Archives for category: Justice
« Older Entries

David French: Why the Laws of War Matter

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2025 //
12

David French was hired by The New York Times to be a conservative opinion writer. He is a lawyer who practiced commercial law, then joined the military during the war in Iraq and served there as a lawyer. After deployment, he was a writer for the conservative National Review.

His explanation of the “laws of war” and the “rules of engagement” was very helpful to my understanding of current events, which is why I share it now.

He wrote:

In their military campaign in South America, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth aren’t just defying the Constitution and breaking the law. They are attacking the very character and identity of the American military.

To make this case, I have to begin in the most boring way possible — by quoting a legal manual. Bear with me.

Specifically, it’s the most recent edition of the Department of Defense Law of War Manual. Tucked away on page 1,088 are two sentences that illustrate the gravity of the crisis in the Pentagon: “The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”

Here’s another key line: “It is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given.” A no quarter order is an order directing soldiers to kill every combatant, including prisoners, the sick and the wounded. The manual continues, “Moreover, it is also prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter.”

Before we go any further, it’s important to define our terms. This newsletter is going to focus on the laws of war, not a related concept called rules of engagement. The laws of war reflect the mandatory, minimum level of lawful conduct, and all soldiers are legally obligated to obey them at all times and in all conflicts.

Rules of engagement are rules devised by commanders that are often more restrictive than the laws of war. For example, when I was in Iraq, our rules of engagement sometimes kept us from attacking lawful targets, in part because we wanted to be particularly careful not to inflict civilian casualties.

In my service, we were often frustrated by the rules of engagement. We did not, however, question the laws of war.

There are now good reasons to believe that the U.S. military, under the command of President Trump and Hegseth, his secretary of defense, has blatantly violated the laws of war. On Nov. 28, The Washington Postreported that Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everybody” the day that the United States launched its military campaign against suspected drug traffickers.

According to The Post, the first strike on the targeted speedboat left two people alive in the water. The commander of the operation then ordered a second strike to kill the shipwrecked survivors, apparently — according to The Post — “because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo.” If that reporting is correct, then we have clear evidence of unequivocal war crimes — a no quarter order and a strike on the incapacitated crew of a burning boat.

And if it’s true, those war crimes are the fault not of hotheaded recruits who are fighting for their lives in the terrifying fog and fury of ground combat but rather of two of the highest-ranking people in the American government, Hegseth and Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the head of Special Operations Command — the man the administration has identified as the person who gave the order for the second strike.

My colleagues in the newsroom followed on Monday with a report of their own, one that largely mirrored The Post’s reporting, though it presented more evidence of Hegseth’s and Bradley’s potential defenses. Hegseth, our sources said, did not order the second strike, and the second strike might have been designed to sink the boat, not kill survivors.

But if that’s the explanation, why wasn’t the full video released? The administration released limited video footage of the first strike, which created the impression of the instant, total destruction of the boat and its inhabitants. Now we know there was much more to see.

At the same time, Hegseth and the Pentagon have offered a series of puzzling and contradictory statements. Sean Parnell, the Pentagon spokesman, told The Post that its “entire narrative was false.”

Hegseth weighed in with a classic version of what you might call a nondenial denial. In a social media post, he said the Post report was “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory,” but rather than explain what actually happened (and make no mistake, he knows exactly what happened), he followed up with an extraordinary paragraph:

As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be “lethal, kinetic strikes.” The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.

“Biden coddled terrorists,” Hegseth wrote later in the same post. “We kill them.”

We shouldn’t forget that this incident occurred against the backdrop of Hegseth’s obvious disdain for military lawyers. He has called them “jagoffs” and — along with Trump — fired the senior military lawyers in the Navy and Air Force.

We also know that the commander of Southern Command, which is responsible for operations in Central and South America, Adm. Alvin Holsey, announced that he was stepping down after holding the position for less than a year. As our newsroom reported, two sources “said that Admiral Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.”

He announced his departure in October, weeks after the September strike.

Unlike many wartime incidents, airstrike incidents can be rather easy to investigate. Unless an airstrike is in response to an immediate battlefield emergency, the intelligence justifying the strike and the orders authorizing it are frequently preserved in writing, and the video and audio of the strikes are typically recorded. If this Pentagon, which proudly calls itself the “most transparent” in history, were to release the full attack video and audio, it would help answer many questions.

It’s a mistake, however, to limit our focus to the legality of this specific strike — or even to the important question of the legality of the Caribbean strikes in general. We live in an era in which our nation’s first principles require constant defense.

In other words, as we dig into incidents like this one, we cannot presume that Americans are operating from a shared set of moral and constitutional values or even a basic operating knowledge of history. We will have to teach the basic elements of American character anew, to a population that is losing its grasp on our national ideals.

The laws of war aren’t woke. They’re not virtue signaling. And they’re not a sign that the West has forgotten how to fight. Instead, they provide the American military with a number of concrete benefits.

First, complying with the laws of war can provide a battlefield advantage. This year I read Antony Beevor’s classic history of the end of Nazi Germany, “The Fall of Berlin 1945.” I was struck by a fascinating reality: Hitler’s troops fought fanatically against the Soviets not simply to preserve Hitler’s rule (most knew the cause was lost) but also to slow the Red Army down, to buy more time for civilians and soldiers to escape to American, British and French lines.

In short, because of our humanity and decency, Germans surrendered when they would have fought. The contrast with the brutality of the Soviets saved American lives.

I saw this reality in Iraq. By the end of my deployment in 2008, insurgents started surrendering to us, often without a fight. In one memorable incident, a terrorist walked up to the front gate of our base and turned himself in. But had we treated our prisoners the way that prisoners were treated at Abu Ghraib, I doubt we would have seen the same response.

Men will choose death over torture and humiliation, but many of those men will choose decent treatment in prison over probable death in battle.

Second, the laws of war make war less savage and true peace possible. One of the reasons the war in the Pacific was so unrelentingly grim was that the Japanese military never made the slightest pretense of complying with the laws of war. They would shoot shipwrecked survivors. They would torture prisoners. They would fight to the death even when there was no longer any military point to resistance.

We were hardly perfect, but part of our own fury was directly related to relentless Japanese violations of the laws of war. We became convinced that the Japanese would not surrender until they faced the possibility of total destruction. And when both sides abandon any commitment to decency and humanity, then the object of war changes — from victory to annihilation.

Even if only one side upholds the law of war, it not only makes war less brutal; it preserves the possibility of peace and reconciliation. That’s exactly what happened at the end of World War II. For all of our faults, we never became like the Soviets and thus have a very different relationship with our former foes.

Finally, the laws of war help preserve a soldier’s soul. We are a nation built around the notion of human dignity. Our Declaration of Independence highlights the worth of every person. Our Bill of Rights stands as one of the world’s great statements of human dignity. It is contrary to the notion of virtuous American citizenship to dehumanize people, to brutalize and oppress them.

We are also a quite religious society, and all of the great faiths that are central to American life teach that human beings possess incalculable worth.

If we order soldiers to contradict those values, we can inflict a profound moral injury on them — a moral injury that can last a lifetime. I still think about a 2015 article in The Atlantic by Maggie Puniewska. She described soldiers haunted by the experience of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Some of these soldiers describe experiences in which they, or someone close to them, violated their moral code,” she wrote, “hurting a civilian who turned out to be unarmed, shooting at a child wearing explosives, or losing trust in a commander who became more concerned with collecting decorative pins than protecting the safety of his troops.” Others, she said, citing a clinical psychologist who worked with service members who recently returned from deployments, “are haunted by their own inaction, traumatized by something they witnessed and failed to prevent.”

There are moral injuries that are unavoidable. I’m still haunted by decisions I made in Iraq, even though each one complied with the laws of war. Armed conflict is horrific, and your spirit rebels against the experience. But I can’t imagine the guilt of criminal conduct, of deliberately killing the people I’m supposed to protect.

In fact, when I first read the Washington Post story, I thought of the terrified pair, struggling helplessly in the water before the next missile ended their lives. But I also thought of the men or women who fired those missiles. How does their conscience speak to them now? How will it speak to them in 10 years?

I want to close with two stories — one from Iraq and one from Ukraine. There was a moment in my deployment when our forces were in hot pursuit of a known terrorist. We had caught him attempting to fire mortar rounds into an American outpost. Just when we had him in our sights, he scooped up what looked like a toddler and started running with the kid in his arms.

No one had to give the order to hold fire. There wasn’t one soldier who wanted to shoot and risk the toddler’s life. So we followed him until the combination of heat and exhaustion made him put the child down. Even then we didn’t kill him. We were able to capture him without using lethal force.

I’ll never forget that day — and the unspoken agreement that we would save that child.

Now, let’s contrast that moment of decency with the stories I heard in the town of Bucha, just northwest of Kyiv. It was the site of some of the most intense fighting in the first phases of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As I walked in part of the battlefield, I heard the stories of Russian soldiers looting and murdering their way across northern Ukraine.

One woman told me that the Russians shot a neighbor, a civilian, in his front yard and then threatened his wife when she tried to leave her home to retrieve his body. So he just lay there, day after day, until the Russians were finally driven back. That’s the character of the Russian military, and it’s been the character of the Russian military for generations.

Something else happened when I first read the Washington Post story; I instinctively rejected it. The account was completely at odds with my experience. There is not an officer I served with who would issue a no quarter order. There is not an officer I served with who would have given the order to kill survivors struggling in the water.

But I also knew that Hegseth is trying to transform the military. As The Wall Street Journal reported, he has been on a “decades-long quest” to rid the military of “stupid rules of engagement” — even to the point of becoming a champion of soldiers convicted of war crimes. In one of his books, he wrote that he told soldiers who served under his command in Iraq to disregard legal adviceabout the use of lethal force.

I don’t think that all of our rules of engagement are wise. I have expressed profound doubts about many of the rules that were imposed in Iraq and Afghanistan that went far beyond the requirements of the laws of war. Not every soldier accused of crimes is guilty of crimes.

But there is a difference between reforming the rules and abandoning the law — or, even worse, viewing the law as fundamentally hostile to the military mission. There is a difference between defending soldiers against false accusations and rationalizing and excusing serious crimes.

The pride of an American soldier isn’t just rooted in our lethality. It’s rooted in our sense of honor. It’s rooted in our compassion. We believe ourselves to be different because we so often behave differently.

Hegseth, however, has a different vision, one of unrestrained violence divorced from congressional and legal accountability. If that vision becomes reality, he won’t reform the military; he’ll wreck it. And he’ll wreck it in the worst way possible, by destroying its integrity, by stripping its honor and by rejecting the hard-earned lessons and vital values that have made the American military one of the most-trusted institutions in the United States.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Discipline, Ethics, Failure, History, Justice

Trump Did the Same Trick with His Florida Mortgages of Which He Accuses Letitia James, Adam Schiff, and Lisa Cook

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2025 //
9

ProPublica posted a bombshell story about Trump’s history of mortgages. It is a must-read.

In a late-night tweet that probably was supposed to be a private text message, Trump urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue criminal charges against his political enemies–James Comey, Letitia James, and Adam Schiff–for various alleged crimes.

New York State Attorney General James was accused of mortgage fraud, of getting a mortgage on a home used as an investment property while claiming it would be her secondary residence, in order to lower the cost of borrowing. Trump wants Senator Schiff and Congressman Eric Swalwell prosecuted on the same charge of mortgage fraud; charges have not yet been brought against them.

Letitia James denies the charges. A grand jury indicted her but the case was tossed out by a judge because of errors made by Trump’s inexperienced, hand-picked prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan. Halligan was an insurance lawyer who had never prosecuted a case before. Trump had previously engaged her to review the holdings of the Smithsonian and identify exhibits that disparaged America or promoted DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion).

Attorney General Bondi plans to reindict James.

Now, ProPublica carefully documents, Trump did exactly the same mortgage gambit that he calls criminal.

He bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985. In 1993, he purchased two neighboring homes. He took out a mortgage on both houses and declared at the time that each house would be his primary residence.

But he never lived in either house. They were advertised for rent or leasing, by the week or by the month.

“Given Trump’s position on situations like this, he’s going to either need to fire himself or refer himself to the Department of Justice,” said Kathleen Engel, a Suffolk University law professor and leading expert on mortgage finance. “Trump has deemed that this type of misrepresentation is sufficient to preclude someone from serving the country.”

Mortgages for a person’s main home tend to receive more favorable terms, like lower interest rates, than mortgages for a second home or an investment rental property. Legal experts said that having more than one primary-residence mortgage can sometimes be legitimate, like when someone has to move for a new job, and other times can be caused by clerical error. Determining ill intent on the part of the borrower is key to proving fraud, and the experts said lenders have significant discretion in what loans they offer clients. (In this case, Trump used the same lender to buy the two Florida homes.) 

But in recent months, the Trump administration has asserted that merely having two primary-residence mortgages is evidence of criminality. 

Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director who has led the charge, said earlier this year: “If somebody is claiming two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer it for criminal investigation.”

Trump hung up on a ProPublica reporter after being asked whether his Florida mortgages were similar to those of others he had accused of fraud.

In response to questions, a White House spokesperson told ProPublica: “President Trump’s two mortgages you are referencing are from the same lender. There was no defraudation. It is illogical to believe that the same lender would agree to defraud itself.”

The spokesperson added, “this is yet another desperate attempt by the Left wing media to disparage President Trump with false allegations,” and said, “President Trump has never, or will ever, break the law…”

Each of the mortgage documents signed by Trump contain the standard occupancy requirement — that he must make the property his principal residence within 60 days and live there for at least a year, unless the lender agreed otherwise or there were extenuating circumstances.

But ProPublica could not find evidence Trump ever lived in either of the properties. Legal documents and federal election records from the period give his address as Trump Tower in Manhattan. (Trump would officially change his permanent residence to Florida only decades later, in 2019.) A Vanity Fair profile published in March 1994 describes Trump spending time in Manhattan and at Mar-a-Lago itself.

Trump is no longer at risk for mortgage fraud because the statute of limitations has rendered the issue moot.

Democrats suspect that the claims about mortgage fraud were based on confidential information acquired by Bill Pulte, who was appointed by Trump to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Pulte denies it. Pulte, a wealthy private equity investor, contributed generously to Trump’s campaign.

ProPublica points out that Trump tried to fire Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook on a charge of mortgage fraud, so he could appoint his own choice and gain control of the Board. Cook denied the charges and sued in federal court, where the matter is still pending.

In September, ProPublica reported that three of Trump’s Cabinet members have called multiple homes their primary residences in mortgage agreements. Bloomberg also reported that Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent did something similar. (The Cabinet members have all denied wrongdoing.)

Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency head, has denied his investigations are politically motivated. “If it’s a Republican who’s committing mortgage fraud, we’re going to look at it,” he has said. “If it’s a Democrat, we’re going to look at it.”

Thus far, Pulte has not made any publicly known criminal referrals against Republicans. He did not respond to questions from ProPublica about Trump’s Florida mortgages.

After reading this article, I wondered about Trump’s financing of Mar-a-Lago. It cost $7-10 million. He paid $300,000. He got a mortgage from Chase Manhattan for $8.5 million. At the time, his residence was New York City.

Did he claim Mar-a-Lago as his primary residence?

Categories Accountability, Fraud, Hypocrisy, Justice, Trump

Happy Thanksgiving! Thoughts for 2025, Now

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2025 //
25

Let us be thankful for the good things in our lives. Our families and friends. Health. Food. The blessings of freedom and democracy, which we must defend every day.

Let us think about those who do not enjoy the blessings of family, friends, good health, shelter, and food.

Do what you can to support those less fortunate than yourself. Lend a helping hand at a local community center or church or synagogue or mosque. Support groups that are helping immigrant families who are living in terror, fearful of being kidnapped by ICE.

Remember that it is not normal to have armed military patrolling the streets of our cities. It is not normal to see masked men pepper spraying fellow citizens in the streets. It is not normal to see armed men chasing people on farms, where they are picking the fruits and vegetables on our Thanksgiving table, tackling them, and whisking them away to unknown detention centers.

We don’t have a crisis of too many immigrants. We have a crisis of a do-nothing Congress that has been unable to pass legislation creating a process for honest, hard-working immigrants to have a legal path to citizenship.

We have a crisis of bigotry, of white nationalists who think they can restore a world of white supremacy that has disappeared. Nope, won’t happen. Twenty percent of our population is Hispanic. About 57-58% is Caucasian. Among children 17 and younger, about 49-50% is Caucasian.

Like it or not, our society is diverse. Banning the word “diversity” doesn’t change reality.

We must, all of us, practice kindness. Gratitude. Generosity of spirit.

This Thanksgiving is a good time to start.

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Freedom, Immigration, Justice, Love, Puerto Rico, Racism

Trump’s Shocking Destruction of the Department of Justice

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2025 //
3

The New York Times published a deeply researched article about the Trump administration’s systematic destruction of the U.S. Department of Justice.

This is a gift article, meaning that non-subscribers may open the link.

Traditionally, the Department of Justice is independent of the administration in power.

Trump has broken down all the guardrails that protected the Department from political interference.

Trump selected Pam Bondi as Attorney General to carry out his wishes. He selected his personal defense attorneys as Bondi’s top assistants. Hundreds of career officials were fired. Thousands have left. The ethics officer was fired, because he insisted that the Department abide by ethics rules. The pardons attorney was fired, because Trump wanted to give pardons to friends, like actor Mel Gibson, who wanted his gun rights restored despite his history of domestic violence.

The Justice Department is now completely under the personal control of Trump. It is an instrument of his whims.

In one example, the Department of Justice sued a prestigious law firm for discriminating against white men, even though the law firm is 97% white. Why? The firm has represented Democrats.

The agency responsible for investigating domestic terrorism has been gutted. Civil rights enforcement has turned to attacking racial inequities and defending aggrieved white men.

The New York Times is the one major newspaper that has not bowed to Trump or capitulated to his threats. We sometimes criticize the Times for its efforts to be “on the one hand, on the other,” but this is not one of those articles.

This is a straightforward demonstration of the politicization and gutting of a bedrock protector of our democracy.

This article documents the early stages of fascism.

Categories Civil Rights, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Injustice, Justice, Trump

Federal Judge Permanently Blocks Federal Troops in Portland, Oregon

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2025 //
3

Judge Karin Immergut was appointed to the bench by President Trump in 2019. But unlike Trump’s appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Immergut puts the Constitution and the law above partisanship.

She had previously issued a temporary injunction against sending federal troops to Portland. Today she turned her order into a permanent injunction. She was not convinced that there was a need for federal troops in that all she saw were relatively small and peaceful demonstrations that could be handled by local law enforcement.

The Trump administration will appeal her decision.

The Department of Homeland Security insisted that troops were needed to quell rioting. Judge Immergut was not persuaded.

The New York Times reported:

President Trump overstepped his authority when he sought to deploy National Guard troops to Portland, Ore., to protect the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office there, a federal judge ruled on Friday, issuing a permanent block on troop deployments to the city in response to anti-ICE demonstrations.

Judge Karin J. Immergut of U.S. District Court, who was nominated to the bench by Mr. Trump, had previously issued a preliminary injunction blocking the president’s order federalizing National Guard soldiers in Oregon in a lawsuit that was brought by the States of Oregon and California and the City of Portland.

In her final 106-page ruling, Judge Immergut rejected arguments from government lawyers that protests at the ICE building made it impossible for federal officers to carry out immigration enforcement, represented a rebellion or raised the threat of rebellion. She also found that the attempt to use National Guard soldiers in Oregon had violated the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which gives states any powers not expressly assigned to the federal government.

“The evidence demonstrates that these deployments, which were objected to by Oregon’s governor and not requested by the federal officials in charge of protection of the ICE building, exceeded the president’s authority,” she wrote.

Never a dull moment when Trump is in office.

Categories Disruption, Justice, Oregon, Portland, Trump

Justice J. Michael Luttig Denounces SCOTUS for Failing to Condemn Death Threats to Judges

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2025 //
5

Judge J. Michael Luttig was appointed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush, where he served until 2006. He was a prominent conservative jurist, but was repulsed by the Trump regime, especially Trump’s contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law. He became one of the most outspoken critics of Trump. In this post, he criticized the Supreme Court for ignoring death threats to judges who disagreed with Trump.

He wrote:

This week, David French and I have both addressed the death threats on the lives of the federal judges who dare to rule against Donald Trump.

David did so this morning in the chilling piece in the New York Times linked below, and I did so on Tuesday in an hour-long interview with Meghna Chakrabarti of NPR’s On Point, one of the most thoughtful, intelligent interviewers I have ever had the pleasure to talk with.

During my conversation with Meghna, she played on air the actual audio of the death threat made to Federal Judge John McConnell referenced in David’s article. It was bone chilling. When Meghna asked for my reaction to the threat, I first thanked her on behalf of the entire Federal Judiciary for playing the audio for all of America to hear and then said “America is weeping at this moment, Meghna. America is weeping. I wish you could send this audio to the Supreme Court of the United States.”

I went on to say that the unconscionable attacks on the federal courts and individual federal judges by Donald Trump and his Attorney General will not only continue, but will continue to escalate until Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court of the United States denounce the President and the Attorney General for their unconscionable threats against the nation’s Federal Judiciary.

I explained that up to now, the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court have acquiesced in these assaults on the federal courts, tacitly condoning them, when the Chief Justice and the Court have no higher obligation under the Constitution of the United States of America than to denounce these attacks.

After my interview with Meghna, I forwarded the audio of the death threat to Judge McConnell to a number of the national media, with a note saying simply that “if the national media would saturate the American public with this chilling death threat against Judge McConnell, it could change the course of history.”

David French:

“Have you ever written words that you thought might get you killed? Have you ever written words that you worry might get someone you love killed?

That’s the reality that federal judges are facing across the nation. Our awful era of intimidation and political violence has come for them, and it represents a serious threat to the independence and integrity of the American judiciary.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/opinion/judges-courts-threats-fear.html


https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2025/08/05/judiciary-judge-j-michael-luttig-trump

Categories Corruption, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Justice, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Why Donald Trump Will Never Win the Nobel Peace Prize

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2025 //
21

Jennifer Rubin was one of the best columnists at The Washington Post. She left soon after Jeff Bezos began meddling into the views of the editorial pages. Rubin was hired by the Post originally to be the newspaper’s conservative voice. But after Trump was elected in 2016, her political views changed. Trump turned her into a keen-eyed liberal.

Rubin launched a wildly successful Substack blog called The Contrarian, which offers essays and conversations by her and other journalists and scholars.

She wrote yesterday about Trump’s open campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize and how the Nobel Committee may have trolled Trump by the language of this year’s awards.

Trump currently is enjoying well-deserved plaudits for bringing about a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all Israeli hostages.

Trouble lies ahead, however, because under the agreement, Hamas is supposed to disarm and withdraw from governing Gaza. However, Hamas shows no willingness to give up their authority or their weapons. They were videotaped murdering their Palestinian rivals in public. When asked about these public executions, Trump said that Hamas was merely punishing some “very bad gangs.”

Trump very likely brokered a peace deal with two strategies: 1) his personal economic ties to Arab potentates; 2) his threat to Hamas to let Netanyahu do whatever he wanted in Gaza unless they signed the deal.

Rubin wrote in The Contrarian about the implicit messages that the Nobel committee sent to Trump in their awards.

The Nobel Prize Committee announced its annual awards over the last week or so. Aside from the number of winners based at U.S. universities (which have been until now the crown jewel of our education and scientific communities), something else caught my attention: Are the Nobel Prize judges…trolling Donald Trump?

I have no doubt the awards—the culmination of a long and rigorous process—are apolitical and entirely well deserved. However, what the committee said about the prizes and how the winners’ work were described certainly highlight Trump’s ignorance and malevolence. If you are going to shine a light on brilliance and excellence, Trump is going to be left in the dark—and others will notice.

Nobel Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes was explicitly asked about Trump’s clamoring for the Peace Prize. “In the long history of the Nobel Peace Prize, I think this committee has seen many types of campaign, media attention,” Frydnes said. In other words, they are used to getting nagged. He continued: “This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So, we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.” Hmm. Sounds like Trump fared poorly in comparison to all those men and women esteemed for courage and integrity.

The explanation of the award itself seemed even more pointed. “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 to Maria Corina Machado,” the committee explained. “She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” [Emphasis added here and below.] Democracy surely was front and center (with a notable reminder that it exists in conflict with dictatorship). In fact, democracy was mentioned in more detail and with greater fervor than peace itself.

The statement about Machado read: “As the leader of the democracy movement in Venezuela….” She was credited with leading the opposition demanding “free elections and representative government.” The committee explained:

This is precisely what lies at the heart of democracy: our shared willingness to defend the principles of popular rule, even though we disagree. At a time when democracy is under threat, it is more important than ever to defend this common ground.

The regime she opposed is described in language you would (or will, on Saturday) hear at a No King’s Day rally: “a brutal, authoritarian state,” where the few at the top enrich themselves, where “violent machinery of the state is directed against the country’s own citizens,” battling an opposition “systematically suppressed by means of election rigging, legal prosecution and imprisonment.”

And in case anyone had missed the point:

Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace. However, we live in a world where democracy is in retreat, where more and more authoritarian regimes are challenging norms and resorting to violence. The Venezuelan regime’s rigid hold on power and its repression of the population are not unique in the world. We see the same trends globally: rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarization. In 2024, more elections were held than ever before, but fewer and fewer are free and fair.

Maybe this was not intended to poke Trump in the eye—and the statement is accurate without any consideration of him—but condemnation of his tactics and outlook are the inevitable result of an award that elevates democracy, the rule of law, fair elections, and a free media. Since Trump antagonizes all those things, the award winners’ opponents sound an awful lot like Trump.

Trump prosecutes his perceived enemies, sets the American military against Americans, blows ships out of the water and murders those on board without due process, bullies the media, and seeks to rig elections. In other words, he embodies all the things Maria Corina Machado and other deserving winners fight against. So long as he continues doing all those things (i.e. so long as he remains Trump), he will continue bearing a disturbing resemblance to the other authoritarians around the globe—and will therefor never receive the award he has so openly whined about deserving. (Buckle up, however. Speaker of the House and go-to sycophant Mike Johnson, instead of working to find a compromise and assist in re-opening our government, is reportedly devoting his time and efforts to getting Trump his prize in 2026. Good luck with that.)

Trump, his lackeys, and his cultish cheering section seem not to understand that “peace” is not simply the absence of war. Conquest also achieves the end of some wars. But that is not what we are after. Peace, rather, requires renunciation of violence in favor of democratic and humanistic values. Only then do you have a lasting peace during which human beings can flourish.

The Peace Prize was not the only award that sounded like an anti-Trump recitation. Consider one of the three Nobel Prize winners for economics: Phillipe Aghion, a French economist and ½ of the winning team with Peter Howitt of Brown University. The Guardian reported:

[He] warned that “dark clouds” were gathering amid increasing barriers to trade and openness fueled by Donald Trump’s trade wars. He also said innovation in green industries, and blocking the rise of giant tech monopolies would be vital to stronger growth in future.

“I’m not welcoming the protectionist wave in the US, and that’s not good for world growth and innovation,” he said.

To be clear, I don’t think he and the other winners received their awards because they sound like a rebuttal to Trump. Rather, Trump is so invariably, deeply, and consistently wrong on economics that anyone recognized for merit invariably will contradict his irrational, ignorant views.

In all likelihood, Nobel folks did not set out to troll Trump. But if you are going to celebrate peace—real peace, and the democracy it depends upon—alongside the keys to economic growth (free trade, scientific discovery, dynamic and free societies), then you are going to find yourself sounding like the retort to MAGA authoritarian, know-nothingism.

This year’s Nobel prize committee wound up illustrating the degree to which Trump is inimical to peace, progress, and prosperity. The committee should earn a prize for that.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Environment, Ethics, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Justice, Trump

No, Trump Can’t Send in the Military Whenever He Wishes

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2025 //
17

Someday, somehow, there will be another President of the United States, and his name won’t be Trump. That future President might well be a Democrat. That President might be in a position to exercise unchecked power, thanks to the acquiescence of the current Congress and Supreme Court, which are allowing Trump to exercise the powers of a dictator. The second and third branches of our government have willingly wiped out the separation of powers and ceded their authority to the President.

Congress has voted to give its power of the purse to King Donald. The Supreme Court (the Supine Court) has stood aside and approved of whatever the King wants, regardless of precedent. Justice Thomas said recently that precedent was irrelevant; he is no longer an originalist.

Now comes what might be considered the most important question. May the President send in troops–either the state’s National Guard, the National Guard of other states, or even the regular military–to cities that he believes need to be suppressed?

A Trump-appointed federal judge ruled that he could not. Justice Karin Immergut, appointed by Trump, ruled that Trump could not send troops to Portland, because it is not “war-ravaged,” as he claimed, or in a state of rebellion. In other words, you can’t just make sh-t up to do whatever you want, even if you are the President.

Constitutional lawyer Steve Vladeck, a scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, noted that Trump’s advisors are claiming that the President doesn’t need approval of the courts before using the troops on American soil. He explains here why the President can’t ignore the judiciary.

Welcome back to “One First,” an (increasingly frequent) newsletter that aims to make the U.S. Supreme Court more accessible to all of us. If you’re not already a subscriber, I hope you’ll consider becoming one (and, if you already are, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription if your circumstances permit):

I wanted to put out a quick issue this morning in light of Judge Karin Immergut’s remarkable ruling yesterday, granting a temporary restraining order against President Trump’s federalization of members of the Oregon National Guard to quell the “violence” in “war-ravaged Portland.” That ruling has prompted a slew of claims this morning from the President’s advisers and outside supporters that federal courts, in general, lack the power to halt domestic deployments of the military.

Before this claim makes it too far, it seems worth helping to educate folks about a key early precedent that, in my view, cuts entirely in the other direction—and that provides powerful evidence, to those who care about such things, that the Founding-era understanding not only tolerated a robust judicial role in such cases, but, for a time, actually required one. That’s not to say Judge Immergut’s specific analysis in this case is correct (although I’m sympathetic); it’s to say that there is nothing categorically inappropriate about federal courts reviewing—and, where necessary, halting—domestic uses of the military while they are ongoing. Indeed, it would be striking if it were otherwise.

***

The modern-day Insurrection Act traces its lineage all the way back to a statute Congress enacted on May 2, 1792—which has often been referred to as the Calling Forth Act or First Militia Act. That statute was designed to carry into effect the Constitution’s grant of power to Congress, in Article I, Section 8, Clause 15, “[t]o provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” 

The idea was that Congress would identify the circumstances in which military power could be used domestically—and would thence delegate that power to the President. As Justice (Robert) Jackson would remind us in his concurring opinion in Youngstown, the Clause’s “limitation on the command power, written at a time when the militia rather than a standing army was contemplated as the military weapon of the Republic, underscores the Constitution’s policy that Congress, not the Executive, should control utilization of the war power as an instrument of domestic policy.”

But how, exactly, should that delegation work? This question was the subject of a rich debate in the Second Congress—one that culminated with the 1792 statute. I’ve summarized that debate elsewhere; for present purposes, the key point is that Congress’s principal concern was not with the last two circumstances in which it was to delegate power to the President (“to suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions”), but with the first circumstance (“to execute the Laws of the Union”). And the way Congress addressed its concerns was to delegate the authority to use the military, but with meaningful procedural checks. 

Here’s the full text of section 2 of the act, image first; block quote second, with the key provisions highlighted:

[W]henever the laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act, the same being notified to the President of the United States, by an associate justice or the district judge, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia of such state to suppress such combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed. And if the militia of a state, where such combinations may happen, shall refuse, or be insufficient to suppress the same, it shall be lawful for the President, if the legislature of the United States be not in session, to call forth and employ such numbers of the militia of any other state or states most convenient thereto, as may be necessary, and the use of militia, so to be called forth, may be continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the ensuing session.

In other words, unlike section 1 (which dealt with insurrections and invasions), section 2 imposed two procedural requirements on domestic use of the military to carry out the laws of the union: a district judge or Supreme Court justice had to make the requisite factual findings before the President could do anything;¹ and, if out-of-state militia were used, there was a baked-in sunset.

Even though the Congress that enacted the 1792 act was full of folks who were either at the Constitutional Convention (and helped to draft that document) or who were central in the ratification debates, my research found no evidence that members made constitutional objections to the judicial review that section 2 required. And President Washington, in putting down the Whiskey Rebellion two years later, followed the statute’s mandates to the letter—obtaining the requisite judicial determination from Supreme Court Justice James Wilson (one of the six people to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) before he sent troops to Western Pennsylvania to restore order.

The 1792 act was written as a temporary experiment. Congress decided to delegate comparable authority on a permanent basis in 1795—and, alas, removed the ex ante judicial review requirement. But there was no suggestion at the time, and I’m unaware of any since, that the provision was eliminated for constitutional reasons—as opposed to Congress’s broader (if, alas, myopic) view that the checks weren’t needed in light of how responsibly President Washington had behaved during the Whiskey Rebellion.

Thus, although there are later examples of courts issuing injunctions against domestic uses of the military (Youngstown itself stands out as a fairly prominent example), the relevant point for present purposes is that there was no Founding-era aversion to a robust judicial role in these cases. The first statute Congress ever enacted on the subject required such a role, and there was no contemporaneous suggestion that the Constitution forbade it.

I am, as regular readers of this newsletter likely know, no great fan of “originalism” as a conclusive methodological approach to constitutional interpretation. Thus, the way that I tend to think about these things, the existence of the judicial review provision in the Calling Forth Act of 1792 is useful evidence of how the Constitution was understood at the time, but nothing more. Rather, the argument for judicial review being available to halt, where necessary, unlawful domestic uses of the military rests on a lot more, in my view, than what some folks believed more than 230 years ago.

But for those who ascribe to the view that we are, today, bound by how the Constitution was understood then, I do not see how one can reconcile the 1792 precedent with any claim that prospective judicial review is categorically precluded when it comes to domestic use of the military. And given current and recent events, such review, if anything, seems more important than ever—whatever its outcome.

Categories Democracy, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Justice, Trump

Trump Fires US Attorney for Eastern Virginia for Failing to Prosecute Letitia James

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2025 //
7

The New Republic tells the shameful story of Trump’s decision to fire Eric Siebert, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia for his failure to find evidence to indict New York State Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump has said repeatedly that he wants to bring retribution on his enemies. His Attorney General Pam Bondi has protected and obliged him, not only by not releasing the unredacted Epstein files, but by firing any lawyers who worked on Trump investigations while he was out of office.

Trump is determined to prosecute Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, James Comey, and Adam Schiff.

He assigned Erik Siebert, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, the job of prosecuting Letitia James. Trump hoped to get her criminally prosecuted for mortgage fraud, for having obtained a mortgage on a vacation home, getting a favorable rate by claiming it as her home. Unfortunately, the case fell apart when evidence emerged that she had not claimed her second home as her primary residence.

Trump was furious at Siebert.

Siebert announced that he had resigned since the President didn’t want him. Trump quickly contradicted him and said Siebert had not resigned, he was fired. Trump promptly announced a replacement, a conservative Republican, Mary “Maggie” Cleary.

Just last night, Trump expressed his frustration that there had not yet been indictments of his enemies.

The New Republic wrote before Siebert’s ouster:

Trump is set to remove Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, for being faithful to facts, evidence, and guidelines governing good prosecutorial conduct, rather than fully corrupting his office to target Trump’s enemies.

That’s not a rhetorical cheap shot. It’s what Trump is actually doing, per ABC:

President Donald Trump is expected to fire the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after his office was unable to find incriminating evidence of mortgage fraud against New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to sources.

Federal prosecutors in Virginia had uncovered no clear evidence to prove that James had knowingly committed mortgage fraud when she purchased a home in the state in 2023, ABC News first reported earlier this week, but Trump officials pushed U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert to nevertheless bring criminal charges against her, according to sources.

Nixon tried to hide his plots against his enemies. Trump says the quiet parts out loud.

What are they guilty of? Criticizing Trump and–in the case of Schiff and James– trying to hold him accountable.

Categories Accountability, Citizenship, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Justice, Lies

Thom Hartmann: Trump Orders Murder of 11 People on a Boat in International Waters

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2025 //
8

When I first heard that an American fighter plane had attacked a boat in international waters off Venezuela, my first thought was that there must have been a high-value target on that boat. I waited for the details, but they were never released. Eventually I heard that there were 11 people on the boat. Trump and Secretary of War Hegseth said that they were gang members and they had a boatload of drugs that they were intending to bring to the U.S.

I looked at that video released by the War Department, and I was struck by two anomalies. First, the boat wasn’t large enough to travel from Venezuela to the U.S. But more importantly, could a small boat with 11 people have room for a significant load of drugs? It didn’t seem so.

Where was the evidence that this boat was bringing drugs to the U.S. I never heard it. Secretary Hegseth would clarify the reason for the attack in the boat if he supplied facts and evidence. Does Trump plan to attack other boats and ships that may or may not be carrying a shipment of drugs.

This is not normal.

Thom Hartmann addressed the questions about the use of American power to police international waters.

He wrote:

When the Court says Trump is above the law, who speaks for the eleven dead on that boat? Their lives ended not in a battlefield crossfire or a clash between nations, but at the whim of one man emboldened by six justices who declared him untouchable. 

Trump simply ordered human beings erased, confident the Court had given him immunity from any consequence and the leaders of his military would obey an illegal order. Eleven souls were sacrificed not just to his cruelty, but to a judicial betrayal that transformed the presidency into a license to kill.

For most of our history, American presidents have at least gone through the motions of cloaking lethal force in some form of legal justification. 

Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War but sought Congress’s approval. Franklin Roosevelt went to Congress for Lend-Lease before escalating aid to Britain, and sought a declaration of war against Japan. George W. Bush and Barack Obama leaned heavily on the post-9/11 Authorizations for Use of Military Force to justify everything from Afghanistan to drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia to killing Bin Laden.

The principle has always been that the United States does not simply kill people without some kind of legal process. It may be stretched, it may be abused, but it has been invoked.

What Donald Trump has now done with the strike on a small boat off Venezuela’s coast is to break that tradition in a way that is both lawless and unprecedented. He gave the order to kill eleven human beings with no congressional approval, no international authorization, and no visible evidence justifying it.

This was simply murder on the high seas. And the world knows it….

If America embraces this new Putin-like assertion of America’s power to bomb anybody, anywhere, on the whim of the president, we’ll have abandoned any claim to moral leadership.

Worse, we will have normalized the authoritarian logic that anyone the president labels an enemy can be eliminated without trial, without evidence, without process. We’ll have handed Xi a rationale to attack Taiwan; all he has to do is claim that a non-governmental gang within that nation is importing drugs into China (or something similar).

The international reaction has already been severe. America’s allies are horrified, our adversaries have been emboldened, and human rights groups are openly appalled.

But the real test is here at home. Do we still believe in the principle, famously cited by our second President John Adams, that America is a nation of laws and not of men? Do we still insist that presidents cannot kill at will? If Trump can strike a boat off Venezuela today, what is to stop him from ordering lethal force against dissidents, protesters, or political opponents tomorrow?

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Justice
« Older Entries