Another Unoriginal Thought

Not so long ago, I commented that I thought one reason Trump was focusing so much on foreign policy was that his power in the domestic sphere was slipping away.

His attempt to use the government shutdown for a power grab had failed.  The Supreme Court had limited his power to impose unilateral tariffs and deploy the National Guard domestically.  ICE failed to subdue Minneapolis and had sparked a public backlash.  The Senate refused to end the filibuster.  More and more Epstein material kept leaking.  Anthropic was taking the Administration to court.  And the midterms looked really bad.

So Trump focused on foreign policy and war, because there is very little that can be done to constrain a President in foreign policy and military matter.  Except, of course, that "very little can be done" means that little can be done domestically.  The enemy still gets a veto.

And now that Trump's overseas war is not going so well, it appears he is turning back to domestic matters, with some success.  The Supreme Court has not only authorized, but mandated Republicans to gerrymander the South in their favor.  Indiana Republicans who defied Trump have lost their primaries.  The Attorney General is pursuing indictments against James Comey (for seashells) and the Southern Poverty Law Center for using informants, with who knows what to come.  And now he is proclaiming political opponents to be terrorists.

Look, there are signs of growing push-back against Trump's power.  But he is becoming more abusive the more he feels threatened. 

Buckle up.
 

Some Obvious Points About Donald Trump

 

Trump famously embodies the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby people who know very little about a field think they know much more than they actually do.  He is also the walking embodiment of H.L. Mencken's maxim that complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers.

That is, of course, a major source of his appeal.  He appeals to people who don't know any more about policy questions than he does and assume that there are simple solutions out there that politicians have not adopted because they are too stupid, corrupt, or weak-willed.  Trump claims that he will cut through the red tape and fix everything by not being half-hearted about it.  Of course, when his profoundly ignorant claims run up against reality, things tend not to go so well.

In his first term, Trump appealed to people's complaints about Obamacare.  "We'll have great health care at a fraction of the cost and it will be so easy."  It was, after all, what people wanted to hear.  After working on it a while, Trump complained, "Who knew health policy was so complicated."  Not many people, Donald, just anyone who knows anything at all about health policy.  Admittedly, this is a fairly small portion of the total population.  He ended up with a plan to repeal Obamacare with no replacement and thereby strip 20 million people of their health insurance.  I think even the least informed members of the pubic would have noticed that.

Much the same applied when Trump agreed to a summit with the North Koreans.  He only cared about the pomp and pageantry and was not interested in trivial details like what agreement they might reach.

For his second term, Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine in one day.  Presumably he believed that his friend Pooty, would happily end the war as a personal favor.  To the extent the Ukrainians were unwilling to agree to Putin's terms, a little arm twisting should bring them into line.  Well, this failed for much the same reason -- Trump thinks of foreign policy solely in terms of personal relationships and has no idea that countries have interests that transcend the individuals in charge.  

So too with the Iran war.  The Iranians' clear wish up until February 28 to avoid war with a much stronger country made Trump think they were pushovers and easily intimidated.  What he didn't understand was that the regime was never going to agree to its own destruction, or that it would fight fiercely when cornered, although both points should have been obvious.  He appears to have believed that Iran would be intimidated into submission by the mere presence of US forces or, failing that, that he would have been able to swap out the name at the top for someone more compliant, just the way it has worked in Venezuela.

When that failed, Trump's advisors apparently convinced him that if he blockaded the straits, pressure would build up in Iran's oil storage and threaten to blow up in a matter of days, which would presumably force their capitulation.  Well, spoiler alert, that didn't happen either.  Trump now seems to believe that if he threatens and cajoles enough the Iranians will agree to his terms in a matter of days.  He has no patience for the long, drawn-out process of diplomacy.  

In the case of Obamacare, the dying John McCain made one last appearance in the Senate to save his party from itself and vote down repeal.  No deal was reached in either Korea or Ukraine, so the situation continued -- bad, but ultimately something most Americans could live with.

Well, the war in Iran is looking to be the most intractable problem yet.  Continuing that status quo is clearly not acceptable and bound to get worse, but there is no easy out.

Maybe next time don't elect President Dunning-Kruger.

Reflections on the Gerrymanders

 

The original gerrymander

I was confused by reports on the latest Supreme Court outrage.  A decision that allows states to gerrymander to reduce minority representation but not to increase it???  How does that work?

It appears that the answer is that the Supreme Court held that states may not take race into account in drawing voting districts may may consider partisanship.  The practical effect of this was to remove the last barrier to Republican gerrymandering in southern states.  Up till now, Republican legislatures in the South were not allowed to deliberately break up Black districts.  They are now free to do so, so long as they claim to be setting boundaries for partisan, rather than racial, reasons.  Presumably Democratic states could do the opposite -- maximize minority representation so long as they claim partisan motives.

Naturally Republicans are cackling gleefully, boasting about redrawing their districts to ensure that Republicans have permanent control of Congress.

Just last week, Republicans were outraged that Virginia had redrawn its districts to move Democrats' advantage from 6-5 to 10-1.  And given the general makeup of the Virginia electorate, that move, taken by itself, would be egregiously unfair.  But Republicans are ignoring their own behavior leading up to the Virginia move, redrawing electoral maps in Texas, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina, with Florida next in line.  

And no, this is not two children on the playground yelling about who started it, or a game of tit for tat. This is about whether Democrats will unilaterally disarm, giving Republicans a complete free hand to draw districts to their advantage while Democrats refrain.  Last week Republicans were denouncing how unfair the Virginia gerrymander was and pointing out other Democratic states that were gerrymandered (sometimes even denouncing states with just one Representative for not having a proportionate share of Republicans!) while totally ignoring the gerrymanders in Republican states.  Now Republicans are boasting about redrawing districts so as to ensure that Democrats can never hold Congress again.  

Sigh!  I know Republicans don't read my blog.  (Neither does anyone else, really).  But simply put, the options are like this:

No one gerrymanders	Republican gerrymander Democrats don’t
Democrats gerrymander Republicans don’t	Both parties gerrymander

So far as I can tell, Democrats, given the opportunity to rank their preferences, would do it as follows:

1. No one gerrymanders	4. Republican gerrymander Democrats don’t
3. Democrats gerrymander Republicans don’t	2. Both parties gerrymander

Republicans, by contrast, appear to rank their preferences as follows:

4. No one gerrymanders	1. Republican gerrymander Democrats don’t
4. Democrats gerrymander Republicans don’t	4. Both parties gerrymander

It is not even clear to me that Republicans are able to distinguish among the other three options.

On the Other Hand

Consider:

August, 2025:  Former DOGE staffer "Big Balls" injured in a carjacking.  Trump deploys the National Guard to Washington DC and an immigration crackdown, even though the carjackers were natural born US citizens.

September, 2025:  Charlie Kirk assassinated.  Stephen Miller pledges an "all of government" crackdown on the opposition.  JD Vance and others urge people to comb the internet for criticisms of Charlie Kirk and have the people making them fired.  Talk of a "Reichstag Fire moment."

November, 2025:  Afghan National drives from Washington State to Washington, DC to shoot two members of the National Guard.  Trump Administration cuts off asylum applications from 19 Muslim countries and starts arresting lawfully present Afghan asylum seekers when they check in.

December, 2025:  Investigations of fraud by the Somali community in Minnesota lead the Trump's biggest and most brutal immigration crackdown to date.

April 25, 2026:  Attempted assassination of Donald Trump, JD Vance and much of his Cabinet at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.  Trump and his followers respond -- with an all-out push to approve the proposed White House ballroom.

Honestly, if that is the worst thing to emerge from the latest assassination attempt, I would consider that very fortunate indeed!

About That Southern Poverty Law Center Indictment . . . .

 

In all honesty, I was starting to feel ready to declare victory in the Charlie Kirk matter and say that it had not, after all, turned out to be our Reichstag Fire moment.  No political opponents or organizations had been charged.  People fired in the wake of the assassination were starting to sue to get their jobs back.  Instead of a government attempt to bring down the Great Leftwing Conspiracy that killed Charlie Kirk, rightwing conspiracists were pointing the finger at each other.

Oh, yes, and Ed Martin was fired from the "Weaponization Working Group," supposedly for failing to do any actual weaponization.  At the time (February 2) the report was that it was supposed to get results within two months.  Well, two months have passed and all it has produced is a report criticizing the Biden Administration for prosecuting protesters blocking access to abortion clinics.  And then there was the prosecution of anti-ICE protesters who really did set off fireworks outside an ICE facility and shoot a police officer.  Some have complained about over-charging.  I was less concerned because (1) there really was a crime and (2) like it or not, federal over-charging is nothing new.  Don't bring guns and fireworks to a protest seems like a sound rule to me.

Well, just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water, the Administration released an indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center for paying informants in the groups it was investigating.  It seems at least plausible that the Law Center identifying Turning Point USA as an extremist group may have been a factor in the decision to indict.  Honestly, most critics I have read about the indictment are dismissing it as propaganda, to justify the far right marchers in Charlottesville.  I am inclined to think it is more for two reasons.  One is that this may be just the beginning.  Other such indictments may be coming.  The other is that the purpose of this indictment is obvious -- to chill any other organization that may express views the Administration dislikes.

Anyhow, back to the signs that Trump's power may be waning:

1. Media outlets bought by Trump allies are willing to criticize or oppose him:  CBS continues to run worthwhile stories on Trump, as do the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, so I am hopeful on this score.
2. State Republicans defy Trump.  No real change from last time.
3. Republicans in Congress splinter and Trump cannot bring them into line: This clearly happened on the SAVE Act.  It may be happening on funding as well.
4. Attempts to target opposing organizations through taxes or RICO are thrown out, or never materialize:  The latest indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center is a bad sign.
5. Universities, high power law firms, and other institutions targeted by Trump start consistently defying him:  Not much changed from last time.
6. The Supreme Court makes a meaningful attempt to reign Trump in:  He lost on the National Guard and tariffs, although he keeps threatening to ignore the tariffs decision.  Prospects on birthright citizenship do not look good.
7. Democrats win control of the House and Trump cannot stop them:  Too early to say, obviously.  But Trump acknowledging that the President's party tends to lose during midterms may be an encouraging sign.
8. Democrats win control of the Senate and Trump cannot stop them: Ditto.
9. Growing numbers of state and local jurisdictions reject cooperation with ICE, putting more strain on the organization:  No.  This might happen after midterms, but not before.
10. ICE starts losing personnel faster than it can recruit them and begins shrinking: No.
11. Big money interests start standing up to him:  Anthropic has, anyhow.
12. Trump supporters stop making death threats and harassment against people who he criticizes:  Maybe I should drop this one because there are just too many crazies out there.

 Donald Trump has always made his fortune ripping off the gullible rubes.  And it appears that there is not a more gullible set of rubes than the ones on Wall Street.

What Is It About Ultra-Nationalists and Treason?

 This one isn't even thinking outside the box.  It is a widely observed phenomenon.  

In the first half of the twentieth century, a wave of extreme rightwing movment arose all across Europe.  Invariably, their claim to legitimacy was in their nationalism.  They mocked the liberals with their universal human rights and the socialists with their international brotherhood of labor as unreliable and not truly devoted to their country.  When the chips were down, could these groups really be counted on to stand up for their country, or was it only the far right who could be trusted.

And then Hitler showed up, and the far-right nationalists all proved to be a pack of traitors.*  

For a while, we might dismiss this as a historical curiosity, something unlikely to repeat.

And now here we are.  Another rightwing nationalist movement is sweeping Europe, and the US.  And once again, they are turning out to be a pack of traitors.  As Orban's cronies frantically shred documents to conceal the full extent of their collaboration with the Russians, we really need to give some thought as to why this keeps happening.  Because at some point it starts looking less and less like a coincidence and more and more like something innate to the ideology.

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*One might make a exception for Lindberg's America First movement that looked like a potential pack of traitors but ultimately rallied to the Allied side during WWII.  On the other hand, one can also argue that America First never became traitors because they never had the opportunity.