Donald Trump is giving illegal orders to the National Guard

Echo report published in The New York Times and again in Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper by Shawn McCreesh, a White House reporter for The Times covering the Trump administration.

What I do not understand is how Mr. McCreesh can report about this situation without raising the salient question 💥- How can Donald Trump keep getting away with giving illegal orders to the National Guard?)

(Maine Writer preface- Donald Trump continues giving illegal orders regardless of how many people are harmed but then when the inevitable result turns tragic, he deflects the subject by reigning down more cruelty.)

Trump’s Evil Response to ragic Shooting Intensifies Anti-Migrant Stance- to deflect from the fact about how the National Guard were in harm's way because he issued an illegal order for them to be in Washington DC to police peaceful civilians.

Donald Trump is furiously demanding limits on migration and attacking ethnic groups as he steps up his efforts to equate immigration with crime and economic distress.

The shooting of two National Guard members by a gunman identified by the authorities as an Afghan national has set off an especially intense level of fury in President Trump and a new push to step up his anti-immigration policies.

In a series of statements in the two days since the shooting on a Washington street corner just blocks from the White House, Mr. Trump has cast the attack as exactly what he has warned about and made clear that he intended to use it to pursue an even more maximalist version of his agenda.

In social media posts near midnight on Thanksgiving, he vowed to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” and threatened to strip U.S. citizenship from naturalized migrants “who undermine domestic tranquillity.”



He threatened to “end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country” and deport foreigners deemed to be “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director said in a statement that his agency had “halted all asylum decisions until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”

On the same day, the State Department announced that it was halting visas for Afghans, including those who had helped the United States during the war in their country.

Mr. Trump used remarkably derogatory and personal terms in his Thursday night posts to portray Somali refugees as preying in gangs on innocent Americans, and Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who emigrated to the United States from Somalia and became a citizen 25 years ago, as someone who “probably came into the U.S.A. illegally.” He described her as “always wrapped in her swaddling hijab.”

Those statements came after he had ordered the administration to review the status of green card holders from 19 nations that he has subjected to a travel ban.

It is not clear what authority Donald. Trump has to follow through on his demands or how he will seek to have them carried out. 

Under federal law, for example, U.S. citizens can generally be denaturalized only if they are found to have concealed material facts about their background in gaining citizenship or to have misrepresented themselves in the process.

But, the ferocity of his response was in keeping with his longstanding views on immigration, race and national identity and what he sees as a direct link from those factors to crime, national security threats and economic distress — even though those links, where they exist, are often tenuous and more complex than he makes out.

The killing of one of the National Guard members and the critical wounding of another is also sure to fuel further debate over the costs and benefits of using the military on the streets of American cities. Mr. Trump has already ordered another 500 National Guardsmen to Washington on top of the roughly 2,000 there already, although a federal judge ruled last week that the initial deployment was illegal.

The shooting and Mr. Trump’s response assure that immigration will remain at the center of American politics heading into the 2026 midterm election cycle and at a time when the White House is on the defensive over issues like the cost of living and the Jeffrey Epstein files.

In his second term, Donald Trump has been primarily focused on deporting migrants from the United States. But over the last several days he has re-emphasized policies and language that date back to his first term, when he disparaged African countries, and the 2024 campaign, when he singled out groups of migrants and blamed them for crime and other social ills.

Since the shooting, Donald Trump has seemed to fixate on Somalian refugees in Minnesota in particular.

“We’re not taking their people anymore,” Donald Trump said on Thursday. He later wrote on social media that Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of that state, was “seriously retarded” for welcoming immigrants from Somalia.

Asked Thursday at Mar-a-Lago what Somalis in Minnesota had to do with the accused Afghan shooter in Washington, Mr. Trump replied: “Ah, nothing. But Somalians have caused a lot of trouble.”

The shooting has taken on an outsize significance in the story that Mr. Trump tells about the country and the world. The details of the tragedy dovetail neatly with so many of the issues that animated his campaign for president.

The way Mr. Trump talks about immigration invokes tropes, not all of which are supported by the facts, about out-of-control crime in big cities and about foreign invaders who take advantage of American hospitality with no intent to assimilate to an American way of life. He repeatedly brings up the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and its border and refugee policies, which Mr. Trump had said all along would result in catastrophe.

When he spoke in Palm Beach on Thursday, he held up a photograph showing Afghans rushing onto a plane leaving their country as its government collapsed in 2021. Such scenes, he said, were incontrovertible proof of what he had been warning about for years.

He downplayed the fact that the suspect in the Washington shooting, an Afghan who had worked with C.I.A.-backed forces to help the United States in Afghanistan, had received asylum from the U.S. government in April, when Mr. Trump was president, according to three people with knowledge of the case who were not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Trump had an answer ready to go when he was asked about that on Thursday.

“When it comes to asylum, when they’re flown in, it’s very hard to get them out,” he said. “No matter how you want to do it, it’s very hard to get them out. But we’re going to be getting them all out now.”

Edward Wong contributed reporting.

Donald Trump and his unpatriotic obsession with despots like the Saudi ghoul Mohammed bin Salman

Trump is crazy! He defends Saudi Crown Prince at White House Over Jamal Khashoggi Killing Read more (Legit World): 

Echo opinion letters: The NYTimes editorial board correctly called out Donald Trump’s disgraceful defense of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman 👿💢of Saudi Arabia after being asked by an ABC News reporter about the murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But in reacting as he did, Trump, undoubtedly unintentionally, called out the prince.

In Trump's disgusting castigation to the reporter, Mary Bruce, the he said to her, “You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”

In more than 40 years as a psychiatrist, I have observed something that will be obvious to most: Innocent people, wrongly accused, are generally indignant and angry.

Guilty people, rightly accused, are embarrassed or even ashamed (if they have the moral fiber for it).

When Donald Trump least intended it, the truth slipped out.

From Harold Schwartz in West Hartford, Connecticut

"Trump thinks Ms. Bruce’s job is to report to the president rather than to report about what the president does," from Bernard Joshua Kabak in New York.

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth cannot handle the truth! Senator Mark Kelly is a national hero who speaks truth to power

An echo opinion essay by David Cole published in The New York Times:  Senator Mark Kelly Is Being Investigated for Telling the Truth.

Senator Mark Kelly is a former astronaut and a retired Navy Captain

On Monday Pete Hegseth, the 🤢secretary of defense, directed the Pentagon to investigate Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain who flew combat missions during the gulf war and took several spaceflights as an astronaut before he was elected to serve Arizona’s citizens in Congress. His potential crime❓ Telling members of the armed services the truth: that they do not have to follow illegal orders. But saying so is not a crime; it’s a true statement of the law. And even if Donald Trump doesn’t like it, it’s protected by the First Amendment.

In a video released last week, Senator Kelly and several other Democratic lawmakers reminded members of the military that they “can refuse illegal orders.” That’s exactly right. “Following orders” is not a defense if you follow an illegal order to commit a war crime, as Allied prosecutors established at the Nuremberg trials of Nazis after World War II. 

Members of the military have not only the right but the obligation to refuse illegal orders.

The video enraged Trump, who evidently likes his orders followed, regardless of whether they are lawful. On (shitty 💩) Truth Social he called the video “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” He then reposted another person’s message that said, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!” 

Now his defense secretary has opened an investigation into whether Mr. Kelly committed a military crime by saying what he did. 

And the F.B.I. followed suit by seeking to question the six lawmakers in the video, all of whom served in the military or the intelligence service. (Mr. Kelly alone is subject to military jurisdiction because he is “retired,” while the others did not serve long enough to be eligible to retire with a pension.)

If anything is lawless here, it’s the investigations. The video itself mentioned no particular orders. On “Face the Nation” Mr. Kelly, a member of the Armed Services Committee, questioned the legality of the orders to kill suspected drug smugglers at sea. But on that point he’s echoing what countless experts in the law of war have said. Even John Yoo, one of the former Justice Department officials who notoriously greenlighted the waterboarding of Al Qaeda suspects, has questioned the legality of the strikes, arguing that “the United States cannot confuse crime with war.”

It’s hard to find anyone outside Donald Trump’s inner circle of solicitous advisers who considers the killings legal. The administration has notably declined to publicly disclose a memo that is purported to advance a legal rationale for the strikes, which have already killed more than 80 people. Even if you are tried and convicted of smuggling drugs, you cannot be executed for that crime alone — much less by summary execution meted out from the air.

The notion that we are at war with drug smugglers confuses a metaphor for reality; the war on drugs is no more an armed conflict than the war on cancer is. In any event, during an actual armed conflict, the laws of war prohibit targeting civilians who are not actively engaged in hostilities against us. Yet instead of conforming the military’s conduct to the law and halting the killings, the Pentagon is now investigating Mr. Kelly, and the F.B.I. wants to question both the senator and his colleagues for doing nothing more than stating what the law is.

We’ve seen something like this before, but it’s not a precedent we should be proud of. During World War One, Congress made it a crime to incite insubordination in the military. 

More than 2,000 people were prosecuted for criticizing the war under this law, and about 1,000 were convicted. Several of these cases made their way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the convictions. Among those convicted was Eugene Debs, who ran for president as the Socialist Party candidate in 1920, while serving his sentence and received nearly a million votes.

In its decisions affirming the convictions, the Supreme Court reasoned, without a shred of convincing evidence, that the speakers posed, as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. put it, a “clear and present danger” to the country. One defendant, Charles Schenck, had mailed leaflets to men who had been drafted, criticizing the war and urging them to “assert your rights.” Another, John Frohwerk, was convicted of writing a dozen news articles similarly criticizing the war effort. Debs was sentenced to 10 years for praising imprisoned critics of the war in a speech, among other things.

In none of the cases was any evidence offered that anyone had actually acted upon the criticisms, or that anyone had in fact incited insubordination. The mere possibility of interference with the war was enough.

Those decisions are now viewed as egregious missteps in the interpretation of the First Amendment. 

Today’s free speech doctrine looks instead to the subsequent dissents of Justice Holmes and Justice Louis Brandeis in Abrams v. United States and Gitlow v. New York, which argued that the First Amendment prohibits censoring speech because it criticizes the government, and maintained that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,” not whether it pleases government officials. Years of repression against union activists, communists and civil rights activists ultimately led the Supreme Court to adopt robust protections for free speech on matters of public concern — under which the prosecutions of World War I would all have been invalid.

As a result, it is now clearly established that I cannot be prosecuted for saying, in this essay, “Members of the military have not only the right but the obligation to refuse illegal orders.” Nor could I be prosecuted for stating, as I also have, that the orders to kill suspected drug smugglers are illegal. The First Amendment protects all such statements. Indeed, it protects explicit calls for illegal conduct unless the speech is both intended and likely to incite imminent illegality, a standard rarely met, and one not even approached by Mr. Kelly’s words.

The administration maintains that it can investigate Mr. Kelly because he is a retired naval officer. In other words, because he fought for his country — something Mr. Trump managed to avoid doing — Mr. Kelly has less First Amendment protection than the rest of us. That’s wrong.

It’s true that the Uniform Code of Military Justice applies to retired members of the military. On very rare occasions, retired members have been called up to stand trial in military court for violating the military code. The only code provision that addresses mere speech, however, is the rarely used Article 88, which prohibits officers from using “contemptuous words” against the president and other high-level officials. Nothing Mr. Kelly said was remotely “contemptuous,” which a military judges’ manual defines as “insulting, rude and disdainful.” Mr. Kelly did not even mention the president or any other official; he simply described the law that governs service members.

The fact that Mr. Kelly is a retired officer does not authorize an exception to the First Amendment. While restricting how officers speak about the president may make sense when applied to active-duty officers, where respect for the commander in chief and military discipline are paramount, it makes no sense when applied to a retiree who engages in no military activity and exercises no military authority.

Precisely because those exercising command authority are often limited in what they can say, it’s all the more important to protect the speech rights of those who have retired and can offer their perspective. Some of the most important voices questioning President George W. Bush’s torture program in the war on terror were retired admirals and generals. Such officials rarely speak out on military matters, but when they do they deserve to be heard, not criminally investigated.

We ask a lot of those who put their lives on the line defending our nation. The least we can do is respect their free speech rights once they’ve retired.

David Cole is a visiting professor at Columbia Law School and a former national legal director of the A.C.L.U.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must end illegal attacks against Venezuelan boats without proof to explain fake claims about drug smuggling

Drugs or no, US boat strikes violate the law

Echo opinion published in The Baltimore Sun, in Maryland, by Peter Jensen: For three months now, Americans have been regularly sickened by real-time images of military strikes against vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that Donald Trump claims — so far without corroborating evidence — carry “narco-terrorists” running drugs bound for the United States. 

U.S. airstrikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have continued unabated since early September.

At least 20 attacks have been illegally ordered so far, with at least 83 deaths. As much as it may be tempting to believe that drug trafficking, particularly the trade in highly dangerous fentanyl, can be so easily dispatched, there is ample reason for skepticism. And that was reinforced by a recent Associated Press report that found victims who were not terrorists or even members of any drug cartel but simply average working-class Venezuelans (including laborers and at least one fisherman) earning an extra $500 to crew these craft.

Is this legal or are these deaths, as Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has described them, “extrajudicial?” There is ample evidence to believe the latter is true. And that the attacks dovetail with President Trump’s clear desire to unseat Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who he claims is in league with the drug cartels — which also helps explain why so many U.S. warships, including the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, are situated nearby. This further strains the credibility of a president itching to send in the troops.

Donald Trump may believe that referring to the drug smugglers as “unlawful combatants” or comparing drug traffickers to al-Qaida terrorists and claiming that every sunken boat saves 25,000 lives reinforces his position that the U.S. is at war, but that’s more than a small stretch of the truth. (There is zero proof❗)

More telling is the United Kingdom’s recent decision to suspend intelligence sharing with the U.S. about drug smuggling boats. Why would our nation’s closest ally, a country with much history in the region, choose to do that? Apparently, because Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government is certain that U.S. actions are illegal.

Finally, here’s another reason not to be dropping costly munitions on drug boats: It’s probably not an effective strategy. First, because Venezuela does not appear to play much of a role in the production of fentanyl, which is mostly smuggled in through Mexico, but also because such supplies are better halted through traditional interdiction by the U.S. Coast Guard. 

Drug cartels are out to make money. You want to stop them❓ 

You make arrests and seize their boats and, in the process, prove to skeptical Americans that this is not all a smokescreen. But, Donald Trump and his evil hangnam Pete Hegseth would rather create uncessary deaths, because dead smugglers tell no tales.

Peter Jensen is an editorial writer at The Baltimore Sun.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are ignoring tanking poll numbers and losing independent voters

Echo opinion letter publishd in the Wisconsin CAP Times | Trump is becoming a Democratic asset.

November 2025, elections results, when key races were won decisively by Democrats, suggest that Democrats may be seeing light at the end of the tunnel. 

And the margins of victory were quite substantial, not razor thin.

Is Donald Trump becoming an asset for the Democrats❓

Recent polls spell even more trouble for Republicans. Trump's favorability rating is sinking to new lows, and a significant majority of voters would vote Democratic if elections were held today.

 Although his (cult) MAGA base remains (more or less❓- but think Marjorie Taylor Greene) solid, 😕many other Republican voters are becoming increasingly disillusioned, and independent voters, who often determine the outcome of elections, are shifting to support Democrats.

None of this is surprising. If you look back over the past 10 months, Trump’s policies, both domestic and foreign, have wreaked havoc on the American people. When voters were asked about their major concerns, affordability was their greatest worry. 

Immigration, crime, wars in Israel and Ukraine were far behind. Interestingly, when Trump won the 2024, election, the economy was the major issue that led to his victory, which now has become his albatross.

Voters are also disenchanted with most other Trump policies. 

Tariffs have become chaotic and quite damaging to various businesses, farmers and everyday Americans.

Latino Republicans, who showed increased support for Trump in the last election, have become furious with his outrageous immigration policies. And calling a female reporter “piggy” has disgusted 🤢 countless numbers of voters.

Democrats are beginning to celebrate. And some may be thanking Donald for becoming a gift that keeps on giving.

From Harvey Weinberg in Onalaska, Wisconsin

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must put an end to verbal slander against women journalists

Letters to the Editor: We can’t let ourselves become desensitized to Trump’s hostility toward women❗ Echo letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times: It’s an ugly and unfortunate sign of our times that Donald Trump acting as the president of the United States is viciously attacking a reporter’s reasonable question by snapping “Quiet, piggy”. This horrible attack must generate more substantial nationwide condemnation. 

Trump's slander suggests we’re becoming desensitized to the ugliness spewed by the president. 

Columnist Anita Chabria wrote a brilliant analysis of this issue (“‘Quiet, piggy’ wasn’t a joke. It’s a dangerous invitation to violence,” Nov. 21).

Donald Trump’s shocking and extremely ugly insult to this female reporter is simply the latest in a long line of his personal attacks on women. His go-to insults are to call a woman “very low IQ” (particularly when insulting a woman of color) or calling women “nasty” or “terrible.”

Like it or not, Trump’s conduct (like the conduct of all past presidents) sets an example for young people. Do we really want Trump’s aberrant behavior modeled by a generation of young men❓ Do we want that behavior to be inflicted on our wives and daughters ❓❗ (

By not more loudly condemning Trump’s appalling behaviors, we appear to be indifferent to them, or even condoning them.

What kind of a dangerous society are we then creating for women and young girls in this country❓

From Matthew Singerman, in Newbury Park California

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must end illegal attacks against Venezuela! This Tump divesion is not about fentanyl It about oil!

Echo opinion letter published in the Philadelphia Inquirer

Art of deflection- Danger⚠️ "Déjà vu all over again" (popular phrase, originally attributed to the folksy philosopher Yogi Berra,)

After the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration announced that Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq, had weapons of mass destruction and needed to be removed. Thus, the ensuing Iraq War, the removal of Hussein, the loss of over 100,000 civilian lives, and 4,400 American troops, only to discover there were no such weapons of mass destruction. Further investigation determined George W. Bush had plans to attack Iraq even before the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Why❓ Iraq contained massive reserves of oil.

Fast-forward to 2025, and the Trump administration is beating the war drums against Nicolás Maduro and Venezuela. Claiming it is responsible for the flow of fentanyl, the president has launched dozens of airstrikes against supposed drug boat smugglers without evidence or with congressional input. New measures are being planned for possible attacks within Venezuela and perhaps boots on the ground. “I have not ruled out using troops,” Donald Trump recently asserted. Our largest aircraft carrier has been stationed just off the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela happens to have the largest oil reserves in South America. There is scant evidence that Venezuela is involved in drug smuggling, unlike neighboring Colombia and its infamous drug cartels. Why no military actions against it❓

As the Epstein files near release and flagging poll approval numbers, Trump desperately needs a diversion. Venezuela could be just the ticket. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Let’s not be fooled again.

From Angus Love, Narberth (Narberth is a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.)

RFKjr is a "betrayal of all my father worked for", by his sister Maxwell Taylor Kennedy in an emotional tribute to her father

Wow, this opinion echo puplished in th Boston Globe must be considered for award winning journalism.✍️🏆

My brother RFK Jr. is betraying our father’s legacy.

"It’s a betrayal of all that my father worked for."

Robert F. Kennedy would have turned 100 this week — and he would have been appalled at the Trump administration’s cruelty.  By Maxwell Taylor Kennedy

The late Senator Robert F. Kennedy former Attorney General
(b. 1925- D. 1968)

Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, the ninth child of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, is an attorney and an author.

My father, Robert F. Kennedy, would have turned 100 years old this week. 

And were he alive, he would certainly be taking stock of the country he loved and served. Of course, there is no way to know precisely what he would have thought. 

But, I do know what he cared about most deeply: the injustice of poverty in the richest nation in the world and our duty as citizens to make sure that no child goes to bed hungry.

And specifically know, that he would have been appalled by the cruelty the Trump administration has directed toward America’s neediest people..

During the Republican government shutdown, the administration put 42 million Americans at risk of losing food assistance through the SNAP program.

And while the recent budget deal has provided some relief, it won’t make up for the permanent changes Republican legislators made to SNAP with passage of the president’s “Big Beautiful Bill” 🤢 this summer — tightening eligibility requirements and all but ensuring that millions will lose benefits.

It’s a betrayal of all that my father worked for.

And all those complicit in that betrayal have lowered themselves — not least my brother, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s secretary of health and human services, who knows my father’s legacy as well as anyone.

The legacy:  My father grew up in one of the most privileged families in the United States. The Great Depression had no impact on his standard of living. His father and brothers graduated from Harvard, just like did he.

But, Robert and his brother he President John F. Kennedy saw poverty up close during John’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for president in West Virginia. 

And shortly after taking office, President Kennedy authorized a pilot food stamp program. It grew throughout his time in office, and President Lyndon B. Johnson ushered in a major expansion when he signed the Food Stamp Act as part of his War on Poverty in 1964.

That same year, my father was elected to the US Senate. And it was there that his fierce advocacy for the poor and the hungry began in earnest.

A key turning point came during Senate hearings on hunger in 1967. One of the witnesses was a young Black attorney named Marian Wright who testified that Black children in Mississippi were starving. Some were skeptical. But my father resolved to see for himself and headed south with three other senators.

In Jackson, Miss., the senators heard from civil rights leaders and conservative politicians, but the 27-year-old Wright was again the star. Against great odds, she had recently graduated from Yale Law School and dedicated her life to helping bring children out of poverty. My father piled into a late-model sedan with Wright and his aide Peter Edelman — Wright and Edelman would later marry — and motored into the Delta, one of the poorest and most isolated regions of the United States, where rich black soil grew some of the world’s finest cotton and where white supremacy still defined life a century after the Civil War.

Ellen Meacham in her book “Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi” detailed my father’s trip through the region and documented the terrible conditions for laborers in 1967. New pesticides meant that fewer hands were needed to chop weeds in May and June. Modern farm equipment meant that fewer hands were needed to plow. And most devastating of all, subsidies from the Department of Agriculture paid landowners to leave portions of their fields unplanted — eliminating even more jobs for laborers. Landowners prospered; their workers starved. Elderly people without cash to pay for heat froze to death that winter in the Delta.

The drive down Route 61 is one of the most striking transitions in America, from gently rolling pine country into the flat, ancient, and seemingly endless alluvial plain that people call simply the Delta. The road is straight as a razor — 30 miles at a stretch with no curves. Cotton fields panned to the horizon when my father took the trip, punctuated by cypress breaks and irrigation canals “shining,” in Paul Simon’s imperishable phrase, “like a national guitar.” It must have felt like moving into a different region — but it probably felt, too, like going back in time.

They stopped on Ethel Street in the town of Cleveland early that afternoon, at Annie White’s rented shack of hammered, unpainted boards with gaps that allowed in light, rain, and wind. The single sink near the back dripped tepid brown water — no hot, no cold. A hole in the floor served as the only toilet. The stench and the flies were inescapable. It was hot in summer, cold in winter, and wet when it rained. A wood stove was the only way to cook or provide warmth. Rent had recently doubled from $3 to $7 per month. State officials had twice turned down White when she’d applied for welfare.

White swept the dirt yard and gathered wildflowers to decorate indoors. She’d trained wild honeysuckle to climb the entry and help mask the odor from the open-pit toilet. For the baby’s diapers she used old cloth — difficult to clean. White’s parents and grandparents had picked cotton. As an infant, she’d sat atop the cotton sack as her mother picked, and pulled the sack to the next bush. Her mother died from a venomous snake bite in the fields. 

White, like many Black Americans growing up in the Delta, began chopping and picking cotton as a child and never attended school long enough to learn to read and write. Her children read borrowed books by oil-lamp light when they could afford the fuel.

The family rarely had more to eat than bread and molasses or beans, and often missed meals. My father was probably the first white man to set foot inside the house. In the back he found a toddler named David White, sitting silently on the dirty floor, staring at breadcrumbs.

David did not look up when my father made a clicking sound with his tongue that would have brought all of my siblings to attention, nor when he brushed the child’s cheek with his hand. Marian and Peter had entered the room and watched in silence. My father sat down beside David White. A tear slipped down his cheek. He made more attempts to connect with the boy. But David did not respond. He simply kept picking at the breadcrumbs on the floor and lifting them to his mouth. David and I were both about 20 months old that day, and it must have been shocking for my father to see a child so much like his own son, but doomed — literally starving.

When the trip began, Marian Wright didn’t trust Senator Kennedy. But watching this scene, she felt her distrust dissolve. She doubted she would have sat down on the floor in that stinking house, among the crumbs, and wondered whether she would have touched the child, with his little distended belly and open sores. She later said: “He could do almost anything after that, and I trusted him from that time on, just as a human being.”

I don’t know how it is that people change, sometimes overnight. But I believe my father was never the same after that trip. He flew back to D.C. with Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania that night, and arrived late for my mother’s birthday party at our family home, known as Hickory Hill. My older siblings remember the night because of the new and different way my father entered the house. Normally he was full of vigor, motion, and energy. But that night he was quiet, his face somber, careworn, serious, as if something had shifted inside him.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans in denial about the 2025 special election results- Trumpzi-ism WAS on the ballot!

Hip❗ Hip❗ Hurray❗  🎈❗ Somebody must roadblock this despicable Trumpzi tyrant.: Trump’s Low Approval Rating Is Hurting Republicans in Polls- opinion published in New York Magazine  Intelligencer, by Ed Kilgore.

One of the major narratives that came out of the very poor showing of Republicans in the 2025, elections is that the GOP struggles to win when Donald Trump is not on the ballot. 

Certainly Donald Trump himself shares that (delusional😕😦😟) belief, as he said on Election Night in no uncertain terms on social media: “‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT.”

This was cold comfort for Republicans who understand that Trump isn’t going to be on the ballot in 2026, either. 

Nevertheless, the narrative may not even be true. Polls keep showing that Trump is increasingly a drag on his party and that his weaknesses in the electorate very much resemble the GOP’s weaknesses on November 4. (Duh❗ Ya'think❓- Mr. Kilgore is insulting my intelligence with this logic....like the folksy sage Yogi Berra is supposed to have observed, "You can see👀 a lot by just lookin'❗)

There’s now little question that Donald Trump's low job-approval ratings have been steadily sliding downward for the past couple of months. On September 20, his net approval average at Silver Bulletin was at minus-7.5 percent (44.9 percent approval, 52.4 percent disapproval). On November 20, it was at minus-14.1. percent, which is a new low for his second term. The intensity of his unpopularity is high and rising: 45.2 percent of Americans strongly disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president, again per the averages at Silver Bulletin.

On particular issues, his net approval remains underwater on all the major categories: immigration (minus-7.2 percent), trade (minus-18.8), the economy (minus-20.2), and inflation (minus-34). The numbers for immigration, the economy, and inflation are at second-term lows. The last two are noteworthy given the importance of “affordability” in the 2025, Democratic victories (reflected in Trump’s own messaging beginning the moment the November 4 results were in) and, beyond that, the importance of these issues in Trump’s 2024 victory.

A poll from Fox (Fake❗) News released on Wednesday probed more deeply into public sentiment on the economy and showed that the administration’s argument that high prices were caused by Joe Biden isn’t working anymore:

By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, voters say Trump is more responsible for the current economy than Biden (62% vs. 32%). Unsurprisingly, there’s a large partisan gap, as Democrats are nearly 40 percentage points more likely than Republicans to blame Trump. Somewhat surprisingly though, 42% of Republicans blame him, while a 53% majority says Biden is responsible. Among independents, 62% say Trump and 29% Biden.

Not all polls break down the electorate, but those that do are pretty consistent in showing that Trump’s 2024, coalition is shrinking back from the hard-core MAGA base. New polling from The Argument reinforces that impression forcefully:

Republicans are hemorrhaging support with the young, nonwhite, and disengaged voters who powered Trump’s victory in 2024. Here are a few tidbits to show just what I’m talking about:

• Democrats are winning 25% of nonwhite Trump 2024, voters. Among white voters, this number is just 4%.
• Among registered voters who didn’t vote for either Harris or Trump in 2024, Democrats receive 62% of the vote — a 25-percentage-point lead. Among the white voters of this group, Democrats lead by two points; among nonwhite nonvoters, they lead by 48 points.

Democrats win 64% of young voters in our survey, for a lead of 28 points. (For context, in 2024, they won this group by just 10 points.)

Exit polls from the 2025, elections showed exactly the same pro-Democratic trends among young and non-white voters in New Jersey and Virginia. If the numbers persist into 2026, it’s hard to imagine Republicans hanging on to their control of the House — particularly if Trump’s effort to change the landscape through gerrymandering continues to flounder. In addition to Trump’s popularity issues, and despite their own well-known problems, Democrats are now opening up a significant lead in the congressional generic ballot, an approximation of the House popular vote next year. 

According to RealClearPolling, the average Democratic lead on the generic ballot is 4.8 percent, another 2025, high. At Decision Desk HQ, the Democratic lead is 5.4 percent; Republicans led by 5.3 percent there at the beginning of 2025. The Argument explains what these trends might mean in the results:

If the election were held today, Republicans may be facing a blue wave larger than the 2018 midterms, which resulted in a commanding Democratic House majority. Put simply, they are in really bad shape.

How bad❓ Consider this: In our survey fielded right after the election, Nov. 10-17, Republicans trailed by four percentage points among registered voters. When we pushed undecided voters to pick a side, that deficit expanded to six percentage points. And after that was filtered to just those who said they were likely to vote, it grew even further, to 7.6 points.

So neither the GOP nor its leader are doing that well at the moment, particularly on the affordability issues* that they now recognize are so crucial to swing voters. Some Republican candidates in 2026 will choose to cleave to Trump even more fiercely, and others may try to achieve some distance, but they’re probably joined at the hip for better or worse.

*Meanwhile, ⚠️ Tresury Secretary Scott Bessent says parts of the Trumpzi economy are in recession:  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that some parts of the U.S. economy have already slipped into an economic downturn.  "I think we are in good shape, but I think that there are sectors of the economy that are in recession," Bessent told CNN host Jake Tapper.

#ImpeachTrumpNOW #25thAmendment

MAGA Republican must put an end to the insane rantings and threats of death spewed by the unstable crazy Donald Trump

Echo reported in Yahoo News❗by Paige Skinner.

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Mr. Dick Cheney praised him for doing “the right thing” by certifying the results of the 2020 election on January 6, 2021.

“When it came to Vice President Cheney, we were here for a funeral not long ago, and he leaned over next to me and just said to me in his usual terse manner, said: ‘You did the right thing,’” Pence told MS NOW on Thursday at Cheney’s funeral at Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. “And I said, ‘Dick, I will always cherish that.’”

• Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were specifically not invited to attend Mr. Cheney's funeral.

The anecdote about Cheney is especially noteworthy considering President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance weren’t invited to Cheney’s funeral. 

Mr. Cheney, who died earlier this month, endorsed Trump in the 2016 election, but after the Jan. 6 insurrection, Cheney became more outspoken against him. In 2024, he announced he would vote for former Vice President Kamala Harris in that year’s election, calling Trump a “threat to our republic.”

Mr. Pence called Mr. Cheney a “man of principle” and someone who championed “the conservative agenda.”

“And I think this nation will remember him as an extraordinary public servant who contributed mightily to the life of the nation and to the principles I hold dear,” Pence told MS NOW.

The late Vice President Dick Cheney (b. Jan. 30,1941- d. Nov. 3, 2025) father of Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney

Mr. Pence’s comments about Cheney’s solidarity with him come the same day that Trump called for violence against Democratic lawmakers who urged military members to disobey unlawful orders given to them. On Truth Social, Trump reposted an evil message that reads, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” In another post, Trump wrote himself, “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

He followed it up with another evil post, writing, “It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET. President DJT.”

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were bookends in a clandestine sex trafficking scheme: Epstein recruited young girls and Trump protected him- until he couldn't trust him anymore

Echo opinion letters published in the Sun Sentinel news in Deerfield Beach, Florida*:

Dear Editor: I’ve been reading all these news articles regarding the sick, narcissistic Jeffrey Epstein.

All of us have had best friends in our lifetime. Anyone from any walk of life who thinks that two best friends didn’t try to duplicate what each other did is more than gullible — it’s stupid, too.

(Maine Writer- they were also neighbors in Manhattan, see my asterick below.)

It’s long past due to impeach Donald Trump for a third time, remove him from office and save America. We all should be on board with this move, as we all are for America and against abusing young women — at least I would hope so.

From Jim Tiffin, in Coral Springs, Florida

*Donald Trump's Manhattan residence at Trump Tower was approximately 0.8 miles (1.3 km) from Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan townhouse. The proximity meant they were about an 8-minute walk from one another.

• Donald Trump's Manhattan Home: Located in the penthouse of Trump Tower at 721 Fifth Avenue, in Midtown Manhattan.
• Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan Home: Known as the Herbert N. Straus House, it is located at 9 East 71st Street, on the Upper East Side, a half-block from Central Park.

Just my opinion, Donald Trump basked in the perverted veneer created by Jeffrey Epstein until he finally couldn't trust his long time friend and neighbor anymore. Without a doubt, Donald Trump was involved in the demise of Jeffrey Epstein and the evil Ghislaine Maxwell knows it, too.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must stop illegal maritime attacks on Venezuela boats! American lives are not being saved

National Security Leaders for America: Maritime Strikes as an Ineffective, Illegal Response to Drugs
NSL4A Press Release

Warning strikes were carried out on thin evidence, will hinder future counternarcotics efforts, and are illegal.  October 23, 2025

Washington, DC, National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) today condemned the Trump Administration’s continued authorization of lethal strikes on boats in South American waters suspected of trafficking drugs, as ineffective, carried out on paltry intelligence and without congressional authorization, and a violation of U.S. and international laws.

“Narcotics trafficking is a threat, and the United States government has a duty to protect Americans from it,” said Retired Navy Rear Admiral Michael Smith, NSL4A Founder and President. “We fully support the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard in their lawful missions to detect, intercept, and board vessels suspected of smuggling drugs. These missions, conducted in accordance with established maritime law and congressional authorization, reflect the professionalism and moral integrity of our maritime services. They are also effective, seizing hundreds of thousands of pounds of narcotics every year.”

“These strikes did nothing to keep Americans from dying from fentanyl,” said NSL4A member Rear Adm. William “Bill” Baumgartner (USCG, Ret.), former Commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District that oversaw drug-interdiction operations. 

“With this indiscriminate military action, we not only killed the occupants without due process or confirmed hostile intent, but we also destroyed any evidence, eliminated the possibility of gathering intelligence from them, frustrated our international allies in combating the flow of illegal drugs, and we have abandoned the frameworks we’ve developed over the last 50 years to approach this legally.”

Recent reports of internal dissent—culminating in the early retirement of Admiral Holsey, Commander of U.S. Southern Command—underscore growing concern within the ranks about the legality and morality of these operations. When senior officers feel compelled to step down rather than preside over unlawful actions, it should alarm every American who values civilian control and accountability under law.

Smith added, “America’s strength has never rested on the exercise of raw power, but on the moral authority that comes from adhering to the principles we defend.”

“These strikes appear to be acts of war conducted outside the bounds of the Constitution— eroding the rule of law, damaging America’s global standing, and risking implicating our servicemembers in potential war crimes for carrying out unlawful orders,” stated Baumgartner, adding “The only thing we know with reasonable certainty is that these boats were not carrying fentanyl bound for the United States, as virtually none of the fentanyl on America’s streets comes from Venezuela, and the destroyed boats were hundreds of miles from America’s shores.”

NSL4A urges Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to demand effective counternarcotics operations, stop further violations of the law, and prevent our Armed Forces from being misused.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans in denial about the 2025 blue wave election- Impeach Trump Now!

Democratic wave crushes GOP candidates

"If congressional races had been held nationwide in 2025, rather than 2026, Democrats would certa"inly have taken the US House and perhaps even the US Senate", John Hood. 

Echo opinion published in the The Carolina Journal news by John Hood:  The odd-year elections yielded precisely what all the warning signs of 2025, portended: a strong Democratic wave🌊 that crushed Republican nominees in the gubernatorial races of New Jersey and Virginia, gave Democrats their largest legislative majorities in decades in both states, delivered left-wing results in various ballot initiatives, and elected a hate monger as attorney general of Virginia and a socialist as mayor of New York. (Well, I disagree with much of this lead, but more or less get the point.😬🙄)

Here in North Carolina, the GOP took a beating in both partisan and (officially) nonpartisan races for municipal office. In Charlotte, Republicans lost one of the two seats they previously held on the 11-seat city council. In Wake County, Democrats won 25 of the 27 municipal races in which they made an endorsement, including several mayoral seats previously held by Republicans or conservative independents. They enjoyed comparable success in other urban communities, too, including clean sweeps in Wilmington and Greensboro.

I won’t assert that local matters were irrelevant to these outcomes. In other circumstances, the high-propensity voters who turn out in odd-year cycles might well have chosen more right-leaning candidates over left-leaning ones based on specific issues or candidate quality. Indeed, some right-leaning candidates did prevail last week, especially in smaller cities and towns where Democratic registration has been shrinking for some time.

But to deny the breadth and depth of the Democratic victories this year in North Carolina and beyond would be to deny obvious facts. It is the appointed task of conservatives to accept reality as it is rather than as one might wish it to be.

If congressional races had been held nationwide in 2025, rather than 2026, Democrats would certainly have taken the US House and perhaps even the US Senate.☺️ If North Carolina’s legislative and county races had occurred this year, the GOP’s legislative majorities, not just its supermajority in the state senate, might have been at risk.

Like it or not — and just for the record, I dislike it intensely — our electoral politics have become nationalized. Many North Carolina voters went to the polls this year to vote against (or, to a lesser extent, for) Donald Trump, despite any meaningful connection between the president’s fiscal, regulatory, and foreign policies on the one hand and issues of municipal policy on the other.

A just-released YouGov survey for Catawba College’s Center for North Carolina Politics & Public Service showed Trump with 44% approval from North Carolinians, vs. 52% disapproval. The latest High Point University poll also had Trump upside down with all adults (40% to 49%) and registered voters (44% to 48%).

To say that the 2025 elections were a signal of Democratic rejuvenation is not to say the outcomes of future elections — the 2026 midterms and the presidential cycle of 2028 — are clearly visible or unchangeable. They remain contingent on decisions made by both parties over the coming months and years.

Will the Democratic Party, for example, become more like the newly elected mayor of New York, the demagogue Zohrab Mamdani; or the newly elected governor of Virginia, centrist former congresswoman and CIA officer Abigail Spanberger❓ If the former, it will lose winnable races in the many jurisdictions more competitive than the Big Apple. This really will be a choice, by the way. Mamdani was only one of many Democratic mayors elected last week, including relative moderates defeating hard-left candidates in such cities as Detroit and Minneapolis.

As for Republicans, Trump and other candidates fared well in 2024 by running against the Biden-era surge in inflation. Exit polls confirm that the affordability of housing, food, health care, and other necessities remains a top priority for voters. The president is now underwater on that issue, too, in part because of his fondness for import taxes and their inevitable effects on consumer prices. At the state and local levels, too, GOP and center-right candidates stumble when their attention wanders away from the bread-and-butter issues important to persuadable voters.

If Republicans keep committing such unforced errors, next year’s midterms will be brutal.☺️

John Hood books: Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy and American history.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must end the ICE horrific and terrifying raids on innocent immigrants

Immigration sweep sparks 'outrage'

Echo opinion letter published in the California Santa Maria Times:

Viewing videos on social media, I experienced a shock to my conscience and apoplectic outrage at finding out that “… upwards of 60 HSI special forces and ICE agents… over 40 unmarked vehicles, bobcats, and vans (were) used in the actual raid” at East Valley Farms, off the Telephone Road.

I find it despicable that many of the agents wore masks, did not identify themselves, never produced warrants, and suddenly used flash-bangs against unarmed peaceful protesters.

I was horrified by how the witnesses stated “5 people were taken from (a) home, including an infant and a pregnant mother”. Also “around 10-15 people were taken from a nearby farm”. Some peaceful protestors were “physically handled” getting “pushed around four or five times”. Because “as of Friday afternoon, no federal agency had issued a public statement about which agencies executed the operation, whether federal warrants were served, how many individuals were detained, or whether children were taken into custody,” I fear that Constitutional due process (habeas corpus) of the abductees was not and will not be provided, and their constitutional human rights have been violated. I can only wonder where these innocent people (until proven guilty) are being detained and whether their families have been contacted. I travel on Telephone Road regularly and on the farms in the area I always see hardworking field laborers, often in blistering heat, sun and piercing winds working from morning until dusk doing a job few want or are capable of performing. I seriously doubt there are any violent, dangerous criminals among them. What threat do these field laborers pose to our community? How does abducting these hardworking field laborers make our community safer❓ 

My heart goes out to the abductees and their families realizing their grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, uncle, aunt, brother, sister, cousin, or friend won’t be coming home because they decided to go to work on Thursday to provide for their families. I applaud all the Rapid Response Network volunteers that “work directly with families afterward, giving families money, food and delivering groceries when they are afraid to go shopping”. I “tip my cap” to all the protestors that showedo defend the most vulnerable, necessary, important, tireless, hard working, deeply religious, family centered people in our community. Your selfless courage is inspiring.

In November 2026, I believe the midterm elections will mirror the recent special elections earlier this month. I predict all Democrats will defeat all Republicans and the House and Senate will turn blue. Only then can there be a reckoning against the corrupt and incompetent White House, cabinet, House of Representative, and Senate.

Californians, in passing Prop. 50, showed other states the power of the people and the power of voting. We need to show up and lead the way again in 2026, and 2028.

Nelson Sagisi in Santa Maria, California

Let me get this? No one denies the purpose of Jeffrey Epstein's recruitment of young girls was sexual but is more intel beneath the service?

Opinion echo published in The New York Times by Ross Douthat:  

Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were friends and neighbors in Manhattan where they lived only a few blocks away from each other.

Ross Douthat writes: For those of us with a sincere, nonpartisan interest (I swear😉😜😂) in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, it was a good week:

• First the Democrats, with an eye to hammering Donald Trump, released a few redacted Epstein emails in which the president’s name featured prominently; 
• Then, the Republicans, presumably with an eye to burying the Democratic leak, released thousands more Epstein documents.
• Ho-ho-ho❗😮🎅With this kind of tag-team effort, we’ll have the whole story out in the open by 🎄Christmas❗

A word of caution, though, for those liberals who are relative newcomers to the tragic Epstein saga, for so long a mostly conservative (obsession❗) fixation. 

Instead, there is a dark conspiratorial thrill that comes with encountering the reality, amply displayed in the latest round of disclosures, that so many American elites were perfectly comfortable being buddy-buddy with a trafficker of teenage girls.😳 

And because both right and left have pivoted away from the Bill Clinton-era neoliberal center, the fact that Epstein had (to quote the left-wing writer Jeet Heer) “very banal centrist politics with the same gestalt as 90 percent of U.S. elite since 1990s” makes him an ideal symbol of elite perfidy  (i.e. deceitfulness) for both progressives and populists alike. (Maine Writer: IMO Bill Clinton has paid plenty for his "perfidy" regarding his history with women because the right wing "perfidy" won't allow him to forget about it. So, going back over this same old history is useless intelligence.)

But, it’s important not to let that conspiratorial thrill outrun the actual facts. The new tranche of information confirms, yet again, the moral squalor of various powerful Americans. 

Yet, it still leaves us short of definitive answers about the outstanding Epstein questions: Did other powerful men have sex with the underage girls that he trafficked❓ What were his connections, if any, to the world of intelligence❓ And what unrevealed details have made Trump so intent on preventing further disclosure❓

I thought we might be closer to answers to the last question when I read the first email that the Democrats released, a 2011, note from Epstein to (the evil😈) Ghislaine Maxwell, shortly after his release from prison: “I want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is Trump … [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him, he has never once been mentioned. Police chief, etc. I’m 75 percent there.”

With the name redacted, this email suggested there might well be an as-yet-unknown victim with whom Epstein assumed that Trump had a sexual encounter. 

But, the hidden name turned out to be the late Virginia Giuffre, the most famous of Epstein’s victims, who had worked for Trump at Mar-a-Lago and who specifically and repeatedly denied that the future president had sex with her or any other girl, even as she made allegations against many other powerful figures.

Just because she denied it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, the suspicious reader might say, which is true. 

There are reasons to doubt the reliability of some of Giuffre’s accusations, so it’s possible she was also unreliable in her non-accusations. But still, those non-accusations mean that this email is not the smoking gun proving Trump’s complicity in sex crimes. 

And you could also read it as Epstein speculating that Trump was the person who ratted him out to the Palm Beach police, which would actually dovetail with a narrative some of Trump’s defenders have tried to spin up.

Meanwhile, the documents release also includes a much later email from Epstein, a stream-of-consciousness ramble sent to himself shortly before his last arrest in 2019, in which the financier seems to describe his operation (“200 dollars for a rub and tug … no sex … most in thier mid twenties …”) and then says Trump “came to my house many times in that period” but “never got a massage,” before turning to a long complaint about how Trump took advantage of him in a real estate deal (duh, ya' think❓). The emails suggest:

• First, that it was normal for Epstein’s friends to have sexual encounters (if not sexual intercourse); 
• Second, that Epstein at least wanted people to think the girls in involved were not minors; 
• And third, that Epstein had a longstanding grudge against Trump but probably did not have some secret tape of Trump getting a massage or more.

In which case the ultimate truth could be squalid (powerful men getting "hand jobs" from masseuses whom they thought were over 18) without being a Grand Guignol conspiracy (powerful men knowingly trafficking minors to facilitate some kind of “Eyes Wide Shut” scenario). And something similar could be the case with the intelligence-world questions: YES❕ There is evidence that Epstein used his connections to assist Israel intelligence on various projects, but nothing indicating that he was running a sex-and-blackmail operation on its behalf.

But then, the great question remains: Why doesn’t Trump want more disclosure❓

It’s possible that he just doesn’t like the embarrassment of having everyone reminded that he was one of the rich creeps in the Epstein circle. Or, it’s possible that there’s something truly sensitive related to Epstein and intelligence that has yet to be revealed.

Or, it’s possible that there is some thread remaining here, and not necessarily the obvious one, that the president really, really doesn’t want to see get pulled.

Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009.