Stop Asking

Boil it all down and what do we have? We have a military operation with no clear ends at all. Stop asking what the US government’s intentions are, they do not exist outside of the personal interests of Donald Trump. They can and will therefore change in a heartbeat as he searches desperately for whatever end gives him the best chance to declare victory. He has made the national interest entirely personal.

– Phillips P. OBrien

This week’s featured post is “Why this? Why now?“

Ongoing stories

  • Trump’s assault on American democracy. The Iran attack further undermines the role of Congress in our democracy. But congressional Republicans seem content to watch their institution fade into irrelevance.
  • Epstein. From the beginning, I’ve been in denial about the depth and persistence of this scandal. It’s not going away. So I’m moving it onto the Ongoing list.
  • Climate change. My limited attention didn’t spot anything this week.
  • Gaza. The US has opened two consular offices in West Bank settlements that past administrations of both parties have deemed illegal.
  • Ukraine. Ukraine seems to have survived the “battle of winter”, gaining more territory than it lost during February.

This week’s developments

This week everybody was talking about the attack on Iran

In the featured post I focus on how little Trump seems to care about either Congress’ approval or the public’s.

and the State of the Union

In past years I’ve often devoted a featured post to analyzing the State of the Union, but this one doesn’t deserve that kind of attention. Ordinarily, a president whose party controlled Congress would list things he wants Congress to do in the coming year, and use his public platform to build popular support behind those proposals. But Trump views himself as a dictator, so he didn’t bother to ask Congress for much of anything — not even for approval of the Iran attack that was undoubtedly already in the works.

The one noteworthy thing is a speculative theme I’ve seen in several places, notably from David Frum in The Atlantic: Trump has now broken the State of the Union tradition so badly that Democrats should put an end to it if they hold the House majority next year.

Lots of people think the State of the Union address is mandated by the Constitution, but in fact it isn’t. Here’s the relevant text:

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient

Notice: no set schedule and no requirement for an in-person speech. Washington and Adams did speak to Congress on a more-or-less annual basis, usually sometime in early December. Jefferson began sending written messages instead, a practice that continued until Woodrow Wilson revived the in-person speech in 1913.

If you look at old state-of-the-union messages, they are not political speeches. What they resemble instead are the reports corporate presidents send to their boards of directors: This is what your government has been doing this last year and what we plan to do in the coming year. They aren’t full of well-crafted phrases and soaring rhetoric. But they did have policy announcements: James Monroe announced the Monroe Doctrine in the 1823 SOTU.

The first SOTU broadcast over radio was Calvin Coolidge’s in 1923. The first televised SOTU was by Harry Truman in 1947. Broadcasting changed the nature of the speech, turning it into an address to the nation rather than a message to Congress. Now it’s an annual pageant for the president to try to whip up support.

This year’s address was shameful, as so many of Trump’s speeches are. It was full of lies, way too long, and insulting to the Democrats in Congress. It contained no proposals of substance. It’s sole point was that Americans should love Trump and hate his enemies.

Before the speech, Democrats debated among themselves about whether to attend or boycott. Why subject yourself to two hours of lies and insults? I “boycotted” in the sense that I had better things to do with two hours of my life. (I scanned the transcript.)

Here’s the piece of the SOTU ritual that Trump has forgotten and needs to be reminded of: He is not the master of this event; he is a guest of the Speaker of the House. He comes in response to an invitation. Guests should act with a certain decorum. In particular, they should not gratuitously insult their hosts.

The Democrats are widely expected to regain the House majority in the fall. So when it’s time for the 2027 SOTU, the Speaker may be a Democrat like Hakeem Jeffries. He should not invite Trump to come speak in person. Trump should not be invited back at all until he pledges to behave as a guest should.

and ICE

Every week, more horror stories.

Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a refugee from Burma who was nearly blind, died after Border Patrol agents took him into custody, determined that they couldn’t hold him, and then abandoned him outside a closed Tim Horton’s franchise on a freezing-cold night in Buffalo. His family (who put up fliers asking if anyone had seen him) wasn’t told about his release or where to find him. His body was found five days later.

A Nashville man who was in this country legally and had a work permit was stopped, had his windows broken, and was taken away. His wife says he showed the agents his papers but they didn’t care.

The Portland Press Herald has found 35 Maine residents (out of the 206 swept up by ICE in the recent Operation Catch of the Day) who have been arrested and detained, but were then released by immigration judges who found that the government had no reason to hold them. Many of them have done nothing wrong.

[South Portland resident Evaristo] Kalonji’s name was on ICE’s target list even though the agency knew he had no criminal record, according to notes the government submitted in court that were viewed by the Press Herald. He said he had left his native Angola, completed an ardous journey up through the Americas and arrived in California a few years ago. He presented himself at the border, he said, then applied for asylum, so the Department of Homeland Security knew he was here.

He spent weeks in custody, paid a $3000 bond, and was released back into the same situation he was abducted from: He’s living with his family and working while he waits for his next asylum hearing.

“People were held in detention facilities for weeks for an immigration judge to essentially find that they were not a danger or a flight risk and should be released,” said Jenny Beverly, an immigration attorney in Portland and a former immigration judge. “That tells me that the arrests were needless to begin with.”

Being in detention meant Kalonji and others missed paychecks. Some lost their jobs. Their families and friends scrambled to raise money to continue to pay their bills, to pay bond, while waiting anxiously for news.

Here’s what grinds on me: The Maine detainees were brought to a detention facility in Burlington, Massachusetts — the next town over from where I live. The site was built to be a temporary processing center, but has turned into an overcrowded jail where people spend weeks or months under “inhumane” conditions. I’ve protested outside this facility, which is a quick walk from the popular Burlington Mall, with its Nordstrom’s and Victoria’s Secret. (Mall police chase away protesters who try to use the mall’s parking.) But those of us who live nearby have no way of knowing what goes on inside.

You may feel like all this Gestapo activity is far away from you. But it probably isn’t.

Politico tells the inside story of Minnesota officials dealing with Trump’s crackdown, and what lessons they have for other cities.

and Epstein

So now Bill and Hillary Clinton have both testified before the House Oversight Committee that is investigating the Epstein files. Reportedly, they answered every question. Both denied wrongdoing, and Hillary said she had never met Jeffrey Epstein, although she did know Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.

There is way more evidence linking Trump to Epstein than either of the Clintons. So why isn’t he testifying?

and deadly AIs

The Pentagon was negotiating a contract to use Anthropic’s AI app Claude, a competitor of ChatGPT. They hit a snag when Anthropic wanted the contract to ban Claude “being used for the mass surveillance of Americans or deployed in autonomous weapons with no humans involved”.

That demand didn’t just result in Anthropic losing the contract, but being declared a “supply chain risk“, which would blacklist the company from just about any government work. Axios says this designation is “usually reserved for companies from adversarial countries, such as Chinese tech giant Huawei”.

The future is not working out the way Isaac Asimov pictured. Sticking to his three laws of robotics will get you punished.

and you also might be interested in …

Florida is making it virtually impossible to teach introductory sociology at their state universities.

In 2023 the Florida Legislature passed a bill that bans curriculum at state-funded schools that supposedly teaches identity politics or diversity, equity and inclusion, or that suggests racism, sexism and other forms of oppression are embedded in American institutions.

You might wonder what kind of sociology textbook Florida professors could find that stays clear of all that. Well, Florida has made its own.

Florida’s new 267-page sociology textbook is an abbreviated version of the 669-page free and open-source “Introduction to Sociology 3e” and excludes chapters not just on race and ethnicity and gender and sexuality — the usual targets — but also on media and technology, global inequality and social stratification.

The word “racism” appeared 115 times in the original textbook, but just six times in the censored version. Sociology Professor Robyn Autry comments:

Because sociology aims to better understand “today’s most divisive issues,” it’s hard to imagine how any sociology course, especially an introductory one, can be taught without delving into topics that have been censored. And that appears to be the point for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies on the board of governors. It’s rational to conclude that they don’t want sociology taught at all, and that it’s not just particular topics but the discipline as a whole that bothers them.

Robert Cassanello, president of the United Faculty of Florida, warns:

I have it on good authority that next year they’re going to look at the psychology and American history textbooks. It’s an assault on critical thinking.

Hegseth won’t allow officers to take courses at Ivy League universities. Anything that interferes with the indoctrination he wants the military to have is off the table.

India has shifted towards Israel because they are both ethno-nationalist states now.

How does MAGA want to make ObamaCare plans cheaper? By raising the annual deductible to $31,000.

Trump’s Trumpiest judge isn’t satisfied with just blocking his prosecution for his document-stealing crimes. She has also banned Jack Smith from releasing volume 2 of his report.

and let’s close with something slick

What do Canadian dads get up to when their wives aren’t looking? Curling with the baby in a car seat.

Until I went looking for that video, I never realized that “Dads unsupervised” is a popular YouTube search term. Here’s something else it will get you.

March 2, 2026 – 12:22 pm Categories: Uncategorized | Comments (2)

Why this? Why now?

Two decades ago, George W. Bush and his cabinet spent months raising support for an invasion of Iraq. Two days ago, the Trump regime attacked Iran without giving us any coherent explanation.

Saturday, the US and Israel began an air war against Iran. The widespread attacks had a variety of goals, but decapitating the government was clearly one of them: One early death was that of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, an ayatollah who has been in power since the death of the founder of the current theocracy, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989.

The first American deaths were reported yesterday: three service members who had not yet been named. Five more have been seriously wounded.

We have no idea how many Iranian civilians have been killed, but at least 175 of them appear to be schoolgirls.

It’s hard to know what to write about this, because we have been told so little. Comparisons to George W. Bush’s Iraq fiasco are everywhere, but this attack differs in one important respect: Bush spent months trying to raise public and congressional support for his invasion. Trump, on the other hand, has given no credible explanation. In retrospect, many Americans resented Bush’s deceptive propaganda, but at least he acted like our opinions mattered. Trump seems not to need either our approval or that of Congress. (The Constitution and the War Powers Act say he does need Congress’ approval, if things like that still matter.)

I remember where I was when Bush came on every TV network to announce we were going to war. Trump hasn’t bothered. He posted to social media an 8-minute video full of rhetoric and falsehoods, and never answered the questions “Why this? Why now?” Stylistically, he talked at us rather than to us — standing behind an official podium and hiding his eyes in the shadow of the visor of a USA cap.

Yesterday, he didn’t even send his people out to answer questions.

No senior Trump administration officials or cabinet members appeared on the Sunday show television circuit a day after the US and Israel began a major military operation in Iran, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. … The White House’s communications operation indicated that it would let allies on Capitol Hill do the talking, three people familiar with the discussions said.

Why would Trump want Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton to make the case rather than Marco Rubio or Pete Hegseth or J. D. Vance? To me, the answer seems obvious: Republican senators aren’t official representatives of the Trump regime, so anything they say is deniable.

Trump has sent them out to lie to us, and doesn’t want to be answerable when those lies collapse.

Every hint of an explanation that we’ve been given so far is full of holes. We were told in June that the bombing raids then had “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capability. But only months later we have to attack again because Iran “can never have a nuclear weapon.”

As they made their public case this week for another American military campaign against Iran, President Trump and his aides asserted that Iran has restarted its nuclear program, has enough available nuclear material to build a bomb within days, and is developing long-range missiles that will soon be capable of hitting the United States. All three of these claims are either false or unproven.

Of course, President Obama had already negotiated a plan to keep Iran from getting nukes, but Trump tore it up, promising a “better deal”. This war, apparently, is that better deal.

He told Iran’s military and police forces:

Lay down your arms. You will be treated fairly with total immunity. Or you will face certain death.

But there’s no way an air campaign can back that up. The Iranian forces would have to surrender to somebody on the ground, somebody with the institutional power to hold tribunals for some people but not others. Who is that?

Trump also claimed to be doing this for the Iranian people:

When we are done, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations. … America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.

But yesterday he told the NYT

What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario.

In Venezuela after Maduro was captured, his vice president took power and the entire regime remained intact. All they did was let Trump control their oil.

So much for the Iranian people.

In the absence of any plausible explanation from Trump, we’re left to imagine some other motive. Here’s the opinion of Phillips P. OBrien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland:

Boil it all down and what do we have? We have a military operation with no clear ends at all. Stop asking what the US government’s intentions are, they do not exist outside of the personal interests of Donald Trump. They can and will therefore change in a heartbeat as he searches desperately for whatever end gives him the best chance to declare victory. He has made the national interest entirely personal.

The pundits who look for personal motives have identified two:

  • Trump attacked Iran to change the media narrative in the US. The testimony of the Clintons to the House Oversight Committee has raised the question of why Trump doesn’t testify. And polls show Trump’s party headed for a historic defeat in November, losing the House and possibly even the Senate.
  • This bombing campaign is what Iran’s regional rivals get in exchange for a series of bribes to Trump and his family: the UAE’s half-billion-dollar investment in Trump’s crypto company; a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar; Jared Kushner’s firm getting $2 billion in Saudi money to invest despite their high management fees and lack of experience; an Abu Dhabi firm using $2 billion in Trump meme coins to complete a business transaction; and perhaps countless others that are still hidden behind the veil of Trump’s real estate and crypto-currency operations. Rachel Maddow says: “And now for that low, low price, they appear to have rented the services of the United States military to start a war that they want, but that the American people do not, and that our American government hasn’t bothered to explain in terms that are even internally consistent, let alone rational and sound.”

A big, expensive distraction? A quid for the sheikhs’ quo? Trump may not like those theories. But if he doesn’t want them settling into the public mind, he needs to give us something better.

March 2, 2026 – 9:46 am Categories: Articles | Comments (10)

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The Monday Morning Teaser

Friday night, it seemed like I had a newsy week to cover: the State of the Union address; further developments in the Epstein case, including testimony from the Clintons and questions about why Trump isn’t testifying; still more instances of ICE’s excessive violence; the midterm primary season kicking off in Texas tomorrow with consequential Senate races in both parties; the War Defense Department showdown with a major AI firm about killer robots; and the usual collection of lesser stories.

And then Trump attacked Iran, killing its leader and at least 175 schoolgirls, getting at least three American servicepeople killed in the process.

That move shoved everything else into the background. But the problem it presents to me and other commenters is that we don’t have a lot of facts to pass along. We don’t know what’s happening on the ground in Iran. We don’t have any clear explanation from the Trump regime about why they’re doing this, what the ultimate goal is, or even what the short-term plan is.

But I remember something my high school journalism teacher said: “If you can’t write about the is-ness of something, you can write about the not-ness of it.” (Thanks, Mr. Connelly.) So that’s the focus of this featured post: Why don’t we know?

Usually, when you hear references to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, it’s a cautionary tale: Don’t be like that. But in one sense, George W. Bush did much better then than Trump is doing now. Bush’s people may have pushed all sorts of lies about their prospective invasion, but at least they respected the American people and the Congress enough to spend months trying to convince us. Trump seems not to care.

So the featured post “Why?” should be out shortly. All the other stuff I thought I was going to talk about will be in the weekly summary, which I’ll try to get out by noon EST.

March 2, 2026 – 8:51 am Categories: Morning tease | Post a comment

Kindness or Cruelty?

I am begging my fellow politicians, my fellow Illinoisans, my fellow Americans to realize that right now in this country we are not fighting over policy or political party. We are fighting over whether we are going to be a civilization rooted in empathy and kindness — or one rooted in cruelty and rage.

– Governor J. B. Pritzker of Illinois
“I Love Illinois. I Love America. I Refuse to Stop.“

This week’s featured post is “The Tariff Decision“.

Ongoing stories

  • Trump’s assault on American democracy. Ever since the Supreme Court’s sweeping and bizarre ruling giving Trump immunity for all “official acts”, followed by a series of shadow-docket rulings giving the Trump regime the power to do things that lower courts had deemed illegal, we’ve had to wonder whether the judiciary is still an independent branch of government. Friday, the Supreme Court asserted its independence by ruling that the majority of Trump’s tariffs are illegal.
  • Climate change. The EPA has reversed the 2009 endangerment finding that named CO2 as a pollutant that can be regulated. The EPA is now essentially helpless to do anything to combat climate change.
  • Gaza. The “Board of Peace” that claims to be overseeing the reconstruction of Gaza includes no Gazans or other Palestinian representatives. But it’s building a base to house a multi-national peacekeeping force. Meanwhile, Israel is preparing to expand colonization of the West Bank.
  • Ukraine. M. Gessen looks at Ukraine after four years of war, a period longer than Russia and Ukraine experienced fighting the Nazis as part of the Soviet Union. “Now Ukraine’s patriotic war, against Russia, has crossed that threshold, with no end in sight. Russia’s offensive appeared to speed up in December. In February, Ukraine recaptured ground, in its most successful counteroffensive in more than two years. But on the whole, the front line has remained largely static for more than three years.”

This week’s developments

This week everybody was talking about tariffs

This is covered in the featured post. Short version: The Supreme Court has ruled that the “liberation day” tariffs are illegal. Trump immediately replaced them with 15% across-the-board tariffs, which are almost certainly illegal too.

One additional comment from Paul Krugman: Even if the new tariffs stand up in court “Tariffs as an instrument of arbitrary power have been dismantled.” Under this law, Trump can’t impose large tariffs on countries he doesn’t like and low tariffs on countries that grovel to him.

Something I didn’t mention in the featured post is how catty the conservative justices got with each other in their written opinions. For example, Roberts strongly implied that Kavanaugh was simply a Trump mouthpiece:

The Government, echoed point-for-point by the principal dissent, marshals several arguments in response.

and the Epstein files

The big recent news about the Epstein scandal is that other governments are taking it far more seriously than the Trump administration is. The former Prince Andrew, brother of King Charles of the UK, was arrested Thursday morning. The King expressed his “deepest concern” over Andrew, but showed no indication to help his brother in any practical way, saying “the law must take its course”.

US Republicans are mostly doing the exact opposite: expressing “concern” over Epstein’s victims, but not lifting a finger against the men who abused them.

Andrew was arrested for “suspicion of misconduct in public office”. I’m not sure how that correlates to anything in the US justice system. You can’t be convicted of “suspicion”, but a formal investigation will decide whether a charge will be pressed. Because “misconduct in public office” is such a catch-all term, the penalties range all the way up to life imprisonment. Ultimately, the charges may include not just sex crimes, but also leaking confidential information to Epstein. (Andrew used to be a trade envoy for the UK, so his insider knowledge could be useful to a financier.)

In spite of King Charles revoking Andrew’s title in November, for now he remains 8th in the line of succession to the throne. Removing him from succession requires an act of Parliament, which is under consideration.

I can’t discuss the Epstein case without mentioning Pam Bondi’s shameful testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. She responded to virtually every question by yelling attacks at the questioner. Among other questions she dodged in this manner, she refused to comment on why the Justice Department had not talked to any of the Epstein victims who were present in the gallery, and segued onto the high stock market and how we really ought to be talking about that.

Just for the record: The performance of the stock market should never come up during the testimony of an attorney general. Her job has nothing to do with that.

The NY Times Pitchbot skewers both Andrew and the US Supreme Court’s decision giving Trump immunity:

“Charges against Former Prince Andrew must be dropped if it’s determined that raping teenagers was an official act.” – by John Roberts (joined by Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett).

WaPo lists prominent people — mostly non-US or in the US private sector — whose connections with Epstein have produced consequences. Notably missing: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

The commerce secretary previously told Congress he cut ties with Epstein in 2005 after the late financier – a neighbour of Lutnick in New York – used sexual innuendo to explain why he owned a massage table in a room of his home. In Tuesday’s testimony, he said: “Over the next 14 years, I met him two other times that I can recall.” The justice department files show Lutnick visited Epstein’s Caribbean island on 23 December, 2012. That came four years after Epstein was convicted for soliciting prostitution from a child.

Tina Brown:

Hunting for revelations about the occupant of the Oval Office in this email blizzard is a fool’s errand. Trump’s name attached to anything incriminating is redacted. Of the 5,300 files with 38,000 references to Trump, Melania, or Mar-a-Lago, none are direct communications between Trump and Epstein. Deputy AG Todd Blanche has already said that the second half of the tranche—another two-and-a-half million pages—will never see the light of day.

Nonetheless, people are finding things. Jay Kuo summarizes what he’s seen so far. Nothing he mentions constitutes beyond-reasonable-doubt proof. But it’s a far cry from Trump’s claim “I’ve been totally exonerated.“

Another look at Trump’s culpability comes from the NYT.

Celeste Davis wonders about the Epstein-files question hardly anybody asks:

Everyone is asking how did these men get away with so much rape? No one is asking what would cause so many to want to rape so much in the first place?

We seem to take for granted that men whose power puts them beyond any restraints will of course abuse underage girls. Why do we do that?

A. R. Moxon makes a related point not specific to the Epstein story. He comments on the “male loneliness epidemic”, which he finds frequently discussed in the media.

This is a problem. What I am inviting you to contemplate is how frequently it is treated as a problem for men, caused by women, to be solved by everyone else. I’m inviting you to contemplate how seldom it’s being treated as a problem caused by men who have never even started the work they need to do on themselves.

Moxon traces the “problem” to the decline of patriarchy: Men who expect to dominate a woman domestically and sexually are less and less likely to find a woman who agrees to be dominated.

The loneliness of women—also quite real—is not a problem that’s usually mentioned at all, much less as one worth seeking a solution to, and certainly never as one that ought to be solved by men deciding that they no longer need to dominate others as a core of their identity.

If patriarchal men are “dying off” (as they often phrase it) due to women finding them unfit for mating, that’s evolution at work. Survival-of-the-fittest isn’t always about becoming a better predator. Sometimes it’s about recognizing that the environment has changed, and adapting to it.

Continuing in this vein, Jessica Valenti discusses the Heritage Foundation’s plans for America’s cultural future, in a piece called “They’re Coming For Our Daughters“. Purportedly high-minded rhetoric about “Saving the Family” translates to limiting girls’ potential futures, and turning back the clock to a time when women could aspire to little other than the protection of a man and the opportunity to bear and raise his children.

People who didn’t take Heritage’s Project 2025 seriously enough are probably not taking this seriously enough either.

and Jesse Jackson

Jesse Jackson, who died last Tuesday at the age of 84, was the most visible Black leader of the post-Martin-Luther-King era. The Guardian published a summary of his influence on American politics.

One thing I remember from listening to Jackson was how he tried to unite all discriminated-against groups in a “rainbow coalition”. I’m going to get this quote wrong, but it went something like: “You have to decide whether you don’t want your group sent to the back of the bus, or you don’t want anybody sent to the back of the bus.”

and Iran

Are we going to war with Iran? We have an enormous armada in the region, including two of our largest aircraft carriers.

according to Robert A. Pape, the Founding Director of the Chicago Project on Security & Threats (CPOST), the US’s current force mobilization in the Middle East accounts for 40-50% of the deployable US air power worldwide.

Trump is giving deadlines and threatening “bad things will happen” if Iran doesn’t give him what he wants. Talking in his mob-boss style, Trump told reporters: “We’re either going to get a deal or it’s going to be unfortunate for them.”

and Cuba

Did you realize that we’re already more-or-less in a regime-change war with Cuba? I didn’t until recently, and I’m pretty sure a lot of Americans still don’t. (By contrast, the Cubans all know about it.)

Nine days after taking office, Trump signed an executive order declaring Cuba “an unusual and extraordinary threat to U.S. national security and foreign policy, requiring immediate response to protect American citizens and interests”. The order imposed tariffs on “any country that directly or indirectly provides oil to Cuba”.

Venezuela had been supplying most of Cuba’s oil, until the Trump regime attacked. While the US has not formally announced a blockade of the island, on January 11 of this year, Trump posted:

THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.

Make a deal about what? Before it’s too late for what? But no list of demands accompanies Trump’s threats. The NYT reports:

Cuban tankers have hardly left the island’s shores for months. Oil-rich allies have halted shipments or declined to come to the rescue. The U.S. military has seized ships that have supported Cuba. And in recent days, vessels roaming the Caribbean Sea in search of fuel for Cuba have come up empty or been intercepted by the U.S. authorities. …

“Among us longtime Cuba watchers, we’ve always resisted people using the word blockade,” said Fulton Armstrong, the former lead Latin America analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, who has been studying Cuba since 1984. “But it is indeed a blockade.”

So OK, “make a deal” about what? Regime change.

“There’s no oil, there’s no money, there’s no anything,” US President Donald Trump told reporters Monday, adding that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading efforts to negotiate with top Cuban officials. Rubio, who is Cuban American and a longtime opponent of the Cuban government, has previously said the only thing he intends to discuss with the island’s communist leadership is when they would relinquish power.

Just so we’re clear, a blockade is an act of war. Human rights experts at the UN put out a statement:

“It is an extreme form of unilateral economic coercion with extraterritorial effects, through which the United States seeks to exert coercion on the sovereign state of Cuba and compel other sovereign third States to alter their lawful commercial relations, under threat of punitive trade measures,” they said. … “There is no right under international law to impose economic penalties on third States for engaging in lawful trade with another sovereign country.”

And it’s having devastating effects on the people of Cuba: Not only is there little-to-no imported food, there isn’t fuel to bring food into the cities from the countryside. When food arrives, there may not be electric power to keep it refrigerated. Recently, the crisis has been damaging the healthcare system:

The situation however has reached a new extreme, with authorities now saying that ambulances are struggling to find fuel to respond to emergencies. Persistent power outages have also further deteriorated hospitals.

Flights bringing in vital supplies, which the island nation has been relying on since the blockade, have now stopped, as Havana is no longer capable of refuelling airplanes for their outbound flights from Cuban airports.

We’re doing that. And why, exactly?

and Gaza

Wielding a golden gavel, Trump presided over the first meeting of his Board of Peace, which, among other vague ambitions, is supposed to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza. The meeting was held in the newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. (Like the Kennedy Center, the Institute of Peace’s name is in the legislation that established it. Legally, Trump has no power to change it, but his name is on the facade anyway.)

Trump pledged $10 billion in contributions from the US. Other BoP members have pledged $7 billion. (By contrast, the US is about $4.5 billion behind in its commitments to the United Nations.) You might wonder where this money will come from. Congress has not yet appropriated anything. But does that matter any more?

The Board, all of whom have been chosen by Trump, includes no Palestinian representative, but does include First Son-In-Law Jared Kushner, whose vision for Gaza is of high-rise towers and beaches full of tourists — basically pre-civil-war Beirut.

As I’ve pointed out before, the BoP’s charter gives all power to its chairman, who is defined in the charter to be “Donald J. Trump”. (Not the President of the United States, but Trump personally.) Like a king, he serves in perpetuity and names his own successor. If the taxpayers are going to contribute $10 billion to the BoP, we might as well just put the money directly into Trump’s pocket.

Major NATO allies like the UK, Germany, and France have seen through this scam and refused to join. Canada’s invitation was withdraw after Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a speech Trump didn’t like at Davos.

The Guardian reports:

The Trump administration is planning to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza, sprawling more than 350 acres, according to Board of Peace contracting records reviewed by the Guardian. The site is envisioned as a military operating base for a future International Stabilization Force (ISF), planned as a multinational military force composed of pledged troops.

During the Gaza War, death toll estimates were given by local Palestinian authorities who were answerable to the Hamas government. For this reason, many observers — especially those sympathetic to Israel — tended to discount them. Surely the carnage wasn’t as bad as the Palestinian numbers made it look.

In fact, it now appears to have been worse. The Lancet has raised its estimate of the death toll of the first 16 months of the two-year Gaza war: from 49,000 to 75,000. That total includes 22,800 children under 18.

and you also might be interested in …

If you haven’t seen Illinois Governor Pritzker’s state-of-the-state speech, you should look it up. (The opening quote comes from it.) It is part political speech, but part sermon on the values that make America what it should be.

DHS is wildly unpopular, partly because it keeps telling the public ridiculous lies that are easily disproven by video. When DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin left the job, then, many hoped for a change in the department’s policy regarding the Truth. Not so fast. New spokesperson Lauren Bis might be worse.

Trump’s White House ballroom passed its first hurdle: approval by the Commission on Fine Arts that Trump has packed with allies.

Friday, students at a Philadelphia-area high school staged a walkout to protest against ICE. According to witnesses, a man in a brown jacket lunged towards students and put one girl in a chokehold. (There’s a picture of that.) Other students started hitting the man, as you well might when an adult attacks one of your classmates. Police arrived.

The attacker turns out to be the local police chief. He walked away. The students who fought him have been locked up over the weekend. Here’s are phone numbers of authorities you might complain to.

Marcy Wheeler sums up Marco Rubio’s message to European representatives to the Munich Security Conference like this: “We want to be friends, if you want to be as racist as we are.”

So Trump announced that he’s sending a hospital ship to Greenland “to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there. It’s on the way!!!”. No one seems to know what he’s talking about. Both of the Navy’s hospital ships (including the one he posted a picture of) are moored in Mobile.

In Greenland, as in Denmark, access to healthcare is free. There are five regional hospitals across the vast Arctic island, with the Nuuk hospital serving patients from all over the territory.

The Danish defense minister responded: “The Greenlandic population receives the healthcare it needs. They receive it either in Greenland, or, if they require specialised treatment, they receive it in Denmark. So it’s not as if there’s a need for a special healthcare initiative in Greenland.”

You know where there are “people who are sick and not being taken care of”? The United States. There are going to be a lot more of them this year because Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill cut funding for Medicaid.

The Danes should send us a hospital ship.

and let’s close with something celebratory

Welcome to the Year of the Horse:

The Chinese Zodiac has 12 animals and five elements, so the pattern repeats every 60 years. This is a Fire year, and the Horse represents speed and energy, two fiery qualities. So a Fire Horse year is essentially “double fire“. Expect sparks to fly this year.

February 23, 2026 – 12:41 pm Categories: Weekly summaries | Comments (7)

The Tariff Decision

At least for now, the power to tax still belongs to Congress.

I had been starting to wonder if we still had a Supreme Court.

Again and again, starting with two cases before the election (the ballot-access case in March, 2024, where the Court more-or-less took Section 3 of the 14th Amendment out of the Constitution; and the immunity case, where they placed Trump above the law) and proceeding through a series of shadow-docket cases in 2025, the high court has seemed to be just another agency in the Trump regime, and not at all an independent branch of government. After spending four years trying to limit executive power when it was wielded by Joe Biden, the Court has been expanding the reach of the Trump presidency well past legal limits that seemed clear to judges in lower courts.

But the Court’s creeping abandonment of the rule of law at least paused on Friday, when it ruled that the emergency law Trump had been using to justify his tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), doesn’t actually give him that power. So the approximately $130 billion of IEEPA tariffs to date have been collected illegally.

I thought the law in this case was clear, so I can’t say that I was surprised by the outcome. But I was (at the very least) grateful that the six conservative justices didn’t make up some completely new legal principle to let Trump continue to do whatever he wants. (Only three of them did — not enough to form a majority.)

Several pundits are trying to read some great meaning into this decision, like that the Court is drawing a line on Trump’s power grabs. In other words, John Roberts has finally seen where all this is going and decided to take a stand. But I don’t think so. In order to understand what happened, you need to break the nine Supreme Court justices into three camps:

  • The partisan hacks: Alito, Thomas, and Kavanaugh. Whatever Republican presidents do is fine. Whatever Democratic presidents do is unconstitutional.
  • The liberals: Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson. They look at the statute Trump says authorizes his tariffs and can’t find an authorization there. They don’t think any novel constitutional doctrine is needed to see this.
  • The long-gamers. Roberts, Gorsuch, and Barrett. They’ve worked to establish new constitutional doctrines (Major Questions, Non-delegation) that limit regulation and unleash corporations to do whatever they want. Denying that those doctrines apply here would undermine their long-term program to hogtie the administrative state.

The votes of the hacks and the liberals were both predictable before any arguments were presented. The question was what the long-gamers would do: They are also partisan Republicans, as the immunity decision showed. (Barrett less so than Roberts and Gorsuch.) So they must have wanted to let the tariffs stand. But Trump’s justification for his tariffs flies in the face of Major Questions decisions the Court made during the Biden administration. Finding for Trump here would give the game away: Major Questions is just a rhetorical trick for constraining Democratic presidents; it doesn’t apply to Republican presidents.

Delegated powers. OK, let’s explain what these doctrines are. When Congress passes a law, sometimes small turns of phrase turn out to have big consequences. (I’ll give you a simple example from the Constitution: When the Founders gave the federal government the power to regulate interstate commerce, they never imagined that eventually nearly all commerce would have some interstate component. What they imagined to be a specialized power has turned into a sweeping power.) Both Major Questions and Non-delegation are supposed to limit this possibility.

  • Major Questions says that an executive action with huge consequences can’t be based on a subtle reading of an apparently minor phrase. So Biden couldn’t cancel all student debt, even though a law allowed him to change the terms of any particular student loan. Congress couldn’t have imagined that this simple provision could be the basis for a trillion-dollar action.
  • Non-delegation says that there are powers Congress can’t delegate, even if it wants to. It couldn’t, for example, delegate the power of the purse, essentially telling the president: “Tax and spend however you want.” Even if a law said that, the courts should disallow it.

Both of these ideas make sense in extreme cases, if the courts apply them fairly. But they both allow the Supreme Court to grab power away from the executive branch, and they’re both open to ideological bias. There’s no clear definition of the powers that can’t be delegated, or exactly when an executive action becomes “major”. So the Court has essentially given itself as much veto power as it chooses to claim.

Up until now, the Court’s conservative majority has been using that power in a partisan way, but they usually don’t even need to: Both provisions inherently favor de-regulation, because corporations tend to move much faster than Congress. For example, corporations can create new compounds faster than Congress can pass laws to regulate them. So the Clean Air Act specifically empowers the EPA to identify new pollutants and make rules about them. (The Obama administration used that power to find that climate change makes CO2 is a pollutant, allowing the EPA to regulate things like coal-burning power plants. The Trump regime has recently unmade that scientific finding, which the Court was probably going to undo anyway.) Disallowing delegations like that favors corporate malefactors over government regulators.

On the surface, both doctrines seem to be pro-democracy: If the government is going to do something significant, Congress should debate it and vote. That sounds lovely in the abstract, but it ignores the dysfunctionality of our Congress. Senate filibuster rules require a supermajority to pass new laws, and a presidential veto requires an even bigger supermajority to overcome. In practice, this means that very few new laws will get passed. So either major problems will go unaddressed, or other branches of government will have to use the powers Congress has abdicated.

This case. (The text of all the justices’ opinions is here.) The problem for the long-game faction is that the Trump tariffs are clearly a bigger intervention in the economy than Biden’s student-loan cancellation was. Biden wanted to take a one-time charge against the national balance sheet. But Trump wants to take hundreds of billions out of the private sector every year, and do it in a way that re-arranges the global trading system. So if student loan cancellation is a major question, massive tariffs must be too.

In 2021, Barrett famously declared that the Court “is not a bunch of partisan hacks”. Taking Trump’s side in this case would have exposed that as a lie.

So, here’s the issue this case presents: The Constitution gives Congress (and not the president) the power to tax. Tariffs are taxes. So a president can only impose a tariff if Congress has somehow delegated that particular taxing power to him or her. In his majority opinion, Roberts writes:

the President must “point to clear congressional authorization” to justify his extraordinary assertion of the power to impose tariffs. He cannot.

Trump takes the IEEPA as the congressional delegation he needs. But IEEPA doesn’t specifically mention tariffs, or any equivalent term. Kagan’s concurring opinion summarizes:

That text authorizes the President, upon finding a foreign threat and declaring an emergency, to “regulate” the “importation” of foreign goods.

Trump’s lawyers interpret “regulating” imported goods as including the power to tax them. But it can’t point to any other law where “regulate” carries that meaning. Roberts writes:

The Government concedes, for example, that the Securities and Exchange Commission cannot tax the trading of securities, even though it is expressly authorized to “regulate the trading of . . . securities.”

(Wouldn’t that be a bombshell, if the next Democratic president could impose a sales tax on NYSE transactions, and change the tax rate according to whatever whim possessed him that day?)

To the liberals, that’s the end of the story; it doesn’t matter whether the tariffs are major or minor, they’re just unauthorized by Congress. (To the charge of hypocrisy, in supporting Biden’s loan cancellation while opposing Trump’s tariffs, the liberals might point to this: Biden stretched a provision that is really in the law. But Trump is making up an authorization that doesn’t exist at all.)

But the long-gamers feel obligated to have an argument about why and how this falls under the Major Questions doctrine, which the liberals don’t recognize at all, and Barrett appears to regard as minor. That argument takes up about half of the 170 pages of opinions, and is well worth skipping.

The consequences. So according to the BBC, the regime has so far collected about $130 billion in illegal tariffs. Legally, that money ought to be returned. It’s a mess, made worse by the length of time the Court took to decide the case.

But who should it get returned to, and how? Directly, tariffs are paid by importers, so they presumably can sue to get their money back. (Or there’s an administrative procedure to claim tariff refunds, a process that undoubtedly will get swamped soon.) Importers like, say, WalMart or General Motors have plenty of lawyers, so they’ll eventually get their money back.

Indirectly, the tariffs have been paid by ordinary American consumers. A recent report from the New York branch of the Federal Reserve estimates that about 90% of the tariff costs were passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. But absent some unlikely legislation to pay us back out of the Treasury, we’re just out of luck. You didn’t directly write a check to the government, so you can’t get a refund.

Next steps. Trump responded to his legal defeat in two ways: First, he lashed out at individual members of the Court, accusing them of being “swayed by foreign interests” and “fools and lapdogs for the Rhinos and the radical left Democrats”. His own appointees — Gorsuch and Barrett — weren’t exempted. He called their opinions “an embarrassment to their families, to one another”.

Second, he announced new illegal tariffs: First 10% across the board, which he then raised to 15%. (Since the IEEPA lawsuit was first decided in a lower court last June, and was filed months before that, you’d think Trump would have had a clear plan of what to do if he lost. Apparently he didn’t, and just started making stuff up on the fly.)

The new tariffs are based on a different law, Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act. That law allows tariffs up to 15% that last for 150 days. However, there are conditions, which Trump has ignored:

the actual language of the Trade Act lists requirements that don’t exist today, including a “large and serious” balance-of-payments deficit. While the U.S. has run a trade deficit for decades, it’s been offset by capital inflows as foreign investors pour billions into financial markets, resulting in a net balance of zero.

Bryan Riley, director of the National Taxpayers Union’s Free Trade Initiative, wrote in a blog post last month that Section 122 only makes sense under a fixed exchange rate, which hasn’t existed in the U.S. in more than 50 years.

Expect lawsuits to be filed as soon as the new tariffs take effect. Trump will lose that case too.

However, winning may not actually be the point. The Supreme Court decision made Trump look weak, and responding with a new power grab makes him look strong again, at least for now. To the MAGA faithful, he remains a valiant warrior against the Deep State, which now includes two people he appointed to the Supreme Court himself.

One last point. Maybe at this point you are asking an obvious question: The Court didn’t say that tariffs are illegal, just tariffs unauthorized by Congress. Republicans control Congress, so why doesn’t Trump ask for authorization?

Two reasons: First, Trump’s authoritarian takeover relies on establishing that he doesn’t need Congress. A tariff he imposes on his own authority is better, in that view, from a tariff Congress gives him permission to impose. And second, Congress wouldn’t do it. The tariffs are unpopular, economists of all stripes say they’re a bad idea, and the Republican majorities in each house are small. Asking for permission and not getting it would make Trump look weak (because he is weak). From an authoritarian-takeover point of view, it’s the worst possible outcome.

February 23, 2026 – 11:04 am Categories: Uncategorized | Comments (4)

Tagged |

The Monday Morning Teaser

I’m running a bit behind schedule today as I watch the blizzard outside my window. Expect delays.

The big thing that happened this week was the Supreme Court’s decision striking down Trump’s liberation-day tariffs. This is Trump’s biggest legal defeat to date. It’s amply justified by the underlying law, but runs counter to the usual partisanship of this court. The featured post will explain what happened and what I think it means. That should be out sometime between 10 and 11 EST.

It’s kind of amazing what stories that has pushed into the background, like Prince Andrew’s arrest on Epstein file charges, Jesse Jackson’s death, a looming attack on Iran, the ongoing blockade of Cuba, and maybe some other stuff that has slipped my mind. In the pre-Trump years, any of those might have been the biggest thing that happened. But times have changed.

Anyway, expect the weekly summary to get out by 1.

February 23, 2026 – 8:56 am Categories: Morning tease | Comments (1)

Uncooperative Responses

No Sift next week. The next new posts will appear on February 23.

Our response should not be “This response to Bad Bunny’s inclusion shows how divided we are, how can we stop this polarization?” Our response should be uncooperative: “The response to Bad Bunny’s inclusion shows just how racist our society is. Racists are angry about the halftime show? Good! Everything about our society should make racists feel alienated. How do we make racists feel even more alienated from even more of society?

– A. R. Moxon, The Reframe

This week’s featured posts are “Non-Cooperation” and “Dying in Broad Daylight: The Washington Post“.

Ongoing stories

  • Trump’s assault on American democracy. This week he threatened to “nationalize” vote-counting in 15 states, and continued the violent occupation of Minneapolis.
  • Climate change. Trump’s war against renewable energy is having results: Last year, for every new dollar committed to renewable energy projects, three dollars were rolled back.
  • Gaza. The ceasefire is holding more or less, but it can’t hold forever if Gazans’ lives don’t start improving.
  • Ukraine. The question is less who is winning than who will crack first. Russia’s economy is in serious trouble, and Ukraine is running out of soldiers.

This week’s developments

This week everybody was talking about election interference

In the wake of the regime’s seizure of Georgia’s 2020 ballots and election records, and Trump threatening to “nationalize” the midterm elections rather than let states run them (as the Constitution mandates), it’s hard to decide how alarmed to be. Trump may daydream about counting the ballots himself and proclaiming his lackeys the winners, but what can he actually get away with?

Hakeem Jeffries sounds very confident: “What Donald Trump wants to do is try and nationalize the election – translation: steal it. And we’re not going to let it happen. This is going to be a free and fair election. [It] is going to be conducted like every other election where states and localities have the ability to administer the laws.”

Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias gets down into the weeds a little and has a more nuanced take on the situation. He starts with the strange fact that the warrant for the Georgia seizure came from a Missouri prosecutor, Thomas Albus, rather than from any Georgia prosecutor. It turns out that Albus has been named a “special assistant” to the attorney general. That gives him national scope, and might allow him to seize ballots anywhere in the country.

But Elias thinks seizing ballots in an ongoing election might be more difficult.

It is one thing to seize old ballots; it is quite another to imagine federal agents seizing ballots from county offices on election night or the day after. And that’s only the beginning of the chaos he could unleash. States and counties have limited supplies of voting machines and tabulators, and Trump has already threatened to unilaterally decertify certain machines. A federal prosecutor willing to abuse his power would be a potent tool in achieving Trump’s stated goals. The same is true of mail-in ballots and other forms of voting that Trump seeks to outlaw or disrupt.

But Albus would need cooperation from other prosecutors, FBI agents, and local judges. While Albus might be willing to corruptly serve his boss, others might not be.

Vox interviewed the Brennan Center’s Wendy Weiser, who has a similar opinion.

There is a very high risk that the administration will use every tool at its disposal to get voting machines or ballots in the course of an upcoming election. But I don’t think there is a high risk that they will succeed. I think every magistrate judge in the country would understand the difference between a search warrant to seize materials for an election that happened five years ago and a search warrant to seize election materials from an election in progress. I understand why people are worried. But it’s not remotely the same.

The Vox article also addresses the worry that ICE will create chaos in Democratic cities in swing states — maybe Atlanta or Philadelphia or Milwaukee. The point would be to lower voter turnout and shift the state Republican. However, it’s just as likely that a heavy ICE presence would energize Democratic voters rather than deter them. Weiser concludes:

There is clearly an effort afoot to interfere in our elections and that is something that people should be alarmed about. But this can be thwarted. And it must be.

and Minneapolis (still)

If you think the regime has changed its tactics in Minneapolis, think again. Watch this video, for example. A woman is following an unmarked ICE vehicle when agents jump out with guns drawn on her. The quickness with which agents draw their guns tells you everything you need to know. Has there been a single incident in Minneapolis in which an agent drawing a gun was an appropriate response? I think not.

More senseless gun-drawing and tear-gassing is recorded here. And then there’s this incident:

Four days after ICE arrested a Rochester man who is the recipient of a kidney transplant, federal authorities still have not given him the life-saving medications he needs to prevent his body from rejecting the donated kidney, according to the man’s wife.

There hasn’t been a headline-grabbing ICE murder in the last couple of weeks. But that doesn’t mean anything has fundamentally changed.

Speaking of murder, Trump explains to NBC’s Tony Llamas how unfair it is to judge his immigration crackdown by the completely unjustified killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti: “two people out of tens of thousands, and you get bad publicity”.

Has anybody in history ever been treated more unfairly than Donald Trump? I mean, I get that two people are dead and their families will never see them again, but Trump has had to suffer through bad publicity. How can you not sympathize with him?

Yesterday I spoke to my minister, who was part of the clergy demonstrations in Minneapolis two weeks ago. He described a church in Minneapolis that invited families who are afraid to leave their homes to sign up online to have groceries delivered to them. They expected to get maybe a dozen responses, but instead they got hundreds. And they mobilized volunteers to deliver the food.

Fox News loves to describe the resistance in Minnesota as “a national network of socialist, communist and Marxist-Leninist cells in the United States” who are funded by “foreign adversaries“. But it’s neighbors helping neighbors, using free online tools (like Sign-Up Genius) to organize themselves.

Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis” was the most-downloaded song in the country last week.

Law Dork discusses a remarkable court transcript in Minnesota. You may have heard one quote from it, where the administration’s lawyer fantasizes about being held in contempt so that she can get some sleep.

The larger story is that lawyers and prosecutors have been resigning from the Minnesota office because the administration’s policies challenge them ethically. Simultaneously, ICE is arresting so many people for no reason that it’s hard to process all the court orders releasing them. So they remain in custody for no reason.

The judge, understandably, disapproves. “What you cannot do is detain first and sort out lawful authority later.”

and Trump’s racism

As anyone with a shred of objectivity knows, Donald Trump has been racist his whole life. NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie sums up:

For years, a cottage industry of political observers has contorted itself to obscure and occlude the obvious. That regardless of what others see in him, Trump’s entire political career — from his embrace of birtherism to his hatred of birthright citizenship — cannot be understood outside the context of his bitter, deep-seated racism.

Thursday night, he ended all legitimate doubt by posting a one-minute video that included an image of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, a common racist trope. After expressions of outrage even from friendly Republicans like South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the post was removed. But Trump insisted that he would not apologize because “I didn’t make a mistake.” He claimed he hadn’t watched the video all the way through, and so had missed the Obamas-as-apes part. Of course, reposting to millions of people videos you haven’t watched all the way to the end is not a “mistake”, and the people who do watch it to the end don’t deserve an apology.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denounced the “fake outrage” the video provoked. Obviously, no one could be genuinely offended by the President of the United States promoting a centuries-old slander that casts your people as subhuman.

A federal judge blocked Kristi Noem’s attempt to end temporary protected status for over 350K Haitians living in the US. The judge points out that Noem has attempted to block all 12 of the TPS designations that have come up for renewal during her tenure. The law establishing TPS had very specific condition for ending TPS status, and Noem has completely ignored them.

Notice, this has nothing to do with “illegal” immigration. TPS recipients come here legally, work, and play significant roles in some communities. These are the same people that J. D. Vance slandered as eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats.

and the Washington Post

That’s covered in one of the featured posts.

but I want to introduce you to somebody

The other featured post links to The Reframe, a Substack written by A. R. Moxon.

and the Kennedy Center

Putting Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center resulted in audiences staying away and artists canceling their performances. So Trump decided to take his ball and go home: The Trump-Kennedy Center will close for two years for renovations, starting on July 4.

The “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” is supposed to cost $200 million, which will either come from private donations or from money for “capital improvements” in the Big Beautiful Bill. NPR doesn’t see how this is possible, given that renovations on the David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center in New York cost $550 million for a less complicated space.

The Center has contracts that go beyond July 4: scheduled performances, employees contracted to work there, and so on. It’s not clear what will happen to them, or if anybody has even thought about them. Five unions issued a joint statement:

At this time, no formal notice or briefing has been provided to the unions of arts workers whose labor sustains the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. We only know of public statements issued by President Trump and an internal message to some Kennedy Center employees that reiterated the President’s social media remarks. A pause in Kennedy Center operations without due regard for those who work there would be harmful for the arts and creative workers in America. Should we receive formal notice of a temporary suspension of Kennedy Center operations that displaces our members, we will enforce our contracts and exercise all our rights under the law. We expect continued fair pay, enforceable worker protections, and accountability for our members in the event they cannot work due to an operational pause. Our members remain steadfast in bringing to life theatrical, music, opera, dance, and other live artistic performances in the nation’s capital that speak to and resonate with all Americans.

During his second term, Trump has put a lot of effort into making a mark on DC and the country that will live on after him. This project, I think, is doomed to fail. As soon as he is gone, the country will undo virtually everything he has done. From the Kennedy Center to the Gulf of Mexico, everything will get its pre-Trump name back. His battleship class will never sail. His ballroom will become something else entirely. His triumphal arch, if it gets built at all, will be torn down. The Trump Era is going to be remembered as a time of American shame. By the time he’s gone, not even his current supporters will want to commemorate it.

and you also might be interested in …

Economist Oren Cass wrote an important piece in the NYT: “The Finance Industry is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating it That Way“. Once, the banking industry was how people’s spare cash turned into houses, railroads, and factories. But the vast majority of what the finance industry does today is disconnected from the productive economy, and its profits are largely parasitic.

The Epstein survivors have released a new ad calling on Pam Bondi: “It’s time for the truth”.

When the Trump administration gets beat, it turns vindictive. We’ve seen that spiteful side in their unending persecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who they were forced to return to his family after illegally sending him to a concentration camp in El Salvador. Now we’re seeing the same hate unleashed against the family of Liam Ramos, the five-year-old whose detention became national news. A week ago Saturday, a federal judge ordered Liam and his father released from the concentration camp in Texas where they had been held since January 20. His ruling was scalding.

But of course, the regime can’t let that stand. So Wednesday they petitioned to expedite deportation hearings on Liam’s father, who came to the border legally, requested asylum from persecution in his home country of Ecuador, and is cooperating with the legal asylum process. Friday, a federal judge granted a continuance, slowing the process down. The reports I’ve seen so far don’t say for how long.

J. D. Vance got booed during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Milan. But if you were watching live in the US, you didn’t hear it; the rest of the world did. Best response is from Keith Oregel: “Imagine getting booed for being a fascist in Italy.”

February 9, 2026 – 12:31 pm Categories: Uncategorized | Comments (4)

Non-Cooperation

When does cooperation become complicity? And what other choice is there?

This morning I want to introduce you to a blogger a bit more radical than I am: A. R. Moxon, who writes a payment-optional Substack blog called The Reframe. I often have reservations about what he’s saying, but I find myself consistently challenged (in a good way). Maybe you will too.

Right now there’s a debate going on in Congress about funding DHS, and before that about funding a fairly large swath of the government. Democrats have tried to hone the issue down as small as possible, and to make only the most obvious common-sense demands in exchange for their support: ICE agents don’t wear masks, have to get judicial warrants, can be held accountable when they use excessive force, and so on. Even this is too much for Republicans, apparently. So Democrats will probably eventually water their position down even further to reach some kind of agreement.

This is usually explained as follows: Democrats want to appeal to a reasonable middle of the country, so that they can build a majority and regain power. Making more extreme demands might alienate the center and leave Republicans in power. That makes sense in its way, but more radical voices reject abandoning principle. When ICE may be building massive concentration camps, compromise makes no sense: Would you feel victorious if you got them to agree to fewer or smaller concentration camps? (“I’ll support Dachau if you agree not to build Auschwitz.”)

That’s the view that animates this week’s Reframe post “Hating the Game“. He starts small, with the MAGA meltdown over Bad Bunny headlining the Super Bowl halftime show. Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican, which makes him a native-born American citizen — unlike previous Super Bowl headliners like Paul McCartney, Sting, Phil Collins, and other English-speaking White males whose selection raised no controversy at all.

But Bad Bunny is brown-skinned and sings in Spanish, making him too “foreign” for MAGA’s nativist base. He is so unacceptable that Turning Point USA (founded by self-proclaimed non-racist Charlie Kirk) sponsored an “All American Halftime Show” featuring the washed-up-and-never-that-good Kid Rock, whose songs have never been described as family-friendly.

So OK, making fun of that is shooting fish in a barrel. (The Onion: “Conservatives Boycott All Forms Of Entertainment“.) But Moxon goes somewhere with it. He starts with this quote from The Washington Post:

Even if Bad Bunny doesn’t use the stage to explicitly condemn Trump’s deportation campaign, the dueling shows will highlight the nation’s deep divide over immigration, and his performance is likely to be viewed through that lens.

This kind of even-handed framing is so common that it may not even raise your hackles. But it raises Moxon’s:

The Post’s framing only makes sense if, as is often the case, the demand of white bigotry is being accommodated. You can be one of the most popular figures on the cultural landscape and it won’t matter; if white racists don’t like you, you’re controversial and polarizing. White racists, meanwhile, are never framed as divisive or polarizing, no, they’re always “concerned” or “anxious,” and the problem to be solved is never their racism, but always how best to assuage it.

From there, he describes three models of political engagement, which he calls the cooperation game, the murder game, and the non-cooperation game. MAGA, he says, is playing the murder game: They are using the machinery of government to dominate opponents and seize loot for themselves. Democrats are trying to play the cooperation game, where you are seeking common ground on which you can assemble a democratically governing majority. Moxon’s observation is that this doesn’t work.

It’s not just a bad idea to play the cooperation game with people playing the murder game—it’s an impossibility. When you act in good faith with those who have proved themselves capable of limitless bad faith, then you are no longer playing the cooperation game: you are merely cooperating with the murder game, and are, therefore, a participant not in the cooperation game, but the murder game.

He suggests playing the non-cooperation game: Stop giving the benefits of cooperation to those who have dedicated themselves to murder.

For the Super Bowl halftime show, non-cooperation looks like this:

Our response should not be “This response to Bad Bunny’s inclusion shows how divided we are, how can we stop this polarization?” Our response should be uncooperative: “The response to Bad Bunny’s inclusion shows just how racist our society is. Racists are angry about the halftime show? Good! Everything about our society should make racists feel alienated. How do we make racists feel even more alienated from even more of society??

More generally:

[Non-cooperation] can be strategic; refusing to grant even one vote toward the funding of a murderous government, until the death squads have been utterly abolished, and the vile white supremacist serial child rapist of a president who controls them has resigned, along with all of his cabinet, and submitted to prosecution. It can be legislative; refusing to allow voice votes, in order to grind down the apparatus of government. It can be social; refusing to fraternize with Republican colleagues, or refusing to serve members of Republican governments or their death squad in restaurants and businesses. It can be tactical: following the death squads and impeding their work; playing loud music to keep them awake; making them and their abuses known and shaming and shunning and excluding them for daring to murder their neighbors. It can be losing paperwork. It can be deliberately misunderstanding instructions. It can be purposefully dawdling. It can be tripping somebody up, getting them lost and turned around, obstructing the gears of brutality, sabotaging the engines of murder.

It’s not murder, and it’s not retributive; it’s removing all the benefits of human cooperation from all humans who play the murder game—not because we hate the humans (though it’s difficult not to hate people who would murder their neighbors, and I don’t shame those who can’t manage it), but because we hate their vile murderous game.

If you’re like me, you read The Reframe and think: “I don’t know if I’m ready for that.” (Example: Do we have to call it “the murder game”? Isn’t that needlessly off-putting?) But why not, exactly?

I’m calling attention to non-cooperation this week for a very specific reason: If the guardrails completely fail and Trump manages to cancel, steal, or ignore the midterm elections, then the only response short of violent revolution is the ultimate form of non-cooperation: the general strike. We need to start talking about it as a real possibility right now. We need to get the general public thinking about it and deciding how they will respond to it. Otherwise, if and when the need arises, most people will brush it off as impossible. But it’s not impossible. It’s an effective tactic whose roots go back to ancient Rome.

There are many possible layers of resistance to a fascist takeover. Currently, I’m counting on the courts and the elections. But if those fail, we’ll need to fall back to more radical tactics. The people who are too radical for us now may someday be our best friends.

While we’re talking about Bad Bunny, Trump hated his show: “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” Because, you know, Spanish. Nobody speaks it.

February 9, 2026 – 11:02 am Categories: Articles | Comments (15)

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Dying in Broad Daylight: The Washington Post

We’ve seen newspapers go into a death-spiral before. But who thought it could happen to The Washington Post?

Maybe you’ve seen this pattern with your own local newspaper: It has financial problems, so it lays off staff. Then the paper shrinks and has less to offer, so its readership declines, creating new financial problems. So the cycle repeats: more layoffs, less coverage, fewer readers, less revenue.

When that happens to a small-town paper (as it has, many, many times in the last 20 years or so), it’s tragic for the community the paper serves, but the rest of us barely notice. Now, however, it’s happening to one of the most storied, most influential newspapers in the United States: The Washington Post.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When the Graham family sold The Post, it looked for someone who had both the will and the resources to do right by one of the crown jewels of American journalism. And at the time, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos looked like the right choice. In The New Yorker, Post veteran Ruth Marcus described the moment like this:

On September 4, 2013, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos held his first meeting with the staff of the Washington Post, the newspaper he had agreed to purchase a month earlier from the Graham family, for two hundred and fifty million dollars. It had been a long and unsettling stretch for the paper’s staff. We—I was a deputy editor of the editorial page at the time—had suffered through years of retrenchment. We trusted that Don Graham would place us in capable hands, but we did not know this new owner, and he did not know or love our business in the way that the Graham family had. Bezos’s words at that meeting, about “a new golden era for the Washington Post,” were reassuring. Bob Woodward asked why he had purchased the paper, and Bezos was clear about the commitment he was prepared to make. “I finally concluded that I could provide runway—financial runway—because I don’t think you can keep shrinking the business,” he said. “You can be profitable and shrinking. And that’s a survival strategy, but it ultimately leads to irrelevance, at best. And, at worst, it leads to extinction.”

For a while, Bezos and The Post had favorable winds. The controversies of the first Trump administration drove the public’s interest in political coverage, and The Post rode that wave to build its online readership. Then the Biden administration set out to be boring (as good government often is) and largely succeeded. The Post began losing money, and even Trump’s return hasn’t turned that around.

Then Bezos stepped away from his white knight role and began interfering in the newsroom. He cancelled the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris at the last minute, shifted The Post’s stable of columnists sharply to the Right, and began currying favor with Donald Trump, who has the power to give or take billions from Amazon’s bottom line. Bezos’ most blatant and most corrupt move is playing out right now: He gave First Lady Melania Trump $40 million for the rights to make the Melania propaganda vehicle, and spent another $35 million promoting it. Yahoo reports that the film’s $7 million opening weekend was larger than expected [1] and high for a documentary, but

It’s hard to imagine a scenario where the film ends up making the $75 million back.

From the beginning, it was obvious that giving Melania $40 million could not be justified economically. It was a bribe.

Bezos appeared to miss one of the key factors about The Post’s potential audience: It appeals to people who want sound, fact-based coverage. But in the Trump era, those people are mostly liberals. Like Elon Musk before him, by bowing to Trump he was alienating most of his market base.

On the flip side, The Post hasn’t been able to bow sufficiently low to attract many MAGA readers.

So Wednesday, Bezos ordered a massive layoff, about 1/3 of The Post’s workforce. The sports department is gone, and the Books section, along with big chunks of its international coverage. (For example, the Ukraine bureau and the Middle East bureau.) The Metro section shrinks from around 40 staff members (already well below its peak) to maybe 12.

NPR analyzes:

Now the Post appears poised to appeal primarily to readers interested in issues about the U.S. government, with an emphasis on national security and American politics. … Several former editors said it appeared the paper was seeking to compete more with such specialized publications as Politico and Punchbowl rather than The New York Times.

Here’s how I think about it: Historically, the Post has been the local newspaper of a company town: the town is D. C. and the company is the US government. That made the Post interesting to a national audience, in addition to the people who wanted to keep up with the Redskins or know what was happening on the National Mall. The recent layoffs look like a decision to stop being a local newspaper in any but the most superficial sense. But simultaneously, Bezos’ decision to position the Post as a MAGA-friendly billionaire-favoring news outlet is alienating its mostly non-MAGA national base. Besides, Fox News and The Wall Street Journal already own that market.

The rest of the mainstream press has been mourning for what the Washington Post used to be, and blaming Bezos for failing to come up with a solution other than entering the doom-loop of diminishing quality and diminishing returns. Many have referenced the scene in Citizen Kane where Kane says he doesn’t care how much money his newspaper loses, because he can go on losing at this rate for sixty years.

Bezos is far richer than Kane (or William Randolph Hearst, the model for Kane). The Post’s losses are just a rounding error on Bezos’ net worth. He could go on losing at this rate forever.

However, it’s a bit unfair to blame him for refusing the Charles Foster Kane role. We, the news-consuming public, have no real claim on the Bezos fortune. [2]

For that reason, one of the most interesting takes on the Post’s situation is from Josh Marshall, who has shepherded Talking Points Memo from a one-man blog to a profitable news site. The necessities of business leave him little room for being sentimental about journalism. “Making payroll,” he says, “is a brutal taskmaster.”

He sees the Bezos/Post saga as one more example of the “billionaire white knight press baron doom cycle” (previously observed when Chris Hughes bought The New Republic in 2012). The billionaire comes in as a hero, ready to spend what it takes to turn around the flagging fortunes of some iconic news source. Why doesn’t that work? In a prophetic post last July, Marshall observed:

The super rich don’t like losing money, even if it’s at scales that are essentially meaningless to them. … Why did things go wrong when Bezos got involved and started making big changes [at the Post]? A big part of the answer is the consultants, the particular ones a guy like Bezos would gravitate toward. In short, he gravitated toward the ones who speak billionaire. Which is to say, the language of leverage, commercial paper, efficiencies, disruption, innovation, the big idea, etc. Why would he go to those people? Because that’s his social world. To the extent Bezos has peers they live in that world, work with those consultants, think in that way. … They have these ideas because, like Bezos, they are heavily plugged into the tech business, its assumptions, its business models. Critically, they are hyper-focused on scale and efficiencies — two things which can be positives but are mostly neither here nor there in terms of the challenges facing most news publications.

Marshall takes a both-sides-are-wrong attitude towards the Post. The business model of the 20th-century metro newspaper is dead, but Bezos is

defaulting to what was probably the biggest error of the first two decades of the 21st century on the business side of the journalism business: the idea that the dynamics, business concepts and mores of the tech world were applicable to the news business. They’re mostly not.

Bezos will probably bring in a new batch of non-journalist consultants when The Post’s decline continues, and so the doom loop will continue, until Bezos either closes the doors or sells to someone who understands what The Post can be in the current era.

[1] Possibly because military commanders pressured their subordinates to see the movie. Viewership dropped considerably in its second week.

[2] I will leave aside whether multi-billionaires like Bezos should face higher taxes, or whether the antitrust laws should apply to online monopolies like Amazon. I strongly support both propositions, but that’s a different conversation.

February 9, 2026 – 9:34 am Categories: Uncategorized | Comments (16)

The Monday Morning Teaser

The featured posts this week are two notes that started out in the weekly summary and grew beyond those bounds. The first is a look at the massive layoffs at the Washington Post and what they mean. That should be out a little after 9 EST. The second focuses on a blog a bit more radical than mine, The Reframe, and its strong position on non-cooperation with the Trump regime. That should appear around 10.

The weekly summary collects several views of Trump’s threats against he midterm elections from people more knowledgeable than I am. It also looks at how little has changed in Minneapolis since Trump appeared to announce a new policy, or at least new tactics. I’ll also discuss closing the Kennedy Center and a few other things. I’ll aim to get that out by noon.

February 9, 2026 – 8:22 am Categories: Morning tease | Post a comment