Month: October 2025

You knew he’d do this right?

President Donald Trump will likely name his new $300 million White House ballroom after himself, according to senior administration officials.  Already, officials are referring to it as “The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom.” That name will likely stick, ABC News was told.

Trump has not publicly said what he intends to name the ballroom, but he is known for branding his construction projects after himself — and it appears this project will be no different.  When asked by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce on Thursday if he has a name for his ballroom yet, Trump smiled and said: “I won’t get into that now.” 

I’m with JV Last on this.I know it sounds like a low priority and maybe a waste of time. But as he explains it has great symbolic power:

The good news is this means that the next Democratic inhabitant of the White House can demolish the Trump Presidential Palace Ballroom and Casino and restore the East Wing and the rest of the White House grounds to their pre-Trump state.

I can already hear the normie objections.

• Tearing down the structure is a waste of resources. Once a thing is built, you keep it and use it.
• Making the Trump teardown a priority would needlessly antagonize Republicans.
• Where would President Newsom get the money for the project?
• The entire thing would be a distraction from the president’s agenda of making a Real Difference in the Lives of Americans.

As he rightly points out, after despots are gone, their monuments are purged.

Last writes:

If you leave monuments to authoritarians standing, then you encourage (a) resistance from the out-of-power revanchists and (b) future strongmen who believe they can permanently mark history.

Would his supporters be upset? Yes, of course. Who cares? At this point there’s nothing to be gained by trying to appease these people.

Last’s last point is the most important:

Undoing the authoritarian project is not a “distraction.” It is the single most important job of the next Democratic administration.

Real talk: “Undoing the authoritarian project” will be incredibly hard when it comes to salvaging the Department of Justice, dissolving ICE, reallocating DHS functions to more professionalized forces, making the District of Columbia a state (in order to safeguard the rights of its citizens), and reforming the Supreme Court.

The authoritarians are counting on this being difficult. They believe that the ratchet turns only one way. That they can do what they will and even in the unlikely event they are turned out of office this time, they can come storming back to finish the job.

It is maximally important to demonstrate—both to the authoritarians and those who oppose them—that the ratchet can go in reverse. That authoritarian gains are not permanent. That liberal society has the will to undo their grotesqueries.

I agree 100%. This one’s a lay up and it’s symbolically hugely important. They don’t have to make a huge deal out of it. Just do it and say they will collect small donations from individuals to rebuild the East Wing to its historical scale. I’m sure MAGA would squeal but because the monstrosity will be new and paid for by a bunch of billionaires and corporations nobody can say there’s any real reason to keep it. Get rid of it and purge the body politic of this monstrous gilded temple honoring tyranny and greed.

It’s settled. Pete Hegseth has to be the coolest Secretary of Defense in American history.

I had no idea this guy could fly planes. 👏 pic.twitter.com/CsuXiZyqUJ

— George (@BehizyTweets) October 22, 2025

It was a propaganda stunt. As with all other members of Trump’s administration that’s the most important part of his job.

Meanwhile, Trump’s getting his splendid little war. According to the Atlantic:

[Yesterday]the Pentagon announced that the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft-carrier strike group, a multi-ship force staffed by as many as 5,000 troops, would travel from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. The intent, the Pentagon said, is to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors.” The ships, which are currently on a port visit in Croatia, will take just over a week; their movement was the latest indication that what began as a campaign to pick off alleged drug runners as they ply the seas in small fishing vessels is evolving into something far larger.

The U.S. hasn’t sent this many ships to the Caribbean since the Cuban missile crisis. There are already roughly 6,500 Marines and sailors in the region, operating from eight Navy vessels, as well as 3,500 troops nearby. Once the Ford arrives, the U.S. will have roughly as many ships in the Caribbean as it used to defend Israel from Iranian missile strikes this summer. The carrier strike group also provides far more firepower than is necessary for the occasional attack on narco-trafficking targets. But the ships could be ideal for launching a steady stream of air strikes inside Venezuela.

“The only thing you could use the carrier for is attacking targets ashore, because they are not going to be as effective at targeting small boats at sea,” Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and retired Navy officer, told us. “If you are striking inside Venezuela, the carrier is an efficient way to do it due to the lack of basing in the region.”

Of course they’re going to strike Venezuela. True, Marco would have liked it if Maduro had just crawled away with his tail between his legs and turned the country over to the Chalabi-esque exiles Rubio would like to replace him with but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. So war it is. Trump needs to revive his flaccid manhood after all that peace talk (which really isn’t his style) and the others all have their presidential ambitions and xenophobia to feed.

And they’re just going to do it without going to congress. Trump said,they might talk to them at some point but they don’t need a declaration of war they’re just “going to kill them, they’ll be, like, dead.” So that’s that.

I’ve written about all this stuff a lot over the past few weeks as we’ve seen this escalation. It’s inevitable. But the consensus is that they will not have boots on the ground:

All of the military experts we consulted agree that the United States doesn’t appear to be preparing for a boots-on-the-ground invasion like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. More likely, they said, the administration is gearing up for a “push the button, watch things explode” operation, like the strikes against nuclear facilities in Iran in June. Among the potential targets being considered is infrastructure used by suspected narcotics traffickers, officials familiar with the administration’s thinking told us.

But such a campaign would not be without peril for the troops carrying it out. Since the strikes began, Venezuela also has already flown F-16s over American destroyers operating in the region. During any attack in Venezuelan air space, U.S. pilots would likely come up against Maduro’s air defenses. Analysts differ over how much of Venezuela’s air defense is fully functional and maintained, but they are in consensus that its military has a network of anti-aircraft batteries, multiple air-defense units armed with cannons, and numerous portable air-defense systems. The military also has a sophisticated long-range-missile system capable of shooting down aircraft and ballistic missiles, according to Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.

Ramsey warned that even if the strikes lead to defections and eventually the fall of the regime, multiple pro-government armed groups in the country could challenge a new government and contribute to a bloody outcome that would look something like Libya after the 2011 fall of Muammar Qaddafi.

“I think ultimately, what you need is a way to channel the enormous pressure that Maduro is under towards a peaceful, democratic outcome,” Ramsey told us. “And I think you can get there without firing Tomahawk missiles into the country.”

During the Arab Spring, Trump had initially said that he supported U.S. and NATO intervention in Libya. But as instability followed, he shifted his position. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said that Libya would have been better off if Qaddafi had stayed in power.

“I was never for strong intervention,” Trump said that year. “It’s a total mess.”

If you thought those missions were a mess, get ready. We have Orange Julius Caesar and Whiskey Pete running this one. And they both love to see things go boom.

I posted the full address yesterday along with the transcript. Not that any of you needed the proof that Ronald Reagan, of all people, was not a big fan of tariffs as Trump is saying.

Here’s the problem: Trump is very stupid so maybe he actually think’s Ronnie was MAGA. The people at Fox know better. Look how they’re framing the story:

“I can play dirtier than they can.”

President Trump is standing by his decision to end trade negotiations with Canada over an ad made by Ontario’s government that used “selective audio” of former President Ronald Reagan. pic.twitter.com/9XjV9dHm41

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 25, 2025

They aren’t coming right out and saying that it’s AI like Trump is but they are putting “selectively edited” as if they somehow changed the meaning of what Reagan said in that video which is absolutely untrue. Reagan said those words in the ad and he meant them exactly as they are portrayed.

Ok, so Fox is playing along with Trump. What else is new? I think I’m a little but surprised, however, that the Reagan Library is doing that. They are literally betraying their man by suggesting that the ad doesn’t accurately reflect Reagan’s beliefs. They don’t come right out and say it either, simply saying they used the speech without permission (it was publicly available with no restrictions) and that the words were “misrepresented.” So even the staunchest Reaganites are now re-writing history and throwing his legacy in the toilet in order to curry favor with Donald Trump.

That marks the final end of the old conservative movement.

It’s interesting that Mike Johnson has made himself the face of the shutdown while ceding all of his power:

Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to put the House on an indefinite hiatus that is now stretching into its second month while the government is shut down is the latest in a series of moves he has made that have diminished the role of Congress and shrunken the speakership at a critical moment.

It’s an approach born of political expedience that could have far-reaching consequences for an institution that has already ceded much of its power to President Trump. And Mr. Johnson, who without the president’s backing wields little influence over his own members, has chosen to make himself subservient to Mr. Trump, a break with many speakers of the past who sought in their own ways to act more as a governing partner with the president than as his underling.

“I’m the speaker and the president,” Mr. Trump has joked, according to two people who heard the remark and relayed it on the condition of anonymity because of concern about sharing private conversations with him.

Well, he’s actually the dictator so he’s right.

That didn’t have to happen. The Republicans just decided to let him politically castrate them and then thank him for the privilege of giving him what he wanted.

Johnson’s just doing press conferences instead of keeping the House in session to do what they normally do which is call difficult votes, like passing a stand alone bill to pay for air traffic control and the like. It’s his strategy. He’s got Newtie advising him:

The absenteeism, people around Mr. Johnson said, is a strategic calculation that the best way to keep his unruly rank and file in line is to place them on an extended leave.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who often serves as a sounding board for Mr. Johnson, said in an interview that if the House were in session, “other issues will begin to clutter this up, and there is some small danger that some Republicans might begin to have a mixed message on the shutdown.”

In fact, such dissonance has already begun bubbling up even with everyone working remotely. The divide among Republicans over whether to extend expiring health insurance subsidies — Democrats’ central demand in the shutdown fight — has highlighted a political vulnerability for the party.

It has all created a strange dynamic on Capitol Hill: Mr. Johnson appears to be using the considerable power of the speakership to render the House irrelevant.

Oh why not? The only job of a GOP official in 2025 is to kiss Donald Trump’s ass. And he’s doing a find job of that, even adopting his crude, childish rhetoric and calling Democrats communists and saying that people who oppose Trump are all a bunch of paid Hamas supporters. It’s a much easier gig than being an actual politician with real power.

The’re all just submissives, yearning of a Daddy to tell them what to do.

QOTD: an anonymous elite

What has changed is simple: people are scared of crossing Trump this time. In researching this piece, I interviewed dozens of figures, including lawmakers, private sector executives, retired senior military figures and intelligence chiefs, current and former Trump officials, Washington lawyers and foreign government officials. Such is the fear of jail, bankruptcy or professional reprisal, that most of these people insisted on anonymity. This was in spite of the fact that many of the same people also wanted to emphasise that Trump would only be restrained by powerful voices opposing him publicly. At times, it has felt like trying to report on politics in Turkey or Hungary.

I think that says it all about elites, don’t you agree?

That is from an article by Edward Luce in the Financial Times that’s gotten wide circulation. It’s basically an overview of where we are at this point in the second Trump term with interviews and analysis from people within Trump world and outside of it. Let’s just say that it’s not good.

I thought this was especially good. As you can tell by that excerpt above, the elites come in for a major drubbing in this piece and for good reason. They have turned out to be the lowest of cowards in most cases, refusing to speak out for fear of … well, everything. However:

In contrast to chief executives, America’s billionaires are not shy about speaking their mind. But their pronouncements are mostly in praise of the president. Days after Trump first took office in 2017, Google co-founder Sergey Brin joined a protest against his immigration policies, which threatened America’s “fundamental values”. This January, Brin was a guest at Trump’s inauguration, among several of the world’s richest men, including Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, LVMH’s Bernard Arnault and Reliance Industries’ Mukesh Ambani. Apple’s Tim Cook was also there. Their support has paid off.

The second term has also worked out nicely for the Trump family business. Though Trump once dismissed bitcoin as a “scam”, he had a road-to-Damascus conversion during the campaign. Days before his inauguration, he launched a memecoin called $TRUMP. The first lady, Melania, launched her own. Trump and his family’s participation in the crypto boom has netted more than $1bn in pre-tax profits over the past year, according to a Financial Times investigation.

Trump’s love affair with crypto is also at the heart of his foreign policy. Governments that want to seduce Trump have the perfect vehicle, World Liberty Financial, a token and stablecoin company set up by Trump’s sons Don Jr and Eric, and the sons of Trump’s chief foreign policy envoy, Stephen Witkoff. Earlier this year, the Abu Dhabi fund MGX bought $2bn of a WLF stablecoin, dubbed USD1, to invest in Binance. Pakistan’s military-backed government has gained an advantage over rival India after offering crypto investments to Trump’s family.

Trump sees no distinction between public and private. States governed by ruling families thus find it easiest to do business with him. This leaves America’s democratic allies stuck in a perpetual antechamber. “Even if we wanted to invest in Trump’s crypto schemes, we would legally be unable to do so,” said the foreign minister of a significant Nato ally.

A Baltic foreign minister admitted to visiting the US seven times this year. Ordinarily, there might have been two trips across the Atlantic, they said. Such concern is most acute at the Russian border on the fringes of the west’s fraying empire. “Would Trump honour Nato’s Article V pledge?” asked the Baltic foreign minister, referring to the commitment that an attack on one member is treated as an attack on all. “We don’t know.” Qatar, meanwhile, has donated a $400mn luxury jet to Trump. A Trump-branded luxury hotel and golf course is being built outside Doha. Earlier this month, Trump signed a Nato-style mutual defence treaty with the Gulf state.

What that shows is just how difficult it is for democrats (small d) to fight him, whether at home or abroad. We operate under a set of laws and rules that preclude thr sort of outright corruption that the autocrats embrace. Think about this one:

A little-known drone company backed by Donald Trump Jr has won its largest contract from the Pentagon, as the US government expands its procurement of the drones.

Florida-based Unusual Machines, in which Trump Jr has held a $4mn stake, said the US army had contracted it to manufacture 3,500 drone motors, alongside various other drone parts.

The company added the army indicated it planned to order an additional 20,000 components from Unusual Machines next year.

Allan Evans, the company’s chief executive, said he believed it was the largest order for Unusual Machines parts from the US government to date, but declined to disclose the value of the contract.

Chief Warrant Officer 4 John Brown of the 101st Airborne Division said of the acquisition: “The ability to train like we fight, using drones that are reliable . . . gives our soldiers the confidence they need for real-world scenarios.”

Shares in Unusual Machines jumped as much as 13 per cent on Friday.

Kicker:

Unusual Machines brought Trump Jr on as an adviser in November 2024. The Financial Times earlier this year found shares in the company almost tripled in price in the weeks leading up to its disclosure of the move.

Hunter Biden was persecuted for being on a board a decade ago that had zero business with the United States government and wasn’t allowed to sell his paintings because it represented the appearance of conflict of interest.

The corruption story goes part and parcel with the authoritarian story. And it isn’t getting the attention it deserves.

Ill winds blow

Timothy Snyder reinforces what Hullabaloo readers already know: “the goal of these people is the end of law, the end of democracy, and the end of a recognizable republic.”

Retired intelligence analysts confirm what the political scientists are telling us — and what the world outside is telling us — the goal of these people is the end of law, the end of democracy, and the end of a recognizable republic.https://t.co/RQW7qAIjj3

— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) October 24, 2025

Snyder reacts to this Guardian story on a report released last week before the No Kings 2 protests:

The United States is “on a trajectory” toward authoritarian rule, according to a sobering new intelligence-style assessment by former US intelligence and national security officials, who warn that democratic backsliding is accelerating under the Trump administration – and may soon become entrenched without organized resistance.

The report, titled Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline, was released on Thursday by the Steady State, a network of more than 340 former officers of the CIA, the NSA, the state department and other national security agencies.

The intelligence experts employed the same tools from their former careers. They conclude “with moderate to high confidence” that the U.S. is “on a trajectory toward competitive authoritarianism: a system in which elections, courts, and other democratic institutions persist in form but are systematically manipulated to entrench executive control.”

“These are people who have seen these indicators develop in countries that shifted dramatically away from democracy towards authoritarianism,” Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior intelligence official who spent two decades at the NSA, told reporters on Thursday. “And we’re seeing those things happening in our country today.”

Among the key indicators of democratic decline identified in the report: the expansion of executive power through unilateral decrees and emergency authorities; the politicization of the civil service and federal law enforcement; attempts to erode judicial independence through strategic appointments and “noncompliance” with court rulings or investigations; a weakened and increasingly ineffective Congress; partisan manipulation of electoral systems and administration; and the deliberate undermining of civil society, the press and public trust.

The report itself is here.

The Guardian report continues:

“The speed with which we have devolved away from a fully functioning democracy is startling to me,” Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst and a member of the Steady State, said on a call with reporters after the assessment was published on Thursday. “In most cases, it takes longer than nine months to get where we are.”

Since returning to the White House, the president has pardoned January 6 rioters who assaulted police, fired independent watchdogs, purged career officials viewed as disloyal, publicly urged his attorney general to prosecute political opponents, deployed troops to US cities, attacked judges who ruled against him, threatened universities and restricted press freedom – all while testing the boundaries of executive power in ways federal courts have repeatedly deemed to be unlawful and unconstitutional.

Just last week, Trump’s justice department indicted Letitia James, the New York attorney general who successfully sued him for fraud, and separately charged the former FBI director James Comey, a longtime political adversary. He has also called for jailing the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, and the Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, both Democrats who opposed his deployment of federal troops there.

Just yesterday, Trump AG Pam Bondi threatened to investigate Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi of California. Anticipating Trump surging federal immigration forces into San Francisco, Pelosi suggested that federal officers could be arrested for violating California law.

How dare she, Bondi roared:

“If you are telling people to arrest our ICE officers, our federal agents, you cannot do that, you are impeding an investigation, and we will charge them,” the Florida Republican told Fox News. Bondi added, “You’ve got Pelosi out there saying to obstruct their investigation. You can’t do it, and we’re going to investigate her now.”

Former Trump personal lawyer, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, chimed in with a letter posted to FKA Twitter:

“The Department of Justice will investigate and prosecute any state or local official who violates these federal statutes,” he wrote, “or directs or conspires with others to violate them.”

He concluded that “federal agents and officers will continue to enforce federal law and will not be deterred by the threat of arrest by California authorities.”

Not to be left out, Gruppenführer Stephen Miller went onto Fox News to assure ICE officers (no matter how unprofessional, capricious, brutal, or even murderous?) that they enjoy federal immunity for any of their actions.

Feels like we’re going down the rabbit hole pretty fast here, folks. https://t.co/gKI0b38ZY1

— Miles Taylor (@MilesTaylorUSA) October 24, 2025

If democracy is not on life support, it’s close

North Carolina Republicans this week passed yet another in along line of heavily gerrymandered congressional maps. Congressional (and state) representation is increasingly so skewed against Democrats in GOP-controlled states that they no longer look small-d democratic. The Republican Party has over the last decade-plus worked at denying the Constitution’s guarantee “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government” (that’s small-r) under Article IV, Section 4. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1849 ruled the Guarantee Clause nonjusticiable. The National Constitution Center adds, “Nearly one hundred years later, the Court sweepingly declared that the guarantee of a republican form of government cannot be challenged in court. Colegrove v. Green (1946). But is a guarantee a guarantee when Republican-controlled executive and legislative branches must enforce it?

Get busy defending it or get busy watching your republic die.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

What constitution?

Not to be a bummer, but we talked about this topic a month ago. Then again, I’m just some rando blogger. Let Ronan Farrow lay it out with more gravitas. This from last night.

The White House just issued a sweeping federal directive transforming how dissent might be policed in the US—here’s why civil liberties groups are so alarmed. pic.twitter.com/jaBPotLjV3

— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) October 24, 2025

“Working from a fever dream of conspiracies, President Trump has launched yet another effort to investigate and intimidate his critics,” is how the ACLU responded:

“After one of the most harrowing weeks for our First Amendment rights, the President is invoking political violence, which we all condemn, as an excuse to target non-profits and activists with the false and stigmatizing label of ‘domestic terrorism.’ This is a shameful and dangerous move. But the President cannot rewrite the Constitution by memo.”

Here’s the problem with that sincere ACLU statement. Donald Trump doesn’t care who he targets. He doesn’t care about what’s false. Or stigmatizing. He’s not shy about throwing around labels like “domestic terrorism.” Or about what’s shameful or dangerous.

He cannot rewrite the Constitution with a memo? Trump’s actions clearly demonstrate that his sense since being reelected is “Constitution? What constitution?”

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

In honor of the great Jane Goodall, here are new chimpanzee babies at the L.A. Zoo:

Vindi and Yoshi are showing off their new bundles of joy! 🍼

The two new moms have joined the rest of the troop in the large outdoor yard at the Chimpanzees of Mahale Mountains exhibit and are proudly giving the other chimps (and zoo guests) a good look at the newborns! pic.twitter.com/1rQY1dOp4b

— Los Angeles Zoo (@LAZoo) October 1, 2025

Yoshi & Vindi continue to bond with their infants amongst the troop at Chimpanzees of Mahale Mountain! 🍼 Stop by their exhibit and see these new babies. #SavingWildlife #LAZoo #Zoo pic.twitter.com/t2rY25VyqO

— Los Angeles Zoo (@LAZoo) October 20, 2025

The LA Zoo gave this statement:

The first unnamed female infant was born to 35-year-old female Yoshi (YO-shee) and 26-year-old male Pu’iwa (P/ʊ/-ee-vuh) on Aug. 20, which also happens to be Pu’iwa’s birthday. This is Yoshi’s third offspring and Pu’iwa’s first. The second yet-to-be-named female infant was born on Sept. 9 to first-time mother eighteen-year-old female Vindi. Animal caregivers report that Yoshi and Vindi and their infants are all doing well and bonding.

“We’re thrilled to welcome the newest members of the troop!” said Candace Sclimenti, curator of mammals at the L.A. Zoo. “These are significant births for the Zoo and both are welcome additions to the dynamic, multi-male, mixed-age troop which closely mirrors the species’ natural social structure in the wild. Not only are these births vital for the well-being and social composition of the chimpanzees in our care, but they also play an important role in supporting the broader population in AZA accredited zoos both genetically and demographically.”

Chimpanzees are native to the forests and grasslands in east, central, and west Africa ranging from Senegal to Tanzania. Along with gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos, chimpanzees are great apes. They are one of the closest genetic relatives to humans. Chimps communicate using a wide variety of facial expressions, gestures, and vocalizations. Chimpanzee height ranges from 3.5 to 5 feet; weight ranges from 70 to 150 pounds. Males can be up to 20 percent larger than females. Their life expectancy is 50 to 60 years.

Chimps in the wild live and travel in troops of 30 to 80 individuals led by a dominant male. Challenges to the dominant male are common and the group leader typically changes every three to five years. Chimps live in a “fission-fusion” society, breaking into smaller temporary subgroups (fission) during the day. Smaller groups have a better opportunity to find sufficient food. In the evening, they reunite (fusion) to build nests and sleep. Larger groups offer better protection against predators. At the L.A. Zoo, chimps practice their own fission-fusion, breaking into subgroups during the day to either lounge in the penthouse or head out into the main habitat to enjoy the waterfall. They reunite at night in their sleeping quarters.

Chimpanzees are classified as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Threats include human-wildlife conflict and other human activities including poaching, hunting, deforestation, and more. Although chimpanzees are protected in 34 national parks and reserves, those laws can be difficult to enforce in remote regions.

Also this… go Dodgers!

The LA Zoo cheers for the @Dodgers in the World Series! ⚾️
Here's a friendly wager:
💙 If they win, the Toronto Zoo swaps their Blue Jay logo for a condor!
💙 If Toronto wins, we’ll change our logo to a Blue Jay!

Let the games begin! #LADodgers #WorldSeries2025 #LAZoo pic.twitter.com/7wmMx7na6n

— Los Angeles Zoo (@LAZoo) October 24, 2025

Trump: "I don't think we're necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war, I think we're just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We're going to kill them. They're going to be, like dead." pic.twitter.com/55NQXpZ0jf

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 23, 2025

Following up on the post below, here’s the New York Times on the illegality of Trump’s killing spree:

Since he returned to office nine months ago, President Trump has sought to expand executive power across numerous fronts. But his claim that he can lawfully order the military to summarily kill people accused of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America stands apart.

A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called Mr. Trump’s orders to the military patently illegal. They say the premeditated extrajudicial killings have been murders — regardless of whether the 43 people blown apart, burned alive or drowned in 10 strikes so far were indeed running drugs.

The administration insists that the killings are lawful, invoking legal terms like “self-defense” and “armed conflict.” But it has offered no legal argument explaining how to bridge the conceptual gap between drug trafficking and associated crimes, as serious as they are, and the kind of armed attack to which those terms can legitimately apply.

The irreversible gravity of killing, coupled with the lack of a substantive legal justification, is bringing into sharper view a structural weakness of law as a check on the American presidency.

That’s certainly true. It’s very hard to stop an ignorant sociopath with immunity and pardon power from doing anything he wants. The presidency has a tremendous amount of power that most presidents have to use judiciously or risk losing the support of their party and the American people. Trump has no such restraint. He cares little for public opinion having found that he can just lie about it to soothe himself and his loyal followers and the Republican party establishment is his most eager enabler. He does what he wants and the law is basically irrelevant:

Today, the Trump administration is mostly behaving with audacious transparency about its boat attacks. Mr. Trump has posted surveillance videos of the deadly strikes, talked with relish about how “it is violent and it is very — it’s amazing, the weaponry,” and even acknowledged that he had authorized the C.I.A. to take covert actions in Venezuela.

But administration officials have clammed up when asked for the legal analysis to support their assertion that there is a legal state of armed conflict that makes the killings lawful.

Even in closed-door congressional briefings, according to people familiar with them, officials have provided no detailed legal answers. They are said to have cited drug overdose deaths of Americans, and stated that Mr. Trump decided the country was in an armed conflict with drug cartels. They are also said to have pointed to the part of the Constitution that makes the president the commander in chief of the armed forces, without much further elaboration.

Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former top Justice Department lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said Mr. Trump’s actions demonstrated an indifference to law that threatened to hollow it out.

“Nixon tried to keep his criminality secret, and the Bush administration tried to keep the torture secret, and that secrecy acknowledged the norm that these things were wrong,” Professor Goldsmith said. “Trump, as he often does when he is breaking law or norms, is acting publicly and without shame or unease. This is a very successful way to destroy the efficacy of law and norms.”

This is the systemic weakness Trump has exposed. If one is completely shameless and has the support of a cult-like following, there really are no barriers. Who is going to stop them?

In peacetime, targeting civilians — even suspected criminals — who pose no threat of imminent violence is considered murder. In an armed conflict, it is a war crime. International law accepted by the U.S. military says that, as do U.S. laws.

That seems pretty clear cut to me. He is murdering civilians and bragging about it. He nods to some kind of legal rationale by saying they’re drug dealers but it isn’t and he doesn’t care about that anyway. He is so drunk with power, as are his henchmen, that he believes he can kill anyone he chooses for whatever reason he sees fit.

In the case of the Venezuelans, he is trying to drive Nicolas Maduro from office because Marco Rubio and his Venezuelan exiles are promising him access to Venezuelan resources. The CIA is targeting Colombians in order to destabilize the Petro government and Trump doesn’t like him because he has a “fresh mouth.” And mostly, Trump just wants to demonstrate his willingness to kill anyone he chooses in the belief that that will make the world bow to his will. That what “peace through strength” means.

The law cannot restrain someone like him and now that he’s proved that it’s hard to imagine that he will be the last to use these powers for their own corrupt ends.

Here’s a gift link to the full legal analysis. It’s very thorough and very interesting. But it doesn’t leave a lot of hope that the law will be able to save us.

That’s just wrong. Trump is too ignorant to know the truth which is that free trade was always GOP doctrine until he came along. Reagan certainly did NOT believe in tariffs which is clear in the speech from which the ad in question was taken:

Here’s the original clip of Ronald Reagan from April 25, 1987, where he delivered a complete and total rebuke against tariffs. Trump is calling Reagan’s words in this video “FAKE” and “fraudulent.” They’re 100% real. And the original clip is actually far worse for Trump, as much… https://t.co/koi1Udz77B pic.twitter.com/ZchQyPWPfU

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) October 24, 2025

If that’s an endorsement of tariffs then words have lost all meaning.

The beef from the Reagan Foundation, which started all this, was that the ad “misrepresents” Reagan’s address and Ontario’s government “did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks. I guess they were afraid Trump would get mad at them so, like every other Republican institution in America they abandoned every principle they, and Reagan, ever had in order to keep him happy. It’s enough to make you sick.

Here’s the ad in question which most certainly does NOT misrepresent Reagan’s speech.

The words that are directly taken from the speech are as follows and not not in any way change the meaning:

I’d love to know who told Trump that Reagan loved tariffs. It makes me laugh (mordantly) at the thought of it.

By the way, here’s another clip of Reagan condemning tariffs and praising Canada:

Reagan condemning US tariffs and praising Canada pic.twitter.com/GaDN40intL

— Morgan Cameron Ross (@Morgan_C_Ross) October 24, 2025