“Today marks the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s return to the presidency. We thought it would be the perfect occasion to look back at some of the low-lights of Year 1 of Trump 2.0 and imagine the diagnosis that the self-proclaimed cool heads would have ascribed to us Trump worrywarts if we had predicted even a fraction of what His Orange Eminence and Wannabe Nobel Peace Laureate went on to do. Actually, we know their diagnosis because they were not shy about telling us.” (01/20/26)
“From Greenland to Ukraine to Venezuela, President Donald Trump has relied on a dizzying diversity of definitions for peace over the past year. They range from ‘peace through strength’ (using tariffs or troops) to temporary and shaky ceasefires. He has brokered deals that offer security if the United States gains natural resources or that assume economic integration between rivals can alone ensure tranquility. He overarchingly sees his role as a ‘president of peace’ (an allusion to ‘prince of peace’) and as deserving of winning a Nobel Peace Prize or, at least, an actual winner’s gold medal given to him this month as a gift of gratitude. Lately, however, he’s warned that he does not feel ‘obliged to think purely of Peace.'” (01/20/25)
“Should we expect a four-year pitched battle? I see one brewing between the new communist mayor of New York City and those judges who respect law and the U.S. Constitution.” (01/20/26)
“‘The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must’ is a quote that has come down through the ages from the Greek historian Thucydides’[s] History of the Peloponnesian War, written in 416 BC. It has come to encapsulate the ‘might makes right’ philosophy in international relations and is embraced by some in the realist school of foreign policy. Such realists are mostly right about how the world still works, but have a PR problem in today’s milieu of woke platitudes in international relations. Despite the fact that the balance of power and spheres of influence still shape the worldview of the vast majority of global leaders, some of these strong countries usually dress up the reasons for their military interventions in terms of democratization, humanitarian ends, or their national security.” (01/20/26)
“As usual, today’s president, coming late to a long-standing problem, but presuming his original discovery of it, has made himself the issue. His acquisitiveness regarding Greenland has nothing to do with national security, and everything to do, as everything always does, with his fragile ego. He is pouting, and threatening aggression, because he has not received the Nobel Peace Prize. The Danes can perhaps take comfort from the fact that the president is contemplating military operations against another northern place. As this is being written, the Army is reportedly readying a potential deployment to Minnesota to quell disturbances stemming from ham-handed activities by the ludicrously — and lethally — militarized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. During all this, the president has announced he will order that no other football game can be televised during the annual Army-Navy game.” (01/20/26)
“Around the United States, the rebellions against President Donald Trump’s militarized Immigration and Customs Enforcement invasions (bolstered by other agencies including the National Guard and, at least in one case, actual Marines) continue. National headlines have mostly skipped over Memphis, perhaps because it’s a smaller city in the South, far from the headquarters of national media. On the ground in Memphis, local policy organizer Amber Sherman explained, the fear (and resistance) are similar to what we see in bigger cities. It’s not so much the National Guard, she said, but around the city, there are some 1,500 federal agents from the so-called Memphis Safe Task Force working alongside existing police and using traffic stops (reportedly more than 35,000 in two months) as a way to get their hands on people. This is the very issue (pretextual stops) that Memphis activists organized against so effectively after police killed artist and skateboarder Tyre Nichols two years ago.” (01/21/25)
“Missouri’s Sunshine Law was a product of the Watergate era, passed in 1973 with a clear message: the public’s business should be done in public. But in the decades since, while the language has been modestly updated, the spirit of the law has too often been ignored — and in some cases, actively undermined. Across Missouri, public officials routinely delay, dodge, or deny access to information that taxpayers are entitled to. They charge outrageous fees, cite vague exemptions, lose track of requests, or hide behind non-disclosure agreements, treating transparency as a nuisance rather than a requirement.” (01/20/26)
“For more than 80 years, the law has been clear. The government can’t force public school children to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. One Tennessee school was either oblivious to this settled First Amendment principle or chose to ignore it. But thanks to a letter from FIRE, the school district has stepped in and promised to investigate.” (01/20/26)
“In my opinion, if I pay to own something, I’ve paid to own all the things it can do … assuming I can figure out how to make it do those things. The manufacturers of ”owned,’ but with subscription-only features’ goods, though, frown on homebrew tinkerers jail-breaking those products instead of forking over cash in perpetuity. And they’ve got ‘intellectual property’ law on their side. They don’t have to care about your happiness.” (01/20/26)
