About Joe Weber

Now the Jerry and Karla Huse Professor Emeritus at the University of Nebraska's College of Journalism and Mass Communications, I worked 35 years in magazines and newspapers. I spent most of that time, 22 years, at BUSINESS WEEK Magazine, leaving in August 2009 as chief of correspondents. So far, I have worked in central New Jersey, New York City, Denver, Dallas, Philadelphia, Toronto, Chicago, Beijing, Shanghai and Lincoln, Nebraska. The adventure continues.

Is the worm turning?

Posted on January 26, 2026 by Joe Weber

Lies by Trump and his minions seem to be catching up with them at last

Joseph Weber

In a 1967 essay for The New Yorker, the German-Jewish writer and philosopher Hannah Arendt shared unsettling thoughts that speak loudly to us now, nearly 60 years later.

“Truth, though powerless and always defeated in a head-on clash with the powers that be, possesses a strength of its own: whatever those in power may contrive, they are unable to discover or invent a viable substitute for it,” she wrote in the piece titled “Truth and Politics.”

“Persuasion and violence can destroy truth, but they cannot replace it,” the sometimes-enigmatic author of “The Origins of Totalitarianism” wrote. Truth, she added, is “hated by tyrants, who rightly fear the competition of a coercive force they cannot monopolize …”

With the lies upon lies that Donald J. Trump and his minions tell about their now-twice murderous actions in Minneapolis, Arendt’s insights about totalitarians spring to mind. For tyrants, she wrote: “Unwelcome opinion can be argued with, rejected, or compromised upon, but unwelcome facts possess an infuriating stubbornness that nothing can move except plain lies.”

Thus, we hear protesters – including a lawyer and a school board member, as well as an ICU nurse and a poet – described as “anarchists,” and “deranged leftists.” Alex Pretti, the murdered VA hospital intensive care nurse, we’re told by Trump lapdog Stephen Miller, was a “would-be assassin.” Border patrol commander Gregory Bovino, fond of Nazi-like outfits, insisted Pretti intended to “massacre law enforcement” and had “violently resisted” before his men killed him.

Never mind that videos of the killings of both Renee Good and Pretti have shown Americans starkly different realities. “Without waiting for facts, the Trump team has advanced one-sided narratives to justify each of the killings and demonize the victims,” a New York Times reporter wrote.

“The trick is that the Trump versions of reality have collided with bystander videos watched by millions who did not see what they were told,” reporter Peter Baker wrote. “Ms. Good did not run over the ICE agent who killed her; a video analysis suggested she was trying to turn away from him and he continued to shoot her even as she passed him. Mr. Pretti approached officers with a phone in his hand, not a gun; he moved to help a woman who was pepper sprayed and he was under a pileup of agents when one suddenly shot him in the back.”

In bids to buttress their lies, officials produced images of a gun Pretti carried – legally – that they had grabbed from his waistband. Never mind that he hadn’t pulled the weapon, hadn’t held it, hadn’t pointed it at anyone.

The question, of course, is how many Americans buy the lies that the Trumpists sell.

“When I hear the officials from the Trump administration describe this video in ways that simply aren’t true, I just keep thinking, ‘Your eyes don’t lie,’” Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said on “Meet the Press”. “The American people aren’t sitting at a Trump cabinet meeting having to say everything to make him happy. They’re going to make their own judgments.”

Indeed, the worm seems to be turning on Trump. Some 57 percent of people responding in an Economist/You Gov poll now say Trump is not honest and trustworthy, while 55 percent dislike him as a person. Only 32 percent find the president honest and fewer, 30 percent, like him.

That poll was conducted between Jan. 16 and 19, and thus followed the Jan. 7 shooting of Good but preceded Pretti’s murder on Jan. 24. Only 29 percent said Good’s shooting was justified, while 56 percent said it wasn’t. Even more, 66 percent, said the ICE shooter, Jonathan Ross, should be investigated.

So far, only a handful of Republican politicians have agreed with most of those respondents.

As reported by PBS, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy said on social media that the shooting was “incredibly disturbing” and that the “credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake.” Cassidy, who is facing a Trump-backed challenger in his reelection bid, pushed for “a full joint federal and state investigation.” North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who is not seeking reelection, urged a “thorough and impartial investigation” and said “any administration official who rushes to judgment and tries to shut down an investigation before it begins are doing an incredible disservice to the nation and to President Trump’s legacy.”

Even Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts, a staunch ally of Trump, called for a “prioritized, transparent investigation.” Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, echoing that call, added that “ICE agents do not have carte blanche in carrying out their duties.” And Maine’s Susan Collins, facing reelection in a state Democrat Kamala Harris carried in 2024, said a probe is needed “to determine whether or not excessive force was used in a situation that may have been able to be diffused without violence.”

But will Trump and his minions heed the will of most Americans and these dissenters in the GOP? Encouragingly, Trump at last seems to be signaling a change, suggesting he will cut back on the number of ICE agents in Minnesota, according to officials in Gov. Tim Walz’s office.

This follows a Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “Time for ICE to Pause in Minneapolis” that called out the administration lies, particularly about Pretti.

“The Trump Administration spin on this simply isn’t believable,” the piece said. “Stephen Miller, the political architect of the mass deportation policy, called Pretti a ‘domestic terrorist.’ He was a nurse without a criminal record.”

Going further, the WSJ argued that Pretti’s shooting “as he lay on the ground surrounded by ICE agents, is the worst incident to date in what is becoming a moral and political debacle for the Trump Presidency.”

As Arendt contended just under 60 years ago: “Seen from the viewpoint of politics, truth has a despotic character…. In other words, the more successful a liar is, the more likely it is that he will fall prey to his own fabrications.”

With the ICE and Border Patrol murders in Minneapolis, at least some of the many fabrications by Trump and his acolytes are finally catching up with this White House. If morality and decency aren’t enough for them, the stench of political reversals may be strong enough to move them — at least for now.

Brutality, it seems, is the point

Posted on January 22, 2026 by Joe Weber

Echoes of Italian fascism cannot be accidental for Stephen Miller and Donald Trump

Joseph Weber

Just over a century ago, in January 1925, Benito Mussolini laid out the vision for his emerging dictatorship to Italy’s Chamber of Deputies. “When two irreducible elements are locked in a struggle, the only solution is force,” he said.

Mussolini, like Donald J. Trump, was long derided as a buffoon before he seized power. But he knew how effective brutality could be.

Mussolini had risen with the help of the “squadristi,” paramilitary outfits also known as Blackshirts, who terrorized cities, such as Bologna, where socialists had been elected. “Town after town was taken over by fascist thugs,” according to the Foundation for the History of Totalitarianism. “Local democratic institutions fell, one by one. Once towns were taken over, control and obedience was maintained through torture and terror.”

Are we seeing a revival of Mussolini’s approach today?

Is it reappearing by way of Stephen Miller, an adviser to Trump who seems to have the president’s ear on everything from anti-immigrant efforts to foreign policy? “But we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world,” Miller said in a CNN interview.

It seems hardly accidental that Miller is parroting the long-dead dictator. Certainly, Miller, through his influence on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is normalizing squadristi-like practices on American streets. Brutality seems to be his point.

Consider this Stateline report:

“Violence in immigration enforcement is on the rise. A federal immigration agent’s killing of Renee Good in Minnesota on Jan. 7 was one of half a dozen shootings since December. An immigrant’s death in a Texas detention facility this month was ruled a homicide. And detention deaths last year totaled at least 31, a two-decade peak and more than the previous four years combined.

“There also have been dozens of cases in the past year of agents using dangerous and federally banned arrest maneuvers, such as chokeholds, that can stop breathing.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in masks and tactical vests have been recorded firing pepper spray into the faces of protesters, shattering car windows with little warning, punching and kneeing people pinned face down on the ground, using battering rams on front doors, and questioning people of color about their identities.”

And give some thought to the phrasing in this November ruling by a federal judge in Illinois: “While defendants argue that they used less lethal force as a de-escalation technique to reduce the risk of harm to both agents and the public, plaintiffs have marshaled ample evidence that agents intended to cause protesters harm and that no legitimate governmental interest justified their actions.”

Think, for a moment, about these observations by New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall: “In its efforts to triple the number of ICE agents in the field, the administration has adopted recruitment strategies that appear to be designed to appeal to white nationalists and supremacists, including the use of what amounts to an unofficial anthem of theirs, ‘We’ll Have Our Home Again,’ in a recruitment ad.”

“According to numerous reports, the Department of Homeland Security has cut back on new employees’ training about abiding by constraints during potentially hazardous confrontations,” Edsall adds. “In addition, the Trump administration, according to court documents, fails to enforce those rules and regulations in places such as Minneapolis.”

For the squadristi, who celebrated their raids with “alcohol, laughter and song,” and launched them with “[c]heerful photographs transmitting pride and brute-masculinity,” brutality was the point. Is that now the case with the Miller-guided ICE policies?

Certainly, the echoes of Italian Fascism and German Nazism – or at least their appeal to modern white supremacists – are not coincidental.

A writer for Vox, in a mid-January piece titled “The Trump Administration Can’t Stop Winking at White Nationalists,” nailed this.

“The administration opted to associate its immigration agenda with a Nazi slogan: Adolf Hitler’s regime famously advertised its rule with the tagline “One people, one realm, one leader,” Eric Levitz noted. “Three days after Renee Good’s killing, Trump’s Department of Labor tweeted, ‘One Homeland. One People. One Heritage. Remember who you are, American.’

Under Trump, he reported, the official accounts of federal agencies have repeatedly referred to white nationalist memes and works.

“On Jan. 9, the Department of Homeland Security posted, ‘We’ll have our home again,’ a lyric from an anthem adopted by the neofascist group the Proud Boys and other white nationalist organizations. This was accompanied by a link where one could sign up to join ICE.

“Last August, D.H.S. shared an ICE recruitment poster beneath the phrase ‘Which way, American man?’ — an apparent reference to the white supremacist tract, “Which Way, Western Man?’ which argues that “race consciousness, and discrimination on the basis of race, are absolutely essential to any race’s survival. … That is why the Jews are so fiercely for it for themselves … and fiercely against it for us, because we are their intended victim.”

“In October, the U.S. Border Patrol posted a video on its Facebook page of agents loading guns and driving through the desert, as a 13-second clip of Michael Jackson’s song “They Don’t Care About Us” plays — specifically, the lines ‘Jew me, sue me, everybody do me, kick me, k*ke me.’”

By all appearances, Miller’s ICE and Border Patrol agencies want to recruit the most brutal racist low-lifes they can find.

“The Department of Homeland Security has spoken publicly about its fast-tracked effort to significantly increase ICE’s workforce by hiring more than 10,000 new employees, a surge promoted on social media with calls for recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders,” The Washington Post reported. “The agency currently employs more than 20,000 people, according to ICE’s website.”

The type of person DHS wants seems clear, and that is sort who would have fit in well with the squadristi.

“On social media, administration accounts have mixed immigration raid footage with memes from action movies and video games to portray ICE’s mission as a fight against the ‘enemies … at the gates,’ the Post reported. ‘Want to deport illegals with your absolute boys?’ one post says. ‘Are you going to cowboy up or just lay there and bleed?’ says another.”

Trump and his aides such as Miller seem to know exactly what they are doing. Trump, a narcissist, craves power and wants more than anything to project “strength.” And Miller – ironically, a Jew – seems to see fascistic approaches as the way to serve his boss best.

Of the two, Miller’s psyche is the more perplexing and, probably, the more dangerous. Someday, perhaps, we’ll fully understand the likely self-hating psychology that animates him.

His hostility to non-white people appears to have begun in high school, but it congealed at Duke University. There, Miller worked with white nationalist classmate Richard Spencer, as members of Duke’s Conservative Union, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The two helped bring white nationalist Peter Brimelow to campus in 2007.

Of course, that doesn’t get to the root of Miller’s pathology. But, we also have some insight from Miller’s uncle, retired neuropsychologist David S. Glosser. In a 2018 piece for Politico, he labeled his nephew an “immigration hypocrite,” saying his family would have been wiped out in Europe if Miller’s approaches to immigration had been adopted a century before.

“I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country,” Glosser wrote. “Acting for so long in the theater of right-wing politics, Stephen and Trump may have become numb to the resultant human tragedy and blind to the hypocrisy of their policy decisions.”

Sadly, Glosser may have been mistaken on one point. Neither Trump nor Miller seem numb to the brutality. Like Mussolini and the Blackshirts, they seem to exult in it.

Propaganda or news?

Posted on January 21, 2026 by Joe Weber

Sad and outrageous incidents don’t paint the full picture

Joseph Weber

Decades ago, sci-fi writer Robert A. Heinlein put some powerful words into the mouth of one of his memorable characters, Zebadiah “Zeb” Jones. “You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic,” Jones said.

The line appeared in a story about a rebellion against a theocratic government that had taken hold of the United States, “If This Goes On—,” a story first published in 1940. It appears in Heinlein’s collection, “Revolt in 2100.”

I’m reminded of this by some fascinating exchanges on a family chat site. They point to the peculiar hold that the Trump Administration seems to have on a substantial chunk of the American public. They also underscore the power of propaganda.

In the family chat, a dear relative who supports many of the president’s anti-immigrant actions often replies to criticisms of Trumpian policies with examples of outrages committed by undocumented folks.

One, drawn from Fox News, refers to the death of an 8-year-old girl in Boise, Idaho, in a pickup truck crash. The driver, we’re told, was an “illegal alien released into the country by the Obama administration who was provided a driver’s license by a sanctuary state and was eventually ordered to be deported.”

Another outrage, from a New Jersey radio station, details the attempted-murder charges against a Venezuelan national in north Jersey, apparently after a pre-dawn fight. His unidentified victim, we’re told, was hospitalized with “non-life-threatening injuries.”

Perhaps the most unsettling, though, is a third one, a Facebook post by comedian Terrence K. Williams saying “Four MS-13 illegal aliens have been arrested in Maryland after they hacked a 14-year-old boy to death with a machete.” The comedian added: “This is why we stand with ICE. So violent criminals are removed before they destroy families.”

All these involve ugly events. To my relative, the incidents apparently prove how immigrants pose horrific threats to Americans and must be driven out at whatever cost. With each, I suspect, readers of a certain bent will nod, find confirmation for their beliefs, and will be thankful for Trump and ICE.

But let’s look more closely. In the first case, every fatal pickup truck crash is awful, of course. We have about 20,000 such crashes each year in the U.S. But how many, one wonders, involve undocumented drivers? How much more likely is it that the vast majority involve homegrown Americans?

And does the one terribly sad case involving a child prove that undocumented drivers pose an inordinate threat? Does that case prove anything, in fact, other than that it was one awful accident, one among many?

And then there’s the early-morning fight that led to a New Jersey woman’s hospitalization. Do we know anything, really, about this case? Were the parties related or involved with one another?

All across the U.S., nearly 70 women are shot to death each month by their domestic partners. Might this have been something like that? And is it relevant that this shooter was a Venezuelan national? Does it suggest that such immigrants are more dangerous than the far greater number of homegrown Americans involved in such killings?

As for the men who allegedly killed a 14-year-old, it’s not clear that the four suspects charged in the ghoulish case were immigrants or were members of MS-13. So far, all that the police have said is that the killing appears to be gang-related and the victim knew one of his assailants. All involved appear to be Latinos.

We don’t have all the facts, though that didn’t stop the comedian from jumping to conclusions. And, even if all those charged were undocumented, does that prove anything about how big a threat such folks are to non-gang Americans?

Awful as such things are, gangsters of all nationalities have been killing one another for decades. For years, the Mafia made an industry of this and yet Italians haven’t been targets of mass deportations.

These cases remind me of an adage those of us in journalism education drive home to students: “the plural of anecdote is not data.” In other words, you can usually find cases to make just about any point you want to make, often with a potent emotional punch.

Fox News and anecdote-besotted politicians such as Trump know too well how to manipulate audiences with such cases.

But the question we must always ask is “do the data really support that point?”

Despite the cases my relative cited, numerous studies have shown that undocumented immigrants are involved far less in crime than American-born people are, for instance. One Department of Justice study, focusing on Texas, found that “undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.”

As The Brennan Center reported last May, “the arrival of record numbers of immigrants at the United States–Mexico border over the past two years has not corresponded with an overall increase in crime in so-called “blue” cities where many of the recent arrivals have settled. In most places, the opposite has happened — crime, including violent crime, has trended downward (other than larceny and a small increase in robbery) after peaking across the country in 2020.”

Of course, the exchanges on our family chat were generated by the murder of Renee Good and the presence of nearly 3,000 ICE agents in Minneapolis. Each day, it seems, we are confronted with more examples of outrages not by immigrants, but by such agents.

Minneapolis residents opposed to what they see as a federal invasion of their city document by phone illegal raids on homes, harassment of people on the streets, rousting of innocent citizens in stores. Our Facebook feeds are filled daily with such imagery. And journalists are reporting on the fear that keeps innocents in hiding, afraid even to go to the grocery store.

Yes, these incidents – numerous as they are — are anecdotes, too. We don’t yet have the data to show how pervasive the abuses have been. Indeed, while Homeland Security officials say they’ve made some 3,000 arrests so far, we also don’t know how many involve violent criminals or just innocents whose only offense was fleeing into the U.S., or even those protesting the presence of masked armed men on their streets.

But the anecdotes of abuses do take on more power when elected leaders such as the mayor of Minneapolis, the state’s attorney general and the governor condemn the presence of the uninvited federal forces – and sue to have them removed. They do appear to represent a pattern, even if we don’t have the full picture yet.

And, when some of these leaders are subjected to Justice Department harassment, the pattern grows even darker.

Thanks to social media and the well-honed anti-immigrant propaganda spouted by Washington officials, the sad, broader truths about how the ordinary lives of Americans are being upended are being obfuscated. This has been the case in cities ranging from Chicago and Los Angeles to Minneapolis and, now, to smaller cities in Maine, where the ICE operation is called “Catch of Day.”

Maine, as it happens, has been a popular haven for Somalis, much as Minnesota has been. So ICE seems to see it as a target-rich environment.

A government official quoted by NBC did not say how many arrests were made during the first day of the Maine operation. But in a statement, she said officers had “arrested illegal aliens convicted of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and endangering the welfare of a child.” She pointed to four examples among those arrested, though she offered few details that would provide fuller pictures of their cases.

Already, however, local officials are wary that Mainers may face the same sorts of excesses that those in Minnesota have suffered.

Carl Sheline, Lewiston’s mayor, condemned the latest ICE action, for instance. “These masked men with no regard for the rule of law are causing long-term damage to our state and to our country,” he said, as The Washington Post reported. “Lewiston stands for the dignity of all people who call Maine home.”

Gov. Janet Mills also had sharp words for the Trump Administration.

“To the federal government, I say this: If your plan is to come here to be provocative and to undermine the civil rights of Maine residents, do not be confused — those tactics are not welcome here,” she said. “Maine knows what good law enforcement looks like …. They don’t wear a mask to shield their identities, and they don’t arrest people to fill quotas.”

Soon, we might expect, we’ll see more examples of shoddy law enforcement. Will Americans see the broader picture or will they fall for the propaganda? Will they be suckered by cases that appeal to their prejudices or will they use their sense of logic?

Is the law “a ass?”

Posted on January 17, 2026 by Joe Weber

Or are there just asses misusing it?

Joseph Weber

Jan 17, 202

Charles Dickens had little use for the law. His “Bleak House” focused on an endless court case that deprived a family of an inheritance. And in “Oliver Twist” the writer gives us the cruel and pompous beadle of a poorhouse, Mr. Bumble, who memorably – if ungrammatically — says: “… the law is a ass—an idiot.”

Justice? That’s pretty much impossible in Dickens’s world.

It was a bit different for Roy Cohn, the notorious disbarred lawyer who was Donald J. Trump’s first legal muse. Justice and truth were irrelevant for him. Cohn taught Trump to use the legal system as a weapon, not a means for recourse, as the publishers Berrett-Koehler report. Lawsuits, the long-dead Cohn held, were instruments of intimidate, designed to punish, harass and silence.

And now, in the hands of Trump, the U.S. Justice Department seems like an even more powerful tool for such aims. But is it? Some of the pushback to Trump’s lawfare gives us all reason for hope.

Consider Exhibit A, the subpoenas issued for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. As The Washington Post reports, the DoJ is investigating whether the two Democrats are impeding federal law enforcement officers’ abilities to do their jobs. “The subpoenas suggest that the Justice Department is examining whether Walz’s and Frey’s public statements disparaging the surge of officers and federal actions have amounted to criminal interference in law enforcement work,” the paper reports.

Of course, there’s no doubt that Walz and Frey and much of the citizenry of Minneapolis want the nearly 3,000 federal immigration officers out. “Get the f**k out of Minneapolis,” Frey memorably said after agent Jonathan D. Ross shot Renee Nicole Macklin Good to death. For his part, Walz called on Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to “end this occupation.”

Walz went further. The governor urged Minnesotans to “protest loudly, urgently, but also peacefully…. If you see these ICE agents in your neighborhood, take out that phone and hit record … Help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans, not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution.”

Even as Trump’s Justice Department minions try to bludgeon the two leaders legally, however, Minnesota (like Illinois) and Minneapolis and St. Paul have sued to drive ICE out. Those suits seem to be uphill efforts, but as the case proceeds federal Judge Katherine Menendez hearteningly ordered the agents to stop pepper spraying, detaining and pulling over peaceful protesters.

Judge Katherine Menendez; source: Wikipedia

Recognizing their free-speech rights, her temporary injunction prohibits “retaliating against persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity, including observing the activities of Operation Metro Surge,” as NBC News reported.

Despite the Trumpian perversions, the law still can be used to pursue justice – but it requires people of goodwill and sound conscience to see to that.

Take a look at Exhibit B. Trump’s lackeys atop the Justice Department have pushed to investigate the murdered driver, Good, not her assailant. That led six principled federal prosecutors in Minnesota to quit, along with four leaders of DoJ’s civil rights division, which investigates the use of force by police officers. Those lawyers apparently were revolted by the decision by a Trumpy assistant attorney general for civil rights to not investigate the killing of Good.

In this case, as in others, is it the law that is the ass here or are there just asses manipulating it?

Of course, we should consider Exhibit C, Trump’s on-again off-again threat to send the U.S. military into Minneapolis under the Insurrection Act. “If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump wrote in a Jan. 15 social media post.

The night before, one of Trump’s toadies, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, said Walz and Frey needed to be stopped from their “terrorism.”

“Minnesota insurrection is a direct result of a FAILED governor and a TERRIBLE mayor encouraging violence against law enforcement. It’s disgusting,” the Trump lapdog, Blanche, posted on X. “Walz and Frey — I’m focused on stopping YOU from your terrorism by whatever means necessary. This is not a threat. It’s a promise.”

It would appear that Blanche is Trump’s latter-day Cohn.

But Trump walked back his Insurrection Act threat after a few Republican senators dissuaded him. “I have felt that since the fatal shooting [of Good] a week or so ago that we needed to be very, very careful, very cautious in how we proceed, not only in Minnesota but in other areas, to keep the conflict — the potential for conflict as it relates to ICE enforcement — dialed back,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told The Hill. “I’ve said several times that this feels like a climate that we went through during the time of George Floyd,.”

It’s too early, though, to count out Trump’s misuse of the military. Flush with the Pentagon’s success in Venezuela, the president surely will be tempted to turn its guns on American citizens who offend or defy him, much as Nicolás Maduro did. Defiance seems to stir Trump more than anything.

That leads us to Exhibit D, the absurd investigations into Sen. Mark Kelly and other lawmakers who counseled soldiers that they can refuse illegal orders. Three House Democrats and two senators are under the gun there. Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger, said Trump is “using his political cronies in the Department of Justice to continue to threaten and intimidate us.”

“But he’s picked the wrong people,” the Colorado congressman said in a video post on X. “We took an oath to the Constitution, a lifetime oath when we joined the military and again as members of Congress. We are not going to back away. Our job, our duty is to make sure that the law is followed. We will not be threatened, we will not be intimidated, we will not be silenced.”

Sen. Mark Kelly; source: The Washington Post

For his part, Kelly has sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth challenging the Department of Defense’s decision to formally censure him and move to reduce his retired military rank and pension. Kelly is a retired Navy captain and a potential 2028 presidential candidate whose stature likely has been helped by Hegseth’s assault on him.

For all the efforts by Trump and his acolytes to bend the law to their purposes, conscientious judges like Minneapolis’s Menendez have served as a bulwark against the overreaches. More than 300 federal judges, including appointees of every president since Ronald Reagan, have rebuffed Trump’s efforts to expand a so-called “mandatory detention” policy, POLITICO reported. Those judges have ordered immigrants’ release or the opportunity for bond hearings in more than 1,600 cases.

And dozens more have ordered the administration to release immigrants yanked off the street without due process or held for prolonged periods even though no country has agreed to accept them, the outlet reported.

Some judges who have stood in Trump’s way have done so at great personal risk. Reuters reported last May that the families of at least 11 federal judges have faced threats of violence or harassment after they ruled against Trump actions. Reuters identified more than 600 posts on social media and right-leaning message boards targeting family members of such judges.

“Hey you f**k I hope some terrorist kills you and your family,” one grammatically challenged email sent to a federal judge said. “Just because your a judge doesn’t give you immortality.”

Examples abound of so-called lawfare or abuses of the legal system by Trump and his allies – and, encouragingly, they often rebound against the administration.

The launch of a criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell spurred Republican leaders to defend the Fed’s independence, for instance. Wrongfully deported immigrant Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s court victories have been a continuing embarrassment for Trump and his minions. And an assistant U.S. Attorney apologized in court for the deportation of 19-year-old Babson College freshman Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, saying an ICE agent had mistakenly flouted a court order keeping her in the U.S.

As any lawyer will admit, though, courts are often flawed vehicles for pursuing fairness.

Novelist Raymond Chandler went even further in “The Long Goodbye.” His character, lawyer Sewell Endicott, argues: “The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.”

Sadly, such cynicism is mirrored by Blanche, Cohn and Trump. To their credit — and at their peril, but to society’s gain — plenty of judges and litigants are pushing back on the abuses, however. May they prevail and serve us all.

First, they must be dehumanized

Posted on January 10, 2026 by Joe Weber

Trump and his minions cast enemies and opponents as subhuman

Joseph Weber

Good moments before her murder; source: Fortune

Six years ago, Renee Nicole Macklin Good won an Academy of American Poets Prize for a piece trying to reconcile the wonders of science and faith.

Her work, “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” includes the verses: “… can i let them both be? this fickle faith and this college science that heckles from the back of the classroom/now i can’t believe—/that the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for wonder”—/all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as:/life is merely/to ovum and sperm/and where those two meet/and how often and how well/and what dies there.”

After being shot by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis this week, Good left behind three children, and her wife, Rebecca, who told Minnesota Public Radio that she was, “made of sunshine.” Her award-winning poem was read on NPR by Scott Simon.

Good was also the widow of an Afghanistan war veteran and a mother of three children. Rebecca called her deceased wife “a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.”

In Minneapolis, Rebecca said, the couple found “a vibrant and welcoming community” where they “made friends and spread joy.” “And while any place we were together was home, there was a strong shared sense here in Minneapolis that we were looking out for each other,” she wrote. “Here, I had finally found peace and safe harbor.

But this is not the Good that Donald J. Trump and his minions would have us remember. To Trump, she was part of a shadowy “leftwing network” trying “to incite violence” against federal agents and she “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.” To Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, Good was “a deranged leftist.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Good of committing “domestic terrorism.”

Not much sympathy for Good’s family. Not much compassion. Not much concern about a woman shot dead while trying to move her car away from ICE agents, as she was directed to do.

Ever the politician, Vance claimed that part of him felt “very, very sad” for Good, but he added she was “brainwashed” and “a victim of left-wing ideology.”

If anyone doubts his crocodile tears, the vice president said: “I can believe that her death is a tragedy, while also recognizing that it’s a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left who has marshaled an entire movement — a lunatic fringe — against our law enforcement officers.”

The reaction of the Trumpists is reminiscent of how soldiers are taught to regard their enemies. In the Middle East, Americans fought “towel-heads.” In Vietnam, the Vietcong were “slants” and “gooks.” In the two world wars, Germans were “Krauts,” “Huns” or “Heinies.”

Dehumanizing enemies makes it easy to mistreat or even kill them. And Trump and his aides do this to a fare-thee-well. The undocumented migrants they are crusading against are “illegals” or “illegal aliens” who are “poisoning the blood of country.” They are “illegal monsters,” “gang members,” “rapists” and worse.

For their purposes, such migrants cannot be mothers, fathers, children, would-be Americans who hope for nothing more than decent lives and citizenship. No, they must be objectified. There can be no compassion, no sympathy.

And the same goes for Good. To them, she can’t be a poet, amateur guitarist or simply a human being who cares for others.

Moments before agent Jonathan D. Ross shot her, Good said to one of the immigration officers: “That’s fine, I’m not mad at you,” as the officer passed by her car door. She had one hand on the steering wheel and the other outside the open driver side window.

Is this the phrase of a “brainwashed” and “deranged” person?

But, that comment notwithstanding, in Good’s case there can also not be a fair and full investigation by this administration in collaboration with Minnesota authorities. Already, the administration has judged her and the death sentence one of its operatives gave her was wholly just in its view.

To allow that maybe this was a rash act by a PTSD-addled agent would be unacceptable. No, this was self-defense against a militant leftist who clearly deserved to die. Good and her ilk, to them, are “lunatics” and little more than enemies who must be vanquished by any means necessary.

This is a war, Trump has said. The “radical left lunatics” are the “enemy within.” And people like Good – really anyone who shows compassion for migrants being targeted by ICE agents – are nothing more than acceptable casualties, it would seem.

The big question of our day is whether most Americans share the callousness of Trump and his minions.

Narcissists are notorious for their lack of empathy and Trump surrounds himself with others who seem to share that shortcoming. Former Trump colleague Elon Musk called empathy the fundamental weakness of the West. Trump, a New Yorker piece contended, “is Teaching Christians to Abandon Empathy.”

John Grosso, source: Fairfield University

But not all are buying it. John Grosso, a writer at the National Catholic Reporter, took Vance particularly to task as someone who claims to have embraced Roman Catholicism.

“In times past, a politician might offer thoughts and prayers, encourage those reacting to wait for the full results of the investigation and generally try to lower the temperature,” Grosso wrote. “A leader might take the opportunity provided by a fresh day to soothe the broken heart of a nation and appeal to the better angels among us.”

Grosso didn’t hold back.

“As a Catholic, Vance knows better than to peddle this brand of gaslighting and agitation. Vance knows that, by virtue of her humanity, Good was endowed with inherent dignity, made in the image and likeness of God. Vance knows that only God can take life. Vance knows that protesting, fleeing or even interfering in an ICE investigation (which there is no evidence that Good did) does not carry a death sentence. Vance knows that lying and killing are sins.

“Vance knows. He doesn’t care. Vance’s twisted and wrongheaded view of Christianity has been repudiated by two popes. His Catholicism seems to be little more than a political prop, a tool only for his career ambitions and desire for power.

“The vice president’s comments justifying the death of Renee Good are a moral stain on the collective witness of our Catholic faith. His repeated attempts to blame Good for her own death are fundamentally incompatible with the Gospel.”

Amen.

But Grosso mistakenly adds that “Our only recourse is to pray for his conversion of heart.” Actually, it’s to turn out by thousands at any opportunity to protest against this administration and then to oust it and all its supporters at the ballot box.

That would be a real act of compassion. That would justly memorialize Good and all the Trumpists’s many other victims.

Will a single death turn the tide?

Posted on January 8, 2026 by Joe Weber

A 37-year-old mom’s murder could open Americans’s eyes, but who will control the story?

Joseph Weber

Winston Smith, a low-level staffer in the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s “1984,” muses to himself: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Now, Americans who have seen the videos of an ICE agent’s murder of an unarmed woman in Minneapolis are being asked to do the same. Despite Renee Nicole Macklin Good’s attempt to move her car at the direction of ICE agents, one pulled out a gun and shot her in the head.

President Donald J. Trump swiftly claimed it was self-defense, that the agent feared for his life. His PR minions called her a “violent rioter,” and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed she was “stalking and impeding” officers and trying to “weaponize her vehicle.”

And, tragically, gullible Americans are likely to swallow the claim that this 37-year-old mother of three — a poet and amateur guitarist – was committing an act of “domestic terrorism,” as Noem claimed.

Indeed, some in my own family seem to be falling for a refinement of such propaganda. This is the argument by Vice President JD Vance that Good was illegally interfering with federal officers and that her death was “a tragedy of her own making. If she weren’t bothering ICE officials legitimately doing their duty, this Party line goes, she’d be alive today.

In other words, don’t believe your own eyes and ears.

If there is to be any justice for Good, however, the agent needs to be charged and tried for murder, plain and simple. At his trial, the full context should come out. State authorities, such as Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, are mulling that over, despite stonewalling by federal officials.

They do have the right to pursue such a case. And we all have the need to see the full picture of what happened.

Beyond the video of what on its face is an unjustified shooting, there is much we don’t know. Why was Good, the widow of a now-deceased Air Force veteran of Afghanistan, on that street? Was she part of an ICE resistance effort? Or was she a “legal observer” of federal actions, as local officials called her?

An earlier ex-husband of Good’s told the Associated Press she was no activist and that he had never known her to participate in a protest. Instead, he called her a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger.

Was Good, in fact, just a mother who had just dropped her 6-year-old off and wound up on the street where ICE agents were operating?

Good’s current spouse, Rebecca, asked her to drive to the site where the ICE agents were, the New York Post reported. Rebecca had been outside their car when the shooting occurred. “I made her come down here; it’s my fault,” Rebecca said, her face covered in blood after having attempted to help Renee. “They just shot my wife.”

Even if Good was intentionally interfering with ICE operations, why would an agent fire on her as she was moving her car away, as ordered? Are such agents not trained, as police are, to pull their weapons only when in life-or-death situations?

Moment’s before Good’s death; source: ABC News

For now, the most sympathetic cast one can put on the shooting is one that Vance sought to paint about the veteran agent ,Jonathan D. Ross. Vance said the agent had suffered substantial injuries last June when he was dragged off by a car driven by a man he was trying to arrest. “So you think maybe he’s a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him with an automobile,” Vance argued.

But, should such an officer still be on the job if he is suffering from PTSD that might make him gun-happy? And just how well trained was he?

Just how fully — and truthfully — these questions will be answered remains to be seen, since federal officials appear to be freezing out local investigators. Already, the Trump Administration has fashioned a narrative and is closing ranks around it. While a more sober-minded leader might just await the results of an impartial probe, the president and his minions have already prejudged any investigation.

Will FBI officials commit career suicide by contradicting Noem and Trump?

Minnesota State Attorney General Keith Ellison has offered unsettling insights on how troublesome justice will be in this killing.

“And the one thing that I don’t want to do is to be like Trump or Noem. I want to be – I want to maintain my professional conduct as I look at this case,” he told NPR. “So, at this point, I think there must be a robust investigation. It should be independent. It should be independent. Nobody from this agent’s agency should have any role in the investigation at all. And it should be – and then we make a prosecutorial decision. That’s what should happen…. I can tell you that I think the local FBI agents are professional people. I also know that they have a boss in Washington who is extreme partisan, and that matters.”

Still, a few things are clear already. ICE agents – some 2,000 of whom have been deployed to harass Somalis in Minnesota – are “spreading terror throughout our communities,” as Ellison has also said. And, as Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said, they need to get out of the city (and the state). “People are being hurt,” he said. “Families are being ripped apart.”

Is there really a need for such ICE agents in Minnesota? Or is this the action of racist president hungry for the optics of looking tough on Black immigrants on Fox News? Is he just feeding his base and punishing Democrats who lead the state?

“It’s clearly a hostile act,” said Ellison. “It’s clearly unwarranted. It clearly is injecting fear. It is injecting terror. And it is really – at the end of the day, Leila, we can talk like lawyers about whether the force was reasonable or unreasonable, as I believe there’s facts to support. But the real problem here is the decision from the chief executive of this country, the president, to escalate ICE agents in Minneapolis and all over the country. We’ve seen this in LA, Portland, Illinois, and it has done no one any good. And now it has cost somebody their life.”

Beyond the details of what seems like an unjustified shooting – the eyes and ears part — consider the broader context. As in “1984,” a sociopathic totalitarian leader, aided by sycophants, is persecuting literally millions of people. Recall that in 2023 there were 14 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and that Trump and his minions claim now to have expelled or driven out 2.5 million of them.

Sadly, Good’s death is hardly the first that can be blamed on Trump and his operatives. At least 32 people died in ICE custody last year. As The Guardian reported, they died of seizure and heart failure, stroke, respiratory failure, tuberculosis or suicide. As of mid-December, the agency was holding 68,440 people; nearly 75 percent of them without any criminal convictions. December was also the deadliest month in ICE custody – six people died.

Beyond the in-custody deaths, federal agents have been involved in at least 15 shootings since Trump took office, according to The Trace. Among these are the shootings of three people observing or documenting ICE raids and the shootings of five people driving away from traffic stops or evading an enforcement action. At least four people have been killed and five others injured.

Good’s death may well prompt action by Americans horrified by the battlegrounds that their streets and neighborhoods are becoming. Hundreds came out in protest in Minneapolis and others did so in similar demonstrations in many cities across the U.S.

For her death to mean more than just a family loss, however, it will likely take an electoral upheaval in November and again two years hence. Trump and his followers most likely will double down on their efforts, making more such deaths likely. With each, it might tougher to keep up the Orwellian spin.

A Christian country?

Posted on January 5, 2026 by Joe Weber

Vance, Trump and Tuberville ignore history and Christianity in making the claim

Joseph Weber

Anglican priest George Whitefield preaching in the 18th Century; source: ARDA

Eons ago, it seems, the late American cultural historian Warren I. Susman told undergraduates at Rutgers, including me, that in the U.S. we all are Protestants.

Of course, he didn’t mean that literally. Indeed, like 2 percent of the American population, Susman was Jewish. What he meant was that Americans of all faiths (or none) have been shaped by our history of Puritanism and the Protestant work ethic, topics he focused on in his work.

Pardon Susman, a colorful and entertaining lecturer, for occasional overstatement. In “Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century” he wrote that “Mickey Mouse may in fact be more important to an understanding of the 1930s than Franklin Roosevelt.” The phrase triggered widespread tut-tutting among academics and critics, but it just reflected Susman’s view of “everyman” culture, not political history.

So, too, with his Protestantism comment.

Indeed, we’re not all marching into any of the dizzying variety of Protestant – or, more broadly, Christian – churches that populate the country. Today, only 62 percent of Americans call themselves Christians (including 40 percent Protestants and 19 percent Catholics), according to a Pew survey. Many of us – 29 percent – are unaffiliated (including atheists, agnostics and “nothings.”) Seven percent adhere to non-Christian faiths.

And yet, also today, plenty of folks seem to think the U.S. has long been a Christian nation — and they vow to do all they can to keep it that way.

“The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be, a Christian nation,” Vice President JD Vance said to great applause at a pre-Christmas Turning Point USA gathering. “Christianity is America’s creed.”

The “only thing” that’s been an anchor? Not democracy? Not pluralism? Not a belief in equality? Not social mobility and opportunity?

And never mind that Vance’s wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, is a Hindu. Moreover, don’t take note that the Vances are letting their three children choose their faith, even as they send them to a Catholic school. The vice president, who attended a Pentecostal church as a teen, converted to Catholicism in 2019.

To be sure, in true missionary style Vance wants Usha similarly to convert, something she has said isn’t on her agenda. That may make for intriguing dinner conversation, especially on visits to the in-laws.

But, while cultivating his own political prospects in his talk, Vance was echoing the comments of his boss, Donald J. Trump. At a Christmas tree lighting a few weeks before, the president departed from the usual broad and ecumenical presidential messages of the past, explicitly invoking Christian beliefs as fact.

“During this holy season, Christians everywhere rejoice at the Miracle in Bethlehem, more than 2,000 years ago when the Son of God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, came down from heaven to be with us,” Trump said. “Full of grace and truth, he brought the gift of God’s love into the world and the promise of salvation for every person and every nation…. Tonight, this beautiful evergreen tree glows bright in the dark and cold winter night and reminds us of the words of Gospel of John, in him was life and that life was the light of all mankind. Beautiful words. With the birth of Jesus, human history turned from night to day.”

Should one call it hypocrisy when a thrice-married often-philandering felon and business cheat makes such remarks? Should one call out the contradiction with Jesus’s teachings when he vindictively pursues his opponents by any means necessary (See James Comey, Letitia James, Mark Kelly)? Should one note the inconsistency when such a man orders up the summary executions of more than 100 people – some quite wantonly — on the unproven suspicion that they were ferrying drugs? Isn’t there a Christian (and Jewish) commandment against that sort of thing, not to mention American and international law?

Of course, Trumpists deftly used religion to win office and often invoke it to justify their actions. They have suckered plenty of folks with their pitches:

But historians more often point to the broad-minded approach the Founding Fathers took. The writers of our foundational national documents didn’t want to create a Christian nation, but rather one that tolerated many creeds.

“There were Christians among the Founders – no deists – but the key Founders who were most responsible for the founding documents (Declaration of Independence and Constitution) and who had the most influence were theistic rationalists,” argues Gregg Frazer, a professor of history & political studies at The Master’s University, a Christian university in California, with degrees from Claremont and California State University. “They did not intend to create a Christian nation. Not a single Founding Father made such a claim in any piece of private correspondence or any document. If they had, it would be blazoned above the entrances of countless Christian schools and we would all be inundated with emails repeating it.”

Frazer, a deacon in his community church who wrote “The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders: Reason, Revelation, and Revolution,” holds that Christians “damage their witness by promoting historical inaccuracies” of the sort politicians such as Vance do. The Founders, he maintains, “were religious men who wanted religion – but not necessarily Christianity – to have significant influence in the public square.”

But many among them also wanted religion and government to be separate and a personal matter.

As President Thomas Jefferson wrote to a Baptist group in 1802: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

George Washington, an Anglican, was well aware of the diversity of religions in the United States, whether Christian or not. To a Jewish congregation in Rhode Island, he wrote, “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

The Founders knew all too well about the diversity among religious groups and the tensions among them that had marked the early history of North America. As historians writing about George Washington’s Mount Vernon have recounted, in 1620 a group of Puritans arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Roman Catholics founded Maryland in 1634, and twenty years later Jews arrived in New York City.

Each group was guided in civil matters by its own beliefs and many showed little respect for others. Puritans in New England based laws on the Bible, and only full church members were permitted to vote. While Catholicism thrived in Maryland in the 1630s, by the 1640s, Protestants took control and deported many Catholics, outlawing Roman Catholicism in 1654. Quakers were expelled from Massachusetts.Presbyterians and Baptists were banished from New England. In Virginia, Puritans and Quakers were barred.

17th Century Massachusetts law, source: George Washington’s Mount Vernon

It wasn’t until the so-called the Great Awakening in the 1740s that tolerance grew in some regions of the colonies. Given the potential fractiousness they faced, it’s no wonder that the Founders took refuge in a well-defined secularism, at least in common matters of government, despite objections by some fellow Americans.

“When the Constitution was submitted to the American public, ‘many pious people’ complained that the document had slighted God, for it contained ‘no recognition of his mercies to us . . . or even of his existence,’ according to The Library of Congress. “The Constitution was reticent about religion for two reasons: first, many delegates were committed federalists, who believed that the power to legislate on religion, if it existed at all, lay within the domain of the state, not the national, governments; second, the delegates believed that it would be a tactical mistake to introduce such a politically controversial issue as religion into the Constitution.”

Indeed, the library reports, the only “religious clause” in the document–the proscription of religious tests as qualifications for federal office in Article Six–was intended to defuse controversy by disarming potential critics who might claim religious discrimination in eligibility for public office.

Religious ideologues – like Vance – have tried to argue otherwise, insisting that Christianity is essentially mandated. “Thousands of pieces of evidence exist that demonstrate that America was founded as a Christian nation, and Holy Trinity v. United States is only one of the many pieces of that mosaic of historical truth,” argues one such source, the Christian Heritage Fellowship, citing an 1892 Supreme Court decision.

The fellowship points to the ruling written by Justice David Josiah Brewer, hardly a disinterested party since his father was a Congregational missionary. In it, he argued the “evidence,” culturally at least, was unmistakeable.

“Among other matters, note the following: the form of oath universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty; the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, ‘In the name of God, amen;’ the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day; the churches and church organizations which abound in every city, town, and hamlet; the multitude of charitable organizations existing everywhere under Christian auspices; the gigantic missionary associations, with general support, and aiming to establish Christian missions in every quarter of the globe,” Brewer wrote. “These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”

Well, since 1892 many of the oaths or affirmations we now use in the U.S. don’t invoke a deity. Plenty of businesses operate on Sundays. And, along with churches, we have many mosques, synagogues, temples and other institutions that speak to the breadth of American culture. We have leaders, such as Zohran Mamdani, taking their oaths of office on the Quran, not the Christian Bible.

Of course, we also have cultural fossils such as Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who declared on X, “The enemy is inside the gates,” on hearing about Mamdani’s swearing-in ceremony. In mid-December, the GOP lawmaker wrote on X, “Islam is not a religion. It’s a cult. Islamists aren’t here to assimilate. They’re here to conquer… We’ve got to SEND THEM HOME NOW or we’ll become the United Caliphate of America.”

Muslims account for 1 percent of the American population, according to Pew. This is about the same share as Buddhists. “United Caliphate,” really?

For the fossils, even single-digit percentages are intolerable. They would have fit in well with the “pious people” who objected to the absence of Divine references in our country’s founding documents.

While the likes of Vance, Tuberville and Trump are prominent now, it may be that their time running things could prove short. That is, of course, if enough moral people — G-d-fearing and otherwise — rebel against their hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness. Another thing historian Susman was mindful of was that one of the few constants in America is change, sometimes for the better.

The “Donroe Doctrine”

Posted on January 3, 2026 by Joe Weber

Trump’s empire-building in action

Joseph Weber

Soon after the turn of the century, in 1803, James Monroe became famous as a special envoy to France for helping arrange the Louisiana Purchase. Sixteen years later, as the nation’s fifth president, he pressed Spain to cede Florida to the U.S. But what he’s most famous for, of course, is the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, setting up the Western Hemisphere as the de facto American realm.

Under that policy and in revisions adopted by Theodore Roosevelt, among others, the U.S. intervened, at times militarily and at times covertly, in Mexico, Santo Domingo, Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba and Chile.

Now, a couple centuries later and under a similarly expansion-minded President Donald J. Trump (Greenland, Canada, Panama Canal), Americans will take over Venezuela. As Trump declared, “We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”

He mandated that the U.S. military will be on the ground in the country “as it pertains to oil.” And he said that the United States would be selling Venezuelan oil to China and other nations, adding “we’ll be selling large amounts of oil to other countries.” To offer cover for his actions, Trump has argued that Venezuela stole American oil fields.

To be sure, few will mourn the overthrow of Nicolás Maduro, who refused to cede power after losing an election in 2024. He had been indicted for “narco-terrorism” by Trump’s Justice Department in 2020.

But Trump’s imperialistic efforts must give us all pause. The president was explicit about his view in the new National Security Strategy announced in November, which declares “The United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe doctrine to restore American preeminence.” That includes the so-called “Trump Corollary,” a nod to the “Roosevelt Corollary” under which Roosevelt in the early 1900s legitimized Latin American interventions.

Where Monroe’s doctrine was defensive and exclusionary toward Europeans getting involved in the western hemisphere, Roosevelt’s turned U.S. policy into “big stick” hegemony. As The Guardian warned, Trump’s “reckless and regressive behavior is spurring changes that the U.S. … may live to regret.” The newspaper editorialized that the national security strategy of a “potent restoration of American power and priorities” will depend on “enlisting” allies and pressuring others, and on an “adjusted” military presence.

The so-called “Donroe doctrine” includes efforts to prevent mass migration, eliminate drug trafficking, gain trade advantage and access to natural resources “plus a craving for headline-grabbing, ego-bolstering symbols of domination,” The Guardian noted.

Trump’s acquaintance with history is likely pretty skimpy, but recall that first and foremost, he is a real estate mogul. That means acquiring – by whatever means necessary – land and resources.

Maduro in US. custody, source: Truth Social

Regarding Latin America, he has found a philosophical compadre in Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a son of Cuban immigrants who has long wanted to weaken the leaders of Cuba, who have been allied with Maduro. And together they’ve been buttressed by The Heritage Foundation, which has sought to give hemispheric imperialism an intellectual cast, declaring in a 2022 policy document: “U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere should focus with greater intensity on such destabilizing regional challenges as transnational crime, illicit tracking networks, corruption that fosters criminality, and the growing influence of external geostrategic adversaries.”

Moreover, Trump seems infatuated with the idea of spheres of influence, allowing the U.S., Russia and China to carve up the world according to their interests. His move on Venezuela underscores this, potentially giving license and justification to Russia’s war on Ukraine and, possibly, rationalizing moves China might make on Taiwan.

“The concept of spheres of influence is entirely familiar to Moscow and Beijing. Vladimir Putin, who claimed his own fantastical premise for invading Ukraine, where he still claims to be waging a ‘denazification’ campaign, wants to control Ukrainian territory and subjugate its government precisely because he believes it forms part of Russia’s historical sphere of influence,” The New Statesman notes. “Xi Jinping used his New Year’s Eve address to repeat his insistence that China’s ‘reunification’ with Taiwan was ‘unstoppable’ after staging major military exercises around the self-ruling democracy in recent weeks. He views Taiwan as an integral part of China’s historical territory – although the Chinese Communist Party has never ruled the island – and the wider region, including the South China Sea, as rightfully belonging to China’s own sphere of influence.”

“What is the difference, Putin’s supporters will ask, between Trump’s actions and Russia intervening to remove an unfriendly government within its own sphere of influence, or even to capture Volodymyr Zelensky and put him on trial in Moscow for his supposed crimes? If Xi views Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, as a dangerous separatist, cultivating a pro-independence movement against Beijing, couldn’t he claim, according to Trump’s new doctrine, justification of acting to protect China’s interests in what he views as his own backyard?”

The publication is raising the alarm, too, about Greenland and Trump’s designs there. “By casting off any pretense of adhering to international law and the so-called rules-based order, Trump is endorsing a dangerous new era of ‘might makes right’ … Trump’s doctrine could have implications far beyond Latin America as well. Denmark – and its Nato allies – should take his claims to Greenland seriously and urgently.”

Perhaps even more than craving real estate, though, Trump loves to exercise power. While that has mostly taken the form of vindictively pursuing anyone who has offended him (Mark Kelly, Letitia James, James Comey), it also has extended to his murderous assaults on alleged drug smugglers and his use of National Guard troops and a beefed-up ICE in the U.S.

As his business and political history shows, Trump is also insatiable and easily bored. So, it’s an open question whether his military adventurism in Venezuela will be his last such effort.

With three years left and his “Donroe Doctrine” just beginning, it’s unclear just how extensive his ambitions will be. But it’s hard to believe that his move on Venezuela will be his last.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Posted on December 23, 2025 by Joe Weber

Ben Sasse reminds us of grace in the face of death

Joseph Weber

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas wrote those words, in “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” in 1947. This was five years before the death of his father, in mid-December 1952, after a 20-year battle with throat cancer. It’s widely thought that he was speaking to his dad, longtime English teacher D.J. Thomas, who had introduced him to poetry.

His father’s death, at 76, plunged Thomas, just 38 at the time, into a tailspin from which he never recovered. While on a reading and lecture tour in the United States, the self-described “roistering, drunken and doomed poet” drank himself into a coma. Barely 11 months after his dad’s passing, Thomas died on Nov. 9, 1953, in St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York.

Morbid as this is, I’m reminded of it after reading a remarkable post by Ben Sasse, my former Nebraska senator, letting people know about his terminal diagnosis. Far from “roistering,” it is a powerful reminder of how we all face the inevitable and how we can do that with grace.

“Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die,” Sasse wrote on X. “Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do… Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.”

Sasse, 53, wrote that he doesn’t know how much time he has left, though he said it’s less than he wants. And, while striking a realistic tone — saying he’s “now marching to the beat of a faster drummer” – Sasse also echoed Dylan Thomas:

“I’m not going down without a fight,” he wrote. “One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived.”

Dylan Thomas, source: discoverdylanthomas.com

Sadly, death – and thoughts of it — are all too common at this time of the year. As a young obituary writer for a newspaper in New Jersey decades ago, I was struck by the surge in deaths, usually among the elderly, that we reported on in December and January. My colleagues and I often speculated about the cause – bad weather, loneliness at a time of supposed great joy, the spread of viruses and other infections and the lack of sunshine and the depression that can bring.

Indeed, scientists have long known that winter is the cruelest season for mortality, with January the deadliest month. “The seasonal swings are substantial,” The Washington Post reported in a midwinter piece last year. “About 20 percent more people die in January than in August, which is typically the least lethal month.” One researcher quoted blamed heart disease and respiratory problems.

The phenomenon is personal for me, too. My father, who had suffered with smoking-related lung problems, died at 70 on Christmas Eve in 1998. My mother, who suffered from similar problems, died in February, four years later, at 69.

Given both their ages when they left us, I’m thankful that I recently surpassed them (though I remain wary and, as they say, cautiously optimistic). In his post, Sasse, a devout Christian, addressed the optimism point head on – again realistically, in light of his diagnosis:

“To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient,” he wrote, reflecting on the Christian pre-Christmas season of Advent. “It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son. A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.”

Every faith tries to come to terms with death, of course. For some creeds, it is a gateway to better things, including reunification with those lost and closeness with one’s G-d. Others admit that we simply don’t know what comes next, if anything.

For most of us left behind, though, the passing of a loved one is just a barely bearable loss. It’s the sad recognition that we won’t have that person as a part of our life anymore (except in warm recollections and, if we’re lucky, in occasional happy dreams).

And this time of the year ratchets it all up.

In some ways, the holiday period can be especially cruel and not solely because of the rise in deaths. For those who celebrate, Christmas can be a time of unrealistic expectations. There seems to be so much pressure on people – Christians, at least – to feel the cliched joy of the season that one wonders if it’s simply impossible to clear the high bar. It’s all a lot too noisy and demanding, it seems.

A decade ago, researchers confirmed this. A 2015 survey conducted by Healthline, a consumer health information site based in San Francisco, found that 62 percent of respondents described their stress level as “very or somewhat” elevated during the holidays. They pointed to financial demands, negotiating the interpersonal dynamics of family, and maintaining personal health habits such as an exercise regimen.

“The holidays are filled with both joy and stress,” Dr. Ellen Braaten, then an associate professor of psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate director of its Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds, said in a Harvard Medical School piece.

For many of us, too, the holidays may always carry a dark side. We acutely feel the absence of those who seemingly were always there and now are not.

In the case of my family, that revolves about the loss of our parents years ago and, more recently, of our dear sister, Madeline. She fell to cancer during the summer. All of us — her siblings — will long grieve for her, though her absence is especially tough for her husband, sons and daughters-in-law, of course. And that grief is amplified at this time of year, when around us so many are smiling and celebrating.

We who survive such losses must endure, of course. We cannot let ourselves plunge into paralyzing grief, perhaps as Thomas did.

Sasse in his post was cold-eyed about the reality of imminent treatments and the strains to come, but he ended by offering his friends peace and referring to “great gratitude.” He and his family, he wrote, have “gravelly-but-hopeful voices.”

May his suffering be bearable and may his family’s memories be a blessing for them in years to come.

What’s in a name?

Posted on December 22, 2025 by Joe Weber

Trump believes his should last forever

Joseph Weber

When Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili wanted to sear his name into the minds of his countrymen, he did so first by adopting a new identity. He became Joseph Stalin, meaning “man of steel.”

That wasn’t enough, of course. As Stalin consolidated his power, he needed more. So he had cities renamed in his honor: Tsaritsyn became Stalingrad, Yuzoka in Ukraine (now Donetsk) became Stalino and Novokuznetsk transformed into Stalinsk, along with many others. He even had his name inserted into the Soviet national anthem.

More recently, after the now-deceased leader of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, took power in 1993, he became “Turkmenbashi” or the “Leader of all Turkmen.” Infamously, he then renamed the month of January “Turkmenbashi” and gave April his mother’s name, calling it Gurbansoltan. He also named airports, streets, and even vodka after himself.

Donald J. Trump (whose ancestral family name was Drumpf) is determined to not be outdone by these men, however.

It’s not enough that we have the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts and the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. Soon (maybe), we will have two new “Trump Class” battleships, with the eventual goal of acquiring 25. As The New York Times reported, Navy secretary John Phelan called the vessels “just one piece of the president’s golden fleet that we’re going to build.”

The ships, of course, will be “the largest we’ve ever built,” Trump said. They also will be able to launch hypersonic missiles and nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

Trump’s penchant – perhaps, obsession – with affixing his name to things from hotels and casinos to steaks and even a university has a long history. It has also been much commented on, as hundreds of mental health professionals have warned of his “malignant narcissism.” His own niece, clinical psychologist Mary L. Trump, warned in 2020 that “This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism … Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be.”

More recently, Politico shared a revealing anecdote on the point. During a guided tour of Mount Vernon last April, Trump learned that Washington was a major real-estate speculator. So, he couldn’t understand why he didn’t name his historic Virginia compound or other property after himself. “If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said, according to three sources. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff, or no one remembers you.”

Of course, the nation’s first president did wind up having the nation’s capital city named for him while he was in office. Tellingly, he didn’t do that himself, however; that was done in his honor by three commissioners he had appointed. Washington, a trained surveyor, had overseen development of the federal city, so between that and his leadership of the Revolutionary Army he very much earned the distinction.

It’s hardly clear what Trump did – if anything – to merit a vote by the Kennedy Center’s board (most of whose members he appointed) to rename that historic building. Indeed, ticket sales have plunged since he made a series of changes at the place. Already, Trump and his loyalists on the board have been sued over the name change.

As for the “Trump class” of warships, the president once again is breaking with tradition in affixing his name on it. Typically, new classes of ships have been named for the lead ship in a group – thus the four in the “Iowa class” (Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri and Wisconsin) were named after the U.S.S. Iowa – though the first one planned in the new Trump class is to be called Defiant.

Trump’s interest goes beyond the naming of a warship class, though. Apparently thinking himself suited to crafting battleships, Trump said that he plans to play a direct role in the design. As Newsweek reported, Navy Secretary John Phelan has told senators that Trump has frequently texted him late at night about ship maintenance and design, and Trump has previously said he personally intervened to alter the design of a now-canceled frigate, calling the original version “a terrible-looking ship.”

According to the renderings, Defiant will sport the usual gray color, though its construction is part of the “Golden Fleet” initiative. Trump, of course, has a deep fancy for gold, as he has gilded much of the Oval Office. Curiously, the late Turkmenistan president also adored gold — so much so that he had golden statues of himself erected around the country:

Saparmurat Niyazov, source: RadioFreeEurope, RadioLiberty

Much like the past leaders of the U.S.S.R. and Turkmenistan, Trump has moved aggressively in his first year in office to affix his name or image to many things. As Axios reported, the Interior Department in November unveiled the 2026 America the Beautiful National Park pass, which features a side-by-side image of George Washington and Trump to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary.

The administration is starting to process applications from parents with children born between 2025 and 2028 to receive $1,000 to deposit into “Trump accounts.” The administration also began accepting requests for the Trump Gold Card, which fast tracks immigration processing for applicants who pay a $15,000 fee and contribute $1 million more if approved. The card features Trump’s likeness alongside images of the Statue of Liberty and a bald eagle.

The president also has sketched out plans for TrumpRX.gov, a government-run portal that would steer patients directly to a manufacturer’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) website to purchase medications out-of-pocket (i.e., without going through their insurance) at discounted rates set by the government. It is expected to launch early next year.

While Trump’s frenzied self-aggrandizement may reflect a personal pathology, the larger question in the case of the “Trump class” of battleships is whether they are practical and needed for modern warfare.

Naval historian Steven Wills has suggested that the mission for battleships in modern warfare is “less clear.” He said such ships could conduct traditional gunfire support missions for operations ashore and serve in battleship surface action groups, freeing aircraft carriers for other efforts. While bombarding shores would be a key mission, air and missile threats to warships, such as the Houthi rebel’s missile capability in Yemen, suggest the ships would be vulnerable.

Also, the “Trump class” ships are expected to have so-called electromagnetic railguns. These can use electromagnetic force to launch heavy projectiles at ranges upwards of 200 miles. A “railgun battleship” however has its own drawbacks, Wills argued. An immense amount of power is needed and enormous heat must be dissipated in its use.

Also, the Navy has long had troubles building new ships, with delays and budget overruns common. As Politico reported, defense industry analyst Roman Schweizer of TD Cowen told investors after Trump’s remarks that “we see the plan as extremely ambitious and, in some ways, running counter to the trend in unmanned and robotic maritime systems,” that the Navy had said it was focusing on.

Moreover, the ranking member of the House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), called Trump’s plan “vague.” He said the “proposal to bring back battleships raises many questions for Congress to scrutinize.” Courtney added: “There is a reason that the Navy stopped building battleships in 1944 and that President Ronald Reagan’s 600 ship fleet didn’t bring them back.”

Of course, many things Trump affixed his name to have failed. Trump Steaks failed after about two months in 2007. Trump University died in 2010, after five years, and Trump paid a $25 million settlement to students who sued claiming they had been duped. And Trump’s casinos went bankrupt, ripping off creditors, even as he reaped millions from them.

One can only wonder about the likely fate of the Trump battleships and his several other attempts at making sure Americans can’t forget him.

The Big Picture

Author Archives: Joe Weber

About Joe Weber

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Vance, Trump and Tuberville ignore history and Christianity in making the claim

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What’s in a name?

Trump believes his should last forever