clearandpresentdanger.blog

I’m fascinated by this particular topic, so sue me if I blog too long.

Donald Trump continues to make claims, in public speeches that are recorded by contemporary information technology and therefore viewable after the fact, that schoolchildren are being subjected to surgical procedures to alter their genders, without parental permission or knowledge. He has been making these claims at least since the fall of 2024, when he did so while campaigning for re-election to the presidency of the United States, and he made them again yesterday at a midterm elections rally in Arizona. Here is my verbatim transcript:

Mutilate your children, they want to cut your children.  It’s unbelievable, what they do.  Six states, they can do whatever they want, and they do.  Your son leaves as Jimmy, and comes back home in three days as Janet. [Some people in crowd laugh in what sounds more like a polite than a sincere way].  And they don’t even ask you.  Most people don’t believe that, you know, they think it’s like an exaggeration – it’s not.  They can take your child out of school and do whatever the hell they want.  These people are sick.  Minnesota is one of those states that can do that.

I had to make my own transcript after viewing a video clip of the rally posted by Aaron Rupar, because I can find no news stories reporting on these specific remarks. These remarks, made yesterday by the president of the United States, are not considered in any way newsworthy by any major media outlets.

What’s going on here? Some speculations:

I don’t believe this is an example of media bias in the crude “the New York Times supports Donald Trump and therefore covers up bad stories for him” narrative.  What’s happening here is subtler than that I think. If, for example, Mike Johnson were to come out and say he can’t negotiate with Hakeem Jefferies and Chuck Schumer because they are possessed by demons, and that therefore negotiations must wait until a successful exorcism, this would be a massive news story, there would be lots of calls for Johnson’s immediate resignation from the speakership, etc. Johnson’s hypothesized claim is actually less crazy, for certain values of crazy at least, than Trump’s actual claim yesterday, since demonic possession is not empirically verifiable or disconfirmable, while the existence of unauthorized transgender surgeries at American elementary and/or secondary schools is. So why are the Trump remarks a complete non-story, given that they are totally insane on their face, and the president of the United States making totally insane on their face statements seems like real news by definition?

The answer, it would seem, is that Donald Trump, president of the United States, makes totally insane on their face statements all the time, so such statements aren’t news, because they fail to clear the dog bites man as opposed to man bites dog definition of news.

Relatedly, the media, consciously, semi-consciously, or unconsciously, rationalize all this as some sort of joke or schtick. Trump isn’t serious, you see, because if he were serious that would be totally insane, and the president of the United States is not totally insane, because if he were that would be extremely alarming, plus we have institutional guardrails ™ to deal with insane presidents, that aren’t being employed, or indeed even referenced, so obviously he has not gone insane. [Extreme Captain Willard voice]. Obviously.

Also relatedly, this whole thing implicates a pet little idea of mine, which is that right wing politics and ideology in contemporary America can be described as Apocalyptic Calvinism on Meth which works something like this. As I’m sure you all remember, a core principle of Calvinist theology is the total depravity of the human moral condition, which is an assumption that actually makes a certain amount of twisted sense, for certain values of twisted sense, if your metaphysics assume not a can opener but an omniscient omnipresent eternal definitionally good down to the last drop deity. Think of it this way. I’m sure there are a lot of different ability levels in the LGM readership in regard to playing basketball, but how would the differences in all those levels stack up in comparison to Nikola Jokic’s basketball abilities? The answer of course is that the differences would be trivial, because Jokic is almost infinitely better at basketball than anyone at LGM. Well in Calvintown, God is not almost infinitely better than you or me or Pope Leo or Ted Bundy or Donald Trump: he is literally infinitely better. Which means . . . stick with me for a second here . . . that sure Donald Trump lies, but all politicians lie, because all people lie, unlike God, who literally never does, because he can’t by definition (This would seem to contradict the omnipotence feature of our featured deity, but whatever as the kids say).

So yes, Donald Trump is totally depraved, as illustrated by his totally depraved statements about transgender surgeries, but everybody is totally depraved compared to God, so none can be justified by works, which is why you need Unconditional Election via the Irresistible Grace of Jesus Christ (are you with me so far?).

From this perspective, saying “Social Security is going broke” and saying “Jimmy goes to school and comes home three days later as Janet” [side point: does Donald Trump not realize that not everyone goes to boarding schools or how is this part supposed to work?] are the same, because they’re both lies, and God hates all liars with equal fervor, which again is why we all need all that irresistible grace. That the first lie is a kind of subtle spinning of the facts while the second is a deranged claim totally orthogonal to reality itself is a trivial detail in the eyes of the Big Guy, so it should be in ours, as well. Or something.

Let us turn now to Chapter 33, verses seven through eleven, of the Good Book:

Take for example Trump’s claim that elementary schools are carrying out secret gender reassignment surgeries on children, so that one day Johnny goes to school and comes back as Jane.   How does he get away with making this utterly insane and above all epically stupid claim, at the height of a presidential campaign, with no apparent ill effects on his re-election chances? 

First, because of epistemic bubbles, a huge number of Trump voters will never hear about this claim, as Fox News and the internet algorithms won’t feed it to them.  The fact that in theory it’s very easy to find this information runs into the practical reality that people who don’t want to hear it will very often successfully avoid doing so. 

Second, many supporters who do hear it are stupid enough to believe it, as Trump himself probably does in his increasingly degenerate decrepitude. 

Third, Trumpian intellectuals – and they do exist, despite the reflexive denial of so many liberals – will interpret this claim in symbolic terms.  Yes, it’s not literally true, but it’s true in a higher, metaphorical sense, given that elementary schools, controlled by cadres of woke cultural Marxists, are trying to make transgender identity a normal and acceptable thing.  One can perform a similar re-interpretation of just about every item on the list below.  And that is the essence of this nightmare from which we are trying to awake.

And that is why there are no news stories about Donald Trump’s deranged claims about transgender surgeries yesterday. Because the fact — and it is very much an undeniable fact to any rational observer — that Donald Trump himself is a deranged delusional liar, who is losing touch with reality and is almost out of blow, is NOT NEWS. It’s just how he is, and the way things are now, and we had better get used to ie, because there’s nothing to be done about it for twenty-seven more months (minimum unless Captain Willard gets a real choice mission), because that’s the way God planned it, that’s the way God wants it to be.

President Donald Trump’s new White House press secretary has an apparent shortfall in her resume.

The 80-year-old president introduced Katie Zacharia as “an attorney,” and she has described herself the same way on national TV over and over, but a new investigation by Popular Information’s Judd Legum found no evidence that she has ever been admitted to practice law in any state.

The journalist searched bar records in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and turned up no sign that Zacharia holds a law license. She isn’t listed with the State Bar of California, where she lives, or with the bars in Texas and D.C., where she has also worked.

But that hasn’t kept her from using the title.

“I’m a lawyer,” she said on the Greg Kelly Show earlier this month. In August she told a podcast, “a lawyer, I went to Pepperdine, Pepperdine Law.” In a February appearance on CNN, she said, “[A]s a lawyer, there’s a big difference between answering something under oath and answering something to the media.” Fox News has also labeled her a lawyer.

Zacharia does have a law degree, but a Juris Doctor alone doesn’t authorize someone to practice law. That requires admission to a state bar, which means passing a bar exam.

In California, presenting yourself as entitled to practice law without an active license is a misdemeanor under state law. Zacharia’s LinkedIn says she worked full-time from January 2024 to March 2025 as “General Counsel” for Fix California, a conservative nonprofit founded by Trump ally Ric Grenell. A general counsel is usually an organization’s top lawyer. According to archived versions of her X profile, she kept listing that title, along with “Lawyer,” as recently as July 2026.

However, there is this exchange — her answer to a reporter’s question when Trump introduced her.

Q: You said Zacharia is an attorney. Where did she pass the bar exam? What state?

ZACHARIA: When I moved to China.

The Chinese bar exam is in Chinese and is available only to Chinese citizens.

Popular Info’s Judd Legum found that, after analyzing state bar association databases from all 50 states and Washington, Zacharia never actually passed the qualifying legal exam anywhere in the country. But she couldn’t have passed the Chinese equivalent of the bar exam, either, as it’s actually forbidden for foreigners to do so.

Zacharia’s LinkedIn work history places her at Zhong Lun, an elite Chinese multinational law firm, between 2011 and 2013. She worked at the Beijing-based firm as an associate on the international practice team, months after she obtained her J.D. from Pepperdine Caruso Law. Zacharia’s LinkedIn also notes that she spoke Chinese at an “elementary proficiency.”

Oct 13, 2026, 3:00 PM EDST

This is a photo of the crowd at a JD Vance scheduled event 10 minutes before start time.  In TEXAS.

Botox lips, high cheekbones, other work done lower down.

In mid-2017, Guilfoyle signed a long-term contract extension with Fox. In July 2018, she abruptly left Fox News and began working for a pro–Donald Trump super PAC.  HuffPost reported that, at the time of her departure, the network had been in the midst of a year-long investigation of a sexual harassment accusation against Guilfoyle. Network officials had given Guilfoyle an ultimatum: resign by the end of July or be fired.  Later, turned out that she had been hopping into bed with several male Fox fellow employees and officers.  Her favorite pastime was to take photos of her companions’ genitals and post the pics on her Instagram account.

After leaving Fox, she hooked up with Donald Trump, Jr., who did exactly what Donald Trump, Sr., would have done: Ditched his wife and five kids for Guilfoyle.

They announced their engagement after which she dumped him; he wound up marrying the daughter of Epstein’s accountant in a multi-millionaire wedding paid for by a close friend of the ruling prince of Saudi Arabia.

Trump appointed her as ambassador to Greece where she proceeded to endear herself to her hosts by saying “We could overthrow you if we wanted to. ”

In October 2026, The Wall Street Journal reported that while preparing for her Senate confirmation hearings in 2025, Guilfoyle asked businessman and Trump-allied donor Eric Deters to send a wire transfer for $100,000 to pay down her American Express account “in a way that wouldn’t leave a paper trail.”  He claims to have refused but somehow the bill was paid.  She was afraid if this debt became public in her confirmation hearings, she would not be confirmed.  There’s no record as to who paid the AMEX bill.

And now — Oct 13, 2026 — she is resigning as ambassador because she embarrassed Trump.  Her problem now is that she is 57 years old — Botox and surgery can only help so far, then, nature takes over.  And if you can’t pay off your $100K AMEX bill, you sure as hell can’t afford to have any more work done.  Oh, well.  There’s always a place somewhere for another Trump camp follower.

UJPDATE!!  UPDATE!! Oct 13, 2026; 12:38 PM EDST

BREAKING: LOL! The big MAGA donor who Kimberly Guilfoyle tried to squeeze $100,000 out of for political favors announces that he’s suing her.

And it gets even better…

“I’m going to be suing those lawyers, that law firm, and Kimberly Guilfoyle. It’s going to be fun,” Eric Deters told CNN.

Guilfoyle, who it was revealed today is being forced out as U.S. Ambassador to Greece, demanded that Deters pay off $100,000 of American Express debt in return for access to senior Trump administration officials. It’s the most blatant form of corruption imaginable, the kind of thing that we once expected only from Third World dictatorships. But under President Trump’s criminal rule, all of these crooks are exploiting their positions for financial gain. Guilfoyle’s great sin was not being more subtle about it and leaving text message evidence.

Deters claims that Guilfoyle’s legal team lied about him after the bombshell story broke.

“They first said that the text messages were fake. Defamation,” said Deters. “Then they said I was a known blackmailer. I’ve never blackmailed anybody in my life.”

Desperate to construct a narrative to shield her from possible prison time, Guilfoyle’s team is insisting that she was innocently trying to collect on $150,000 that Deters owed her for speaking events and consulting. Deters, in turn, says that he paid Guilfoyle the full $300,000 that he owed her for speaking at an anti-COVID mandates event.

“Now, they’re claiming that there are invoices when she knows that’s not true. In all the text messages, she doesn’t mention anything about me owing money,” Deters said. “She knows that is phony, and I’m going to be suing them all for defamation.”

“I think she’s gone. I think he has to fire her,” he added. “It’s grifting on the highest level, and it’s just an awful look for the administration.”

As it turns out, Deters was correct and Trump has asked Guilfoyle to leave. But again, it’s not because she tried to enrich herself through corruption. It’s because she got caught.

Introducing Kate Zacharaia, the new White House Press Secretary, shown here displaying her qualifications for the job.

The woman who spread her filth calling Democrats and Hollywood celebrities “sick pedo cannibals”, who wanted to suspend the habeas corpus for migrants, who spread Covid-19 vaccine lies, who called for a federal takeover of California, and who called for Trump to serve a third term . . . is holding her first press conference as Trump’s Press Secretary, Tuesday, Oct 13.

Is Natalie Harp in trouble?

While Zacharia has routinely presented herself to the public as a lawyer, Popular Information’s Judd Legum could find no evidence that she had ever been licensed to practice law, and when offered an opportunity to prove otherwise, the White House referred to a Trump social media item in which the president asserted that she was an attorney.

Before the mid-19th century, executions in America were presumptively public. Most prisoners were hanged on a gallows, following an hours-long affair that began with the condemned person’s exit from jail accompanied by ministers, the sheriff and his deputies, and sometimes a military escort. Spectators joined the humiliating procession, gathering by the thousands to watch the noose lowered over the prisoner’s neck. The sheriff would mount the scaffold to read aloud the death warrant, sometimes adding commentary, and at least one minister (often several) would issue sermons. The condemned was offered the chance to give a speech, with spectators standing so close that they could ask the prisoner questions and join him in prayer, or bid him goodbye, if he was a family member or friend.

All of that seemed safely confined to a past that the Trump administration now hopes to revive. President Trump, a consummate showman, has authorized the country’s first public execution in 90 years. The condemned prisoner is Nidal Hasan, a military psychiatrist who murdered 13 people and injured many more during a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, in Texas. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that the killing, scheduled for December 3, will be conducted by the military and publicly livestreamed. During his trial, Hasan alarmed his standby attorneys when he chose to defend himself, and mounted an argument that the lawyers considered tantamount to seeking his own death. He could still conceivably file civilian appeals, which could delay his execution substantially. If it goes forward, the administration surely hopes to make an example of Hasan to all who might be tempted by his worldview. But this strategy could just as likely result in unintended consequences, and pushback by the public.

Elizabeth Bruenig: The way of the gun

Public executions ceased not because those who clamored to witness them found the displays uniformly outrageous, but because politicians in the 19th century associated them with proletarian barbarity. Though these executions were theoretically meant to deter crime and exhort onlookers to practice proper Christian values, they were mostly entertainment, and did not always provoke the desired reactions. Some onlookers cheered and celebrated the killings; others sympathized with the condemned. Public executions of Black prisoners in the South, for instance, became opportunities for community, song, and displays of Black religious authority. Ministers preached sermons of salvation and sometimes protested that the prisoners were innocent.

In that sense, the public nature of executions backfired, and critics took note. Because the attendant crowds were so volatile, vulgar, and unruly, by 1860 all northern states had begun carrying out the killings in jail yards, which were much smaller areas, subject to tight government control. Decades later, the South followed suit. The large crowds soon vanished. Military executions, traditionally carried out by firing squad, were long conducted in small, controlled settings, often witnessed only by military personnel and chaplains. The last military execution in the United States was carried out in 1961.

Trump and Hegseth aim to have it both ways: a small, secure setting and massive crowds. This time, viewers will be watching a livestream on their screens, close enough to see the event but too far to smell the gunpowder. Both Hegseth and Trump seem intent on flexing America’s political power and military might as a message not just to foreign enemies but to the American people, as if to say: This could be you. This method of ruling by fear is central to authoritarian governance, and Trump and Hegseth seem drawn to executions partly for that reason.

But if Trump and Hegseth are hoping for a deterrent effect, they’re unlikely to get it. The idea that executions could deter other killers with political motives seems sorely mistaken; those who carry out such murders already know that they could face grave consequences and have deemed that outcome acceptable. Nor do executions deter murderers without political motives, because deterrence is generated not by the severity of the punishment, but by the certainty of getting caught. And there is little certainty in American homicide investigations: In 2023, the nationwide case-clearance rate for murder was only 58 percent, meaning that murderers have decent odds of evading justice. Even if they are caught, they have good odds of avoiding the death penalty—only 23 new death sentences were handed down in 2025. Trump’s Department of Justice hopes to boost those numbers, but even if they tripled, they would add up to 69 death sentences spread across some 14,000 murders.

Adding a livestreamed element is perhaps an attempt to intensify the intended deterrent effect, but it might have opposite consequences. Plenty of Americans would surely enjoy the spectacle of a public execution, just as people have historically. One can envision groups of people crowded around their phones, sharing chips and drinks, admiring the military pageantry. But it’s easy to imagine a different effect, too: Other crowds of people, other phones, entirely different impressions—that the death penalty is a disgusting violation of human rights that puts America in league with nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China. Or that Nidal Hasan is a martyr, and the United States is a savage country not worth defending—which is the narrative presented by Hasan himself. Before the shooting, he told family that he’d turned against the country he served upon hearing horrific stories of war from his psychiatric patients and grew troubled by the fact that America was killing Muslims abroad. Carrying out his public execution would only credit the notion that this country is barbarous.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Dana Mattioli, Drew Hinshaw, Rebecca Ballhaus, and Joe Parkinson of the Wall Street Journal reported on the tawdry grifting of Kimberly Guilfoyle, former fiancee of Donald Trump Jr. and now Trump’s ambassador to Greece. Panicked about how much money she owed on her American Express credit card, Guilfoyle reached out to Eric Deters, who wanted the administration’s help with tax and legal issues. Deters had promised Guilfoyle as much as a million dollars if she was successful in getting him the help he wanted.

With her confirmation hearing for the ambassador post coming up, Guilfoyle begged Deters to pay $100,000 to American Express. “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she wrote on the secure messaging app Signal, the Wall Street Journal reporters explained. “Please.” She reiterated over text: “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today.” “Your needing $100,000 urgent unfortunately is not going to work,” Deters wrote. “I can’t do this without getting a divorce.”

In their months of correspondence, Guilfoyle often complained that he was not being careful enough. “Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things,” she wrote. “It’s really dangerous and not helpful to you or me while you could simply just call me on signal.” She wrote: “It’s unbelievable when we have a private arrangement with you that you would now CC a producer talking about money.” And later: “What a nightmare you’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing.”

Looking back today at stories of corruption involving Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem, and so on, Chris Hayes of MS NOW explained that Trump’s inner circle “works a lot like a crime family…. [E]veryone gets their fiefdoms. They can get their beaks wet. But they’ve always got to make sure they’re giving the boss his due.”

On Tuesday, Samantha Subin of CNBC reported that just days after Palmer Luckey joined the Pentagon’s new Project Meridian, set up to report on the military’s future needs, the company Luckey co-founded—Anduril—landed a $2.9 billion contract with the U.S. Navy. And today, Reuters reported that Kalshi is investigating suspicious trades having to do with Trump’s selection of Katie Zacharia as the new White House press secretary.

Americans don’t like corruption, and with the midterms shaping up to be a disaster for the Republicans, Trump has launched an all-out offensive to solidify his base. That offensive includes spinning the Iran War, calling for a public execution, attacking immigrants both rhetorically and in real life, and shifting the United States against the defense of international law and allying with authoritarian governments.

On Wednesday, October 7, Jonathan Saul of Reuters reported that attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz hit the highest level since the war on Iran began. Shortly after noon yesterday, October 8, Trump tried to spin the situation there to make it sound like he was in control. He posted that “Iran is in a very bad condition, both Economically and Militarily,” that the U.S. blockade is still in effect, that oil is flowing “in Record Numbers of Barrels through the Hormuz Strait,” and that the administration is having “productive discussions” with Iran. He added: “[W]e will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd. IRAN WILL NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”

In an interview with far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec on board the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appealed to the MAGA religious base with a promise that the execution of former Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the mass shooter who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, would be public. An active Army officer when he committed the murders, Hasan was court-martialed and sentenced to death.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said. CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen noted that a livestream of the execution would be a rallying cry for terrorists.

The backlash against Hegseth’s plan has been swift and bipartisan.

Representative Jason Crow (D-CO), who served as a paratrooper and Army Ranger and is now on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, said: “Pete Hegseth has taken our military’s tradition of selfless service and flipped it on its head. With this public execution, he is degrading the culture of our military and turning a culture of service into one of vengeance and spectacle, performed for cameras and attention on social media. The Fort Hood shooter’s actions were horrific. Responding to it by livestreaming a violent execution is not an answer. A public execution only gives our adversaries fodder for anti-American propaganda that makes us less safe. Pete Hegseth’s self-absorbed hunger for power, attention, and violence is disgusting and beneath the office he holds. He is not fit to lead.”

The idea was “beyond disgusting,” Senator Tom Tillis (R-NC) wrote. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”

Trump then tried to rile up his supporters by turning them against an invented “enemy,” a tactic that is Authoritarianism 101. On Wednesday the FBI said it had prevented an attack on Minnesota’s Mall of America by a teenaged American-born U.S. citizen of Somalian descent whom they had been monitoring since December 2024 and to whom an FBI agent sold the assault rifle and ammunition for the attack.

At 4:30 on the afternoon of October 8, Trump wrote: “The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants. There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State. The people of Minnesota must fight back. You have been robbed, and abandoned by your State Government. Your Governor is an incompetent thief who doesn’t want to get involved. He just wants to get out of town with as much as he can steal, and then, lead a quiet life. The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue. Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, must immediately ask for Federal help—and leave the rest to us!”

Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, a MAGA Republican, promptly referred to Somali-Americans as “enemy combatants” and complained that Democrats were not “rounding them up and putting them in jail.”

On Thursday, October 8, Priscilla Alvarez and Michael Williams of CNN reported that on Tuesday, the leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) verbally told agents across the country to ramp up their arrests by another 1,000 people a day, bringing arrests back to 3,000 daily.

On Thursday afternoon, as ICE agents in New York City surrounded a Dominican man and his five-year-old son in a car, one of the agents fired several shots. It is not clear how badly injured Oscar Belgal is; he was shot in the neck, treated at a hospital, and then moved to an ICE facility outside of New York. His son was not hit by a bullet. New Yorkers immediately began to protest, calling for an end to ICE. New York governor Kathy Hochul and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, both Democrats, have demanded ICE stop operations in the state. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin refused. “No, we’re not putting a pause on enforcement,” he said. “I’m sorry, we’re not. In fact, I’m not sorry.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a South-African-born jurist and former chief of human rights at the United Nations. There she led a U.N. commission that concluded Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians. She is currently a judge at the International Court of Justice. The committee’s message with their choice seemed pointed: Pillay has promoted peace through her protection of international law, they said, and the committee chair said the award was “a message to those who are attacking” international law. The committee said Pillay was “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.”

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted that the “Nobel Prize committee has lost its moral compass,” calling Pillay “a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state.”

Hours after the prize announcement, Humeyra Pamuk, Steve Holland, and Anthony Deutsch of Reuters reported that Trump’s administration was imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), founded in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on judges and prosecutors before; now it is sanctioning companies that provide services to the court itself.

The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Israeli officials including Netanyahu, as well as Russian officials including Vladimir Putin. Today Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans.”

Sanctioning the ICC sets the U.S. against its allies in Europe, who are increasingly worried about hybrid attacks from Russia, attacks that avoid direct war while destabilizing another country, methods like cyberwarfare or disinformation. Today, after ten years of cozying up to Vladimir Putin, Trump openly allied the United States with Russia against Ukraine.

Three weeks ago, by large bipartisan votes, Congress passed new sanctions against Russia and countries that were continuing to use Russian oil and gas and gave Trump sweeping powers to expand those sanctions. At the time, Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX) said: “This bill will cripple Russia’s war machine and finally bring Putin to the negotiating table. It will ensure America’s adversaries, not only Russia, but also China and Iran, suffer for their coordinated campaign of aggression.”

But today, Trump used the law for the opposite of what Congress apparently intended: “I have just concluded a highly successful discussion with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, wherein it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter. Additionally, based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries, Russia will then deliver, within a short period of time, 3,000,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel. Between our TOTAL CONTROL of the Strait of Hormuz, and this great announcement on Russian Energy, Diesel Prices for Americans and, indeed, the World, will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST! Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority. This is a very big and important announcement. Additionally, it must be understood, that Iran will not have a Nuclear Weapon!”

The Treasury Department promptly announced it was issuing a temporary license to permit Russian diesel to sell on the global market. The sales will likely do little for U.S. oil prices, but they will funnel money to Russia for its war on Ukraine.

Trump’s smash-and-grab suggests concern he will lose the midterms. The latest poll from the Pew Research Center shows that 68% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the presidency. Cook Political Report has moved 18 more House ratings toward the Democrats. Myah Ward of Politico reported that 26% of those who voted for Trump in 2024 think the Republican Party should break with Trump in order to win in November. In Kansas on Wednesday, more than 100 prominent Republicans launched a coalition called “Republicans for Hamilton” to back Democrat Adam Hamilton for the U.S. Senate. Their announcement referred to “a growing network of everyday Republican voters…who are ready for change.”

Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who conducts focus groups with voters, says Trump’s campaign ads boosting himself have backfired: people hate them. They object to using taxpayer money for them by a margin of 86 to9. Furthermore, Longwell finds that Trump 2024 voters in Florida whom Trump needs to energize for this election, really hate them—the word Longwell used is “revulsion.” One said: “We need to get rid of all these people. Even if the Republicans don’t win for the next ten years, it’s probably best to wash these people out, you know, so you can get cleaned—clean slate.”