Category: Opinion

Source: Mindset Shifts
by Barry Brownstein

“Let’s start change with ourselves; societal flourishing doesn’t come from politics.” (01/21/25)

https://mindsetshifts.substack.com/p/is-there-hope-in-politics

Source: Fox News
by Liz Peek

“Democrats are in freefall. As of Monday, Donald J. Trump is officially the 47th president of the United States. He starts his second term in the Oval Office with a bang – rolling out dozens of executive orders fulfilling promises made to American voters — and more popular than he has ever been. Democrats have no idea how to respond. Their party is currently earning its lowest approval ratings ever, for good reason. It is guilty of perpetrating the greatest political scandal of our lifetimes — pretending President Joe Biden was OK to run for another four years. Their efforts to brand Donald Trump a threat to Democracy were a bust and their leadership is in disarray. They deserve every minute they serve in political purgatory. A former communications director for Kamala Harris says Democrats ‘got to burn down our image’. He’s right. The party’s trials will not end soon.” (01/21/25)

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/liz-peek-donald-trump-our-president-democrats-have-no-idea-what-do

Source: Law & Liberty
by Miles Smith IV

“There have certainly been examples where the spread of conspiracy theories and false information has proved harmful — one thinks of the 2016 Pizzagate incident where a North Carolina man was imprisoned after firing a rifle at a Washington, DC, pizza restaurant he believed was hiding a pedophile ring. But the idea that governments are more trustworthy than the citizenry or the free press is specious, particularly in light of worldwide government mismanagement of the covid pandemic and how basic civil rights have been curtailed across the West by governments left, right, and center. In the United States, the press understood itself until very recently to be a check on state power and to hold state declarations accountable, not to be a vehicle for state-codified information.” (01/21/25)

https://lawliberty.org/americas-free-press-tradition/

Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson

“Donald Trump really is a vindictive would-be caudillo who is going to have to be constrained by the courts on any number of fronts, and taking prosecutions off the table — of Anthony Fauci, of members of the January 6 committee of investigation, notably Liz Cheney, etc. — might save the republic some unwanted convulsions. But there are problems, too: Biden’s decision to pardon people who have not been investigated — much less charged with or convicted of — any crime has no obvious precedent in law.” [editor’s note: Nixon was never charged with or convicted – TLK] (01/21/25)

https://thedispatch.com/article/presidents-and-precedents/

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Alexandra Sitenko

“President Donald Trump has caused quite a stir in the media in recent months with his bold statements on a diplomatic solution to the military conflict in and around Ukraine. One of his moves in this direction at the beginning of December was a phone call with Kazakhstan’s president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev asking the latter for his opinion on the issue. The fact that Trump would pick up the phone to talk to Tokayev suggests that Kazakhstan could play a role as an actor in the search for a diplomatic solution in Ukraine. Furthermore, it underscores Central Asia’s potential to shape the peace and security architecture in Eurasia and beyond. In view of the aspirations of the new Trump administration, it is likely that U.S. policy towards Central Asia may be in line for an upgrade.” (01/21/25)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/central-asian-countries-trump/

Source: Common Dreams
by Jorge Majfud

“Augustus liquidated the Roman Republic a generation before Christ by appealing to religion, presenting himself as Apollo’s favorite, placing the senate under his authority, and becoming the first Roman emperor. He promoted upper-class birthrates, traditionalist moralism, and patriotic literature, such as Virgil’s commissioned Aeneid, a classic of political propaganda based on nonexistent facts about Rome’s past greatness. Augustus capitalized on the social instability of the moment with a charismatic, demagogic, and strategic speech about making Rome great again under the symbol of the Golden Eagle. Half a millennium later, Augustulus was the last emperor of the Western Empire, defeated by the Germanic barbarians. The American Empire, the most powerful in human history, is probably also the shortest. It has held that title for one-tenth as long as the Roman Empire in Europe and one-hundredth as long as the Eastern Empire.” (01/21/25)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-american-empire

Source: CounterPunch
by Kathleen Wallace

“The threat of banning a social media platform so many used actually pushed many Gen Z members to download a Chinese social media app deliciously named Red Note. This is a magnificent fuck around and find out moment.” (01/21/25)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/21/the-red-note-white-and-blue/

Source: Antiwar.com
by Ron Paul

“By the time most of you read this column, we will have a new US President. Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated for his second term today at 11:30 AM, Eastern time, and many Americans are hopeful that the disastrous foreign policy of the past four years under Biden will be improved. There is good news and bad news.” (01/21/25)

https://original.antiwar.com/paul/2025/01/20/can-trump-fix-our-broken-foreign-policy/

Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
by Ilya Somin

“Donald Trump announced today a wide range of planned executive orders and other actions. Several of them are dangerous and illegal abuses of power. This post is a nonexhaustive list, focusing primarily on issues where I have some expertise, and (in many cases) I have written about them previously.” (01/20/25)

https://reason.com/volokh/2025/01/20/trumps-illegal-first-day-executive-actions/

Source: New York Post
by Jonathan Turley

“On January 20, 2025, the ‘shock and awe’ campaign of the Justice Department came to an end as President Donald Trump pardoned 1,500 January 6th defendants. Four years ago, the Justice Department set out to send a chilling message to the nation. In an interview with CBS News a year later, Justice Department official Michael Sherwin indicated that they wanted to send a message with the harsh treatment of defendants. Sherwin explained that ‘our office wanted to ensure that there was shock and awe … it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C. because they’re, like, ‘If we go there, we’re gonna get charged.’ … We wanted to take out those individuals that essentially were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did.’ The awe is gone but the shock remains at the Justice Department.” (01/21/25)

https://nypost.com/2025/01/20/opinion/how-prosecutors-turned-january-6-rioters-into-martyrs/