Judges Gone Wild is Not a Good Look For a Nation of Laws

There's been an event that occurred since this was originally published.  And it's big.

Real constitutional crises are relatively rare in American history.  In 1803 Chief Justice John Marshall could have sparked one with his decision in Marbury v. Madison where he deftly asserted that the Supreme Court had to power to invalidate laws or actions it saw as unconstitutional. The main reason that that assertion didn’t cause a crisis in the fledgling nation was the fact that it came in a decision that supported the position of the Jefferson administration, and as such they were not inclined to protest. 

Then of course there was FDR’s Court Packing scheme in 1937.  In 1936, in the face of continuing 5-4 decisions going against his New Deal legislation FDR’s Attorney General, Homer Cummings proffered an idea penned by one of his predecessors in 1914, James Clark McReynolds, that for every justice over 70 a new justice should be appointed. Ironically, in 1936 McReynolds was a 75 year old Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.

FDR’s legislation died in committee but it would likely not have survived even if it had made it out of committee as it faced a great deal of bipartisan opposition. But then it didn’t really matter because Justice Owen Roberts, who had been a thorn in the side of much of the New Deal legislation joined the liberals in upholding West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish in 1937 and became a relatively reliable New Deal supporter going forward.  History calls that vote the “Switch in time that saved Nine” but the timing doesn’t quite line up.  Although the decision was handed down in March of 1937, it was argued in December of 1936 and Roberts had made his decision before FDR’s plan became public.  That doesn’t mean however that the supposition that Roberts changed his voting pattern due to external events was wrong.  It just means that the timing doesn’t allow for a quid pro quo. 

Crisis might not be the right word in either of those situations because, despite their long term implications for the government, neither imminently threatened the functionality of the government. It most certainly is the right word for what America and the Trump administration is facing right now, and indeed it imminently threatens the functionality of the government. 

The Trump administration has faced an unprecedented number of nationwide injunctions from federal courts on a wide range of issues from deportations to firings of federal employees to paying for sex change surgeries for military members and more.

It seems as if across the country and in virtually every area of government federal judges have suddenly decided that their role is to micromanage every element of the Executive branch. The first Trump administration faced an unprecedented number of injunctions and the first five months the second has faced even more. 

It appears as the federal judiciary has declared war on the Executive Branch, and that is literally a constitutional crisis.

By continuing to face this crisis with appeals to higher courts, the president is bringing a knife to a gun fight. He should instead bring a howitzer. He should make it clear that his administration does not recognize these courts’ power to issue nationwide injunctions and they will no longer be recognizing them as legal.

Tucked away in the bowels of the travesty that is the Big Beautiful Bill is one golden nugget that attempts to obviate the problem.  It states that courts cannot use appropriated funds to enforce contempt citations for failure to comply with injunctions or temporary restraining orders.  That’s an interesting strategy, but it’s a band-aid approach to an artery that’s been cut.  It still leaves the option for courts to continue to micromanage policy from the bench and simply include the funding caveat in the orders themselves or otherwise find funding sources for enforcement.

No, the president needs to face this crisis head on and make it perfectly clear that the courts are acting unconstitutionally and he will no longer be bound by them.   

The obvious consequence of this policy will be the gnashing of the teeth of the left and much of the swamp infested GOP.  “Tyrant” they’ll call him.  “Dictator” they’ll brand him.  “He thinks he’s a king” they’ll claim.  But, frankly, there’s nothing new in any of that. 

But beyond the shrieking however, something more substantial will result of the administration’s new clarity.  It will force Congress and or the Supreme Court to act. 

The reality is, there is no basis in the Constitution for these nationwide injunctions and courts playing the role of executive. These rouge courts have undermined the legitimacy of the judicial system and with it the larger government as a whole.  Once the administration makes it crystal clear that they do not recognize the legitimacy of these rouge courts Congress or SCOTUS will have to step up and provide clarity.  Whether legislative action by Congress or direction from SCOTUS, something will have to be done to begin to repair American’s confidence in the judiciary. 

And that’s actually quite important in a nation of laws like the United States where citizens are largely free and most obey laws because they respect the legitimacy of the government. If that legitimacy is undermined then social order follows suit.  Look no further than cities across the country where the police have been demonized and local governments operate like banana republic grift machines. Crime and corruption are rampant as law abiding citizens and for profit businesses abandon them for safer, more functional environs.

The ideal solution is Congress passing legislation that makes explicit that lower courts have no jurisdiction beyond the immediate cases before them and cannot impose injunctions beyond those specific cases.  This clarity would at a minimum put an immediate end to the tyranny of unelected judges seeking to elevate themselves above the Executive. More broadly it would return to the political realm the work of legislation and policy implementation.  No more would plaintiffs who represent a sliver of the population or hold views far outside the Overton Window be able to venue shop for extremist judges and use the court to impose their ideas on the entire nation.  There’s nothing wrong with being a sliver of the population or having ideas outside that window, but the place to debate ideas is in the public square, not the dark corners of judicial chambers.

This crisis exists today because the left has moved so far to the fringe of society that they can no longer convince Americans to vote for their positions at the ballot box.  But that’s where the Constitution says they should be debated.  If President Trump wants to have any chance of a successful second term he will force Congress’s hand and explain to the American people why he’s doing it. 

 

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

First published on June 10, 2025

https://thefederalist.com/2025/06/10/trump-should-force-congress-and-scotus-to-stop-rogue-judges-by-ignoring-unconstitutional-injunctions/

Trump should look to Washington and the Whisky Rebellion for Inspiration when Dealing with Rioters...

While Donald Trump famously does not drink, alcohol has always played a role in American life, usually ancillary but occasionally central. He could take a lesson from an early instance where it played a central role and how it was handled by our greatest president.

During and after the Revolutionary War the economy of America was a wreck as prices of products it exported, fish, lumber, tobacco, and cotton, collapsed with the removal of the British market.  It’s estimated that between 1774 and 1790 the economy declined by 41 per cent.

The country ended the war heavily in debt.  The federal government owed $54 million and the states together owed an additional $21 million. During the war both tried to print their way out of their difficulties. It didn’t work.

Even after the war under the Articles of Confederation there was no relief as the federal government was weak and the states saw themselves as competitors in many economic matters.

In 1787 the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia and hammered out the Constitution that we still use today.  It created a stronger central government, but one that still had difficulties with finances.  And that’s where the alcohol comes in. In 1791 Congress passed the “Whiskey Tax” which was an attempt to raise funds to pay off the debt run up during and after the war.  This per gallon excise tax was levied on domestic whiskey, a product many farmers, particularly western farmers, produced from their excess grain. 

The western farmers were unhappy because most were small producers and, unlike the large eastern producers, they couldn’t use efficiencies of size to minimize the impact, therefore making their offerings relatively less competitive. At the same time, the tax had to be paid in specie (gold and silver coins) something that was rare in the entire nation and in particularly so in the west. Finally, due to the lack of a viable currency, many workers in the west took whiskey as their pay, which was now taxed!

All of this combined to create a storm we call the Whiskey Rebellion.  By 1794 tempers were flaring in the west and outbreaks of violence began, involving a few thousand people across the west. Finally, that July when a west Pennsylvania tax collector’s home was set fire by 500 armed men, George Washington decided it was time to act. He sent negotiators to see if they could negotiate a solution. But he didn’t dither to see if negotiations would work.  Simultaneously he requested militia from the states and then personally led the 13,000 strong man army to face the troublemakers. The negotiations failed but with the prospect of facing an overwhelming force led by the Commander in Chief, the “rebels” faded away before Washington even arrived. There was no confrontation and when all was said and done four rebels died and there were two casualties among civilians.

Some of the leaders were roused from their beds in the middle of the night, marched barefoot through the mud and the rain and held in animal pens on their way back to Philadelphia. Then “The captured rebels were paraded down Broad Street being 'humiliated, bedraggled, [and] half-starved...”  Eventually 150 men were arrested, 20 were tried and two were convicted and sentenced to death, but given that one was charged with simple battery and the other with theft, Washington eventually pardoned both. 

The newly formed federal government had shown that it had both the means and the will to enforce federal law and hold those responsible accountable.  Washington’s focus on assuring a robust response on issues involving a clearly defined federal power set a precedent that survives to this day.  In principle, that is.  In practice, at least as it comes to immigration, not so much.

Donald Trump should look to the precedent that George Washington set and act accordingly.  Washington utilized state militias to quell the violence.  He not only had the people directly involved in the violence arrested, but he had others who facilitated it arrested as well.  Although Washington did not have to use his 13,000 troops in actual combat, the fact that he had them and demonstrated his willingness to use them was sufficient to end the insurrection.

Trump should do exactly the same thing. When local authorities won’t or can’t stop the violence, Trump should immediately harness the National Guard. In addition, he should put rioters on notice that the soldiers are not there to exchange pleasantries.  For this he could and should use the words of Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County, Florida: “If you throw a brick, firebomb or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your family where to collect your remains at, because we will kill you, graveyard dead.” Trump should be unambiguously clear that violence towards law enforcement, citizens and property will not be tolerated.

At the same time, like Washington, Trump should identify the people who are behind the violence. The people paying for the signs. The people paying anarchists to go out and riot. The people paying for bricks and rocks to be conveniently located near hot spots. The people paying for the masks and other riot gear. 

And most of this will not be individuals. As dataRepublican (small r) has demonstrated American taxpayers are inadvertently funding much of this via NGOs facilitated by Democrats and the rest of the swamp. These leftist, Communist, anti-American organizations, are, under the guise of “charity” fueling a real insurrection and invasion of the United States. 

And Trump should be ruthless. These people, particularly the people behind the scenes, are far more dangerous to America than any external enemy.  They have academia, the media and half the ruling class on their side. This is where the tire hits the road. They should spend decades in prison and emerge penniless, with whatever assets they have seized to pay for the damage they inflicted on the country. 

Instead of dialing things back as he quizzically just announced, Trump needs to turbo charge his response and let it be known that the federal government will not tolerate a violent insurrection.

Washington harnessed an army of 13,000 to demonstrate his intent on restoring order when the population was under 4 million. With 350 million I’m sure Trump can find the men to demonstrate his point.

He should be prepared for a Kent State like episode, or many of them, and be prepared to stand his ground. The reality is, if he does not quell this, we will have another Summer of Love like 2020 with its consequent aftermath.

And what is that aftermath? A bloodbath. Take the murders in the three years following the BLM rioting of 2014. After declining for a decade, in three years murders would climb 26% nationwide, resulting in at least 8,000 more murders than would have otherwise been seen.  Then after the “Summer of Love” in 2020, the year ended up with a 32% jump in murders in a single year, adding another 5,000 murders than would have been expected.  That’s a lot more blood than Kent State. 

So, Donald Trump’s job as president is not to placate the leftist, anti-American Communists and anarchists who seek to abet this invasion, sow discord and delegitimize, destabilize, and ultimately derail his presidency. But this is not about Donald Trump. It’ about America and the American citizens who voted to take back their country.  It is they to whom he needs to answer, not those who oppose him simply because he seeks to make America America again. 

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

Originally published on June 14, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/06/as_leftists_riot_trump_should_look_to_washington_and_the_whisky_rebellion_for_inspiration.html

Iran: To bomb or not to bomb - That is the... Umm, Never Mind

OK, this is twice in one week.  I wrote this today and was just planning on finishing editing it and sending it in, when I read that President Trump has just bombed three sites in Iran!  I've been locked out by X and haven't actually been paying attention to the news because I'm trying to survive 95 degree temps with no AC.  Now this!  As Gilda Radner's Emily Litella used to say... Never mind...

America Has a Perfect Storm of Opportunity to Save Herself From the RINOs in the GOP

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was an attempt to deal with a problem that threatened to rip America apart, slavery. Although it didn’t address the underlying institution itself, it banned new states north of Missouri’s southern border from joining the union as slave states.

The delicate balance lasted until repealed by the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854.

Although not explicit, the Act potentially opened up all of the west to slavery. For the north this was simply untenable and the result was the creation of the Republican Party, which formed in 1854 in the midst of the debate.

Of course, both were basically band aids over the real trauma that was destroying the nation, slavery.

The Republican Party was essentially the combination of the remnants of the Whig Party and elements of other peripheral parties. Six years later Abraham Lincoln would be elected the nation’s first Republican president. The party would go on to dominate much of American politics for the next half century.

In 1854 the Republican party came about as the result of America finally having to face a cancer that had been gnawing at it’s core since its foundation. In 2025 it should die for the same reason.

The cancer today is not slavery in the literal sense, but it is slavery nonetheless. In this case it isn’t blacks being held in bondage because of the color of their skin, but rather citizens being held in financial bondage by politicians who have no problem entombing them in a debtor’s prison from which escape is impossible.

The Republicans had a perfect storm of opportunity in 2025. They had just taken back the Senate, they held the House and on January 20^th they took control of the White House. Not only that, they had perhaps the most motivated electorate in a century or more. The tens of millions of Americans who watched as the 2020 election was stolen and then suffered through four years of anti American and anti-common sense policies were ready to take back their country. And they did.

What’s more, this highly motivated electorate spent the first two months of the new administration watching as the Elon Musk led DOGE revealed the billions and perhaps trillions of dollars of waste fraud and abuse everywhere from the Treasury Department to USAID to the Pentagon and elsewhere.

With the new sheriff in town these voters expected that things were going to be different.

Not so much…

No, the Republicans, the party America hired to actually codify the savings and bring some order to federal profligacy showed themselves to be derelict, indeed borderline treasonous the first chance they were given. 

While we’re being told the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB) is a good deal and it cuts spending, that’s simply a lie. Indeed it increases spending and adds trillions to the national debt.

In what seems like record time the Republican party has gone from the party leading America in a new direction to the Go Along to Get Along party. Indeed, coming to power with promises to cut spending, get the federal government under control and to slash deficits, they’re doing virtually none of that. America took the red pill and discovered that it was really a blue pill dipped in food coloring.

The BBB is nothing less than treasonous. It does nothing to address America’s existential threat: Federal spending and deficits. Today America’s national debt stands at over $36 trillion, or over 120% of GDP, the highest level on record. Of that $36 trillion, $29 trillion has accumulated since 2000, 24 years during which the GOP held the presidency for 12 years, the House for 16, the Senate for 10, and all three for 6. Regardless, the spending seems to always go up and the deficits continue to grow until today where every single American, from baby to centenarian, is on the hook for $102,000. That, in a nation where the average household income is $80,000.

And yet the Republicans, the party that’s supposed to represent financial responsibility has presented America with a budget that basically spends like a drunken sailor.

To put this in perspective, one merely needs to recognize that the Republicans had as their number one cheerleader for the last year the world’s richest and most successful man but with the presentation of this “disgusting abomination” they have made a literal enemy out of him. Addressing the Republican treachery head on, Musk suggested “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people.”

Simply put, the Grand Old Party is grand no more. It is simply Democrat lite and should therefore sent to the dustbin of history.

Of course as we learned with Teddy Roosevelt and H. Ross Perot, third parties don’t work in the United States. The reality is, a new party doesn’t need to be started from scratch. Just as the GOP was built on the remnants of the Whig Party, a new party could be carved out of the decomposing husk of the GOP. Just look to how well that treacherous John Cornyn is doing down in Texas to understand how it’s possible to send swamp rats out to pasture.

And Elon Musk should lead this charge.  Although currently on the outs with President Trump, in reality the two have far in common than not. He should spearhead the creation of this new party, one where financial discipline is, if not the raison d'etre, is a core element beyond compromise.  And the DOGE team has given them more than enough to work with.  Much like Newt Gingrich did in 1994 with his Contract with America, Musk et. al. should build on the DOGE recommendations and put together a new Contract of items that most Americans can agree on and use that to eviscerate the RINO wing of the GOP. 

Most Americans don’t like thousand page omnibus bills that no one can read and fewer can understand.  This new Contract should promise single department bills written in plain English.  Americans don’t like seeing budgets that go up year to year with seemingly zero correlation to the agency’s success or failure.  This new Contract should propose zero based budgeting so that agencies and departments have to make the case for their spending every year or every other year.

These and other no-nonsense policies will no doubt raise the ire of virtually the entire Democrat party, most of the bureaucracy and of course the swamp Republicans.  But they would likely resonate not only with average Republican voters, but they would likely appeal to many of the non-deranged elements of the Democrat party who are simply exhausted with the status quo of dysfunction.  And now is the time, before it’s too late.

One hundred and thirty five years ago slavery was an existential threat to the survival of the United States and it took a war and 600,000 lives to defeat. Debt figures on an accounting sheet might not sound like an existential threat, but make no mistake, they are. Whether Zimbabwe or the Weimar Republic or third century Rome, spending matters, deficits matter, numbers on an accounting sheet can eventually turn deadly. When this debt bubble bursts America will come apart at the seams and it will make the collapse of Venezuela look like a walk in the park.

But it doesn’t have to be. History doesn’t often pair a highly motivated public with the world’s richest man on the same side of an issue so clearly in need of fixing. It has now and we should seize the opportunity and take what little good that remains of the GOP and build upon it a new party that puts the needs of America above those of grifting, power obsessed politicians. That’s the kind of change Americans voted for.

Follow Vince on X at @ImperfectUSA

DOGE, the Big Beautiful Bill and the 'Rich Men North of Richmond

 I was under the illusion that with Donald Trump back in charge and the wind at his back Washington Republicans might actually take off the gloves and say eff-it and take on the swamp.  With the failures inherent in the Big Beautiful Bill, it appears I was wrong.  I don’t blame Trump. This abysmal betrayal of the American people was written in the halls of Congress… 

The Republicans in Congress talk a good game, but when it comes to actually doing what they say they’re going to do, it turns out they’re really snake oil salesmen. Not that this is new.  Remember when they ran on killing Obamacare throughout Obama’s presidency then bungled it when Trump became president?

We’re now watching that same treachery play itself out in real time, and it involves the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that just passed the House. This monstrosity ostensibly does a number of good things.  It extends Trump’s 2017 taxes that were set to expire, it increases spending on border security and apparently it cuts federal support for Planned Parenthood.  All of these are good things… but they’re the equivalent of trying to save the Titanic by emptying water over the side one bucket at a time while a thousand gallons of water pour into the hull every second. 

What this bill doesn’t do is cut spending nor cut the deficit.  Indeed, it puts the deficit on overdrive, just as interest rates on government debt seem to be heading upward. The president’s advisor Steven Miller (who is one of the smartest guys in Washington) pushes back, by pointing out that Reagan’s tax cuts weren’t balanced by spending cuts.  True, but then Reagan didn't have, if I remember correctly, a national debt 125% the size of the GDP that needed to be serviced.

A small part of this problem has to do with the calendar.  The writing of this budget began back in December after it became clear the GOP would have both houses but before they were technically in complete control.  As such, this Frankenstein started being put together long before DOGE started showcasing exactly how dysfunctional the federal government is.  But that’s no excuse.  It’s been over 4 months since the Elon Musk managed vehicle started highlighting problems.

This One Big Beautiful Bill Act demonstrates exactly why the federal government is as screwed up as it is. They say that you can’t turn around a ship on a dime, and that’s true.  But there’s a difference between turning on a dime and setting a course, full speed ahead, for the closest iceberg. 

This bill literally adds $2.5 trillion to the government’s debt and runs a deficit larger than Biden’s last one!  At the same time it basically allows the government to go on, business as usual.  There are no major cuts to spending.  There are no elimination of departments.  There is no substantial paring of regulation.  There’s basically the same budget compiled by the Democrats, RINOs and the administrative state every year with infinitesimal changes except for the taxes.

This bill doesn’t reflect the will of the people, it reflects the will of the establishment and the swamp. 

If Congress really wanted to fix the budget they’d take to heart many of the recommendations and revelations from DOGE, as well as codify much of what Trump has done or tried to do via Executive Orders. Hell, it doesn’t even eliminate the Department of Education, something Trump explicitly ran on. 

This bill cuts $4 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, Joe Biden’s attempt to get everything, including the kitchen sink into the budget, including green energy, social spending and taxes on the rich.  Four billion sounds like a lot until you understand that the IRA is a $1.4 trillion boondoggle. 

The reality is, 2/3 of the federal budget, fully $4 trillion out of $6 trillion is wealth redistribution.  Even if you argue that Social Security isn’t that, which is mostly true, and remove it, you’re still looking at almost half the federal budget being wealth distribution of one sort or another.  How much of that is waste, fraud and abuse? 

Elon Musk had initially suggested that he thought $2 Trillion could be cut from the budget. He lowered that target to $1 Trillion and in the first 4 months of the year DOGE has done a yeoman’s job and cut $170 billion of waste. And that’s with just 100 people on staff and facing a bureaucracy of literally millions who scheme and obfuscate at every turn in order to maintain the cash pipeline.  Imagine how much a DOGE team of 1,000 could do!

But more than actual cuts, DOGE recommended things like personnel cuts, cutting green energy subsidies and of course cutting regulation.  But relatively little is actually being codified in law. That’s despite the fact that 67% of Americans support DOGE cuts of at least $1 trillion, 77% support looking at the entirety of the budget to find savings and 78% support cutting spending to balance the budget.  Indeed, so little is being cut that Elon Musk has announced that he will be stepping back to refocus his efforts on his companies and playing a much smaller role in political spending.    

Inspired by promises to cut spending, taxes and regulation, MAGA voters powered Republicans to win the White House, take the Senate and retain the House. They had the richest and possibly the smartest man in the world not only on their side, but knee deep in funding them, getting them elected and working around the clock to ferret out corruption and fraud in government. Plus, every day seemed to shine more light on the corruption of Democrat / swamp machine.  As a result of all of this Republicans found themselves the beneficiaries of the most passionate electorate America may have ever seen. They were on top of the world.  And what did they do with all of this momentum? Worse than nothing, they gave us Democrat lite.

No major regulatory cuts.  No major cuts to wealth redistribution programs. No departments and few programs actually eliminated. No reining in of the imperial judiciary seeking to derail Trump at every turn.  No, rather than listen to voters and take a sledgehammer to the twin albatross of regulation and spending they use a dull putty knife to create the illusion of actual progress.

Of course we all know why nothing ever changes in Washington. Politicians go to DC and most get sucked into the Georgetown cocktail party scene grift, into being invited to pontificate on Sunday morning shows and give speeches to groups of deep pocketed donors from industries over whom them hold a sword of Damocles.

The fact that Donald Trump didn’t care about any of that, wasn’t swayed by any of that is one of the things that made him so appealing. That’s the reason MAGA put him back in the White House…

Unfortunately for the country however, the GOP in Congress is led by swamp weasels Mike Johnson and John Thune, and Trump is Gulliver to their Lilliputians. They have no real interest in upsetting the grift applecart despite what America wants.  They put America First lipstick on a Business as Usual pig and call it progress.  If the GOP loses Congress next year, look no farther than its leadership.  Like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnel before them, they are more interested in the trappings of leadership than actually solving America’s problems. Rich Men North of Richmond indeed.

Donald Trump’s Lost Honeymoon

As the west was seemingly spinning off its axis of common sense, it was the relief of a lifetime when Donald Trump prevailed in 2024.  Suddenly the world that had been turned on its head was going to be set right again. We were going to have an actual border again. Men weren’t going to be allowed to play in women’s sports.  Freedom of speech was going to be a thing again. DEI was going to be fading in the rear-view mirror rather than a roadblock to merit and success.   

On most of these things the President has been rock solid. But, sadly there are troubling circumstances nonetheless. 

One is highlighted by Democrat Jamie Raskin’s warning to countries who work with the Trump administration: "If and when we come back to power, and we will, we are not going to look kindly upon people who facilitated, to use the word of the day, who facilitated authoritarianism in our country. That's an assault on our Constitution and our people," Raskin is essentially threatening those who work with the Trump administration with consequences when Democrats returned to power.

That promise showcases one of the fundamental problems with the Trump 47 administration:  Executive Orders. The problem with EOs is that they are not laws, and therefore are susceptible to reversal by the next guy who sits in the Oval Office.  (One that should have been but never was is JFK’s Executive Order 10988, which allowed federal employees to unionize.)

Trump has issued Executive Orders addressing issues from immigration, energy, education, keeping men out of women’s sports and more.  They’re great, but unfortunately Congress is not turning those EOs into laws… which means that the next time Democrats steal the White House, all of those can be immediately repealed, which is exactly what happened with Trump 45’s EOs. Has he learned nothing?

Another area of concern has to do with rouge judges.  Trump has faced an unprecedented number of nationwide injunctions and insane court orders.  These have included everything from immigration to federal waste and fraud to transgender surgeries to men in women’s sports. Trump is allowing himself and his agenda to be hamstrung by Obama and Biden activists.   Axios even wrote a piece titled “Lower courts' growing power over the president”.  President Trump just passed his first 100 days, what’s commonly called the “Honeymoon” for a president where he has the momentum and usually the greatest chance of getting legislation passed.  But this administration is not doing that, in large part because the GOP party is full of RINOs and lawmakers are too busy grandstanding or sucking up to donors by introducing over 5,000 mostly pointless bills and resolutions, 95% of which will end in the shredder. 

Given that the GOP House is led by a guy with a pathetic 75% Liberty Score, the filibuster gives Democrats a veto over pretty much anything and the Supreme Court is led by swamp dweller, Trump has few good options.  But few doesn’t mean none. This is probably a bad quote to showcase given the circumstances, but it fits.  After a Supreme Court ruling that went against him in 1832, President Andrew Jackson may or may not have said about the Chief Justice, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

In that same vein, Trump should simply ignore the lower courts’ injunctions that go beyond the specific participants in any case.  Judges have no Constitutional power to make nationwide injunctions and Trump should act accordingly. Force Congress to come up with a solution.  And for those who cry that Trump would be doing something unprecedentedly unconstitutional… not so much. Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase even though he believed he had no Constitutional power to do so.  Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, FDR forced internment of over 100,000 Japanese American citizens, Obama weaponized the IRS to target his opponents and invented DACA while Biden bragged about defying the Supreme Court after they rejected his cancellation of student loans. And there are others.

The reality is, the judiciary is running a coup d'état and if Trump doesn’t end to it soon, his legacy will be failure and the collapse of the Republic.

While the judiciary is the most critical issue, there are still others that must be addressed.

Trump must charge and make examples out of the people behind the persecution of the J6ers and the members of his team who were targeted, like Mike Flynn. Trump has taken more abuse from more sides than any president in American history. They’ve indicted him, they’ve charged him, they’ve sued him and they’ve literally tried to kill him twice – that we know of.  And they did all of that once he was out of office and had spent his entire term in office struggling against the swamp – both across the aisle and in his party.  These people targeted not only Trump, but the Constitution and the Republic.  If not addressed, it will happen again.  

Then there are two more issues: The Epstein list and election fraud. 

We were promised throughout the campaign that the Epstein list was a top priority.  It’s clearly not, as we’ve just been told that the White House doesn’t know when it will be released. That’s after we were told there was an issue with national security.  There should be nothing that involves a blackmailer pimp selling access to children that should impact national security.  It doesn’t matter if that list includes politicians, generals, justices, or anyone else. If someone is on tape doing anything worthy of blackmail with children, they should be exposed, tried and convicted.  If the list never sees the light of day, particularly after Epstein and his primary accuser committed “suicide”, then the public will know for sure that the rich and powerful – including politicians – are not held accountable, regardless of their transgressions.  That is not a message a nation struggling to bring back law and order needs.

Then there is the Democrat’s using every dirty trick in the book to create circumstances where they can steal elections, and that includes ActBlue, the money laundering scheme specifically designed to illegally funnel untraceable money to Democrats. If Trump doesn’t fix the integrity of American elections, the country will quickly become California, a single party nation utterly unmoored from reality, common sense and quickly devolving into a dystopian nightmare which will beget a civil war. 

Donald Trump was elected to fix America.  He can’t do that so long as the people who broke it are still free and in positions to keep him from doing so. No one is talking about rounding up anyone simply because they’re Democrats. No, but those who used their positions to illegally thwart Trump from executing his Constitutional duties, used their offices to illegally destroy the lives of opponents, and those who stole the election in 2020 must be held to account. It must be done publicly, transparently, and constitutionally.  But most of all, it must be done.

If Americans see that the government is no longer constrained by the Constitution and that we’ve devolved from a nation of laws to a nation of men, then their willingness to be governed by said Constitution will evaporate. Anarchy and tyranny are the antipathy of a Republic, but that is ahead if Trump doesn’t demonstrate that no one is above the law, even government officials. 

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The Borg of Uncle Sam...

I grew up in the shadow of World War II. It had been over for almost 30 years by the time I started school, but nonetheless WW II was probably the most talked about subject in my history classes throughout. But the funny thing is, as close as it was, it seemed like it was ancient history.  It was finished. The evil Nazis were vanquished and the world had moved on. America and her allies had won and there were new enemies to slay.

While too young to understand Vietnam when it was raging, by high school I had a better grasp of world events and we were living on Guantanamo Bay, down in Cuba.  Although today it’s more well known for its prison facilities, at the time it was a U.S. Navy training / support station and the enemy was the Soviets and Fidel Castro. 

In the late 80’s after college, I was stationed with the Army in West Germany and our biggest alerts were usually related to the East Germans and they killed an American officer while I was there.  I don’t remember all the details but the Americans said he was on an approved inspection mission and the East Germans said he was spying.

Throughout these decades, I always knew that America was on the right side of history.  It was not that I’d been brainwashed, but it always seemed to me that an objective analysis of the circumstances, from WW II to Korea to Vietnam to the Cold War, America was the good guy, trying to do what’s right.  It’s a funny thing about the “good guy” framework, however, that everybody, even the guys who we know are the bad guys, think they’re the good guys!

Nor is it that I never questioned anything.  In college (of course) I had professors who said the US was the bad guy in Vietnam and that the Soviets only built missiles to defend themselves against the imperialist Americans. I disagreed but my words fell on deaf ears.    

So now we are here 35 years since the collapse of our last superpower enemy and a quarter century from 9/11, and I’m starting to wonder if America’s still the good guy. 

Some time ago it dawned on me that for most of my life I had given the government the benefit of the doubt.  Indeed, while imperfect and often inefficient and ineffective on a wide variety of policies, my default position for most of my life had been that the government was, at the end of the day, working for the American people.

Today, sadly, my default position is literally the opposite. 

In college I read Robert A. Caro’s biography of Lindon Johnson and according to it LBJ was a deeply egotistical, power hungry son of a bitch who would sell his mother to get power. While I think that’s clearly true, it seems that once in office he was genuinely interested in helping people and solving America’s problems. While he was a feckless buffoon as it relates to Vietnam, in domestic matters he wanted to help solve long standing problems, and that intention is not diminished by the fact that his programs were stunning failures.

That’s the way it is sometimes, people in government make mistakes. We all know that. But what has happened over the last two decades is a much different animal. Beginning with Barack Obama using the IRS to shut down Tea Party groups and right up until the moment someone in the White House used Joe Biden’s autopen to give pardons to half the Democrat Party and their swamp comrades, the American government has transformed from a virtuous, if frequently stumbling, vehicle for safely navigating the country through the chaos of life into an autonomous borg that largely operates without effective constraint and almost solely for the purpose of perpetuating itself. 

Biologists frequently say that the fundamental nature of life is to propagate the species, and that seems to be the path the borg of American government has taken. In the 21^st century we’ve seen an amalgamation of the Democrat party and the bureaucratic state, with a bastardization of both.  Maybe no better example exists than the Department of Education.  The education of children is easily one of the most important things a society can do to help perpetuate its culture and civilization, and the DOE spends $280 billion a year on it. Sadly, of that number, less than $70 billion actually goes to educating children.  The rest goes to bureaucracy, consultants, NGOs and ultimately, back into the pockets of Democrat politicians. This would be a crime even if schools were properly educating children, but they’re not.  Across the country you have failing schools where kids can’t do simple math, easily the most basic skill one should take from school. But you know what they are learning?  How to be LGBT.

This, like so much of the rest of government is far beyond incompetence. It’s criminal. It’s ceased to be a vehicle for ensuring the freedom of American citizens and promoting the interests of the United States.  It’s literally become the opposite. From funding prosecutors who release violent criminals into American communities and funding leftist thefts of elections while quashing of free speech internationally, to funding the invasion of our country and undermining the Bill of Rights, the American government has become the enemy within. 

If nothing else, Donald Trump and DOGE should be applauded for exposing what so many of us felt for so long but could never quite put our fingers on. 

Somewhat like learning that there is no Santa Claus, in the back of my mind I’m a bit wistful for that feeling of inner peace I had when I used to think of the country and the government as a single inherently good entity. While I think the former still is good, the latter, not so much, and I was late to the party in internalizing the idea of a difference between the two. For me Uncle Sam was America and the government combined.  Sadly, the Democrats weren’t under that illusion, and their recognizing the dichotomy long ago gave them decades to brainwash their constituents and hide the inner workings of their machine in plain site, behind countless official looking government seals and compassionate sounding NGOs.

Despite what the Democrat / bureaucrat borg has wrought, I firmly believe America remains a great, if imperfect nation and I remain convinced that taken as a whole throughout most of her 250 years, the county and the government have been mostly on the right side of history.  To the degree that that’s no longer true for the government, I’m glad we’re at a point where much of its malfeasance and malevolence is being exposed. It will take a long time and a lot of courage on the part of Republican politicians to fix this situation, but at least it’s being exposed before it’s too late. We’ll see in the next two years if the GOP has the courage necessary to actually set a course for bringing government back under the control of the citizens. Rand Paul, Mike Lee & Thomas Massie have their work cut out for themselves… Hopefully they’ll get some help along the way. 

DOGE and the Façade of a Republic...

If you’d have asked a Roman citizen on New Years in the year 1 AD what kind of a nation he lived in, he’d have likely said a Republic.  And he would have been right.

That year, just a few years after Jesus was born, Rome was ostensibly a proud republic.  While they had a Senate, which was an unelected aristocratic, they also had Consuls, a two man quasi executive which was elected by representatives of the people. They had Tribunes, who were elected by the people (sans the aristocrats) and who acted as a check on the Senate and Consuls. And they had Censors, whose ultimate job was to oversee public morality and manage finances.

Most of those institutions had been in place for half a millennium and the Republic had a long history of increasing power for the common citizens as a balance to the elites. 

For the average citizen he looked around and saw a Republic. 

It was an illusion.  In reality the Republic, for all intents and purposes was gone.  You could make an argument that it ended around the end of the first century BC with the reigns of Marius then Sulla. You could make a stronger case that it ended around 60 BC with the advent of 1^st Triumvirate or in 48 when Julius Caesar defeated Pompey, eventually having himself declared Dictator for life. Most historians don’t quite count the Republic as gone at this point because the Senate still had real power.

By 27 BC, four years after Caesar Augustus defeated Mark Anthony at the Battle of Actium that was no longer the case. At that point the tables had shifted sufficiently that Augustus was an Emperor in everything but name. Offered the title of king, Augustus would refuse, instead preferring to be called Princeps Civitatis, or First Citizen, a man of the people.

The reality is that the Republic was dead and Rome was a tyranny (albeit a relatively peaceful one for the moment) where only one thing mattered, power, in the form of Legions.  And Legions Augustus had, and they were loyal to him, not Rome. 

But in the eyes of the common man, it looked like a republic because all of the adornments of a republic were still there, but what he didn’t see was the fact that Augustus pulled all of the strings behind the scenes. Because of his personal control over the critical legions and richest provinces, Augustus was the undisputed ruler of Rome and dictated who could fill critical posts – including himself as Consul and Censor – what edicts the Senate would pass and much else of what went on across the empire. But his Princeps title and the governmental window dressing gave the citizens the illusion of a republic. 

Once Augustus was gone, the façade disappeared and for most of the next 400 years it was crystal clear that power derived from control of the Legions and or the Pretorian Guard.  And at times they would literally chose the Emperor by auction.

If you’d have asked an American citizen the same question 2020 years later most would have said they lived in democracy and a few, a republic. Makes sense.  We had all the trappings of a democratic form of government.  We had elections, a President and a Congress and a SCOTUS appointed by said President, confirmed by that Senate that stepped in whenever the other branches overstepped their Constitutional powers.

But then the election happened that November and extraordinary inconsistencies made many think that the democratic form of government we thought we had wasn’t quite working.  This was followed by four years of something like a Twilight Zone episode. 

Then of course came the relatively inconsistency free election in November of 2024 and the inauguration of Donald Trump in January.  Finally, Americans felt like maybe they were in control over their country once again…

As soon as the new administration took office and unleashed its DOGE hounds however, it became clear that America was far less of a democratic form of government than anyone had ever imagined.

It turned out that yes, we could elect new members of Congress and even new Presidents, but that control was an illusion because behind the façade of democracy is a hardcore leftist bureaucratic machine that operates the government – and impacts much of the world – essentially separate from but funded by the government.

It turns out that our government has been spending more than $40 billion a year for decades funding leftist causes across the country and around the world. At home they’ve funded George Soros’ Tides Foundation as it sought to install leftist prosecutors and DAs across the country.   Abroad, working in concert with the CIA, the USAID funded revolutions and undermined governments around the world.  Not surprisingly, 95% of agency employees were leftists and 95% of the funding went to leftist causes, including media organizations.  Among other efforts were DEI, trans opera in Columbia, and Sesame Street in Iraq.  

Beyond USAID spending itself, the government is rife with spending that simply continues regardless of who’s in office. Senator Rand Paul in his 2024 “Festivus” showcased over $1 trillion in waste and abuse in the federal budget, funding things such as breakdancing, Girl-Centered Climate Action in Brazil and paying $10 billion a year in virtually empty buildings. This included Defense, Interior, State and virtually all departments and agencies. Mostly they funneled their billions of dollars through NGOs which are Non Government Organizations, but should really be called Not Government Officially because they give the CIA, State, Defense and others the ability to do things they’re either legally prohibited from doing or aren’t Constitutionally empowered to do.

Indeed, the EPA recently revealed that the “Biden administration was allowing just eight entities to distribute $20 billion of taxpayer dollars "at their discretion.”" Including $2 billion to Stacey Abram’s brand new green energy scam.

Leftists complain that DOGE is focusing too much attention on USAID as it’s only 1% of the government budget. That’s true, but that misses the point for two reasons. First, DOGE is looking at the entire government, it’s simply that USAID abuse has been so blatant that it’s basically low hanging fruit. Second, about 75% of the federal budget is non-discretionary, essentially meaning it gets spent regardless of who’s in charge, including things like Interest, Social Security, Medicaid, etc.  Of the remaining 25%, half is Defense. That means that of the 13% of the budget that’s discretionary, USAID makes up almost 10%!

In a recent Joe Rogan interview Elon Musk perfectly articulated why leftists – both in government and out – are going crazy. Suggesting this may be the most important revolution in American history since the original revolution, he said “Normally the bureaucracy eats revolutions for breakfast. This is the first time they’re not, that the revolution might actually succeed.” 

DOGE may still find itself eaten by the bureaucracy it’s targeted, but at least for the first time in decades Americans have an idea what’s being done behind their backs, and there’s someone in office who seeks to do something about it. When the façade of the Roman Republic fell it exposed a tyranny that would last four centuries.  We can only hope that exposing the cancer behind the American façade results in a stronger Republic that can last half as long.

 

Follow me on X at ImperfectUSA