff, and so it’s concerning for individuals who are worried about how they might be perceived as they go about their day-to-day lives.”

Uncertainty raises alarms

According to White House officials, troops will be deployed to protect federal assets and facilitate a safe environment for law enforcement to make arrests. The Trump administration believes the highly visible presence of law enforcement will deter violent crime. It is unclear how the administration defines providing a safe environment for law enforcement to conduct arrests, raising alarm bells for some advocates.

“The president foreshadowed that if these heavy-handed tactics take root here, they will be rolled out to other majority-Black and Brown cities, like Chicago, Oakland and Baltimore, across the country,” said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s D.C. chapter.

“We’ve seen before how federal control of the D.C. National Guard and police can lead to abuse, intimidation and civil rights violations — from military helicopters swooping over peaceful racial justice protesters in 2020 to the unchecked conduct of federal officers who remain shielded from full accountability,” Hopkins said.

A history of denigrating language

Conservatives have for generations used denigrating language to describe the condition of major cities and called for greater law enforcement, often in response to changing demographics in those cities driven by nonwhite populations relocating in search of work or safety from racial discrimination and state violence. Republicans have called for greater police crackdowns in cities since at least the 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles.

President Richard Nixon won the White House in 1968 after campaigning on a “law and order” agenda to appeal to white voters in northern cities alongside overtures to white Southerners as part of his “Southern Strategy.” Ronald Reagan similarly won both his presidential elections after campaigning heavily on law and order politics. Politicians, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former President Bill Clinton have cited the need to tamp down crime as a reason to seize power from liberal cities for decades.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called Trump’s takeover of local police “unsettling” but not without precedent. Bowser kept a mostly measured tone during a Monday news conference but decried Trump’s reasoning as a “so-called emergency,” saying residents “know that access to our democracy is tenuous.”

Trump threatened to “take over” and “beautify” D.C. on the campaign trail and claimed it was “a nightmare of murder and crime.” He also argued the city was “horribly run” and said his team intended “to take it away from the mayor.” Trump on Monday repeated old comments about some of the nation’s largest cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland and his hometown of New York City. All are currently run by Black mayors.

“You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities in a very bad, New York is a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even mention that anymore. They’re so far gone. We’re not going to let it happen,” he said.

Civil rights advocates see the rhetoric as part of a broader political strategy.

“It’s a playbook he’s used in the past,” said Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Trump’s rhetoric “paints a picture that crime is out of control, even when it is not true, then blames the policies of Democratic lawmakers that are reform- and public safety-minded, and then claims that you have to step in and violate people’s rights or demand that reforms be reversed,” Wiley said.

She added that the playbook has special potency in D.C. because local law enforcement can be directly placed under federal control, a power Trump invoked in his announcement.

Leaders call the order an unjustified distraction

Trump’s actions in Washington and comments about other major cities sent shock waves across the country, as other leaders prepare to respond to potential federal action.

Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in a statement that Trump’s plan “lacks seriousness and is deeply dangerous” and pointed to a 30-year-low crime rate in Baltimore as a reason the administration should consult local leaders rather than antagonize them. In Oakland, Mayor Barbara Lee called Trump’s characterization of the city “fearmongering.”

The administration already faced a major flashpoint between local control and federal power earlier in the summer, when Trump deployed National Guard troops to quell protests and support immigration enforcement operations in LA despite opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass.

Civil rights leaders have denounced Trump’s action in D.C. as an unjustified distraction.

“This president campaigned on ‘law and order,’ but he is the president of chaos and corruption,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson. “There’s no emergency in D.C., so why would he deploy the National Guard? To distract us from his alleged inclusion in the Epstein files? To rid the city of unhoused people? D.C. has the right to govern itself. It doesn’t need this federal coup.”

Trump’s rhetoric about DC echoes a history of racist narratives about urban crime
President Donald Trump’s rhetoric in his federal takeover of Washington police echoes that of conservative politicians going back decades who’ve denounced American cities with majority non-white populations or progressive leaders as crime-ridden and in need of outside intervention.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-washington-dc-takeover-race-39388597bad7e70085079888fe7fb57b

Law & Crime: ‘Lied to courts’: Appeals court affirms disbarment recommendation for Trump attorney John Eastman

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The legal disciplinary board for attorneys in California has affirmed a recommendation that former law professor John Eastman be disbarred over his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election to favor President Donald Trump.

On Friday, a three-judge panel on the California State Bar Court’s Review Department ruled on two separate requests by  Eastman and the Office of Chief Trial Counsel – seeking review of a March 2024 decision recommending he lose his law license.

The panel, effectively a court of appeal in the Golden State’s lawyer discipline system, declined to disturb the lower court’s ruling.

Sounds like King Donald’s kind of guy!!!

Appeals court affirms disbarment recommendation for Trump attorney John Eastman
“Whoever they are and whoever they represent, attorneys must remain true to the ethical rules that govern their conduct and respect the rule of law.”
‘Lied to courts’: Appeals court affirms disbarment recommendation for Trump attorney John Eastman

MSNBC: Trump’s attacks on Springsteen and Oprah aren’t legally sound. That’s not the point.

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What history can tell us about celebrity campaign endorsements — and their impact.

Nothing seems to incite angry social media posts from President Trump quite like criticism from celebrities. And while celebrities in 2025 seem less interested in feuding with the volatile president, Bruce Springsteen did manage to poke the bear with an unsparing speech delivered before a May 14 concert in Manchester.

The president noticed. On Truth Social, Trump called Springsteen “a pushy, obnoxious JERK” with “atrophied skin.” But the pettiness didn’t stop with dermatological insults. In the early hours of May 19, Trump escalated even further, implying without evidence that Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign paid Springsteen and other stars, including Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé, for their performances at campaign events, which was a “MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION.” He proclaimed his intention to “call for a major investigation into this matter.” 

Springsteen isn’t backing down in the wake of Trump’s stream of attacks, and musicians like Neil Young and Eddie Vedder have since come to his defense. The doubling and tripling down is so far mostly symbolic. But could Trump really investigate celebrity endorsements?

I don’t think so. Celebrities typically do not get paid for making endorsements. According to the Federal Election Commission, candidates can pay for endorsements as long as they are listed as a campaign expenditure. The Harris campaign has denied paying celebrities directly, claiming that any money sent to Winfrey ($1 million), Beyoncé ($165,000) and others are event production expenses paid out in accordance with federal election law.

“Usually I am reluctant to respond to rumors in general, but these days I realize that if you don’t stop a lie, it gets bigger. I was not paid a dime,” Winfrey said in video response to the Trump post….

Tina Knowles issued a similar denial last year when the same rumors circulated about her daughter: “The lie is that Beyonce was paid 10 million dollars to speak at a rally in Houston for Vice President Kamala Harris. When In Fact: Beyonce did not receive a penny for speaking at a Presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harrris’ Rally in Houston.”

Opinion | Trump’s call to “investigate” Bruce Springsteen ignores the reality of celebrity endorsements
What history can tell us about celebrity campaign endorsements — and their impact.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-truth-social-springsteen-oprah-beyonce-campaign-fraud-rcna208260

Newsweek: Mike Pence Calls for Donald Trump Reversal—’Warning Signs Are Flashing’

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Former Vice President Mike Pence urged President Donald Trump to reverse course on the sweeping tariffs he announced in April.

In an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Pence wrote that “economic warning signs are flashing” as he criticized Trump’s tariffs as a “massive policy misstep.”

Mike Pence Calls for Donald Trump Reversal—‘Warning Signs Are Flashing’
The former vice president called Trump’s tariffs a “massive policy misstep” in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mike-pence-calls-for-donald-trump-reversal-warning-signs-are-flashing/ar-AA1E2Gmg

The Telegraph: If you think it’s alarming now, just wait for Trump to wreck the bond market

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The White House’s push for for expanded presidential power threatens US economic stability

Donald Trump is systematically purging every US government institution, a pattern familiar to anybody who has studied the caudillo regimes of Latin America, or the playbook of today’s Putin-Orbán-Erdoğan prototypes.

It is a racing certainty that he will soon do the same to the Federal Reserve, forcing the central bank to cut interest rates into the teeth of rising inflation, with epic consequences for the world’s dollarised financial system and for €39 trillion (£33 trillion) of offshore dollar debt contracts and swaps.

Late last week he fired the head of the National Security Agency and its top officials at the behest of Laura Loomer, a fringe conspiracy theorist, who whispered into Trump’s ear that they were disloyal to the Maga movement.

He has already fired the heads of the FBI’s intelligence division, its counterterrorism division and criminal investigations division, as well as the heads of the Washington and New York offices.

He has fired the top brass of the US military, starting with a preemptive strike on the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. An earlier chairman – General Mark Milley – refused to ratify Trump’s attempted coup d’etat on Jan 6 2021.

“We don’t take an oath to a king, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the constitution,” said Milley in his parting shot.

But Trump also fired the three judge advocates general, who are legally independent by Congressional statute and have the authority to decide which military orders should be disobeyed – such as Trump’s order to “just shoot” American protesters, on American soil, during the Black Lives Matter saga.

That obstacle will not recur. Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, said the three judges had been sacked to stop them posing any “roadblocks to orders given by the commander-in-chief”.

You can go through the list, agency by agency, extending to the universities and private law firms, and even to the muzzled editorials of some of America’s once great newspapers: the purge is Bolshevik in ambition.

Does anybody in their right mind think that Trump will spare the Fed’s Jerome Powell as the two men gear up for an almighty clash over US monetary policy? “CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!” bellowed Trump in capital letters on Truth Social on Friday.

If you think it’s alarming now, just wait for Trump to wreck the bond market
The White House’s push for for expanded presidential power threatens US economic stability

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/08/trump-sell-off-is-bad-wait-until-wreck-us-bond-market

Karen Wells: Charles Pierce Writes

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CHARLES PIERCE WRITES: “In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, “And we shall overcome.”

I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over.

I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh’s madness in Oklahoma City.

I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing ‘Amazing Grace’ in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

“These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job.

They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.

“And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators.

Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.

“The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides.

We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.

“Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don’t have to be heroes to be good presidents.

They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.

Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn’t he a funny man? Isn’t what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now.”

Karin Wells
CHARLES PIERCE WRITES: “In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, “And we shall…

https://www.facebook.com/karin.wells.7/posts/10226527699715625