Author: rosenjoe1@hotmail.com

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Trump calls for the execution of people with whom he disagrees.

Trump spent Nov 20 morning calling a group of military veterans in Congress traitors and saying they “should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL.” Their crime, in Trump’s eyes, was their release Tuesday of a video reminding military and intelligence officers that they must refuse illegal orders.

The video features Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Representatives Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), and Jason Crow (D-CO). Slotkin is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. Kelly was a captain in the U.S. Navy. Deluzio served in the U.S. Navy. Goodlander is a former intelligence officer. Houlahan served in the Air Force. Crow is a former paratrooper and Army Ranger.

Speaking in turns in the video, the lawmakers say:

“We want to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community who take risks each day to keep Americans safe. We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military, but that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.

“Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution. Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home. Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders; you must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant. But whether you’re serving in the CIA, the Army, our Navy, the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”

“Know that we have your back, because now, more than ever, the American people need you. We need you to stand up for our laws, our Constitution, and who we are as Americans.

They end with the famous line delivered by Captain James Lawrence, who commanded USS Chesapeake in 1813 when it engaged in a naval battle with HMS Shannon during the War of 1812. In the battle, Lawrence was mortally wounded. As his men carried him below, he ordered:

“Don’t give up the ship.”

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller promptly posted on social media, “Democrat lawmakers are now openly calling for insurrection,” but Trump did not appear to notice the video yesterday when he was entertaining Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, known as MBS, at the White House. But something had called his attention to it by last night—perhaps Crow’s appearance on Martha MacCallum’s Fox News Channel show last night in which his advocacy for the military appeared to throw her off balance.

Trump reposted comments from a Washington Examiner article about the video that called for the lawmakers to be arrested, “thrown out of their offices,” “frog marched out of their homes at 3:00 AM with FOX News cameras filming the whole thing,” and “charged with sedition.” He reposted “Insurrection. TREASON!” and a message from a user who wrote: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”

At 9:08 this morning, Trump posted, “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”

At 9:17 he reposted the Washington Examiner article with the note: “This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP??? President DJT”

At 10:21 he posted: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

And so an American president called for the arrest and execution of elected lawmakers.

Restating the law is not sedition, and Fox News Channel legal analyst Andy McCarthy promptly wrote: “There is no insurrection or sedition without the use of force. Disobeying a lawful order is insubordination, not insurrection or sedition. Disobeying an unlawful order is required. That is all.”

Professor of the early American republic Joanne Freeman wrote that she was “[n]ot going to repost DJT’s howling threats against Democratic lawmakers. I’ll just say: 1. We still have free speech here. 2. People can still oppose the president. 3. No—George Washington wouldn’t have hanged the lawmakers because HE WAS VERY CAREFUL TO STAY STRICTLY WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF HIS OFFICE AS PRESIDENT. He didn’t want to be a king or dictator. Plus, he was in his right mind.”

By noon, the White House was doing cleanup. At 1:58, CBS News senior White House and political correspondent Ed O’Keefe reported from Reuters: “TRUMP DOES NOT WANT TO EXECUTE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, WHITE HOUSE SAYS,” an astonishing sentence to see coming from the government of the United States of America.

Hours later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to defuse the crisis of the president calling for the execution of members of Congress by claiming the Democratic lawmakers were the ones encouraging violence. When asked about it, Leavitt said, “They are literally saying to 1.3 million active duty service members to defy the chain of command, not to follow lawful orders.” A reporter interrupted: “Actually, they said…illegal orders.” Leavitt claimed, “They’re suggesting…that the president has given illegal orders, which he has not. Every single order that has given [sic] to this United States military by this commander-in-chief and through this chain of command through the secretary of war is lawful.”

In fact, Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube, and Dan De Luce of NBC News reported yesterday that the senior judge advocate general, or JAG, at U.S. Southern Command in Miami, the command that oversees the U.S. strikes on the small boats near Venezuela, expressed concern that the 82 deaths from the strikes were extrajudicial killings. If so, they would expose service members participating in the operations to legal repercussions.

According to the reporters, the opinion of a command’s top JAG on the legality of a military operation typically would determine whether the operation went forward. It is possible for higher officials to overrule their findings, but their concerns are typically addressed before the operation begins. In this case, though, the reporters write, officials at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department and other senior government officials overruled him.

This new information adds fuel to the concerns of lawyers and lawmakers of both parties about the legality of the boat strikes just as lawmakers are pushing back on the administration’s refusal to honor the 1973 War Powers Act that requires the president to get Congress’s permission to continue strikes for more than 60 days. That deadline passed on November 2, and now the administration appears to be considering a broader assault on Venezuela.

On Tuesday, November 18, Representatives Gregory Meeks (D-NY), top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Adam Smith (D-WA), top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee; Jim Himes (D-CT), top Democrat of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Bennie Thompson (D-MS), top Democrat of the House Homeland Security Committee; Jason Crow (D-CO), top Democrat of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations; and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) introduced a War Powers Resolution to stop the administration, as they said, “from continuing to use U.S. Armed Forces to conduct strikes in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, operations the administration has carried out for more than 60 days without congressional authorization.”

In the last week, Trump’s iron grip on congressional Republicans has appeared to be slipping. All but one member of Congress voted for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and then enough Republicans crossed the aisle to sign a second discharge petition to force a House vote on a bipartisan bill to repeal Trump’s executive order stripping union protections from federal workers. If there is anything but a demand for absolute power behind his insistence that Democrats are traitors, it might be a hope of winning wavering Republicans away from budding bipartisanship and back to his MAGA standard.

Some Trump loyalists did indeed jump to the president’s defense. More stayed silent.

After Trump’s threats, the six lawmakers who made the video—Slotkin, Kelly, Deluzi0, Goodlander, Houlahan, and Crow—issued a statement:

“We are veterans and national security professionals who love this country and swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. No threat, intimidation, or call for violence will deter us from that sacred obligation.

“What’s most telling is that the President considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law. Our servicemembers should know that we have their backs as they fulfill their oath to the Constitution and obligation to follow only lawful orders. It is not only the right thing to do, but also our duty.

“But this isn’t about any one of us. This isn’t about politics. This is about who we are as Americans. Every American must unite and condemn the President’s calls for our murder and political violence. This is a time for moral clarity.

“In these moments, fear is contagious, but so is courage. We will continue to lead and will not be intimidated.

“Don’t Give Up the Ship!”

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Sorry, but the dog ate the jobs report

Dog ate the jobs report

Jobs report? What jobs report? Never heard of it. Must be a hoax.

What an unlucky break:

The Labor Department announced Wednesday that it will not release monthly jobs numbers for October due to complications from the government shutdown, though it intends to include some data in November’s report.

The closely watched economic data is collected via two components: a survey of employer payrolls that is used for top-line changes in the number of people working and a parallel survey of individual households that provides the unemployment rate and other demographic information about the workforce.

Federal employees who conduct the household survey were furloughed during the period it would normally be collected, so the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics does not have the necessary data.

“The household survey data is not able to be retroactively collected,” BLS said in a notice posted to its website.

BLS noted that it would include the October payroll survey data in its November report, which it moved from Dec. 5 to Dec. 16. Additionally, the agency said it is extending its collection period for the November data and “extra processing time will be added.”

The cancellation will mean that economists, businesses and policymakers, including those at the Federal Reserve, will continue to navigate a tricky economic environment for several more weeks with only a partial picture of where things stand — until BLS can return to its pre-shutdown rhythm that observers depend on. The extension for the November report also means it will arrive after Fed leaders meet in December.

Right, the shutdown. We’ll see what the excuse is next month.

This is relevant to the bullshitting is a better campaign strategy than governing strategy problem Trump has — this is not a political environment in which no information about the economy is going to be interpreted in favor of the incumbent government by marginal voters.

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Who is Clay Higgins?

During yesterday’s votes by the House and Senate to release the Epstein files, there was one and only one NO vote — cast by Clay Higgins, Republican of Louisiana.

Higgins tells us he is a “fine Christian man.”

He is currently with wife number four.

Higgins is a real charmer by nature and nurture — he held a gun to his first wife’s head during an argument, and was a mere $140,000 behind in child support with another ex-wife.

In 2021, he challenged a person to a boxing match for calling him a traitor for his vote against certifying the 2020 presidential election.

Higgins’s self-identifies as a white supremacist. He is perhaps the most repulsive member of Congress today.

Higgins — not Trump — is the face of the MAGA republicans seeking re-election in 2026.

Here’s a bit of Higgins’ wisdom:

“The free world… all of Christendom… is at war with Islamic horror. Not one penny of American treasure should be granted to any nation who harbors these heathen animals. Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter. Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied. Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down. Hunt them, identity [sic] them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.”
— Clay Higgins post on Facebook, June, 2017

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Let’s call out Republican and MAGAt hypocrisy

This past week, the seemingly never-ending Jeffrey Epstein scandal that has dogged President Donald Trump resurfaced with the release of damning emails, hinting at more extensive connections between the two, including a claim that Trump “knew about the girls.”

Ironically, after years of campaigning against LGBTQ+ people and inventing nonexistent connections been transgender people and child abuse, the right has been pushing excuses for Trump’s connections to Epstein—and it’s been down a similarly hypocritical road before.

But at the same time he was pounding the table about Clinton, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was screwing one of his staffer’s on his office desk, cheating on his wife as she fought cancer—and he eventually married the staffer (and Trump appointed her as US Ambassador to The Vatican).

A few decades later, many of the same right-wing figures lined up behind Trump—who infamously and publicly cheated on multiple wives—while railing against figures like former President Barack Obama as anti-family. Obama has been married to his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, since 1992.

GOP leaders like Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina have induced whiplash. At one point, she spoke up for victims of sexual abuse but then quickly turned on a dime, saying that she supported Trump in the 2020 election despite his history of sexual assault.

The right has embraced hypocrisy and now thrives on it. But how did that happen?

For years, conservatives have made the concept of “owning the libs” central to their political ideology. The idea is to engage in behavior and use rhetoric that supposedly makes liberals angry, driving them to exhibit this anger, which conservatives then mock.

Gingrich’s hypocrisy thus became more or less acceptable on the right because he spent his time as speaker trolling Democrats, pushing offensive rhetoric about the party or insisting that Republicans were morally superior. It didn’t matter what he did behind closed doors—as long as he “owned” the liberals.

A figure like Trump has taken this ethos and turned it up to eleven. Everything about him is orchestrated to incite liberal ire, from his racism and embrace of crackpot conspiracies, to his childish insults and overt corruption. And his underlings like White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and aide Stephen Miller constantly insult the left to win over their boss.

This creates a permission structure on the right where Republicans are allowed to be contradictory, as long as a liberal somewhere is purportedly mad about it.

Trump can “own the libs” and embrace hypocrisy all he wants—he is a significantly unpopular leader. The public has also made clear that, on the Epstein issue, Trump is the true outlier. The public has repeatedly called for transparency and justice for the victims, survivors, and their families. This shaky ground for Trump has led to Republican defections, which is a departure from the norm.

Shameless hypocrisy might work at the core of the GOP base, but voters outside of the conservative bubble are more than willing to throw Republicans out of office.

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Virginia’s Nov 2025 election results are in — looking good for Virginia Democrats in 2026

First, here are the final results from the 2025 Virginia elections:

  • Abigail Spanberger defeated Winsome Earle-Sears by 15+ points (57.6%-42.2%);
  • Ghazala Hashmi defeated John Reid by 11.5 points (55.6%-44.1%);
  • Jay Jones defeated Jason Miyares by nearly 7 points (53.1%-46.5%);
  • Democrats flipped 13 Republican-held House of Delegates seats, going from a 51D-49R House of Delegates narrow majority to a massive 64D-36R House of Delegates majority.

Here’s another interesting graphic.  Note that Spanberger won the First and Second Congressional Districts.  These two Districts are “represented” in the US House of Representatives by Republican MAGAts:  Rob Wittman in VA-01 and Jen Kiggans in VA-02.  BOTH ARE VULNERABLE IN NOVEMBER 2026 and these results are very good for Democrats.

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“Mortgage fraud” is a crime only when Democrats do it

The latest sham investigation by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, based on sham invocations of mortgage fraud, just got referred to the Department of Justice so that Mr. Weaponization Working Group himself, Ed Martin, can likely kick off a sham prosecution.

This time, it’s California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell.

So weird that these totally neutral and fair investigations just happen to always converge on people Trump perceives as his enemies, right? What are the odds?

It’s especially weird given that Pulte really needed to look no farther than his own father and stepmother to locate the kind of mortgage arrangements he insists are fraudulent.

Oh hello, Pulte’s daddy. It looks like you and your wife just happen to be claiming two homestead exemptions, one in Michigan, and one in Florida. Neat trick, really. Dad claimed one exemption, stepmom claimed the other, and that little bit of what Pulte says is prosecutable fraud when anyone else does it likely saved his parents an estimated $158,000 in taxes for 2025 alone.

But now, if Federal Reserve Board of Governor member Lisa Cook did that, it is for sure fraud, right?

Hmm. Well, that’s just his parents. They’re not part of the administration, and definitely no one in Trump’s administration would have any sort of untoward mortgage arrangements.

Well, except for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has two primary residences, one in Bedford Hills, New York, and one in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Oh, and except for Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who did two primary residence mortgages back to back in a hurry, including one for her second home in Arizona.

Oh also, and except for Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who has a primary residence in New Jersey and another one in Washington, D.C.

Sorry, wait, one more. Environmental Protection Agency Director Lee Zeldin has one primary residence in Long Island and another in D.C.

When faced with the fact that multiple Cabinet members have the same type of mortgage arrangements that Pulte says was criminal behavior when undertaken by anyone with a (D) after their name, the White House went with one of its blustery, fact-free denials.

“This is just another hit piece from a left-wing dark money group that constantly attempts to smear President Trump’s incredible Cabinet members. Unlike [Fed Gov.] Lisa ‘Corrupt’ Cook who blatantly and intentionally committed mortgage fraud, Secretary DeRemer, Secretary Duffy, and Administrator Zeldin own multiple residences, and they have followed the law and they are fully compliant with all ethical obligations,” the White House said in a statement to ProPublica.

Show your work.

Oh hello again, Pulte’s daddy. Did you rent out one of your primary exemption homestead homes this year? Whoopsie, that’s super illegal, and is what your son determined was completely fraudtastic behavior on the part of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Now, thanks to Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, always the number one Florida insurance lawyer in our hearts, the DOJ did score an indictment against James, though it appears to be rapidly falling apart. James’ mortgage contract did not prohibit renting and it also looks like Halligan may have just withheld exculpatory evidence from the grand jury to get that indictment.

There are no guardrails left to stop Pulte, however, as once the Fannie Mae watchdogs started looking into whether Pulte improperly obtained mortgage records of Democrats Trump hates, they referred it up to the Office of the Inspector General for FHFA, and then the acting inspector general sent it to the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia and … we’re back to Halligan.

So, the ethics and internal investigation folks at Fannie Mae were fired and then Trump fired FHFA’s acting inspector general, just for good measure.

That’s one way to solve it. Nothing is going to stand in the way of Pulte using his position improperly to gin up sham charges that just somehow happen to be things that are totally fine when Republicans—like his daddy—do them.

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Trump is desperate . . . resorting to the “Look!! Look over there!!! Don’t look at me!!” defense

When all else fails, a guilty party can shout, “Look, there goes Elvis,” in the hope of creating a distraction. Of course, no one is ever fooled, and invocation of the defense is a sure sign of desperation. Trump left the building on Friday and entered the “Look, there goes Elvis” stage of his presidency. The next stage is “Trump jumps the shark,” but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

In a truly bizarre set of actions designed to distract from the Epstein scandal, Trump called the scandal a “hoax,” demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi open an investigation into prominent Democrats with ties to Epstein, said he had not ruled out pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell (who was convicted of sex trafficking of minors), and “withdrew his support” for MAGA warrior Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Don’t try to make sense of the above conflicting positions. It’s not possible. And just to add fuel to the dumpster fire, the Trump administration announced that it was reducing tariffs on 200 items from “the grocery,” including coffee and bananas.

Trump then promised to give every American a $2,000 “tariff rebate . . . without increasing the debt.” Of course, Trump has no power to unilaterally allocate funds to Americans from the US Treasury, especially not $430 billion, which would definitely increase the deficit.¹ Fact-checking Trump’s promise to give Americans $2,000 payments from tariff dividends | PBS News.

It appears that the vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act is scheduled for next week. As we approach the vote, we should expect Trump to lash out in even more unhinged ways. And, of course, the more desperate Trump appears, the more he reinforces the notion that there is something truly awful about him in the Epstein files.

As always, the Epstein scandal is about justice for the victims and accountability for the perpetrators. But it would be foolish for those defending democracy not to demand accountability for Trump, and to leverage those demands for political advantage.

Trump is a study in corruption. Trump has created and evaded responsibility for dozens of financial, political, ethical, and sex scandals. If the Epstein scandal is the one that finally catches up to him, good for all of us and good for America!

We must remain relentless in our efforts to hold Trump accountable. It remains unclear if we will succeed in obtaining the release of the files during Trump’s tenure. But we must never let the issue fade. It must be the issue that defines Trump and his enablers for the rest of their public lives.

Trump calls for an investigation of Democrats with ties to Epstein

In a post on Truth Social that was inappropriate in every way possible, Trump called the Epstein scandal a “hoax” and said it was like the “Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats.” He also wrote,

I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him.

Pam Bondi then responded by saying that the DOJ would conduct the investigation through the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District in New York.

Former US Attorney Joyce Vance explains the many ways in which the post by Trump and the response by Bondi were inappropriate:

Joyce White Vance (@joycewhitevance.bsky.social) wrote

Count the ways they’re corrupting DOJ: Presidents don’t direct AG’s to open criminal cases, especially ones designating only Dems for investigation when POTUS himself is involved. DOJ doesn’t publicize criminal investigations & the AG definitely doesn’t assign them on Twitter.

But it gets worse. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton is facing serious conflicts of interest. Jay Clayton was twice nominated by Trump (as the Chairman of the SEC and as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York). Under Trump’s unitary theory of the executive, Clayton reports to Trump—a key target in the Epstein sex trafficking operation. Moreover, while in private practice, Clayton represented both Reid Hoffman and JP Morgan—two of the targets that Trump demanded the DOJ investigate.

The only ethical course of conduct is for Jay Clayton to recommend the appointment of a special counsel to conduct the investigation.

Trump’s post and Bondi’s response effectively ensure that any indictment will be dismissed as a selective or vindictive prosecution. It simply doesn’t get any worse than a presidential statement claiming that a sex trafficking ring for minors is a “Democratic” problem and identifying prominent Democrats that Trump wants the DOJ to investigate.

Of course, Trump doesn’t care about the legitimacy of the investigations. He wants to create as many additional investigations as possible to diminish the significance of an investigation into his conduct or documents in the files that suggest he was involved in sex trafficking, rape, prostitution, sexual abuse, or any of the other crimes charged and civil claims alleged against Epstein and Maxwell.

No one believes that Trump’s “investigation” is anything other than a criminal who is caught in the act yelling, “Look, there goes Elvis.” It is a pathetic, desperate ploy that serves only to increase suspicions regarding Trump’s criminal culpability.

Finally, Trump attacked Marjorie Taylor Greene in a lengthy post on Truth Social, which said, in part,

I am withdrawing my support and Endorsement of “Congresswoman” Marjorie Taylor Greene, of the Great State of Georgia.

[A]ll I see “Wacky” Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!

I understand that wonderful, Conservative people are thinking about primarying Marjorie in her District of Georgia, that they too are fed up with her and her antics and, if the right person runs, they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support. She has gone Far Left, even doing The View, with their Low IQ Republican hating Anchors.

Greene responded on social media as follows:

He’s coming after me hard to make an example to scare all the other Republicans before next week’s vote to release the Epstein files. It’s astonishing really how hard he’s fighting to stop the Epstein files from coming out.

I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump.

Marjorie Taylor Greene senses that Trump is weak and that there is an opening for Republicans to resist Trump. She can’t be the only member of the GOP to see the same opportunity to break free of Trump at long last.

Two new scandals for the Trump administration

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem allowed a “no-bid” contract that was part of a $200 million ad campaign to be awarded to a “Republican consulting firm with long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS.” See Pro Publica, Kristi Noem-Tied Firm Secretly Got Piece of $220 Million DHS Campaign.

Second, the DOJ is in settlement talks with convicted-but-pardoned former National Security Advisor for Trump, Michael Flynn. Flynn has sued the US for $50 million for being the subject of a criminal investigation that resulted in a guilty plea by Flynn for lying to the FBI about his secret contacts with the Russian ambassador to the US.

The DOJ is apparently in the final stages of a negotiation that will result in Flynn being paid millions in US taxpayer dollars for wrongful conduct that he admitted as part of his guilty plea. See The New Republic, Justice Department Prepares to Pay Trump Ally Michael Flynn Millions | The New Republic.

The Trump administration is little more than a wealth transfer machine that awards taxpayer dollars to Trump administration officials willing to break the law for him. A key reason for the corruption is the Supreme Court’s grant of immunity in US v. Trump. When we take back control of Congress and the presidency, the first thing we do is reform the Supreme Court—from the ground up.

NYTimes Editorial about Trump’s violation of Article I

I spend a lot of time ranting about Trump’s ongoing violations of Article I, which grants the power of the purse to Congress. Trump has violated Article I in just about every way possible, and the mainstream press has ignored that fact. Every time I write about the issue, I can feel readers rolling their eyes and thinking, “Geez! This guy needs to get over this whole illegal impoundment issue.”

But it is a big deal. Trump has effectively circumvented Congress’s power to appropriate funds. On Friday, the NYTimes Editorial Board published an editorial that addressed Trump’s violations of Article I. Rather than me ranting about this topic again, I will quote liberally from the Times’ editorial, here: NYTimes Editorial Board, Trump’s Spending Abuses Are Out of Control. He Shouldn’t Have That Power in the First Place. (Accessible to all.)

The Constitution gives the authority to tax and spend not to the head of state, but to the elected representatives who are closest to the people: the members of Congress. [¶]

President Trump, however, has tried to take Congress’s constitutional power and make it his own. He has repeatedly ignored laws passed by the House and the Senate to spend money, or not spend it, based on his whims and agenda. He has violated the law at least six times, according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency. That total does not include the government shutdown, when he continued to disregard the law.

Mr. Trump’s abuses of spending power fall into three categories.

First, he has refused to spend money that Congress allocated. [¶]

Second, Mr. Trump has spent money that Congress has not allocated. During the shutdown, he paid military troops and some other federal workers without congressional approval. [¶]

Third, the president has taken steps that effectively overturn Congress’s spending decisions [by taking] steps that make it so an agency cannot carry out the mission that Congress envisioned for it. [¶]

Republicans have done little to confront Mr. Trump’s abrogation of Congress’s spending powers. [¶]

Today’s Supreme Court has been far too tolerant of Mr. Trump’s steamrolling of Congress. It has stood by while Trump effectively cancels, after the fact, the agreements lawmakers make to pass a budget.

What’s the point of the appropriations process if the president can just undo it?

Concluding Thoughts

If it feels to you that the news cycle has become more volatile and faster-paced over the last two weeks, it is not your imagination. We are witnessing simultaneous crises in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government. State governments are contributing to the sense of bedlam by engaging in mid-census redistricting.

A good coping strategy is to focus on the meaning, significance, and trends in the news rather than the events themselves. Trump’s multiple dumpster fires on Friday created a sense of chaos that, in turn, can create a sense of anxiety and helplessness. However, with just a little perspective, we can see that Trump is in a downward spiral, lashing out at enemies and allies alike—a dynamic that explains 90% of the news on Friday.

Friday, he attacked Bill Clinton, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Thomas Massie. Tomorrow, it will be Adam Schiff, Jack Smith, and Hakeem Jeffries. Those attacks are part of a trend in which Trump seeks to deflect blame by attempting to smear others. We will likely remain stuck in that dynamic for many months, perhaps even years. We cannot overreact to each of the coming attacks—with emphasis on “over.”

We should condemn each corrupt act of retribution and vow to hold those involved in Trump’s campaign of vengeance accountable. That day will come so long as we remain steadfast and focused on our goal of convincing others to join us in the streets and at the ballot box.

Meanwhile, we can find comfort and strength in the throngs of fellow patriots standing by our sides at streetcorners and town squares, in living rooms and overpasses, and in Zoom meetings and on social media.

So, this weekend, let’s take a deep breath and recognize that the chaos is a sign that our movement is gaining purchase with each passing day. We are stronger, more organized, and more effective today than we were only a few short weeks ago. Let’s keep it up. If we do, we will win. Victory isn’t guaranteed, but it is within the margin of effort.

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Epstein said what we all know: Trump “is nuts”

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Congress is now releasing a huge trove of over 20,000 email messages from Jeffrey Epstein to his various friends and associates.  In this one dated 3/24/2018, Epstein minces no words in describing Donald Trump.

In Epstein’s words, Trump “feels alone, and is nuts!!! . . . evil beyond belief, mad . . .   he could crack . . . lies after lies after lies.”

Epstein had known Trump for around 15 years when he said this about Trump.  Too bad we didn’t know about this before the MAGAts elected Trump President.  Now we as a nation are learning that Trump really “feels alone, and is nuts!!! . . . evil beyond belief, mad    he could crack . . . lies after lies after lies.”