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.

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.

Vain and trivial

Posted on December 18, 2025 by Joe Weber

Trump’s overreaches and grandiosity ultimately will fade like a mist

Joseph Weber

For several decades, Canute the Great ruled over England, Denmark, Norway, Scotland and parts of Sweden as the most successful monarch in the Anglo-Saxon period. But Canute, who reigned until 1035, is most famous for the often misunderstood story about his ordering the tide to abate on the Thames.

“You are part of my dominion, and the ground that I am seated upon is mine, nor has anyone disobeyed my orders with impunity. Therefore, I order you not to rise onto my land, nor to wet the clothes or body of your Lord,” he is reported to have said while sitting in a chair on the shore.

The tale is commonly seen as ending there, bearing witness to a ruler’s foolish arrogance. But, in fact, as historian Henry of Huntingdon recorded it, the lesson Canute sought to teach was the opposite.

“But the sea carried on rising as usual without any reverence for his person and soaked his feet and legs,” the historian wrote. “Then he moving away said: ‘All the inhabitants of the world should know that the power of kings is vain and trivial, and that none is worthy of the name of king but He whose command the heaven, earth and sea obey by eternal laws.’”

Vain and trivial. More than ever, these terms apply to Donald J. Trump, the would-be monarch who continues to soil the White House and our culture with his vanity and ultimate triviality.

Consider, first, Trump’s move to install plaques under the photos of presidents near the Oval Office that extol himself and denigrate his predecessors. As The New York Times reported, the plaque for Barack Obama falsely describes him as “one of the most divisive political figures in American history” in spite of his high favorability rating. And the plaque for Joe Biden appears under a picture of an autopen and promotes Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, while referring to Biden as “… by far, the worst President in American History.”

And ponder the vote by Trump sycophants on the board of the John F. Kennedy Center to rename the performing arts venue as the Trump-Kennedy Center. Trump, who chairs the center, had repeatedly spoken of such a change, but claimed to be surprised and honored at the move, which may require Congressional action.

Remember, too, how Trump has gilded the Oval Office and laid plans for a grandiose ballroom addition to The White House. “Renderings show a vast, glacially white aircraft hangar of a structure embellished with an ornate coffered ceiling, gilded Corinthian columns and drooping gold chandeliers. Nero, who conceived the original domus aurea, would feel right at home,” the architecture critic for The Guardian wrote. put it. “Trump’s style edicts and building bombast exude a dictator-for-life megalomania vibe, as he barrels through his second term, with an unconstitutional third potentially in his sights.”

Still, those efforts pale beside the president’s just-announced plan, developed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to deny gender-affirming care to transgender youth. Trump, who has refused even to recognize transgenderism, would pull federal funding from hospitals that provide services such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers and rare procedures such as mastectomies to children and teenagers. As The New York Times reported, defying the proposed rules, in effect, would shut down rebellious hospitals.

The pair would also ban Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program from paying for transition care for those under 18 and 19, respectively, according to The Washington Post.

“We are done with junk science driven by ideological pursuits, not the well-being of children,” Kennedy said at a news conference. He said he signed a declaration confirming that “sex-rejecting procedures pose medical dangers of lasting harm on children who receive these interventions.”

In taking these steps, Trump and Kennedy hoisted themselves above experts who treat transgender people of all ages. Groups including the American Medical Association (AMA), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Psychiatric Association (APA), American Psychological Association (APA), and the Endocrine Society, support evidence-based gender-affirming care as medically necessary and beneficial.

Dr. Susan Kressly, source: The Pediatric Lounge

The pediatrics association, for one, condemned the Trump-Kennedy plan as a dangerous intrusion of the federal government into private medical decisions. “Allowing the government to determine which patient groups deserve care sets a dangerous precedent, and children and families will bear the consequences,” Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the AAP, told The Times.

Casting aside medical experience with transgenderism that dates back at least to the early 1900s, Trump launched his anti-trans efforts on the campaign trail and then cemented them in the opening days of his administration. In early-days executive orders he denied the very existence of transgender people. “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” the president wrote, reflecting the sensibilities of religious fundamentalists.

Indeed, an official of HHS echoed the Biblically based notion at the press conference where the new rules were announced. “Men are men. Men can never become women. Women are women. Women can never become men,” said Jim O’Neill, the deputy secretary of the health department. “At the root of the evils we face is a hatred for nature as God designed it and for life as it was meant to be lived.”

While the Trump-Kennedy changes are anything but trivial for the estimated 724,000 minors in the U.S. who believe they are transgender, the pair’s effort is ultimately in vain. No matter how much the men deny the existence of gender dysphoria, those suffering from it are real and will continue to be with us. Many will need and get treatment, even if limited to psychological care, and at least for now, the government’s move just delays some kinds of care until they reach adulthood.

Still, a few points bear noting. For one, the number of transgender people is so small – perhaps just 2.8 million, or 0.8 percent of the U.S. population — that it is mystifying that they should be subjects of federal policy and, in recent times, state policy around the country. And yet, along with the Trump-Kennedy move, more than 1,000 bills are under consideration nationwide that would limit trans people’s rights in areas such as healthcare, athletics, the military, in education and even in prisons, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker.

Of course, Trump and a compliant Supreme Court have already banned transgender people from serving in the military. Up to 1,000 such soldiers are being driven out of the services, which in all number some 2.86 million people.

So, why are so many people apparently feeling threatened by so few? What is it in the psyche of so many conservatives that makes them feel endangered by gender fluidity?

Moreover, what happened to the traditional conservative ideal of limited government? Why should federal or state legislators inject themselves into what ultimately are private medical and psychological decisions by individuals and families? And how can people such as Trump and Kennedy – with their wacko unscientific beliefs about bleach and Covid and vaccines – impose their ignorance on a nation?

Yes, scientists and doctors can get things wrong – such practices and lobotomies and leeching are proof of that. And, yes, there can be misdiagnoses and faddism in psychiatry. Still, the share of young people who get puberty-blockers and other gender-affirming medicines is minuscule, fewer than one in 1,000 adolescents, according to a study in JAMA Pediatrics.

Physicians do not seem to be hell-bent on putting youngsters on such drugs, much less operating on them. In that sense, the Trump-Kennedy restrictions may prove inconsequential, indeed trivial. Relatively few people will be affected and only for a fairly short time in their lives. As they become adults, they likely will have more options.

Indeed, not all transgender youth proceed with medical treatments, Dr. Scott Leibowitz, co-lead author of the adolescent standards of care for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, told The Associated Press early this year. Transgender adolescents “come to understand their gender at different times and in different ways,” he said, noting that the best care should include experts in adolescent identity development who can work with families to help figure out what’s appropriate.

Still, we cannot ignore the fact that Trump and Kennedy are intent on worsening life for transgender people. Already, such folks have it quite rough — some 81 percent of transgender adults in the U.S. have thought about suicide while 42 percent have attempted it, according to The Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law.

For them, Trump’s vanity and triviality are vile and perhaps deadly.

For all of us, we must take heart that the Biblical sense of vanity will apply here. In Ecclesiastes, the Hebrew word for vanity means “vapor” or “breath,” something insubstantial, fleeting and quickly gone, like a mist. Canute appears to have understood that and, someday, that will apply to Trump.

Under assault

Posted on December 16, 2025 by Joe Weber

Jews are being attacked worldwide just for being Jews

Joseph Weber

Police on guard at a New York synagogue, source: NYPD via Facebook

Tragically, there is little new about the savagery in Australia during a Hanukkah celebration except for the weaponry and the locale.

For more than 2,000 years, Jews have been the targets of attacks, ridicule and ostracism across the world. Christian leaders in Europe taught that Jews were to blame for the crucifixion of Christ, triggering countless pogroms. And some Muslims, embracing their ancient scripture, contended that Muslims needed to kill Jews to usher in a Day of Judgment.

Still, for its sheer inhumanity, the antisemitism that drove a father-son pair of Muslims to kill 15 people on the Bondi beach has appalled people the world over. And, because of the massacre’s connections with the so-called Islamic State, the attack has triggered alarms about the persistence of ISIS.

But the sentiments that drove 50-year-old Sajid Akram and his son, Naveed, 24, to wantonly slaughter 15 men, women and children just for publicly being Jews are deeply rooted and, tragically, are on the rise. This is both in Australia and elsewhere.

As Time reported, Australia is home to 28 million people but only about 117,000 Jews. And yet, figures from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) show that antisemitic incidents in the country have reached historically high levels, at “almost five times the average annual number before October 7, 2023.” The group documented 1,654 anti‑Jewish incidents across Australia between Oct. 1, 2024, and Sept. 30, 2025, in addition to 2,062 incidents nationwide the year before.

The Bondi beach attack is part of a worldwide phenomenon, according to Deborah Lipstadt, former Special Envoy for monitoring antisemitism during the Biden administration.

“Since October 7, there have been burnings of synagogues, arson of synagogues on five different continents, including in Australia in Melbourne,” she told NPR. “There have been persistent attacks on Jews eating in kosher or Jewish-style or Israeli restaurants. There have been attacks on Jews walking on the streets, including in Manhattan and in parts of – other parts of New York City. There is something going on that’s not happenstance. I don’t want to suggest … that there’s some sort of giant conspiracy, but there is an effort, which was exemplified by two events, one in Australia and one on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The one in Australia was on October 9, 2023, two days after the Hamas attack on Israel, where, in front of the iconic Sydney Opera House, protesters march[ed], chanting, you know, globalize the intifada – which most Jews interpret as harm Jews everywhere – from the river to the sea. Some say they chanted, gas the Jews.”

Across the United States, the Anti-Defamation League last spring reported 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024. This represented a 5 percent rise from the 2023 tally, a 344 percent increase over the prior five years and an 893 percent rise over the prior decade “It is the highest number on record since ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents 46 years ago,” the group reported.

Even as people were reeling from the Dec. 14 Australian attack, young Hasidic Jews from Chabad on Dec. 15 were assaulted on a New York subway train by a pair of men who had been spouting antisemitic comments. The NYPD is investigating and U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said on X that her department will investigate the “horrific” incident. As The Times of Israel reported, Jews are targeted in hate crimes in New York City far more than any other group, according to NYPD data.

And recall that last spring an apparently mentally ill man set fire to the governor’s mansion in Pennsylvania, targeting Gov. Josh Shapiro during Passover. In statements to police, the assailant tried to justify the attack by connecting the Jewish governor to the Gaza War. A search warrant quoted the attacker as telling police he “will not take part in his (Shapiro’s) plans for what he wants to do the Palestinian people.”

Jews are being attacked just for being Jews. Overwhelmingly, they have nothing to do with Israeli government policy and clearly they are not military targets. They are just Jews who don’t hide their faith or practices.

Nearly a decade ago, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance came up with a concise working definition of antisemitism. “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews,” it suggested. “Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The group included a host of examples. Among them were “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” And, tragically: “Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.”

The first example about statehood has generated lots of heat, both among Jews and among others. After all, such Jewish groups as the Satmars are anti-Zionist for religious reasons (having to do with believing that the Messiah will be the only one who can reestablish Israel), but how could they be considered antisemitic? Moreover, plenty of people, including tens of thousands inside Israel, oppose the current government of Israel — and decry racism within the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — without hating either the country or Jews.

But about the second example, harming or killing Jews, there can be no ambiguity, as we continue to get horrific examples with an awful regularity.

The Bondi beach massacre fits into far too long a string of atrocities. As the details of what motivated the Akrams slowly emerge, we are learning about how the pair supported ISIS. They traveled last month to the Philippines, where ISIS remains active, for instance. And, at home, the younger Akram followed an imam who preached antisemitism.

Sadly, this is not new. ISIS propaganda has often called on followers to murder Jews, seeing them as locked in a global, apocalyptic war against Islam. The group’s English-language magazine, Dabiq, has derided a worldwide “Jewish-Western conspiracy” to destroy Islam and referred to an Islamic prophecy that describes an end-times battle where Muslims will fight and kill Jews. It also has portrayed Israel and the Jews as controlling the West, particularly the United States, a trope long echoed by far-right figures in the U.S.

ISIS’s followers have often acted on its teachings. Recall the May 2014 Jewish Museum shooting in Brussels, where four were killed, and the January 2015 kosher supermarket siege in Paris, where four died as part of a series of attacks. And remember the March 2016 Brussels bombings, where suicide bombers targeted Jews and Americans, killing more than 30 people in an airport, and a January 2016 attack in Marseille, where an ISIS backer tried to decapitate a Jewish man wearing a kippah. More recently, in March 2022, ISIS claimed responsibility for a spate of shootings in Hadera in Israel that left 11 dead.

Beyond these flagrant assaults is a worrisome trend in both right-wing and liberal circles in the U.S. of hostility to Israel. That is a feeling — or contention — that all-too-easily masks that longstanding history of hatred of Jews.

On the right, some are embracing antisemites such as white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Podcaster Tucker Carlson warmed to him and Donald J. Trump defended Carlson for that (recall that Trump had hosted Fuentes for dinner at Mar-A-Lago). As The New York Times reported, Carlson in an interview with Fuentes attacked Republicans who backed Israel, calling them “Christian Zionists” who had been “seized by this brain virus.”

Then there are odd characters, such as right-wing media figure Candace Owens. She accused critics of colluding with “Zionists” to discredit her, as The Washington Post reported. Podcaster Steve Bannon, moreover, derided Fox News host Mark Levin as “Tel Aviv Levin” and claimed to love Israel and Jews, even as he argued that the country was not an ally of the U.S.

Meanwhile, on the left, such figures as the anti-Zionist Mayor-elect of New York, Zohran Mamdani, are getting a hearing. He claims to oppose Jewish statehood because it disadvantages Israeli non-Jews, as Jewish Currents reported. In an October debate, Mamdani said he “would not recognize any state’s right to exist with a system of hierarchy on the basis of race or religion.” One wonders whether he would deny Italians, Irish or British people the right to their nations as he would deny Jews of all races theirs.

Then there are Democrats who’ve long criticized Israel, while claiming not to be attacking Jews. They include Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who was censured by the House in 2023 for her rhetoric about the Gaza War, and Minnesota Rep. Ihlan Omar, who was removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for similar sentiments.

Of course, one can argue – as Jewish critics of the Netanyahu government, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont do – that there’s a distinction between opposing policies of a government and hating Jews.

“Antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people,” Sanders said last spring in addressing Benjamin Netanyahu. “But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts. It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your actions.”

The problem, however, is that it’s far too easy for antisemites to dress up their hatred of Jews in political terms. That gives them easy cover to claim they just dispute a government’s policies, drawing a distinction between a nation’s people and their leaders. How convenient.

And there can be little doubt that Jews, whatever their politics, face a creeping normalization of antisemitism. It’s apparently only “potentially divisive” now for U.S. Coast Guard members to flaunt swastikas and nooses, for instance. That’s a dilution of a longstanding policy that forbade such hate symbols.

“What’s really disturbing is, at this moment, when there is a whitewashing of Nazis amongst some on the far right, and Churchill is painted as the devil incarnate when it comes to World War II, to take the swastika and call it ‘potentially divisive’ is hard to fathom,” the former Biden official and historian, Lipstadt, told The Washington Post. “Most importantly, the swastika was the symbol hundreds of thousands of Americans fought and gave their lives to defeat. It is not ‘potentially divisive,’ it’s a hate symbol.”

What seems to be a growing tolerance of antisemitism – masked or otherwise and shared by some on both sides of the political spectrum – bodes ill for increasingly endangered Jews in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Clearly, the strategists at ISIS don’t draw fine lines among Jews and politics. They believe that an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, a 10-year-old girl from Ukraine and many others, all just celebrating Hanukkah on a beach in Sydney, are legitimate targets in their antisemitic apocalyptic fantasies. They are the modern incarnations of a couple millennia’s worth of inexplicable hatred and misery.

How far we have fallen

Posted on December 13, 2025 by Joe Weber

Simple meanness seems to abound in America on the brink of her 250th birthday

Joseph Weber

When the Indiana state legislature was considering whether to bow to a pressure campaign by Donald J. Trump to redistrict the state to disenfranchise its few Democrats, Republican State Sen. Greg Goode pointed to the climate of fear and intimidation the president generated.

The Spirit of Indiana, a mural in the state capitol

“Misinformation. Cruel social media posts. Over the top pressure from inside and outside the statehouse. Threats of primaries. Threats of violence. Acts of violence,” Goode said on the Indiana Senate floor. “Friends, we’re better than this, are we not?”

But are we? Just what is Trump’s America on the brink of the country’s 250^th birthday? Is it a country of decent people who treat one another with respect, who live their personal lives trying to do the right things, who open their hearts and wallets to the needy, who help to create opportunity for all regardless of color or creed, who work toward fairness and justice, who live in a land that acts as a moral beacon for the world?

Well, consider the president’s actions in trying to manipulate the nation’s electoral system to entrench his minority party’s power.

As Mother Jones reported, Trump summoned Republican state legislators to the White House and sent Vice President JD Vance to Indiana twice to lobby the legislature to rejigger the electoral map to eliminate the state’s two Democratic congress members. Trump vowed to primary Republicans who opposed his election-rigging redistricting plan, calling out individual state legislators by name. He called the leader of the state Senate, Rodric Bray, a “weak and pathetic RINO” after Bray said the body didn’t have the votes to pass the measure.

In a social media rant, Trump called the Senate leader “either a bad guy, or a very stupid one!” and threatened “a MAGA Primary” against “anybody that votes against Redistricting.” That same night, a Republican member of the state House was the victim of a bomb threat at his home. Another GOP state senator opposed to gerrymandering who received a pipe bomb threat at her home posted on X that it was the “result of the D.C. political pundits for redistricting.”

As the magazine reported, the intimidation efforts, which included warnings of a pipe bomb and fake threats against lawmakers designed to produce a law enforcement response, had ugly echoes. Recall that Trumpist rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, threatened to hang Mike Pence, the former vice president and former Indiana governor, because he wouldn’t go along with the president’s unconstitutional plan to overturn the 2020 election.

But now, instead of overturning an election, Trump wants to rig and predetermine the next one. The new map was designed to eliminate all Democratic representation at the congressional level in Indiana, giving Republicans 100 percent of seats in a state where Trump won 58 percent of the vote in 2024. While Indiana’s current map received an A from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, the proposed one got an F.

In the end, the Indianans did the right thing. The Republicans among them stood up to their party’s president and shot down the redistricting effort 31-19, with 21 Republicans joining 10 Democrats in opposition. But they did so with worry.

“I fear for this institution,” said Republican state Sen. Greg Walker, chair of the Senate Committee on Elections, in an emotional speech. “I fear for the state of Indiana and I fear for all states if we allow intimidation and threats to become the norm.”

But across the country, are intimidation and threats not becoming the norm now? As Trump exemplifies sheer meanness in his dealings with the press (“Quiet, Piggy”) and others, are we not evolving into a nation dominated by heartlessness, violence and greed? Indeed, while Trump champions such things, is he not both a symptom of as well as the arch-crafter of much that has grown ugly in our country?

Politicians have a lot to fear nowadays beyond just electoral retaliation. Recall the assassination in June of Minnesota Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home, as well as the shooting of Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, in their home. The shooter carried a hit list of 45 Democratic elected officials he was gunning for.

Remember, too, the attempt on the life of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. An arsonist invaded and set fire to the governor’s residence in April in an antisemitic attack. More recently, a Utah man was arrested for threatening to shoot Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, and other leaders. Shapiro and Cox joined forces at a Dec. 10 meeting at the National Cathedral to condemn political violence.

“We need to begin by saying that all leaders must condemn all political violence — not cherry-pick which violence to condemn and which violence to accept,” Shapiro said, according to The Washington Post. “When you’re a governor, when you’re a president of the United States, you are looked to for that moral clarity. And we have a president of the United States right now that fails that test on a daily basis.”

Of course, Trump himself was the target of two assassination attempts. One killed a Trump supporter in the crowd and wounded two others. Rather than condemn the rising political violence, Trump’s post-shooting immediate response was to suggest that he was spared because he had God on his side. “Nothing will stop me in this mission because our vision is righteous and our cause is pure,” he said at one point.

The national pathology goes beyond the politicians, though.

Trump and his minions exult in the murders of at least 87 people so far – essentially summary executions without trial – in attacks on alleged drug boats. Meanwhile, at home, gun violence continues to take American lives at ghastly rates, with nearly 47,000 such deaths reported in 2023, the latest year for which figures are available (while 58 percent were suicides, 38 percent were murders).

And masked armed men stalk our cities, pursuing immigrants. In their deportation frenzy, ICE agents have rounded up some 220,000 people across the country since Trump took office. More than a third of those grabbed have no criminal records, contradicting the administration claim that is trying to purge the U.S. of dangerous migrants.

By another analysis in The New York Times, less than 30 percent of those seized in major cities had been convicted of a crime, with a far smaller share convicted of violent crime. The most common non-violent convictions were for driving under the influence and other traffic offenses.

In their simple-minded meanness, the ICE agents have assaulted non-migrants and hauled in the wrong people. Consider two incidents in Minneapolis, for instance.

Sue Tincher, a 55-year-old grandmother, was thrown into the snow, handcuffed, hauled off in a van and then detained for five hours with shackles on her legs. Officials cut off her wedding ring. Her offense: she showed up at the scene of an immigration arrest about 10 blocks from her home, asked whether the officials were from ICE, and refused to move on the street when ordered to. Did the 5-foot-4-inch Tincher pose a threat to the agents?

And then there’s the 20-year-old Somali American man who was harassed by ICE. Mubashir, who declined to share his full name for fear of his safety and that of his family, was tackled, arrested and held for about two hours. He had just stepped out onto the sidewalk during his lunch hour when two masked men approached him, followed him into a restaurant, handcuffed him, forced him to his knees in the snow and drove him off to a federal building. Only then did they let him turn on his phone and show him his ID.

“What we saw by these ICE agents that clearly did not know what they were doing was violence and unwillingness to hear the simple truth, which he was repeating again and again, which is, ‘I’m an American citizen,’” said Mayor Jacob Frey.

Modern American meanness takes other forms, too.

Our leaders seem content to let healthcare costs soar both for the neediest and middle-class folks, for instance. Insurance premiums are tripling (or worse). CBS, in reporting on the failure in the Senate of a couple recent health bills, shared the anecdote of a New Jersey woman, earning $72,000 a year, whose monthly insurance cost will rise from about $400 to more than $1,100.

And the Colorado Division of Insurance offered the example of a family of four with an annual income of $128,000. Their health insurance premium will rise some $14,000 for a standard silver plan if they live in the Denver area. If that family of four lives on the Western Slope, Grand Junction, southwest Colorado, the San Luis Valley, or the eastern plains, they will see premium increases of between $16,000 and nearly $21,000.

Where has compassion gone? Yes, healthcare is complicated and an overhaul is long overdue. But don’t politicians owe Americans intelligent efforts to fix the broken system, instead of letting citizens be fleeced or forced to go without coverage? Are we getting sincere efforts at reform?

And don’t they owe their fellow citizens basic fairness in taxes? Instead, the ultrawealthy thrive while others struggle. It’s no wonder that billionaires have lined up to kiss Trump’s, ahem, ring.

Over the next decade, Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) will cut taxes for the richest 10 percent of Americans by more than $14,700 per year per household and cut taxes for the richest 1 percent of Americans by more than $50,000 per year, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). Meanwhile, according to the Center for American Progress, tiny tax cuts for the working class will be outpaced by changes that will reduce the incomes of the poorest Americans.

Overall, CAP reported that the BBB cuts taxes by $4.5 trillion over the next decade, primarily with $2.3 trillion of provisions that deliver most of their benefits to the richest 10 percent of Americans by income. It delivers $1 trillion in tax cuts to the top 1 percent while cutting more than $1.1 trillion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and other health programs used by the poorest Americans.

Is that in any way fair? Does it reflect the sense of common decency that many of us like to believe animates most Americans?

Decades ago, former President Ronald Reagan repeatedly invoked American virtues and ideals in his talks. “We’re still a nation comprised of good and decent people whose fundamental values of tolerance, compassion, and fair-play guide and direct the decisions of our government,” he said in one 1984 speech in Ireland, for instance.

It’s mind-boggling to think about how far we’ve descended in four decades. But, maybe the courage shown by the good Midwesterners in Indiana is a harbinger of something better. Maybe, starting next November, the America of Ronald Reagan (and Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush and others) will rise again and reclaim the virtues such men exalted.

Sleepy Don

Posted on December 10, 2025 by Joe Weber

Trump’s health sparks fresh concerns

Joseph Weber

When Ronald Reagan led the nation, the comics at Saturday Night Live had a field day. One of their best skits showed him as a kindly, doddering soul as he met with children, but then as a shrewd, calculating strategist as he plotted governing decisions.

It was only much later – six years after he left office — that we learned that Reagan was, in fact, developing Alzheimer’s that some analysts believe clouded his final years in the White House. Beginning as early as three years into his first term, even his son Ron was alarmed about his father’s mental condition.

Consider Reagan’s performance in an October 1984 debate with Walter Mondale, when the president was 73. “My heart sank as he floundered his way through his responses, fumbling with his notes, uncharacteristically lost for words,” Ron Reagan wrote in “My Father at 100,” a memoir. “He looked tired and bewildered.”

And, of course, we all saw similar confusion in Joe Biden. His embarrassing debate with Trump in June 2024, when Biden was 81, drove him to yield the nomination to his vice president, Kamala Harris.

Now, it seems we are seeing similar plunges in Donald J. Trump, 79.

Fresh press accounts are chronicling his tendency to doze, on camera, during Cabinet meetings, along with his shortened workdays. At a Nov. 6 special Oval Office event, for instance, Trump’s “eyelids drooped until his eyes were almost closed, and he appeared to doze on and off for several seconds,” The New York Times reported. “At another point, he opened his eyes and looked toward a line of journalists watching him. He stood up only after a guest who was standing near him fainted and collapsed,” not bothering to go to the man’s aid.

Trump applies makeup to a bruise on the back of his right hand, the Times noted, fueling questions about a medical condition that his physician and aides attribute to aspirin and to shaking so many hands. In September, the bruising, coupled with swollen ankles, prompted observers on the internet to speculate wildly about his health.

Of course, Trump attacked the paper and others for raising doubts about his health. “After all the work I have done with Medical Exams, Cognitive Exams, and everything else, I actually believe it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean ‘THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES’,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in a lengthy post.

“Seditious,” “treasonous?” Even such terms go beyond his usual hyperbole. Might his fury lead him to press Justice to investigate, as he did with Democratic officials who did little more than cite the law in a video urging military commanders to balk at illegal orders?

As former CBS anchor Dan Rather noted in his Substack, “Steady,” Trump last week slipped into dreamland during a Cabinet meeting as Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised his leadership. And Rather offered a list of other signs of the president’s cognitive decline:

· Inability to remember words and names — Trump called his Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, “Cristie Kerr,” a professional golfer.

· Memory loss — During a September press conference, he said his first term “started around 2015,” then corrected himself to 2016. It began in January 2017.

· Confabulation — He claims his uncle, a professor at MIT, taught the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. His uncle died 11 years before Kaczynski was identified as the Unabomber, and he did not attend MIT.

· Increased aggression — He has posted thousands of all-caps social media rants aimed at everyone from California Governor Gavin Newsom to The New York Times.

· Confusion — He believes giant, energy-producing windmills “are killing us.”

· Verbal incoherence — The White House has removed from its website some of Trump’s inscrutable remarks. “I got rid of – just one I got rid of the other night, you buy a house, they have a faucet in the house, Joe, and the faucet the water doesn’t come out,” he said in one scrubbed speech. “They have a restrictor. You can’t – in areas where you have so much water they don’t know what to do with it. Uh, you have a shower head the shower doesn’t uh, the shower doesn’t, you think it’s not working. It is working. The water’s dripping out and that’s no good for me. I like this hair lace and [sic] – I like that hair nice and wet.”

As it happens, dozing off in public is not entirely new for Trump, suggesting he’s been slipping for a while now.

“Sleepy Don” during his trial last May, source: CNBC

“When he repeatedly snoozed during his Manhattan trial, last spring, it was a curiosity—especially for someone who had previously seemed so high-energy,” David Graham noted in “The Enfeebling of the President,” in The Atlantic. “But as I wrote at the time, it was also a warning: Was a man who couldn’t stay awake for his own felony trial, during the middle of the day, prepared for the rigors of the presidency? We now have some sense of the answer (and we might also wonder whether he’s even worse at staying awake during meetings that aren’t public).”

But Trump’s incoherence and rambling, also while not entirely new, appears to have worsened. Reporters have long engaged in sane-washing in writing about Trump’s speeches, and they have struggled anew to find consistent story lines in recent comments. Consider his 90-minute “weave” in Pennsylvania on Dec. 9, in which rambled from attacks on “affordability” to denials of inflation and defenses of his anti-immigration policies.

At one point, the Times noted, he compared the U.S. sealed borders to North Korea’s. He also mistakenly referred to his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, as “Susie Trump.”

As he often does, he also repeatedly rode one of his favorite hobbyhorses, blaming Biden for all the nation’s ills while citing no data stats to back up his overwrought claims. For instance, under Biden, he argued, “100 percent of new jobs were going to migrants,” but that “since I took office, 100 percent of all net job creation has gone to American citizens.”

Recent medical tests have done little to clarify Trump’s condition, largely because he and the White House have traded in haziness, keeping the precise results secret. When he was asked about an October MRI in mid-November, Trump insisted both that he didn’t know what it was about and that it had a great result: “I have no idea what they analyzed,” he told reporters, as Graham noted. “But whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well, and they said that I had as good a result as they’ve ever seen.”

As Graham reported, this has raised a big question: MRIs aren’t a routine part of annual physicals, and the president had his most recent physical just last April. So why test him again?

The New Republic reported that doctors generally use such tests to assess tumors, joint injuries, or heart conditions. Moreover, former White House physicians questioned the timeline of Trump’s appointment, pointing out that his four-hour visit to the hospital was far longer than needed for an MRI. Nonetheless, Trump said the tests came back “perfect.”

Trump claims to weigh 224 pounds, Rather wrote, adding that this was “suspiciously just under what is considered obese for someone 6 feet 3 inches tall — especially since he rejects physical exercise as a concept and happily eats Big Macs, plural, in one sitting.” Trump is said to down a dozen Diet Cokes a day.

It’s not unprecedented for presidential administrations to obscure the leader’s health problems. Woodrow Wilson’s incapacitation from a stroke in 1919 was kept secret and his wife, Edith, handled many of his duties, as scholars later learned. FDR, who had suffered from polio, shielded lingering problems from public view, as did JFK, who had chronic back pain and Addison’s Disease. Of course, Biden’s decline was covered up until it came into the open, much as seems the case with Trump now.

What’s more, in some ways Trump seems merely to be a figurehead. He has given free rein to aides such as his anti-immigrant tsar Stephen Miller, his budget manager Russell Vought (architect of Project 2025), the Health and Human Services despoiler Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Pentagon-wrecker and drug-boat assailant Peter Hegseth. Trump seems little more than a rubber-stamp for their efforts.

Still, the stakes are enormously high when the decider-in-chief’s abilities to make rational choices may be impaired. As the oldest American ever to take office in the White House, Trump’s mental acuity is unlikely to improve, making for a rocky remaining three years. The president, who will leave office at 82 if he endures, will provide plenty of grist for SNL. That’s hardly encouraging for the rest of us.

“We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.”

Posted on December 5, 2025 by Joe Weber

Eric Hoffer’s admonition applies in spades to Pete Hegseth

Joseph Weber

Self-styled Secretary of War, source: Instagram

Ah, the dizzying power of self-delusion.

Peter B. “Pete” Hegseth, the former Fox TV host and much tattooed ex-Army National Guard major, styles himself as the “Secretary of War,” even though his official title until Congress decides otherwise is “Secretary of Defense.” Thrice-married, he is fond of looking macho and has buttressed his studly image by paying $50,000 to quash a sexual-assault claim. He also warms to photo-ops of himself doing push-ups with American troops in the snow.

But, lately, Hegseth is adding some big smudges to his escutcheon, even as he seems — or pretends — to be blind to them.

Most recently, of course, is the report by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General about how he used a chat app, Signal, to share advance details about a forthcoming bombing operation in Yemen in March. The IG determined that Hegseth “created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.” In several sections of that heavily redacted report, the IG drove home that point.

“The Secretary sent nonpublic DoD information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes,” the IG report said. “Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DoD information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives.”

Remember that this all came to light because Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, had been added to the Hegseth chat inadvertently. That alone was an astonishing breach of security.

“Signalgate became a shorthand for ineptitude at the highest reaches of the administration,” the magazine recalled in a fresh report. “Foreign allies told us that they felt justified in their earlier reluctance to share their secrets with the United States, given President Donald Trump’s long history of mishandling classified information.”

The IG blasted Hegseth, too, for using his unclassified personal device to share sensitive information via group chat to other top Trump administration officials and for not preserving all associated messages, in violation of federal recordkeeping laws. Notably, he refused to talk with the IG and refused to turn over his phone.

And yet, Hegseth’s public response was, essentially, “no harm, no foul.” His exact words on X were: “No classified information. Total exoneration. Case closed. Houthis bombed into submission. Thank you for your attention to this IG report.”

And, as The Washington Post reported, Hegseth’s spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in a statement that the review was a “TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth and proves what we all knew — no classified information was shared.” Parnell added: “This matter is resolved and the case is closed.”

It’s one thing for a flack to serve up steaming BS. But one has to wonder whether Hegseth, a Princeton graduate with a postgrad degree from Harvard, can read. Or, as so often seems the case with his master and benefactor, Donald J. Trump, perhaps he just believes he can lie and people will believe it.

Falling in line, other Trumpists seem to be taking the same tack with Hegseth’s early September missile attacks on an alleged drug boat. Those hits killed two men who were struggling in the water after an initial strike, beyond the others initially blown apart.

After watching videos of the hits, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton said: “The first strike, the second strike, and the third and the fourth strike on September 2nd were entirely lawful and needful, and they were exactly what we would expect our military commanders to do.” And Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Arkansas), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, added that there was “no doubt in my mind about the highly professional manner” in which the attack occurred.

Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who ordered the missile strikes as he followed Hegseth’s commands, considered the survivors to be viable targets, not shipwrecked, defenseless mariners who, by law, should not have been targeted, according to The Washington Post. The pair could have radioed for help and continued their “mission” of shipping drugs to American shores, Cotton told the paper.

Really? Ah, the power of self-delusion. Certainly, Democrats who viewed the videos saw something quite different.

Rep. Jim Himes (Connecticut), the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, described the footage as “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.” The survivors, he said, were “in clear distress” after their boat was “destroyed.”

“The video we saw today showed two shipwrecked individuals who had no means to move, much less pose an immediate threat, and yet they were killed by the United States military,” Himes said in a joint statement with Rep. Adam Smith (Washington), the House Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat. “Regardless of what one believes about the legal underpinnings of these operations, and we have been clear we believe they are highly questionable, this was wrong.”

Hegseth has tried to distance himself from the strikes that killed the survivors, backhandedly praising Bradley’s decision for sending the missiles that followed the first one. That compliment nicely sets the admiral up as a fall guy. And the admiral, perhaps falling on his sword, has reportedly denied a Washington Post report that claimed that Hegseth ordered the military to “kill them all.”

That Washington Post report — confirmed by an anonymous source separately to NPR — was that Hegseth gave a spoken directive to kill the surviving occupants of the boat with a second strike. Attacking “wounded, sick or shipwrecked” combatants violates the law of war, according to a Pentagon manual.

Hegseth denied those reports as “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory,” saying U.S. operations in the Caribbean are “lawful under both U.S. and international law … and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.”

Recall, though, that Hegseth drove out an earlier area commander who appears to have had reservations about the boat attacks. Adm. Alvin Holsey announced his premature resignation as head of military operations in the Caribbean after raising concerns about the legality of lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Since that boat attack, Hegseth’s military has bombed at least 20 others, killing more than 80 people – all without trials or proof that they were ferrying drugs and all a bloody departure from prior efforts to capture traffickers alive to face justice. When not defending the killings as part of an alleged “war” between the U.S. and traffickers, Hegseth’s reaction to the killings has been to joke about them, posting an image of a cartoon turtle firing on armed boatmen.

The mockup turtle image drew heat from, among others, the Canadian publisher of the Franklin books. “Franklin the Turtle is a beloved Canadian icon who has inspired generations of children and stands for kindness, empathy, and inclusivity,” the publisher Kids Can Press wrote in a statement on X. “We strongly condemn any denigrating, violent, or unauthorized use of Franklin’s name or image, which directly contradicts these values.”

Hegseth’s callousness did not amuse some lawmakers either. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, who has openly sparred with the Pentagon in recent weeks, told reporters that the meme is just one reason why the defense secretary should be fired, calling him “not a serious person,” as NPR reported. “He is in the national command authority for nuclear weapons and he’s putting out … turtles with rocket-propelled grenades.”

And Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, speaking on the floor of the Senate, called Hegseth a “national embarrassment,” calling the Franklin meme a “sick parody.”

Whether Hegseth ultimately weathers the storms he generates is an open question. Democrats have vowed to continue to press the case against him. But, while Trump has said he wouldn’t have ordered the follow-on strike that killed the two shipwrecked men, he has also stood by Hegseth – at least for now.

Whether Hegseth should continue in the job, though, seems hardly in question.

Consider the view of conservative columnist George Will. “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement,” he wrote. “The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself.”

Focusing particularly on Hegseth’s refusal to sit for an interview with his department’s inspector general and or to turn over his phone, former federal prosecutor and University of Alabama law professor Joyce Vance in her Substack drew a broader lesson. “None of this is what Americans are entitled to expect from a public servant or what a president should demand of his appointees,” she said.

Of course, it’s not clear just what at least some Americans expect from their leaders. Some, perhaps, don’t mind being lied to or maybe they delude themselves as much as Hegseth seems to.

The gauntlet is thrown

Posted on December 2, 2025 by Joe Weber

Trump’s moves on the Somalis of Minnesota will not sit well

Joseph Weber

Somalis celebrate at a naturalization ceremony in 2010; source: MPR News

Somalis have come far in Minneapolis. When I was doing research for a book there nearly a decade ago, I visited professors, college students, restaurateurs, businesspeople, imams and others in a sprawling community – now numbering about 80,000 — that also includes police officers, physicians, politicians and others who run the full gamut of society.

Some of the people I met had fled their homeland in the 1990s after it was engulfed by famine and civil war. They had left a tortured country that had been the product of British and Italian imperialism and U.S.-Soviet Union great power meddling. Others I met included their children, young people who were straddling two cultures as they worked to find their way in the U.S. like so many other generations of immigrants – some succeeding and some not.

But none of the people I met were “garbage,” as Donald J. Trump calls them.

Sadly, though, that is how Trump sees the Somalis who have become mainstays of Minneapolis society. Like any demagogue, he appears to hope that such dehumanizing language will motivate the roughly 100 ICE agents who have descended on Minneapolis and nearby Saint Paul.

Perhaps he hopes this will allow those officers – and much of America — to see these immigrants as less than human. That way, the agents can move forward with roundups of Somalis who they can throw on planes and send outside the U.S., perhaps back to the dysfunctional place they fled.

“I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason,” Trump ranted in a recent Cabinet meeting. “Their country stinks and we don’t want them in our country. I can say that about other countries too. We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage.”

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, source: Justice Democrats

Ignorant of history, deficient in compassion and blind to the gains that have led many Somalis, such as U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, into important roles in the last 30 years, Trump is incapable of seeing the community for what it is. He doesn’t see strivers who are making their way — often overcoming language and cultural challenges in the same ways as Italians, Germans, Poles, Irish and so many others have throughout American history.

Instead, Trump seems to see only threatening legions of unwelcome Black people.

This is not new for him. Nine years ago, then-candidate Trump got his comeuppance from the mayor of Minneapolis for his attacks – just verbal ones then – on the Somalis. On a visit to Minnesota, he had slandered the community, saying such refugees were unwelcome and should not be allowed to “roam our communities.”

Betsy Hodges, then the mayor, responded: “This is America, Donald, and the Somali people of Minnesota and Minneapolis are not *roaming* our communities, they are *building* them …. Your ignorance, your hate, your fear just make me remember how lucky we are to have neighbors who are so great.”

Now, others are damning his renewed efforts.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey blasting Trump’s remarks; source: Reuters

“To our Somali community, we love you and we stand with you. That commitment is rock solid, Minneapolis is proud to be home to the largest Somali community in the entire country,” the current Minneapolis Mayor, Jacob Frey, said. “Targeting Somali people means that due process will be violated, mistakes will be made. It means American citizens will be detained for no other reason than the fact that they look like they are Somali. That is not now and will never be a legitimate reason.”

And Melvin Carter, the first Black man to be elected mayor of nearby Saint Paul, has struck a similar tone.

“We saw, sadly, the President of the United States opened his mouth to take a whole country of people and denigrate just based on where they come from,” Carter said. “America prided itself on being a country of immigrants. It seems the darker skin the immigrants who come to our country are, the more our posture on immigration as a country has shifted. That’s un-American, that’s concerning.”

Carter, who recently lost a bid for reelection to a member of the city’s Hmong community, lambasted the arrival of the ICE agents in racial terms.

“The last thing we need is federal agents coming here pretending we should be afraid of somebody just based on the color of their skin, just based on what they look like, just based on what country their ancestors claim,” Carter said. “The last thing we need is federal agents coming to town attempting to turn us against each other, to create chaos. We stand together.”

But, in the face of armed, masked and roving federal agents, it’s not clear just how much such rhetorical unity will mean. In the city where a Black man, George Floyd, was infamously killed in 2021 by a rogue police officer, leading to rioting and bloodshed, the agents are likely to be aggressive and some may find themselves to be targets. Certainly, they will be dogged by people videoing their actions — and perhaps worse.

Dieu Do, a community organizer with the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, told The New York Times that her group and other migrant rights organizations have been preparing for more immigration raids. In recent months, local activists have responded to reports of possible immigration operations in large numbers, often wearing gas masks, kneepads and other protective gear. Activists usually record agents with their phones and chant in protest.

“We have plans in place in case bigger operations come,” the organizer said. “Federal agents should be afraid to come here because we’re not afraid to protect each other.”

As a local newspaper, the Sahan Journal, reported, a Nov. 18 immigration raid in Saint Paul may offer a foretaste of what’s to come.

Protesters and federal agents in Saint Paul, source: Sahan Journal

That morning, the paper reported, protesters clashed with federal agents at a Saint Paul wiper manufacturer and distributor. At least 14 people were arrested. Officers from several agencies, including the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fired pepper balls at protesters blocking vehicles.

Many of the protesters had arrived just minutes after the agents. That quick response was part of a coordinated effort. The activists rely on a response system, the Immigrant Defense Network, to alert them to ICE actions and to guide them on how to respond.

And the federal agents may get little help from Minneapolis police. The force will not collaborate with ICE, officials have said.

“I know how real the fear is in our community,” said the city’s police chief, Brian O’Hara. “People are going to want to speak out, to protest, and to exercise their First Amendment rights. Those are the rights of everyone in our community, and I want to be clear that we will absolutely defend people’s rights to do just that.”

O’Hara pleaded for nonviolence, though, and suggested that police will try to keep things peaceful. An official statement from the city’s communications department, moreover, noted that the police would respond illegal or dangerous conduct, trying to de-escalate any situation that threatens people or property.

As usual, Trump and his minions have pretexts they can point to for their actions – pretexts Trump is pumping up with his usual hyperbole.

As TIME reported, the day after the shooting of the National Guard members by an Afghan near the White House, Trump ordered a review of green cards issued to migrants from 19 countries, including Somalia. And, in a Thanksgiving message posted on Truth Social where he announced that he would “permanently pause” migration from “Third World” countries, he particularly blasted the Somali community in Minnesota. Trump claimed the Somalis are “completely taking over” the state.

More recently, he claimed in a Nov. 21 Truth Social post that “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing.” He pointed to fraud among some Somalis in Minnesota over the last five years, in which scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for social services that were never provided. As The New York Times reported, federal prosecutors said 59 people have been convicted so far, and that more than $1 billion in taxpayers’ money has been stolen in three plots they are investigating.

Trump lambasted the frauds and announced he would end temporary protected statuses for Somalis “effective immediately.” That status had been granted by President George H.W. Bush in 1991 and today, according to TIME, losing it puts at least 700 Somalis at risk.

“The actions of a small group have made it easier for people already inclined to reject us to double down,” Abdi Mohamed, a filmmaker in Minneapolis, told The New York Times. “The broader Somali community — hardworking, family-oriented, deeply committed to Minnesota — is left carrying that burden.”

For Trump, the actions of a small group are excuse enough to go after an entire community. Nursing rage that has festered in him since at least 2016, he’s thrown down the gauntlet. After infamously lambasting cities across America for imagined violence, even as violence and crime have measurably declined, his moves on the Somali community seem likely to stir up far more of it in the Twin Cities and perhaps beyond.

The Big Picture

Author Archives: Joe Weber

About Joe Weber

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Jews are being attacked worldwide just for being Jews

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Sleepy Don

Trump’s health sparks fresh concerns

“We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.”

Eric Hoffer’s admonition applies in spades to Pete Hegseth

The gauntlet is thrown

Trump’s moves on the Somalis of Minnesota will not sit well