#j.d.vance

Trump threatens Iranian negotiators' safety; they walk out.

June 22, 2026

Robert B. Hubbell

Most of Sunday’s news concerns Trump’s efforts to sabotage the negotiations to finalize a peace deal pursuant to the terms of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran. Rather than start the week with a litany of Trump’s incompetence and malevolence (which we must get to), I will pivot to a story about the innate goodness of the American people—which should give us hope that we will not only survive this fraught period but emerge as a stronger and better nation.

One surprising byproduct of the World Cup games hosted in the US is the warmth and affection with which Americans have greeted fans who have traveled to the US to support their home-country football teams. The feeling, it turns out, is mutual. The stories have been a welcome respite from the incessant bad news generated by Trump’s foreign policy that seems designed to offend and alienate every US ally in the world. See Globe and Mail (UK), Visiting World Cup fans pleasantly surprised by friendliness of American hosts, and ABC News, World Cup visitors are going viral for their reactions to everyday American life (“One of the biggest surprises was the friendliness of Americans.”)

Why did this happen? One explanation is the universal appeal of sports, which provides common ground for people to be people without the bother of politics, religious strife, and ethnic division. The issues that divide us melt away when we have a chance to relate to one another as human beings. That fact should give us great hope about the future of our nation as we engage in grassroots resistance to defend democracy.

I was struck by this thought when reading an essay by Juliette Kayyem on Substack, Americans Are Outperforming America. Kayyem, who is new to Substack, is a commentator on CNN, NPR, and The Atlantic. She begins by noting the many ways Trump tried to spoil the World Cup experience for fans traveling to the US. Indeed, I can attest that while my wife and I were in Scotland a week ago, the initial reports on BBC, Sky News, etc. about the fan experiences of traveling to America were overwhelmingly negative, for reasons highlighted by Kayyem:

Almost everything about the 2026 World Cup, and the news leading up to it, defied the vision of what America had promised. . . . The Trump administration issued travel restrictions affecting countries with teams in the tournament; players were allowed in, but some families and fans were not. . . . A Somali referee with a valid visa was denied entry with little public explanation beyond vague security concerns.

But then the American people embraced football fans from across the world with an enthusiasm and directness typical of Americans. As Juliette Kayeem writes,

Americans are proving better diplomats than their administration. The world’s dismal view of America, reflected in our soft tourism numbers and in the frustration of allies and adversaries alike, may not be repaired in a single summer. But this first week – from grim to gleeful – of this very imperfect World Cup is a reminder that Americans can speak in their own voice, too. And we, unlike our leaders, seem to enjoy the world and ourselves in the process.

The unexpected welcome of World Cup sports fans in America has a parallel in politics. As the Trump administration is doing its best to offend the world and infect America with the twin viruses of fascism and white supremacy, the people of the resistance are representing the true America, the one in which neighbors care about neighbors and still believe in fairness, justice, and decency. To paraphrase Kayyem, Americans are proving to be better stewards of the nation’s values than an administration that claims to be grounded in evangelical Christianity and family values.

The dichotomy gives me hope. What we see most days on our smartphones and television screens is the contrived vision of America promoted by a deeply corrupt and depraved administration. What we don’t see are the daily interactions of kindness and generosity that form the sinew of American society.

We have our faults and factions; we have been unfair and cruel, but the people keep pulling America back to its inherent goodness. Sometimes the course-correction process is difficult and painful, as in the civil rights movement, where state and federal governments were dragged, kicking and screaming, into the modern world where people are “not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” (MLK, Jr., March on Washington, August 28, 1963.)

The dichotomy between the corrupt administration and the inherent decency of everyday Americans is on full display in this newsletter. Below, I will discuss Trump’s monumental incompetence and depravity in undermining the peace negotiations being conducted in Switzerland. Then I will close with “Pro-democracy protest photos.” If you want to feel hopeful about America’s future, look at those photos. You will see the Americans who surprised football fans from around the world with their friendliness and decency.

Trump nearly derails peace negotiations in Switzerland.

Vice President JD Vance is in Switzerland to begin the peace negotiations prescribed by the MOU. Iranian negotiators either walked out—or threatened to walk out, depending on which source you believe. Why? Because Trump threatened to bomb Iran and kidnap (or kill?) the Iranian negotiating team if Iran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. See The Guardian, “Talks expected to continue for rest of the week despite disruption caused by US president’s threat to bomb Iran and kidnap negotiating team.”)

The Wall Street Journal’s headline story reported “Iran Says It Is Pausing Talks After Trump Threats.” (Gift article, accessible to all.)

As explained in the Journal, the MOU includes a promise not to threaten the use of force against the other party to the agreement. But Trump not only threatened force against Iran, he threatened Iran’s negotiators:

Fox News reported that Trump, in an interview, said that he had spoken with Iranian officials Saturday night and warned them not to close the strait.

“You close it, and you won’t have a country,” Fox said, quoting Trump. “You won’t even make it back to your f—ing country.”

Given that Trump killed the prior Iranian negotiating team during the first bombing runs in his war on Iran, the new team is understandably skittish.

Again, per the Journal,

The president’s threats prompted the Iranian delegation to leave the negotiation venue and it is unclear when the talks will resume, Iranian media reported.

As noted above, reports are conflicting on the resumption of talks, with The Guardian reporting they will resume on Monday. (Maybe the Iranian negotiators believe they won’t be bombed by Trump if they are in the same room as JD Vance. If so, they might want to reflect on Trump’s treatment of Mike Pence on January 6.)

Trump’s militaristic threats against the peace negotiators were heightened by Senator Lindsey Graham, who said

I spent four and a half hours with President Trump on Friday. Here’s what I think will happen next. If this deal fails, President Trump is going to take the strait of Hormuz over by force … We’ll charge a fee for all those who go through to pay for the operation … if Iran contests control of the strait of Hormuz by the United States, we’ll obliterate them.

To be clear, the collection of tolls violates international law. The notion that the US will take control of the Strait of Hormuz and collect tolls is lunacy.

Speaking of lunacy, Trump was driven to frenzied madness on Sunday by a New York Times analysis that argued that Trump’s war against Iran had achieved very little. The article is here: NYTimes, What Changed After Almost Four Months of War? Analysts Say Not Much | Neither the war nor the agreement terminated the main threats emanating from Iran, many analysts said.

While there is little new in the Times’ analysis, it is newsworthy because the story reflects that growing consensus that Trump achieved nothing despite a massive, sustained air attack on Iran for a month.

A key insight in the article—sourced to an Iranian leader—is that the war helped Iran realize that it could seize control and weaponize the Strait of Hormuz.

Per the Times,

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and a lead negotiator, hailed a revelation that Iran had taken from the war: that it could exert leverage by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial transit point for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. “This was a potential capacity that had never been activated,” Mr. Ghalibaf said in an interview Wednesday with IRIB, the state broadcaster. “But our enemies — God created them fools — turned that potential into reality.”

The other main premise of the article was that nothing had changed for Iran because of the war. That argument sent Trump over the edge. He sent several unhinged tweets on Sunday afternoon, culminating in a threat of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against the Times for TREASON.

Trump wrote,

The way the Corrupt and Failing New York Times is covering stories on a very battered and beat up Iran, through FAKE & MADE UP “FACTS” is, in my opinion, “TREASONOUS.” I will be adding all of their false and ridiculous reporting to my multi Billion Dollar lawsuit against them. They are Criminals! President DJT

For a full recap of Trump’s madcap Sunday afternoon, see Daily Beast, Trump, 80, Spirals in Unhinged Multi-Post Truth Social Meltdown.

It is difficult to see how the peace negotiations will survive Trump’s tantrums and threats. Indeed, those tantrums demonstrate that Trump is desperate—another revelation for Iranian leaders. Trump is negotiating from a position of weakness and fear—and the Iranians know it. They believe that Trump has closed his involvement in the war with Iran and has moved on to other things—like the botched job on the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall.

DOJ quashes criminal inquiry into clemency granted by Trump

Trump has a habit of granting clemency and pardons to donors (or their family members). Although it is difficult to prove a quid pro quo, the pattern is undeniable. But one recent grant of clemency was so suspicious that the US Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York opened a criminal investigation. But when a senior DOJ official called to ask about the investigation, the prosecutors leading the case were told to shut it down. See NYTimes, Trump Administration Shuttered a Criminal Probe Into Fraudster’s Clemency.

In a phone call . . . Aakash Singh, an associate deputy attorney general, expressed concern about the investigation, according to two people with an understanding of the sequence of events.

The investigation, which has not been previously reported, had begun examining whether improper payments were made to help facilitate the commutation awarded to David Gentile, a private equity executive who was convicted in a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of mostly mom-and-pop investors, some of whom lost their retirement savings.

The Times’ reporting is based on interviews with five people “familiar with the matter.” It appears that members of the US Attorney’s Office are so disturbed by the order to close the investigation that they have gone to the press.

It is not clear who is the subject of the criminal investigation, but the article mentions a Catholic priest who is friendly with Trump and the person receiving clemency.

Again, per the Times,

Among the evidence they gathered was information about jailhouse communications in which Mr. Gentile discussed making payments of $2.5 million or more to people or companies to help facilitate his clemency, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation who were not authorized to discuss it.

Given the Times’ sources, this story has legs. The pardons granted by Trump have been corrupt from the start—beginning with the pardons of January 6 insurrectionists.

Concluding Thoughts

Trump tried to put his debacle in Iran behind him by signing a disastrous agreement. One provision in the MOU states that “United States also undertakes to withdraw its forces from the surrounding areas.” Think about that undertaking: It is the US agreeing to restrict the future deployment of its troops—which is another way of saying that Trump surrendered to Iran.

Trump made that remarkable concession because he is so fearful of ongoing hits to the US economy from the war. But having effectively surrendered, it appears that Iran may never comply with the MOU, the Strait will remain closed, and Americans will still be punished with higher inflation.

After the stabbing of their son, the Nowak family asked that the tragedy should not be used to increase division and hatred. Ever inappropriate, Vance tries to increase division and hatred; presumably because he sees that as his job.

Arthur Holquin

When the Neophyte Corrects the Vicar of Christ

On JD Vance, Theological Hubris, and the Gospel He Has Yet to Learn

There is a particular arrogance that takes root in the newly converted — the zeal of the autodidact who, having just discovered the tradition, mistakes enthusiasm for mastery. JD Vance, who received baptism into the Catholic Church in 2019 at the age of thirty-five, has now committed the singular error of instructing the Bishop of Rome to “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

We should sit with the full weight of that sentence.

The Vice President of the United States — seven years a Catholic, formerly an evangelical, before that a self-described atheist — stood before a Turning Point USA audience in Georgia and publicly admonished Pope Leo XIV about theological precision. “If you’re going to opine on matters of theology,” Vance informed the successor of Peter, “you’ve got to be careful, you’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth.”

The audacity is breathtaking. The irony is almost comic.

While Vance was dispensing theological warnings from a stage in Georgia, Pope Leo XIV was standing at the archaeological site of Hippo in Algeria — the episcopal see where St. Augustine served as bishop until his death in 430 A.D. Vance, who claims Augustine as his patron saint and frequently invokes him in speeches, was lecturing on Augustinian just war theology to a political rally audience. The pope he was lecturing — who served as Prior General of the Order of St. Augustine for more than a decade and holds a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas — was planting an olive tree at the very ground where Augustine lived, prayed, wrote, and died. If God governs history with a sense of irony, this moment surely pleased Him.

The occasion for Vance’s correction was Pope Leo’s statement that “God is never on the side of those who wield the sword.” Vance responded by invoking the thousand-year tradition of Just War theory as if the pope were unaware of it. But Leo did not say war is never permissible. He said God is not simply enlisted as a combatant on any nation’s side. That is not a negation of Just War doctrine. That is its foundation. The Catechism at §2309 is unambiguous about the conditions that must all be simultaneously met for a war to be just. Archbishop Broglio stated plainly on Easter Sunday that the war against Iran does not meet those criteria. Cardinals Cupich, McElroy, and Tobin, along with Archbishop Coakley, have spoken with notable unanimity. Cardinal Tobin put it plainly: Pope Leo “will continue to speak clearly against war and other offenses against human dignity and to call for authentic dialogue, because the Church’s witness is grounded in the peace of Christ, not in partisan interests.” That is episcopal fidelity. What Vance offered was its precise opposite.

The deeper problem is not merely that Vance is wrong about just war. It is the ecclesiological framework he is importing from American Christian nationalism into a tradition that explicitly rejects it. Vance told Fox News that “in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic Church, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating public policy.” Let that formulation stand naked for a moment. The pope — who holds a universal pastoral office precisely because the Gospel speaks to every dimension of human life — is being instructed to confine himself to the sacristy, while the president is assigned the role of “dictating” the political world. This is not a Catholic understanding of faith and public life. Catholic Social Teaching from Rerum Novarum onward has always insisted that the Gospel is not a private spiritual comfort but a public moral claim. When Vance tells the pope to stay in his lane, he is not defending Catholic doctrine. He is betraying it.

JD Vance’s forthcoming book on his Catholic faith is titled Communion. Its cover features a United Methodist church. I do not say this merely to mock. Symbolism matters in Catholic theology, and the symbolism here is telling. A book about Catholic unity, bearing Protestant ecclesial architecture on its cover, written by a man who publicly contradicts the pope on Just War doctrine — this is not communion. This is confusion dressed in piety. Archbishop Coakley said it plainly: “The Pope is not Trump’s rival, nor is the Pope a politician. He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.” Communion, in Catholic theology, is not a feeling of spiritual warmth. It is a participation in the Body of Christ that carries radical obligations — to the poor, the stranger, the enemy, to peace. It is a table the powerful do not preside over. They are guests at it, like everyone else.

A seven-year Catholic who tells the pope to watch his theology, while defending an administration that posted an AI image of the president as Jesus Christ and refused to apologize, is not in communion with the tradition he claims to be writing about. He is in communion with power. And that, as Augustine himself understood deeply, is a very different thing.

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Rebecca Solnit 

Is there a sacred hornet's nest you can kick? Not only did Vance, who grows ever more Trumplike in his arrogance, tell the pope what to do and how to interpret doctrine, but this serial liar in service of the Greatest Liar of All Time during a war casually justified after the fact with various lies dared to invoke "truth." He said at his failed Turning Point USA event, “If you’re going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got to be careful, you’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth." The truth is that insofar as he's a Catholic at all he's a bad one launching a war with the Church on the grounds that he knows best.

My ex-Catholic friend John L Moore Jr notes, "JD Vance seems to think that the Pope doesn't know about the Catholic theology behind the "just war" doctrine. If Vance had bothered to do some reading on the history of just war theology, he'd have seen that its origins lie in the teachings of St. Augustine of Hippo. And if he'd done some further reading, he know that Pope Leo is a member of the Order of St. Augustine and has been an Augustinian friar since 1977. Given those facts, who do we think has a better understanding of just war theology?" The future Pope Leo was made the head of the entire Augustinian order in 2001.

"What Trump offers is an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He can bring jobs back simply by punishing offshoring companies into submission. As he told a New Hampshire crowd—folks all too familiar with the opioid scourge—he can cure the addiction epidemic by building a Mexican wall and keeping the cartels out. He will spare the United States from humiliation and military defeat with indiscriminate bombing. It doesn’t matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan. He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.

The great tragedy is that many of the problems Trump identifies are real, and so many of the hurts he exploits demand serious thought and measured action—from governments, yes, but also from community leaders and individuals. Yet so long as people rely on that quick high, so long as wolves point their fingers at everyone but themselves, the nation delays a necessary reckoning. There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria. Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it."

[From the Atlantic article 2016 "Opiod of the Masses" :: by J.D.Vance of course]

J.D. Crowe

* * * *

More on Qatar’s gift of a 747-8 to Trump

Two additional comments on the corrupt offer of Qatar to give Donald Trump a Boeing 747-8 for his personal use.

First, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo discusses the fact that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to update the aircraft to the security standards of Air Force One. The secure communications and defenses would take years to install—meaning that the plane would be ready for delivery after Trump is out of office. At that point, it would be his personal plane. See Talking Points Memo, Don’t Get Conned By Trump’s Air Force One Boondoggle.

Second, Adam Schiff produced an explainer video on the scandal. See The Schiff Notes, Plane-ly Corrupt, by Sen. Adam Schiff. The video is interesting because it includes photos of the plane's interior and explains that the gift of the plane is only one way in which Qatar is enriching the Trump family. It is worth ten minutes of your time to watch.

Yesterday, I explained the legal and constitutional bases that prohibit the gift to Trump from Qatar. While informative, that message is too complicated. Most voters do not care about “the Foreign Emoluments Clause.” They care that they can’t get an appointment until next September to be seen about a heart condition, while Trump is riding in a “Flying Palace.”

Remember and repeat: Flying Palace.

Jack Smith delivers the judgment of history (again)

January 23, 2026

Robert B. Hubbell

Jan 23, 2026

For the second time in a month, special counsel Jack Smith provided a summary of his two investigations of Donald Trump. In plain language, Smith made clear that his team collected sufficient evidence to convict Trump of attempting to overturn the 2020 election and of retaining highly classified documents after he departed the presidency. The full video testimony of Smith’s opening statement is here: CNN, Jack Smith testimony: Full opening statement on Trump probes

As in his December deposition, Smith was calm, measured, and precise in his delivery. Future historians reviewing Smith’s testimony will conclude that he was an honest prosecutor who performed his job in accord with the highest standards of the legal profession.

Smith’s reports and his testimony will constitute the judgment of history about Donald Trump’s criminal conspiracies to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and to retain highly sensitive documents after he left the White House.

Republicans, on the other hand, once again embarrassed themselves with buffoonish, thuggish behavior designed to distract attention from their inability to shake Smith’s confidence in the evidence developed by his team. GOP members of the committee devoted much of their time attempting to dispute inadmissible hearsay testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson that would have never been offered at trial.

They also attempted to create confusion by suggesting that Smith first took his oath as special counsel while in Europe—an oath that was re-administered when he returned to the US to remove any doubt about its validity. In other words, Republicans had nothing. See Politico, Republicans tried to snag Jack Smith on technicalities. But they didn’t engage with the facts.

But even as Republicans were falsely accusing Smith of taking direction from Joe Biden, Trump was using Truth Social to encourage Attorney General Pam Bondi to indict Jack Smith—a breach of the independence of the DOJ that would’ve been unthinkable before Trump was sworn in for the second time. See Politico, Trump is watching Jack Smith’s testimony — and has thoughts.

Trump went further, calling Jack Smith “a deranged animal” at the very moment that Smith was testifying in a dignified and professional manner before the House Judiciary Committee.

There are dozens more anecdotes and hundreds of small details that illustrate how far the president and the Republican Party have fallen in their insane effort to convince Americans that the insurrection on January 6 was a peaceful protest that was attacked by out-of-control Capitol police. No one believes them, and they are disgracing their family names for generations by spreading Trump’s lies about the most serious threat to our democracy since the Civil War.

By performing his assignment with dignity and professionalism, Jack Smith has ensured that his testimony and two reports will be the definitive record of Trump’s criminal culpability. Our nation owes a debt of gratitude to Smith, who has willingly placed himself in the sights of a vengeful and vainglorious president.

Jack Smith represents the best of what the Department of Justice represented before Trump brought it low. When we rebuild the DOJ beginning in 2029, Jack Smith should be the model of what is expected from attorneys who swear to protect and defend the Constitution.

NYTimes Sienna Poll shows further erosion of support for Trump’s policies

The NYTimes and Sienna Research Institute published a poll that surveyed reaction to Trump’s first year of his second term. It was bad news all the way down for Trump. Before discussing the survey, I want to remind readers that polls are not elections, that the time period between now and November 2026 is equal to infinity in the current political landscape, and that we could lose it all if we do not maintain focus.

The New York Times' most recent poll is relevant because it aligns with a nine-month trend showing significant erosion in support for Trump among the voters who swung the 2024 election in his favor. In the aggregate, these polls should give us confidence that our views are shared by a strong majority of Americans.

So, even as we face increasingly dark and desperate days, we have reason to be hopeful that we can win in 2026 and 2028, so long as we do not relent!

The article is here, but I have run out of gift subscriptions, so it is behind a paywall: Few Voters Say Trump’s Second Term Has Made the Country Better, Poll Finds. If a reader posts a gift copy in the Comment section, I will pin it to the top.

The poll shows that Trump is seriously underwater on virtually every issue he campaigned on in 2024. The net negative spreads are as follows:

(-16) Job as president

(-14) Managing the federal government

(-13) Venezuela

(-17) Immigration

(-18) Economy

(-19) Foreign relations

(-17) Israeli-Palestinian conflict

(-29) Cost of living

(-24) Russia’s war on Ukraine

(-44) Handling of the Epstein files

The only net positive spread was on the issue of “the border between the US and Mexico,” (+3).

So, while it may not always be obvious that we are making progress, every measurement point confirms that Trump is becoming increasingly unpopular and that the grassroots uprising against Trump is on the right path!

Lies by White House

In the before times, if the White House was caught in a single lie, it was a major story for weeks. Under Trump, the lies fly so fast and furiously that they are like motes of dust on the top shelf of a college dorm room bookcase—ubiquitous, invisible, and unremarkable.

On Thursday, the White House released a photo of a protester who was arrested for disrupting a church service being conducted by a pastor who was also a senior officer in ICE. The original photo showed the protester with a placid expression on her face. The White House photo was altered to depict the protester as crying as she was being whisked away by federal agents. See CBS News, White House posts an altered photo of Minnesota protester’s arrest to make it look like she was crying

When asked about the falsified photo, White House spokesperson Kaelan Dorr said the altered photo was a “meme,” and that “the memes will continue.”

The White House's flippant response was obviously drafted by someone whose parents failed to teach them the difference between right and wrong. Trying to cover up a lie by describing it as a “meme” is unworthy of a high schooler—let alone a presidential spokesperson.

But it gets worse. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt announced on Thursday that Belgium had joined Trump’s pay-to-play “Peace Board,” in which members must contribute $1 billion for the privilege of joining. (The initiation fees are supposed to be used to redevelop Gaza. Anyone who believes that fiction should look up the promised financial report on Trump’s second inauguration—which have never been released. See NOTUS, Democratic Lawmakers Demand Answers on Trump Inaugural Fundraising ‘Discrepancies’.)

After Leavitt announced that Belgium was joining the Peace Board, the Belgian government issued a statement saying it had not agreed to join the board. See NewsBreak, Karoline Leavitt blasted by Belgium over fake claim it joined Board of Peace.

And it gets even worse. After ice agent Jonathan Ross killed Renee Good, Vice President JD Vance asserted that federal officers have “absolute immunity” from prosecution for acts taken in the course of performing their duties. Vance said,

“That guy’s protected by absolute immunity.”

See Common Dreams, ‘To Be Clear,’ Contrary to Vance’s Claims, ICE Agents Do Not Have ‘Absolute Immunity,’ Say Legal Experts.

Vance now claims he never said Jonathon Ross was protected by absolute immunity. See Raw Story, Vance flip-flops on ICE immunity claim.

On Thursday, Vance said,

No, I didn’t say, and I don’t think any other official within the Trump administration said that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That’s absurd. What I did say is that when federal law enforcement officers violate the law, that is typically something that federal officials would look into.

In short, we should believe nothing that Trump, Karoline Leaitt, JD Vance, or the White House spokesperson says. If they get caught in a lie, they excuse it as a “meme” or deny words that are recorded on videotape (like Trump repeatedly referring to Greenland as Iceland).

Private autopsy indicates Renee Good was shot on the left side of head

We all saw the video. ICE Agent Jonathan Ross shot at Renee Good from the left side of her vehicle, after Ross was no longer in any (alleged) danger of being run over. A private autopsy confirmed that Renee was shot in the left side of the head—a wound that confirms what we all saw on the video. See NBC News, Renee Good was shot in the head, autopsy commissioned by her family finds.

The DOJ has said that there is no investigation of Jonathon Ross. That decision is corrupt. The lawyers responsible for making that decision should be investigated and disbarred at the first possible opportunity.

US withdraws from World Health Organization.

Trump signed an executive order early in his administration declaring the intention to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization. On Thursday, the decision became final in the US, which announced it was breaking ties with the world’s leading global health organization.

WHO is part of an early warning network of global health organizations that identifies and fights infectious diseases. The decision is reckless beyond description. See Washington Post, Formal US withdrawal from WHO is decried as ‘scientifically reckless’

Per WaPo,

“Withdrawing from the World Health Organization is scientifically reckless,” Ronald G. Nahass, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said in a statement. “It fails to acknowledge the fundamental natural history of infectious diseases. Global cooperation is not a luxury; it is a biological necessity.” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in June that the U.S. would no longer contribute to Gavi, an independent public-private financing group that buys vaccines and distributes them in low- and middle-income countries. As part of sweeping HHS staffing cuts last year, the CDC’s Global Health Center lost its director and some other employees. “It’s almost laughable that the Trump administration thinks they can lead in global health,” said Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University and director of a WHO Collaborating Center for National and Global Health Law. “They’ve decimated the global health capacities of the CDC. They’ve slashed global health funding around the world.”

Concluding Thoughts

Professor Laurence Tribe has published an essay in The New York Review that touches on two subjects frequently raised by readers of this newsletter: (1) The fear that Republicans will convene a “rogue constitutional convention” under Article V and (2) the hope that we will be able to amend the Constitution to reform the Supreme Court and overrule many of its most egregious decisions (Citizens United, Trump v. US, Shelby County v. Holder, etc.)

Although the article is behind a paywall, TNYR allows posting of articles to BlueSky, which I have done here: Is the Constitution ‘Dead, Dead, Dead'?

Despite the somewhat alarming title (referring to a quote by Justice Antonin Scalia), Professor Tribe’s essay argues that the ability to amend the Constitution ensures that it remains “as a vast living organism with limitless potential to once again light the path to moral progress around the globe.”

Professor Tribe also notes that the Constitution has “unwritten elements--judicial decisions, congressional interpretations, ever-changing popular beliefs—that can keep a written constitution alive over time regardless of the obstacles to formally altering its written text.”

Professor Tribe’s essay is in response to another Harvard professor, Jill Lepore, whose newly published book, We the People: A History of the Constitution, suggests that because Article V makes it too difficult to amend the Constitution, our great charter is a relic of the past that is incapable of responding to the challenges of a rapidly evolving world. (That is my gloss on a far more nuanced description in the article.)

I recommend the article because it is a pleasure to read about the Constitution through the lens of a deeply thoughtful debate between two respected scholars, rather than in a shadow docket “midnight special” limited to the question of “How can we give Trump what he wants?”

I have often told anxious readers that we should not fear a “constitutional convention” organized under Article V. Proposed amendments at any such convention would require ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures—i.e., 38. If a proposed amendment garners support from 38 state legislatures, 10 of those legislatures would be wholly or partially controlled by Democrats (to get to 38). Any amendment that garners that level of support deserves to be part of our Constitution.

I have been less sanguine about proposals to reform the Supreme Court that rely on constitutional amendments—for the very reason that 38 states must ratify any amendment. But as Professor Tribe notes, we amended the Constitution by ratifying the 27th Amendment in 1992 and the Equal Rights Amendment in 2020 (despite the refusal of the National Archivist to list the ERA as the 28th Amendment because an unenforceable deadline for passage had expired).

Two amendments in three decades is a good track record and should give us hope that real reform is closer at hand than we believe. To undo the most egregious damage inflicted by Trump, we will need constitutional amendments. But we can also make significant headway by expanding the Supreme Court through legislation that requires only a majority vote in each chamber of Congress.

If you are still with me, thanks for listening, and check out Professor Tribe’s discussion in the article. I have failed to do justice to his spirited defense of the Constitution’s ability to respond to new challenges, especially through the 9th and 14th Amendments. The article left me feeling more hopeful about a post-MAGA path to restoring the rule of law by relying on our Constitution--exactly as the Framers intended.

Bill Day

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 11, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 11, 2025

President Donald J. Trump’s big announcement today at his press conference—to which he showed up late—was that he is assuming control over the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department and deploying more than 100 agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and about 40 from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, along with officers from the Secret Service and the U.S. Marshals Service and members of the District of Columbia National Guard, “to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor, and worse.” He reiterated that officers would clear homeless encampments from the city.

In fact, statistics from the Department of Justice show that violent crime in the nation’s capital was at a 30-year low in 2024 and, according to Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), is down 26% this year compared to the same period last year. Former undersecretary of state and editor of Time magazine Richard Stengel noted that Washington is “not even in [the] top 10 dangerous cities in [the] U.S.” Meanwhile, legal analyst Asha Rangappa notes that FBI agents are not trained to patrol the streets, and that every one of them assigned to do that is not investigating foreign spies, foreign and domestic terrorists, or crimes like fraud, murder, corruption, and human trafficking.

If that was Trump’s big announcement, the big story seems to have been something different.

Trump’s performance at the press conference—an event for which his handlers would have made sure he was at the top of his game—made it clear that his mental deterioration is moving rapidly. He let Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI director Kash Patel explain the actual plan, taking the microphone himself to describe a fake world in which he plays the role of hero, solving five wars, creating a booming economy, solving the border security others couldn’t, protecting Americans from a hellscape that exists only in his rhetoric.

The administration’s seizure of power is anything but imaginary. As Stengel noted, “Throughout history, autocrats use a false pretext to impose government control over local law enforcement as a prelude to a more national takeover. That’s far more dangerous than the situation he says he is fixing.” While Trump is mobilizing the National Guard under a pretext now, he memorably refused to mobilize it on January 6, 2021, to protect the lawmakers under siege in the U.S. Capitol as his supporters tried to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Democrat Joe Biden president.

Some clues to what the administration is attempting showed up today in a court in California, where Governor Gavin Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta are suing the Department of Justice, saying it broke the law by deploying about 4,000 troops from the National Guard and 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles in June without authorization. A federal law known as the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits federal troops from acting as law enforcement officers.

Anna Bower of Lawfare Media was following the events in court today. She posted that the government agreed the troops in Los Angeles were subject to the Posse Comitatus Act and that they were put in place simply to guard federal buildings and law enforcement officials. But witnesses said that troops accompanied ICE when they made arrests and one of the documents introduced that related to the massive troop presence in MacArthur Park on July 7 said the purpose of the mission was to “protect the execution of joint federal law enforcement missions...while preserving public safety and demonstrating federal reach and presence.”

The words “demonstrating federal reach and presence” seem to get to the heart of the administration’s object, for it is showing federal troops exercising power over civilians even while telling the court they are not. Making people fear the government is key to the rise of an authoritarian.

This mobilization echoes Trump’s attempt to take over Washington, D.C., in June 2020 when he was angry about the protests over the death of George Floyd, murdered in May 2020 by white police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes. In 2020, members of Trump’s first administration stopped him from using the military against U.S. citizens, and, dramatically, members of the military stepped up to declare their support not for a president but for the United States Constitution.

This time around, Trump has installed loyalist Pete Hegseth at the head of the military. Hegseth made his support for the president’s plan clear today as he stood with Trump at the press conference. Ominously for civil liberties, observers note that no one from the administration is specifying where the administration intends to send people from the homeless encampments, although Trump wrote Sunday, “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.”

The administration is also consolidating power over the economy. Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal noted today that the U.S. is marching toward a form of state capitalism in which Trump looks much like the Chinese Communist Party, exercising political control not just over government agencies but over companies themselves. “A generation ago conventional wisdom held that as China liberalized, its economy would come to resemble America’s,” Ip wrote. “Instead, capitalism in America is starting to look like China.”

Ip points to the government’s partial control over U.S. Steel that it took as a condition for Nippon Steel’s takeover, the $1.5 trillion of promised investment from trading partners that Trump has claimed the right to direct personally, the 15% of certain chip sales of Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices to China that will go to the administration (although who or what entity will get that money I can’t figure out), and Trump’s demand that the chief executive of Intel resign.

Ip calls this system of state capitalism “a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises.” He notes that it is a “sea change from the free market ethos the U.S. once embodied.”

Ip also notes that state capitalism is a means of political control, using the power of the state to crush political challenges. “In Trump’s first term, CEOs routinely spoke out when they disagreed with his policies such as on immigration and trade,” Ip writes. “Now, they shower him with donations and praise, or are mostly silent.” Ip pointed out that Trump is deploying financial power and regulatory power to cow media companies, banks, law firms, and government agencies he thinks are not sufficiently supportive.

But Trump’s press conference did not show a president in control of these dramatic changes. His words echoed the rhetoric he used to win office in 2016, rhetoric he summed up in his inaugural address that turned a speech usually designed to be uplifting into a description of what he called American carnage: “Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our Nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.”

But in the context of the president’s rambling nonsense, that apocalyptic rhetoric, along with Trump’s focus on renovating and redecorating the White House to look like one of his gold-splattered properties, seems like an attempt to return to a past in which he felt powerful.

Meanwhile, Trump’s second presidency has been following the plan outlined in Project 2025 closely, even though Trump denied any association with Project 2025 when he ran for office. Russell Vought, now director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote the section of the plan that called for an extraordinarily strong executive in order to put in place Christian nationalism. Increasingly, it looks like members of his administration are using Trump in order to create a system that will respond to whoever is in charge, making it possible for today’s leaders to retain control over the country even without Trump there to mobilize MAGA voters.

Trump’s press conference today showed a badly weakened president. His apparent connections to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have already weakened him with his base. That story is not going away, and Trump has made it clear he is frantic over it. Then today he indicated even he is worried about his mental deterioration. At 7:36 this morning, he posted on social media that Representatives Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are “morons.” He wrote: “Each of these political hacks should be forced to take a Cognitive Exam, much like the one I recently took while getting my ‘physical’ at our GREAT Washington, D.C., Military Hospital (W[alter] R[eed]!). As the doctors said, ‘President Trump ACED it, something that is rarely seen!’ These Radical Left Lunatics would all fail this test in a spectacular show of stupidity and incompetence. TAKE THE TEST!!!”

Vice President J.D. Vance appears to have been distancing himself from Trump and the administration by taking repeated vacations. As Bill Kristol noted today in The Bulwark, Vance also appears to be undercutting Trump over the Epstein files, twisting the knife while also seeming to make overtures to Trump’s MAGA voters, who have never warmed to Vance. As Kristol notes, Vance set up what Kristol calls a “very unusual” meeting at his residence to discuss Epstein, a meeting that just happened to leak to the press. Then yesterday, Vance brought up the issue again in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on the Fox News Channel, parroting MAGA beliefs that the files name prominent Democrats.

“[A] lot of Americans want answers. I certainly want answers,” Vance told Bartiromo. As Kristol notes: “With this bland statement, Vance succeeded—inadvertently, needless to say!—in reminding us that we don’t yet have the answers we want and deserve,” thus ginning up the Epstein story again.

Those people cheering on Trump’s drive for autocratic power because they still somehow think he will use that power to make their lives better might want to consider how their lives may change if that power is in the hands of J.D. Vance.

And so we have come full circle: the arbitrary nature of autocrats was, after all, what made our nation’s founders base a government not on men, but on impartial laws that defended the rights and liberties of the people.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN