Why Trump's "Trade Deals" are Worthless

When President Donald Trump struck a trade deal with the European Union in July, officials on both sides stressed how it would ensure long-term stability to trans-Atlantic trade.

The Trump administration called the deal a "generational modernization of the transatlantic alliance." European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said it "restores stability and predictability" by locking in 15 percent tariffs on most European goods exported to the U.S., while most American imports to Europe would be exempt from tariffs.

In other words, Trump got what he wanted out of that deal: A reduction in tariffs on American exports and the establishment of a new, permanent baseline tariff on European goods. European leaders also felt like they'd won something: the 15 percent tariff was lower than the 25 percent tariff Trump had threatened, and the deal would stop Trump from hiking tariffs the next time he was in a bad mood.

So much for that.

On Friday, Trump announced that he would raise tariffs on European-made cars to 25 percent. (Those tariffs are authorized by Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, so they are not affected by the Supreme Court's ruling in February that limited some of the president's power to impose tariffs unilaterally.)

Those higher tariffs could cost automakers $4 billion this year.

Read the rest here.

1896: People Leaving Mass at Cologne Cathedral

Trump has lost control of the conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories have been central to Donald Trump’s political rise. He was a leading promoter of the “birther” conspiracy theory targeting then-President Barack Obama, embraced outlandish theories about a “deep state” in the government and still pushes false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

But conspiracy theories, and the people who support them, are unpredictable and hard to control. Now, Trump is increasingly the subject of conspiracy theories on both the left and the right, with many of his onetime supporters viewing him with growing skepticism.

This new dynamic played out immediately after Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner with conspiracy theories and false claims flooding social media, questioning whether the assassination attempt was “staged” for Trump’s benefit. There is no evidence suggesting that is the case.

Some of those who circulated that idea were once among Trump’s most vocal backers.

“Was The Trump Whitehouse Corespondents Dinner Shooting Staged??” posted the right-wing conspiracist Alex Jones, who has recently broken with Trump over the war with Iran. Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who similarly broke with Trump over Iran and his handling of the release of information about the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, questioned why the suspect’s writing was released “almost immediately.” On the left, prominent progressive podcasters Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan released an episode on Monday headlined: “Major False Flags Revealed In Trump Shooting Aftermath, He’s Hiding From the Public?”

Read the rest here. 

Trump's 2nd Bogus Indictment of James Comey

If it’s possible, the Trump Justice Department’s new indictment of former FBI Director James Comey is even more absurd than the previous indictment. That one failed to state a crime. This one fabricates a crime.

The new charges, which have not been released as this is written, reportedly stem from an Instagram post Comey moronically published last year, showing seashells arranged to form the message “86 47.” Even more moronically, the Trump administration interpreted the message as a threat to assassinate the 47th president.

The number “86” is sometimes used in organized crime or gang circles to suggest killing; in more common parlance, however, it connotes getting rid or something, tossing something in the trash, etc. It is not even clear that Comey himself arranged the seashells in his photo, but the claim that, by posting what he’d observed, he was calling for Trump to be assassinated is ridiculous. In the United States, where political speech is protected by the First Amendment, the government may not criminalize the expression of opinion that the incumbent president should be removed or otherwise rejected. (I won’t try to count the number of times Trump did it while Biden was president.)

After uproar generated by the administration, Comey took down the post and publicly asserted that he opposes violence and meant no such suggestion. He also voluntarily submitted to interviews with the Secret Service — which proceeded to drop what should never have been a criminal investigation. There was not a threat of violence against the president, much less an unambiguous call for his assassination. Nor would it be remotely possible, on the known evidence, to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Comey intended violence.

Read the rest here.

Trump is Going After ABC (again)

The Federal Communications Commission has directed Walt Disney Co. to file early license renewal applications for its ABC television stations, citing an ongoing investigation, a day after President Trump called on the company to fire comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

The FCC said in its order that it is investigating ABC stations for "possible violations" of the Communications Act of 1934 and the agency's prohibition on unlawful discrimination. An FCC official told CBS News that the order is related to the agency's investigation into Disney's diversity, equity and inclusion practices, which the official said has been ongoing since March 2025.

In a statement to CBS News, Disney said it has received the FCC's order for an accelerated review of its ABC-owned television stations. 

"ABC and its stations have a long record of operating in full compliance with FCC rules and serving their local communities with trusted news, emergency information, and public‑interest programming," a Disney spokesperson said. "We are confident that the record demonstrates our continued qualifications as licensees under the Communications Act and the First Amendment and are prepared to show that through the appropriate legal channels."

The ABC licenses were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031. The company owns eight TV stations, including WABC-TV in New York and KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

Read the rest here.

Jamie Dimon warns of ‘some kind of bond crisis’

CEO Jamie Dimon on Tuesday warned that rising government debt levels could trigger a crisis in the bond market, urging policymakers to act before markets force their hand.

Dimon’s statement was in response to a question about whether he was worried about rising levels of government debt “around the world and in your country.”

“The way it’s going now, there will be some kind of bond crisis, and then we’ll have to deal with it,” Dimon said at an investment conference held by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world.

“I’m not that worried we’ll be able to deal with it,” Dimon said. “I just think maturity should say you should deal with it, as opposed to let it happen.”

Dimon, who runs the world’s largest bank by market cap, said history has shown that today’s growing mix of risks could combine in unpredictable ways. While the timing is uncertain, failing to address those pressures increases the odds that adjustment comes after upheaval rather than deliberate policy moves.

Read the rest here.

The First Royal Visit to the US (1939)

Meanwhile... The White House posted a picture of President Trump and King Charles III with the caption “two Kings” amid the monarch’s visit to the U.S. on Tuesday.

Suing the Pope? An Aggressive Class Action Presents First Amendment Problems

...The class action, O’Connell v. Conference of Catholic Bishops, threatens to violate the Constitution’s church autonomy principle. The lawsuit started several years ago with Peter’s Pence, a special collection that since the Middle Ages has been taken up by the Roman Catholic Church. It goes directly to the papacy to support the projects and activities of the pope. Lead plaintiff David O’Connell donated to the Peter’s Pence collection after being invited to make the offering during Mass. But he now complains that he was misled. He says that he thought that the church was going to use this for charitable purposes, which he understood to be direct aid to the needy. Only later, he says, did he learn that a substantial part of the Peter’s Pence collection went into long-term investments and supported church infrastructure. And so he decided that he would seek the return of his money by bringing a lawsuit, claiming that he was deceived into thinking that his donations supported charity.

The case was filed in federal court seeking the recovery not only of O’Connell’s donations, but all donations from a class of people who also claimed to be confused about the uses to which Peter’s Pence donations would be put. This class action lawsuit was aggressive; it was creative, but the church thought that it had a strong counter-argument: the church autonomy doctrine. If a court is to decide what counts as a charitable contribution, it would have to take positions on matters of church doctrine and governance. It would have to second-guess the internal decision-making of church leadership on how best to utilize the funds of the Roman Catholic Church and of the papacy in particular.

Read the rest here.

James Comey indicted over seashell photo

The Justice Department secured an indictment Tuesday charging former FBI Director James Comey with threatening the life of President Donald Trump by posting a photo of seashells on Instagram.

The two-count indictment, posted Tuesday afternoon, alleges that a reasonable person would interpret the image of the shells, arranged to spell out “86 47,” as “a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States."

Justice Department attorneys sought the indictment in the Eastern District of North Carolina, where Comey has a beach house and where he posted the beach scene photo. The Department of Homeland Security previously investigated Comey, who has long been a Trump target, over the May Instagram post, even subjecting him to questioning by the Secret Service.

Comey had deleted the post, saying it never occurred to him that it would be interpreted as being violent. "Eighty-six" is a term commonly used in restaurants when an item is sold out, and it's also informally used to mean "cancel" or "get rid of."

In a subsequent Instagram post in May, Comey said that he assumed the shells he saw on a beach walk were "a political message" and that he "didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence," adding that he opposed violence "of any kind."

Comey said in a video posted after his indictment that he was innocent, that he was not afraid and that he still believed in the independent judiciary.

"They're back," he said of the Trump administration. "This time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won't be the end of it."

Read the rest here.

The Rise of Ukraine (and Decline of the US) as the Defender of Freedom

A remarkable thing has happened on the world’s battlefields. Ukraine — a nation that was supposed to dissolve within days of a Russian invasion — has fought Russia to a stalemate, revolutionizing land warfare in the process. It has become an indispensable security partner in the Western alliance, including in the war against Iran.

Now, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is taking the next step, one that would have been unthinkable even as recently as 2024. By word and deed, he’s showing Europe and the world how the post-American free world can preserve its liberty and independence. This is what happens when, as Phillips Payson O’Brien wrote in a piece for The Atlantic, “Kyiv appears to have given up on the United States.”

If that is true — and it looks as though it is — it may be worse news for the United States than it is for Ukraine.

Events on the ground and in world capitals are moving so quickly that it’s hard to keep up. First, the strategic situation in the Ukraine war seems to have changed. Last week, Mick Ryan, a retired Australian major general and one of the most astute analysts of the war, wrote that Ukraine has largely stabilized the frontline in eastern Ukraine, deepened its coalition, isolated Russia diplomatically and developed an indigenous arms industry that makes it less dependent on external support.

It’s no longer accurate to think of Ukraine as a desperate underdog; it’s becoming an independent power. Even as it fights for its life against Russia, it’s reportedly reaching defense deals with the Gulf states and with the United States — and this time it’s Ukraine that’s providing military assistance.

In February 2025, President Trump mocked Zelensky in the Oval Office. “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now,” Trump said. In April 2026, Ukraine has enough cards left that it’s sharing them.

This might be difficult for many readers to grasp — given our nation’s longstanding military supremacy — but the largest and most battle-hardened land force in the Western world may well be the Ukrainian Army. While the precise numbers are classified, the Atlantic Council estimated in 2025 that Ukraine had roughly a million men and women under arms, the vast majority of whom serve in the ground forces.

America’s total force is larger than Ukraine’s, but to put the size of Ukrainian land forces in perspective, the combined size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps is around 620,000. It’s also worth noting that the U.S. forces have much less combat experience than Ukraine forces — especially when it comes to combat with a great power.

No one should minimize Ukraine’s manpower issues (more recent estimates place its total number of active troops well below the million-body peak) or the fact that it has no nuclear weapons and Russia has thousands. But its army is still vast, and its military is the only Western force that has fully adapted to modern drone warfare. Indeed, Ukraine is arguably the world’s leader in drone warfare.

Rapid change isn’t occurring just in Ukraine. Other developments across the Western alliance show that European nations are working with shocking speed to free themselves from dependence on America.

Read the rest here.

The Economic Risks From Trump's War Are Real and Growing

Trump's War is Dangerously Depleting US Military Weapons and Ordinance

Since the Iran war began in late February, the United States has burned through around 1,100 of its long-range stealth cruise missiles built for a war with China, close to the total number remaining in the U.S. stockpile. The military has fired off more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, roughly 10 times the number it currently buys each year.

The Pentagon used more than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles in the war, at more than $4 million a pop, and more than 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles, leaving inventories worrisomely low, according to internal Defense Department estimates and congressional officials.

The Iran war has significantly drained much of the U.S. military’s global supply of munitions, and forced the Pentagon to rush bombs, missiles and other hardware to the Middle East from commands in Asia and Europe. The drawdowns have left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries like Russia and China, and it has forced the United States to find ways to scale up production to address the depletions, Trump administration and congressional officials say.

The conflict has also underscored the Pentagon’s overreliance on excessively expensive missiles and munitions, especially air-defense interceptors, as well as concerns about whether the defense industry can develop cheaper arms, especially attack drones, far more quickly.

Read the rest here.

For Frustrated G.O.P., Redistricting Fight Turns to Florida and the Courtroom

Frustrated Republicans looked Wednesday to rebound from another setback in a nationwide redistricting chess match, as the high-stakes contest turned to Florida and the courtroom.

A Democratic victory on Tuesday in Virginia, where voters approved a change to the state’s House map that could give the party up to four more seats in the midterms, left Republicans with little to show for a tit-for-tat they started last year in Texas at the urging of President Trump.

Republicans are holding out hope that Virginia’s top court might reverse Tuesday’s result. And they are eying a chance to gain ground by redrawing the House map in Florida, where they control the governor’s office and hold supermajorities in the Legislature. But there is growing doubt in the party about its broader strategy.

“The two sides spent hundreds of millions dollars to get back to where they started, and in general, it’s turned out to be a net loser for Republicans,” said C. Stewart Verdery Jr., a Republican consultant.

Read the rest here.

Pew Research: Trends in religious conversions

Christianity has experienced some of the largest losses from religious switching of any faith group around the world, according to our 2024 surveys. Religious switching refers to when people identify with a different religion in adulthood than they were raised in as a child.

Within Christianity, however, religious switching has affected the two largest subgroups – Catholicism and Protestantism – differently:

*Catholicism has lost more people than it’s gained in nearly all countries that we surveyed.

*Protestantism has seen a net gain from switching in nearly as many places as it has seen a net loss.

Here we take a closer look at religious switching into, out of, and between Catholicism and Protestantism, based on Pew Research Center surveys in 24 countries...

Read the rest here.

Are you ready for universal Trump pardons?

President Trump has reportedly told his staff “I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval [Office].” Should we believe his boast, that he will issue pre-emptive presidential pardons to hundreds, if not thousands, of administration staff and officials who may or may not have committed or even been charged with a federal crime?

Although Trump often claims he can or will take certain questionable actions he may have no intention of taking, there are reasons to take this boast seriously.

Could a president issue what amounts to universal administration pardons? Perhaps.

Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution says the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”

The Supreme Court has generally held that this power is unlimited with respect to federal crimes, but it does not apply to impeachment or crimes charged by state and local law enforcement. And there are other limitations — for example, a president cannot pardon someone for a future crime.

Read the rest here.

Being a Mets fan...

...is just God's way of preparing me for eventual martyrdom.

The Bizarre and Corrupt World of Prediction Markets

This is an excellent overview of the latest fad in online gambling.

ICE Is Determined To Unmask a Reddit User Whose Only Crime Seems To Be Criticizing ICE

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is trying to unmask an anonymous Reddit user whose only crime seems to be criticizing the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is part of DHS, withdrew an administrative subpoena demanding information about the Reddit account "Tired_Thumb" after facing a legal challenge in the Northern District of California, where Reddit is headquartered. But as The Intercept reported last week, federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., now seem intent on obtaining information about the ICE critic from Reddit via a grand jury subpoena.

"Government critics are not suspects and free speech is not a crime," says Will Creeley, legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). "The First Amendment protects our right to criticize the government anonymously—an American tradition that dates back to the founding. So far, the government hasn't been able to point to a single Reddit post [by Tired_Thumb] that's not protected by the First Amendment. Not one. By putting the administration's feelings above the First Amendment, government agents are sending a deliberate message to each of us: Don't criticize us—or else."

Read the rest here.

Hungary Is a Laboratory for Illiberal Nationalism. The Results Are In.

Last month, Donald Trump offered Viktor Orban his “complete and total endorsement” in a video message ahead of Hungary’s April 12 election. The statement continued the president’s habit of boldly weighing in on the internal politics of other nations. But in this case, he would have been wise to first check the sell-by date of the prime minister and his creaking project of illiberalism.

After repeatedly winning reelection since 2010, Orban and his ruling party, Fidesz, now face a genuine electoral challenge from Peter Magyar and his center-right Tisza Party, which has led in the polls for more than a year while running on an anti-corruption platform. The result will allow the world to gauge Hungarians’ discontent with Orban’s brand of politics. It will also provide an answer to whether it’s possible for an opposition with broad support to win after 16 years under a government that rewrote election laws to its benefit while bringing much of the media under its influence.

The president’s interest in Orban’s political survival is certainly due in part to their rapport, but there’s a deeper nexus, too. Many of Trump’s supporters and allies — including Vice President JD Vance — see Hungary as a bastion of conservative and Christian values in a liberal and secular European Union.

For them, the election carries added significance. Hungary has served as a laboratory for policies promoted by many self-described national conservatives in the United States who want government to positively promote conservative values.

But regardless of the outcome, Orban has already shown that his vision of illiberal nationalism is a dead end that made Hungary poorer and less free.

Read the rest here.

It's time to talk about the 25th amendment.

Donald Trump attacks the pope online. He claims that it was he (Trump) who got the pope elected. And then he posts an image of himself as Jesus Christ.

Mr. Trump is a pathological liar. He is the most corrupt and incompetent president in US history. He appears to be functionally illiterate. His behavior is becoming more erratic by the day. And yes, he has the nuclear launch codes. 

It's time for the country to have an adult conversation about a man who is, on top of all of his other "issues," very probably mentally ill. 

Hungarian Strongman Victor Orban Concedes Election

After sixteen years in power, the pro-Kremlin ruler was ousted in parliamentary elections. 

Christ is Risen!

 

Reports: Pentagon officials menaced Vatican envoy over papal criticism

Briefly interrupting a blog break for Holy Week to report a potentially significant development in relations between the Catholic Church and the Trump Administration.

I'm not sure what to make of this. On the one hand, as of this post the big boys in the press/media world are not reporting on the alleged incident. However, it is getting widespread coverage in what might be called the second tier of the press. Clearly there was a meeting. Why would the Vatican's envoy be summoned to the Pentagon? The Pentagon says the meeting was respectful but have offered no other details. Some reports have gone so far as to claim that the Pope has indefinitely postponed a planned trip to the US. Conspicuously, the Holy See is thus far keeping quiet. 

Hmm...

Meanwhile, the Democrats...

In California Democrats could lock themselves out of the ballot for the governor's race.

And in New York, they are playing dirty in the governor's race. 

Ten Years Ago Donald Trump Promised to Eliminate the National Debt. It Has Doubled.

Ten years ago today, Donald Trump said he would pay off the national debt in the span of just eight years.

That did not happen. Instead, the gross national debt has doubled since that day—from about $19 trillion to over $39 trillion. Much of that additional borrowing has taken place during Trump's five-plus years in the White House.

The gap between Trump's outlandish promise and the brutal fiscal reality of the past decade is not just a political gotcha. It's also an apt illustration of how far and how fast the debt has spiraled. And it's a painful reminder of a missed opportunity that Americans will be facing for a long, long time. The bill for these 10 years of fiscal profligacy will be coming due long after Trump has finally departed from the political scene.

But it's a story that starts, as everything in politics seems to these days, with Trump.

Read the rest here.

Trump is trying to play dictator with the elections

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and to restrict mail-in voting, a move that swiftly drew legal threats from state Democratic officials as the president demands further limitations on voting ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

The order, which voting law experts say violates the Constitution by attempting to seize the power to run elections from states, is the latest in a torrent of efforts from Trump to interfere with the way Americans vote based on his false allegations of fraud.

It calls on the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to make the list of eligible voters in each state, according to the text of the executive order released Tuesday. It also seeks to bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to those not on each state’s approved list, although the president likely lacks the power to mandate what the Postal Service does.

Read the rest here.

The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree

The Constitution grants sweeping pardon powers to the president, which means that public opinion has historically been the only check on that power. The risk of a backlash is the reason that presidents have waited until their last days in office to issue many pardons and commutations, especially dubious ones to family members (like Hunter Biden) or political allies (like Caspar W. Weinberger, whom George H.W. Bush pardoned). The potential for a backlash also made presidents cautious about the number of pardons they issued. They understood that there could be an outcry if somebody who received a pardon later committed a new crime. The pardon system has also relied on the decency of American presidents.

President Trump has abandoned this approach. His self-serving pardons are so numerous that public attention cannot keep up with them. It is a version of the strategy that his former adviser Steve Bannon has described as “flood the zone”: Do so much so fast that people cannot follow the consequences.

He has created a veritable pardon industry, in which people with White House connections accept payments from wealthy convicts. Among those on whom he has bestowed freedom are dozens of people convicted of fraud. He has also pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras, who helped traffic hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States, and Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for running Silk Road, a sprawling criminal enterprise that sold drugs. There seems to be no crime too ugly for a Trump pardon.

Read the rest here.

The Economic Implications of Trump's War

This is one of the best explanations I have seen for what is going on, and what might be coming down the road.

After a long and cold winter, hints of spring for conservative Catholics

The excellent, and often well informed Traditionalist Catholic blog Rorate Caeli has a summary of recent moves by Pope Leo XIV in the Roman Curia. Reading the tea leaves Rorate appears to be fairly optimistic, characterizing developments as "A Return to Normalcy and Competence."

Read their report here. 

Obviously, what goes on in the Catholic Church is to a certain degree not our business. On the other hand the spread of modernist nuttery within the one bastion of Western Christianity that had, ante-Francis largely resisted this malignancy, cannot be viewed as anything other than an alarming development. While I am reserving judgement on Leo, I remain hopeful that he will curb the more dangerous doctrinal and disciplinary strains of the Franciscan era. 

Alarming news from Finland

The Supreme Court of Finland on Thursday (March 26) found a former government minister guilty of “hate speech” for her biblical views on marriage following two prior acquittals by lower courts.

In a 3-2 decision, the court ruled against Päivi Räsänen for expressing her beliefs on marriage and sexual ethics in a 20-year-old church pamphlet. The court also criminally convicted Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola for publishing the 2004 pamphlet, according to legal rights group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International.

The court levied fines of several thousand euros on both Räsänen and Pohjola and ordered the removal and destruction of the impugned statements. Räsänen has been sentenced to a fine equivalent to 20 days’ wages (in her case, 1,800 euros) and she will also have to pay her own legal costs, according to Evangelical Focus. Pohjola was also given a 20-day fine, and his publishing house, Finnish Lutheran Foundation, must pay a fine of 5,000 euros.

The convictions were based on “making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group,” the court ruled.

Read the rest here.

cf: This

On a positive note; summer is coming

From here.

At CPAC a Generational Divide Over Iran

GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — A generational divide over the Iran war surfaced Thursday between older attendees and their political heirs at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, as the group’s leaders pleaded for unity in a challenging midterm election year for Republicans.

Younger conservatives spoke of disappointment and even “betrayal” over President Donald Trump’s launch of strikes against Iran, saying in interviews with The Associated Press that the president’s actions run counter to his many pledges to oppose foreign entanglements.

Meanwhile, older conservatives were looking past Trump’s campaign criticism of military action to topple foreign regimes, arguing the war in Iran is a pragmatic act forced by threats to the United States.

The bright dividing line emerged in conversations with a dozen participants on either end of the age spectrum who gathered for the annual meeting of conservatives, being held outside Dallas. That split could reflect flagging enthusiasm for Trump among some younger voters, a potentially troubling sign for Republicans heading into midterm elections and for the conservative movement as it looks to build beyond Trump’s tenure.

“We did not want to see more wars. We wanted actual America-first policies, and Trump was very explicit about that,” said Benjamin Williams, a 25-year-old marketing specialist for Young Americans for Liberty. “It does feel like a betrayal, for sure.”

Read the rest here.

Illegal Immigration and Crime

What the stats actually say.

US Shipbuilding and the Jones Act

Last month, I had the chance to sit down with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl for a piece on the moribund state of US commercial shipbuilding. That story, “Turning the Ship Around,” aired last weekend, and having now seen it, I’d like to offer a few thoughts.

The segment opens with Stahl describing the US commercial shipbuilding industry as “nearly extinct.” The numbers back her up. As she points out, US shipyards produce around three ships per year. That’s less than what South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha produces in a month. But even that may be too charitable. Three is the US average over the last 25 years. This decade, US shipyards are on track to average roughly one per year.

But that’s just oceangoing cargo ships. Widening the aperture to include other vessel types does little to improve the picture. The most recent data show that the United States, the world’s second-largest manufacturing country, accounts for just 0.04 percent of global commercial shipbuilding output—good enough for 19th place. Over the past decade, the US has averaged 0.24 percent of global output. And it’s trending down.

South Korean firm Hanwha, however, says it will reverse the matter. According to the CEO of its Philly Shipyard, which the company purchased in 2024 for $100 million, the yard is set to transform into a 21st-century enterprise...

Read the rest here.

A war of regression: How Trump bombed the US into a worse position with Iran

Four weeks into a war that was going to take four days, and that has so far cost the US about $30-40bn and Israel $300m a day, Washington is further away from a diplomatic agreement with Iran than it was in May 2025.

Not only has the war failed to persuade Iran to agree to dismantle its nuclear programme in the comprehensive and irreversible way the US demanded in a 15-point paper that it tabled on 23 May last year, Washington is now having to negotiate to reopen the strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway that has been open ever since the invention of the dhow, with a short exception of a tanker war in the 1980s between Iran and Iraq.

This regression is proving to be perplexing for the American high command. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defence, recently said that “the only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping”, but this was not quite right. Iran has not been shooting at shipping that much in recent weeks. Instead, it is the fear of Iran shooting at shipping that is scaring off insurers and tanker owners.

Still worse from the US perspective, Iran has set up a waterside stall whereby prime ministers and tanker owners can bargain with the Iranian navy over the toll they are willing to pay for their tankers to be given “free passage”. Iran plans to turn the strait into a money spinner, just as Egypt charges for access to the Suez canal. By some calculations, given the massive scale of the traffic that passes through the strait each year, Iran could raise $80bn a year. If a law currently being rushed through the Iranian parliament passes, tankers carrying oil from favoured non-hostile nations such as India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea and China will be waved through or offered cheaper rates.

Little wonder Trump is thrashing around. The US along with Israel continues to bomb Iran, but he has now twice put back the date of threatened strikes on Iran’s civilian power stations – an action that would constitute a war crime. He continues to insist Iran has been defeated and yet Iran continues to behave as if it is not.

Read the rest here.

Trump 24-karat gold coin approved by hand-picked federal panel

A commemorative gold coin bearing the image of US President Donald Trump has been approved by a federal arts commission.

The 24-karat gold coin is intended to mark America's 250th birthday this 4 July and portrays Trump with his fists pressed against a desk.

After a presentation by the US Mint, the US Commission of Fine Arts voted unanimously to approve the design, despite questions over its legality.

Federal law does not allow a living president to appear on US currency. But the coin is being issued in accordance with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's authority and discretion to mint and issue proof gold coins.

Bessent is expected to order the coin to be struck once the US Mint produces final dimensions.

The commission's vice-chairman, James McCrery, said: "I motion to approve this [coin] as presented, and with the strong encouragement that you make it as large as possible, all the way to three inches in diameter."

For comparison, a US quarter dollar is less than an inch wide. Trump last year fired the Commission of Fine Arts' members, replacing them with allies.

Read the rest here.

The Shocking State of Britain's Navy 2026

Underestimating the Potential Energy Shock

It is hard to decide which is the bigger disaster: the unfolding car crash in the global gas market or the mounting danger that entire countries will run out of oil.

The benchmark TTF contract for gas in Europe was €29 (£25) per megawatt-hour (MWh) in mid-February. Bank of America says it could reach €500 this winter if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for 10 weeks, as it may well do.

That would blow through the record high seen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amount to a full-blown economic emergency for Europe, the UK, Japan, South Korea and South Asia.

The picture is dramatically worse after Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field, adding upstream gas and oil infrastructure to the menu of targets on both sides of the Gulf.

Iran’s missile retaliation on Qatar’s Ras Laffan has inflicted serious damage to the giant complex, which alone produces a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG).

It will be months before shipments start again. Qatar Energy says 17pc of production is lost for three to five years. It will have to declare force majeure on LNG supplies to Italy, Korea, China and Belgium.

It is just as bad for oil. The paper market that we all follow does not capture the drama. Physical deliveries are under far greater stress than Brent futures, at about $113, would suggest.

Actual barrels of the Dubai basket and Oman’s Murban are fetching close to $170 a barrel as Asian refiners scramble to buy anything they can. Jet fuel deliveries have hit $210 in Rotterdam and $240 in Singapore.

Kurt Barrow, the vice-president of oil at S&P Global Energy, says it may become physically impossible to obtain supplies. “If the Strait stays closed for two months, you’ll have plants without feedstock and we’ll get real rationing. We’ll have panic buying and hoarding,” he said.

“This is the largest supply disruption ever. Net, we’re around 15 million barrels a day (b/d) short in the market. Crude gets the headline but the actual impact is further downstream in refined products, diesel, jet, fuel or naphtha. There are 68 refineries in the war zone.”

Read the rest here.

Wealth Taxes & Flight... It's Complicated

This is a very good examination of a hot button topic.

Early Color Film Footage from the 1930s Including Pan Am Flying Boats

Meanwhile...

Trump threatens to cut off HIV medication to Zambia unless they cede mineral rights to the US

Trump says he thinks he will have the ‘honor’ of ‘taking Cuba’

Two from CATO

5 Reasons the US Should Not Spend Another Penny on the War with Iran

FCC Threats and the Fog of War: The Government Cannot Be the Arbiter of Truth

Quote of the day...

“You have lost the confidence and the trust of this court. You have lost the confidence and the trust of the New Jersey legal community, and you are losing the trust and confidence of the public.” 

- US Federal District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi to the US Prosecutor 3/16/2026

Anarchists, Political Violence, and Legal Isonomia

The anarchist as a figure in crime is distinct. His goals are not financial, and the terrorist acts committed under the heading of anarchism have ranged from assassinations of public figures to bombings of random civilians. He has also slid far enough into history to seem quaint, or vaguely romantic, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century. 

The anarchist “movement” (if we could apply such a concept to a decentralized group) was the beginning of modern global terrorism. The idea that killing, bombing, were a tactic to bring adversaries to the negotiating table, in the age of mass media, was a novel concept, in the late nineteenth century. It would be a model followed by various political sects to come. But anarchists did not want negotiations. 

Their nihilism marks them out against groups like the Fenians (roughly contemporary, and operating mostly in Britain, with some activities in North America), who had a clear political goal. The Fenians wanted Ireland to be independent from Britain. Whether one agreed with their tactics, the motive was coherent (if alarming to the British authorities). 

Meanwhile, the anarchists (unlike socialists) tended to offer vague ideals as their results. They did not participate in elections or seek to gain support through normal political means. “Burn it all down” was their message. One that was resonant for disaffected young men - as it always has been. There’s a reason terrorist groups and street gangs alike all recruit from this particular demographic.

Read the rest here.

And the Oscar goes to...

Iran: My thoughts...

Any fool with a military can unilaterally start a war. But ending one, short of total and absolute destruction of your enemy (i.e. Germany 1945) is much harder. This war is likely to last a long time because Trump has completely misunderstood who he is dealing with. Religious fanatics who are unafraid of death, and who have highly developed plans to run a decentralized war, involving low tech weapons like drones and mines. To win this war, Trump needs to break the regime's willingness to fight and humiliate them on a level that leaves no doubt who won. For Iran to win, all they need to do is endure, and continue to inflict pain, primarily economic but also some military, until the American people have had enough of a war that is already deeply unpopular. The US is further hamstrung by poor planning and a reluctance to go "all in" by invading with ground forces. Additionally there is a finite supply of ordinance and high tech munitions which cannot be replaced either quickly or cheaply and which we are burning through at an alarming rate. (A fact that both China and Russia are paying very close attention to.) As of right now, I'd be a little surprised if this war ends before the November mid-term elections because the Iranians have zero interest in ending hostilities before then.

Doug Wilson Explains the Future American Christian Theocracy

Pete Hegseth's pastor and mentor says the United States should ban public Masses, Marian processions, and Corpus Christi devotions. Hegseth invited the anti-Catholic preacher to lead a prayer service at the Pentagon on February 14.

From here.

Video here.

The Good Old Days

Discontent fueled the 2025 New York City mayoral election and Zohran Mamdani’s victory. A common theme echoed across the five boroughs: New York is a hard place to live. “We are overwhelmed by housing costs,” said Santiago, a 69-year-old retiree, outside a Mamdani rally. Those opposed to Mamdani had their own complaints. María Moreno, a first-time voter from the Bronx who supported Andrew Cuomo, lamented, “Now everything’s dirty, and our neighborhood does not feel safe.”

Today’s voters have legitimate grievances. The city’s housing costs, quality-of-life issues, and perceptions of disorder weigh heavily on residents’ minds. But it’s important to keep things in perspective. Different voters may romanticize different eras, but many seem to share a sense that if they could travel back far enough in time, they’d find a New York that was once clean, safe, and affordable. When Americans were polled in 2023, almost 20 percent said that it was easier to “have a thriving and fulfilling life” hundreds of years ago. Across the country, as one writer put it, people are engaged in an “endless debate around whether the pre-industrial past was clearly better than what we have now.” In fact, Mamdani’s politics are grounded in an ideology that first arose from the frustrations of the early industrial era.

If Americans could go back in time to preindustrial New York City, however, they’d likely be horrified and possibly traumatized. Despite today’s real challenges, most New Yorkers would not trade places with their predecessors.

Long before the rise of factories and industry, New York City was a bustling port, founded by the Dutch as New Amsterdam in order to trade furs in the early seventeenth century. As early as 1650, local authorities enacted an ordinance against animals roaming the streets to protect local infrastructure—but to no avail. Then, in 1657, according to the Dutch scholar Jaap Harskamp:

New Amsterdam’s council attempted to ban the common practice of throwing rubbish, ashes, oyster-shells or dead animals in the street and leave the filth there to be consumed by droves of pigs on the loose. When the English took over the colony from the Dutch, pigs and goats stayed put. . . . Pollution persisted. The streets of Manhattan were a stinking mass. Inhabitants hurled carcasses and the contents of loaded chamber pots into the street and rivers. Runoff from tanneries where skins were turned into leather flowed into the waters that supplied the shallow wells. The (salty) natural springs and ponds in the region became contaminated with animal and human waste. For some considerable time, access to clean water remained an urgent problem for the city. . . . The penetrating smell of decomposing flesh was everywhere.

Into the early twentieth century, urban living in the United States felt surprisingly rural and agrarian, with an omnipresent reek to match. As late as the mid-nineteenth century, pigs roamed freely through New York City streets, acting as scavengers, and nearly every household maintained a vegetable garden, often fertilized with animal manure.

Indoor air quality was no better. A drawing from Mary L. Booth’s History of the City of New York depicts a seventeenth-century New Amsterdam home with smoke from the fireplace swirling through the room. Indoor air pollution remains a serious problem today in the poorest parts of the world, as smoke from hearths can cause cancer and acute respiratory infections that often prove deadly in children. One preindustrial writer railed against the “pernicious smoke [from fireplaces] superinducing a sooty Crust or furr upon all that it lights, spoyling the moveables, tarnishing the Plate, Gildings and Furniture, and Corroding the very Iron-bars and hardest stone with those piercing and acrimonious Spirits which accompany its Sulphur.”

Read the rest here.

The Making of a Forever War in Iran

President Donald Trump has plunged the United States into an open-ended war with Iran, lacking clearly defined and achievable objectives, a discernible endgame, or a viable exit plan. This is a war of choice—Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, and the White House is now scrambling to devise a strategy for a war already underway and proving more difficult than anticipated.

The war will likely escalate as Iran digs in and hawkish voices push Trump toward maximalist—and largely unachievable—aims. By setting this crisis in motion, the Trump administration is repeating the same failures that have long defined US Middle East policy. Absent a course correction, the United States is on the path to another forever war.

Trump’s ostensible justifications for this war have shifted repeatedly, as have the stated objectives.

Prior to the initiation of Operation Epic Fury, the stated casus belli for military action provided by the Trump administration was fluid and contradictory. They oscillated between targeting Iran’s nuclear program (which Trump insisted he had destroyed last year during Operation Midnight Hammer), destroying its ballistic missile program, and liberating the Iranian people. Despite polling showing that the vast majority of Americans opposed and still oppose such a war, Trump proceeded undeterred.

The stated rationales have been no less fluid and contradictory since the war began. When announcing the war, Trump claimed Iran posed an “imminent threat” to the United States and openly embraced regime-change in Tehran as his objective, urging the Iranian people to “take back” their country. Since then, the Trump administration initially walked back its intentions, rhetorically distancing itself from regime-change—even after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—but recently claimed Trump needed to be personally involved in selecting Iran’s next leader.

Read the rest here.

DOJ seeks tighter grasp on state bar ethics probes

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is turning its focus to state bar associations in its quest to clamp down on the weaponization of the justice system. 

As DOJ lawyers face piling complaints, the government is seeking greater control over the ethics probes that can result in disciplinary actions including disbarment.  

It has prompted a firestorm of questions about the agency’s bid for a tighter grasp on the consequential investigations. 

“It is a DOJ power grab,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics scholar at New York University School of Law. 

In a notice posted online in the Federal Register, the Justice Department proposed a new regulation that would let it intervene in state bars’ disciplinary investigations, including with the authority to review any allegations against DOJ lawyers first.  

It would amount to a request for state bar authorities to suspend their probes until Attorney General Pam Bondi completes her own, though DOJ itself could not force the state bars to halt their reviews. DOJ declined to comment on the matter Thursday.   

Such investigations can eventually lead to disbarment, but the process can take years to complete.    

The Justice Department casts the proposed rule as an extension of President Trump’s day-one directive to end perceived weaponization of the federal government.  

The notice suggests that “political activists” have used bar complaints and probes to target DOJ lawyers, and that state bars’ willingness to investigate those complaints are “troubling.” Trump’s “broad pronouncements” necessitate a review of how Bondi manages and disciplines DOJ lawyers, it says. 

“This unprecedented weaponization of the State bar complaint process risks chilling the zealous advocacy by Department attorneys on behalf of the United States, its agencies, and its officers,” read DOJ’s submitted overview of the proposed rule. “That chilling effect, in turn, would interfere with the broad statutory authority of the Attorney General to manage and supervise Department attorneys.” 

Since Trump’s return to the White House, several of his top Justice Department officials have faced such complaints from watchdog groups, including Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, the former No. 3 DOJ official who is now a federal appellate judge. Rank-and-file prosecutors have also faced complaints.  

Read the rest here.

The UK is a Warning to the Rest of the World

HT Blog reader Kurt.

I had never heard of this guy before but found the arguments presented to be cogent and well backed by sources and statistics. 

Yes, it's a 'War of Choice,' and a Bad One

"The war on Iran is not a war of choice," huffs New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin, who since President Donald Trump launched massive airstrikes on the Islamic Republic last week has had it up here with the "Democrats and their media handmaidens" describing the conflict as anything other than strictly defensive (leave aside for the moment the high-profile conservative critics of the war).

Goodwin's umbrage is widespread among those supporting the war as not only justified but initiated just in the nick of time. Eschewing any defensible definition of imminent, the Harvard-educated Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) avers "the president was right to act" because "Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.) echoes those thoughts, announcing, "The United States has been in a forever war with Iran since the late 1970s" and thanking Trump for "taking decisive action to defend America from the Iranian terroristic regime."

These are ridiculous, nonsensical formulations—especially the notion that Iran was mere hours or days away from turning the American homeland into a nuked-over parking lot. Even President Donald Trump declared last June that "Iran's Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated—and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News." Similarly, a Defense Intelligence Agency report from last year concluded Iran wouldn't have missiles capable of reaching America until 2035. Recall also that U.S. officials were in active negotiations with Iran and that administration officials "told congressional staff in private briefings…that U.S. intelligence did not suggest Iran was preparing to launch a preemptive strike against the U.S."

So prior to last Saturday, Iran didn't have nuclear weapons, was years away from possessing missiles that could reach the United States, and wasn't about to launch a sneak attack. Such basic facts completely undercut the whole idea that the president needed to act immediately and, not uncoincidentally, without any sort of congressional authorization.

Read the rest here.

In the News 03/06/26

Trump says no deal with Iran to end war without ‘unconditional surrender’

U.S. crude oil tops $90 per barrel

Withheld Epstein files with accusations against Trump released 

Miami Republicans, university rocked by report of racist group chat

GOP anxieties rise in Texas after Talarico victory

Noem’s answer on ‘sexual relations’ with Lewandowski was ‘final straw’ for Trump

Massive war price tag could be a problem

Trump hints U.S. will turn to Cuba after Iran

The Implications of the Convert Surge in American Orthodoxy

Medical Associations Trusted Belief Over Science on Youth Gender Care

American advocates for youth gender medicine have insisted for years that overwhelming evidence favors providing gender dysphoric youth with puberty blockers, hormones and, in the case of biological females, surgery to remove their breasts.

It didn’t matter that the number of kids showing up at gender clinics had soared and that they were more likely to have complex mental health conditions than those who had come to clinics in years earlier, complicating diagnosis. Advocates and health care organizations just dug in. As a billboard truck used by the L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group GLAAD proclaimed in 2023, “The science is settled.” The Human Rights Campaign says on its website that “the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary youth and adults is clear.” Elsewhere, these and other groups, like the American Civil Liberties Union, referred to these treatments as “medically necessary,” “lifesaving” and “evidence-based.”

The reason these advocates were able to make such strong statements is that for years, the most important professional medical and mental health organizations in the country had been singing a similar tune: “The science” was supposedly codified in documents published by these organizations. As GLAAD puts it on its website, “Every major medical association supports health care for transgender people and youth as safe and lifesaving.”

But something confounding has happened in the last few weeks: Cracks have appeared in the supposed wall of consensus.

After expressing concerns about the evidence base in 2024, on Feb. 3, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons became the first major American medical group to publicly question youth gender medicine since its widespread adoption. The organization published a nine-page “position statement” advising its members against any gender-related surgeries before age 19 and noting that “there are currently no validated methods” for determining whether youth gender dysphoria will resolve without medical treatment. (The document also acknowledged a similar level of uncertainty surrounding blockers and hormones, though that’s less directly relevant to the practice of plastic surgeons.)

The next day, the American Medical Association — which has long approved of such procedures — announced that “in the absence of clear evidence, the A.M.A. agrees with A.S.P.S. that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood.”

These statements were released days after a woman named Fox Varian became the first person to win a malpractice case after undergoing gender transition care and later regretting it. Ms. Varian and her lawyer argued that her psychologist and plastic surgeon in suburban New York, despite her serious mental health problems and apparent ambivalence over her transgender identity, failed to safeguard her by going forward with a double mastectomy when she was 16. (Many gender medicine practitioners and advocates believe that to carefully scrutinize or even explore claims of a transgender identity is to engage in de facto conversion therapy.) The jury’s $2 million award will most likely give pause to hospitals and clinics that continue to provide these treatments without substantial guardrails.

Read the rest here.

Draw the Line Now Against a Trump Election Takeover

“Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting,” reports the Washington Post. The executive order would decree various changes to election law that Trump has been conspicuously unable to convince Congress to enact. These could include a ban on no-excuse mail voting, “requiring voters to register anew for the 2026 midterms with proof of citizenship,” and giving various federal agencies answerable to the president “a role in identifying ineligible voters.”

It won’t work. Measures of this sort, assuming there is no other problem with them, have to be enacted by Congress using its Article I, Section 4, powers. Under our constitutional order, changes to election law cannot be imposed on states by executive whim, whether or not some supposed national-security rationale is proffered. 

Per the Post’s reporting, the draft executive order is being pushed by some eccentric characters who have previously promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that have been uniformly rejected by courts and disproved by impartial investigation. In most administrations, such conspiracry theories wouldn’t get an audience at all; however, Trump is an obvious exception, as one of the nation’s leading promoters of election falsehoods and as one who has hired bitter-end “Stop the Steal” officials to fill key jobs relating to election policy. He has also repeatedly floated the idea of attempting at least a partial election takeover without going through Congress. 

To paraphrase a high official of this administration: We can do this the easy way or the hard way. 

Read the rest here.

Hours & Primatial Divine Liturgy, Sunday of Orthodoxy, Sunday, 2026

Vigil, Sunday of Orthodoxy, 2026

Normal blogging will resume sometime in the next couple of days. Despite my efforts to shut out the news over the last week, some has gotten through and obviously the world did not stop turning out of respect for the first week of Lent.

Matins, St. Raphael of Brooklyn

Great Compline with Canon of St. Andrew for Clean Thursday, 2026

Hours, Typica, Presanctified Liturgy, for Clean Wednesday 2026

Nocturns, Matins, First Hour, Clean Tuesday 2026

Great Compline with Canon of St. Andrew for Clean Monday

Supreme Court Strikes Down Most of Trump's Tariffs

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs on Friday, handing him a significant loss on an issue crucial to his economic agenda.

The 6-3 decision centers on tariffs imposed under an emergency powers law, including the sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs he levied on nearly every other country.

It’s the first major piece of Trump’s broad agenda to come squarely before the nation’s highest court, which he helped shape with the appointments of three conservative jurists in his first term.

The majority found that the Constitution “very clearly” gives Congress the power to impose taxes, which include tariffs. “The Framers did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.

Read the rest here.

See also: 

The Supreme Court Got It Right on IEEPA—But Don’t Pop the Champagne Yet

What the SCOTUS Tariff Decision Means for Fiscal Policy in Four Charts

Trump’s made tariffs central to his presidency. Chaos may come next

Catholic Schism Likely as SSPX Confirms Episcopal Consecrations without Papal Permission

The announcement

Latin Mass supporters say SSPX controversy has ‘thrown a hand grenade’ into TLM debate

Politically Motivated Killers: 51 Years of Terrorist Murders on US Soil, 1975–2025

This is a longish but good read.

Poll: Canadians View the US as a Threat to World Peace

OTTAWA — It’s the world’s most awkward breakup.

More than a year after U.S. President Donald Trump casually joked about absorbing Canada and repeatedly threatened debilitating tariffs on its goods, many Canadians are convinced their former pals to the south have lost the plot.

New results from The POLITICO Poll suggest a lasting chill has settled over the world’s former bosom buddies. Americans are rosy as ever about their northern neighbors, but Canadians don’t share the love.

Their message to America: It’s not us, it’s you.

Canadians don’t see Trump’s America as merely an annoyance, the survey found. They consider the superpower next door the world’s greatest threat to peacetime.

The POLITICO Poll — in partnership with U.K. polling firm Public First — finds Canadians increasingly view the United States as a source of global volatility instead of as a stabilizing ally.

In survey question after survey question, Canadians say the U.S. no longer reflects their values, is more likely to provoke conflict than to prevent it and, as a result, is pushing Canada to consider closer ties with other global powers — including overtures to China that would have seemed unthinkable only a couple of years ago.

Read the rest here.

The Corruption of the Legal System

Andrew Wiederhorn lived large. His Oregon estate, on a bluff overlooking downtown Portland, had 10 bedrooms, a 2,000-square-foot pool and an indoor basketball court. Even after he lost the property, he flew on private jets, took luxury vacations and in less than four years spent nearly $700,000 on shopping and jewelry alone.

How did Mr. Wiederhorn get this money? According to the Justice Department, largely through fraud. Mr. Wiederhorn was the chief executive of the fast-food company that owns Johnny Rockets and Fatburger, and according to prosecutors, he stole some $47 million from the business in secret payments disguised as loans. (Mr. Wiederhorn and his legal team denied any wrongdoing.) This wasn’t even the first time Mr. Wiederhorn was accused of a criminal scheme: Two decades earlier, he spent over a year in prison for his role in a plan to steal from a union pension fund.

Mr. Wiederhorn was never convicted for the secret payments; his case never even went to trial. In late 2024, his company donated $100,000 to President Trump’s second inaugural committee. A few months later, the prosecutor on his case was fired by a White House official, and a few months after that, the government dropped the criminal case entirely. Mr. Wiederhorn, who had left his job after being indicted, returned to running the business he allegedly stole from. Shortly after, the company went bankrupt.

Mr. Wiederhorn is one of many defendants helping to forge a new path in American justice, one that takes the rich quite literally beyond the reach of the law. Their corruption threatens our economy and our democracy, and is so widespread and so brazen that it is easy to feel powerless. But we are not. There are legal tools that we can use to stop this corruption without waiting for the Justice Department, or anyone else, to act. We can fight back. But first, we need to understand who we’re fighting.

Consider, for instance, Trevor Milton, who was convicted of defrauding investors in his electric vehicle company. (Among other tricks: A video of his electric semi truck was allegedly forged by simply dragging the inoperable vehicle to the top of a hill and then letting it roll down.) Mr. Milton was sentenced to four years in prison. After he gave nearly $2 million to Trump-allied political committees, the president pardoned him. This meant that, among other things, Mr. Milton would not have to pay the $660 million that prosecutors demanded be returned to his defrauded investors.

Read the rest here.

The Decline of Liberal Policing in Britain and its Former Empire

The concept of classical liberal policing (henceforth “liberal policing”) has taken a beating in recent years, nowhere more so than in Britain and its former dominions. When Sir Robert Peel established the London Metropolitan Police in 1829, the flagship of Britain’s modern police forces, he envisioned it as a people’s police. Officers would defend British liberties on behalf of the public, not because the common people were incapable, but because it was more efficient to delegate the task to full-time professionals. To reduce undue political influence, officers swore an oath of allegiance to the Crown and to the law, not to the government of the day. They were unarmed and dressed in blue, as opposed to military scarlet, to emphasize their civilian status. The liberal image of British “bobbies,” as they were affectionately nicknamed, was immortalized in the television show Dixon of Dock Green (1955–1976). The main character, Police Constable George Dixon, lived among the community he served and upheld the law through routine foot patrols. His knack for subduing wrongdoers through words of wisdom meant that he rarely used violence.

Even as this television show was being aired, however, British police forces were discarding the liberal policing model. Constables have become increasingly militarized, politicized, and distant from the citizens they are supposed to serve. Nowadays, they appear more likely to violate civil liberties than to safeguard them. Two examples will suffice to show this fact. In 2002, the police arrested Harry Hammond, a British evangelical Christian, for exercising his right to protest. Hammond held up a placard in public criticizing homosexuality. When offended hecklers began verbally and physically harassing Hammond, the police were called. In the old days, they would have protected Hammond because freedom of speech is a central pillar of British justice. Instead, an officer arrested Hammond for hate speech. Even influential figures find themselves targeted. In September 2025, counter-terrorism police detained George Galloway and his wife. Galloway is a former member of parliament who leads the far-left Workers Party of Britain. Many of Galloway’s political opinions are anathema to liberalism. Nevertheless, he has a right to freedom of speech, and he is a brave critic of British imperialism. Counter terrorism officers informed Galloway and his wife that they were being detained without charge and that they had no right to silence. The elderly couple were grilled for several hours about their views on Palestine, Russia, China, and other areas of the world. Their devices and documents were confiscated. Galloway, who is in his seventies, says the stress of the ordeal has left him with heart problems.

How could the British police have degenerated so quickly from Dixon of Dock Green into an overbearing state gendarmerie? This article argues that there was always an illiberal streak in Peel’s model of policing. Like many British liberals, Peel supported the British Empire, which used repression to keep subject peoples in check. From the outset, this concession to imperialism left the door open to police authoritarianism. This threshold was crossed irrevocably in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as colonialism reached its apex and the First World War militarized the country. This tendency compromised the British police by the 1920s, though it preserved some liberal aspects until the 1960s, and one could find a liberal-minded remnant well into the early 2000s.

Read the rest here.

In the News 02-15-2026

Noem boasts of Trump administration ensuring ‘we have the right people voting’ ahead of midterms

Grand juries take on growing importance amid Trump’s legal retribution campaign

In South Texas, the GOP immigration hard line is now political kryptonite

Top British and German military chiefs press ‘moral’ case for rearmament

European allies ‘frustrated’ by UK defense paralysis 

122 Years Ago Today "Remember the Maine!"

Alexei Navalny was killed by Russia with frog toxin, 5 European governments say

Trump’s Trade Policy Is Teaching Partners Washington Can’t Be Trusted

Prayers please...

Fr.. Z's mother has reposed. In your mercy please for the repose of her soul. Having recently experienced the same loss, I extend my deepest sympathies and prayers.

Memory eternal!

How Virginia's top court might decide Democrats' gerrymandering fate

Virginia Democrats are moving forward with plans to gerrymander their way to four more congressional seats — but they need help from the state’s top court.

After a lower court blocked Democrats’ efforts to amend the state Constitution and redraw federal congressional lines ahead of this fall’s midterm elections, the Virginia Court of Appeals requested the Virginia Supreme Court weigh in.

That puts the fate of the map — and potentially congressional control after the 2026 midterms — in the hands of a group of justices that observers say can be hard to predict.

Political and legal experts in Virginia agree the state Supreme Court is not overtly ideological, with many describing it as “small-c conservative,” leaning heavily on tradition and precedent rather than handing down ideologically right-wing rulings. And many observers say the court is wary of wading too heavily into political fights. But this time, it’s unavoidable.

“It’s kind of a state Supreme Court tradition to stay away from political matters whenever they can. They like to leave the legislating to the legislature. So this is going to be a really interesting test of that tradition,” said Carolyn Fiddler of the Democratic Attorneys General Association, who attended William & Mary Law School in Virginia and worked in state politics.

Read the rest here.

Baseball's Salary Wars Are About to Go Nuclear

Kyle Tucker

THERE IS A group of fans who are angry at baseball. There are a lot of them, and they do not exist only on social media. They are inside of group chats that talk about how much money the Los Angeles Dodgers are spending after winning the past two World Series, and they are in cities big and small that look at the Dodgers with envy masked by eye rolls and curses, and they might just want to devote more time to the game -- maybe they love the pitch clock or Shohei Ohtani or Aaron Judge or the in-person vibe or any number of things about the game today worth loving -- but they're not sure the whole thing is fair.

Owners are angry, too. Their franchise valuations aren't growing as quickly as their billionaire peers' in other sports, and they blame the system that governs Major League Baseball. They don't like it. Nearly every owner believes MLB needs a salary cap. Its presence, owners say, immediately would juice franchise values, with the labor cost essentially fixed and no more chasing Dodgers teams spending $500 million annually on players. At the same time, they say, it would provide a pathway to competitive balance, which they believe is entirely out of whack. They think a salary cap will fix everything, even if it means jeopardizing the 2027 season. "They are ready to burn the f---ing house down," one high-ranking team official said.

Read the rest here.

HT: BW

What Trump Is the Best at, Hands Down

President Trump is unrivaled in American history in one respect: None of his predecessors ever cashed in on the presidency as he has.

The Teapot Dome scandal under Warren Harding? Richard Nixon’s slush funds during Watergate? Those seem like junior high school by comparison with the present culture of corruption.

The fire hose of disclosures has been overwhelming. A Times editorial estimated conservatively that the Trump family has made more than $1.4 billion in documented gains by exploiting the second term of his presidency. (Others offer higher figures.)

And all that pales beside the latest bombshell: a $500 million secret deal backed by a government leader in the United Arab Emirates, just four days before Trump was inaugurated for his second term.

Here’s what we know.

The Wall Street Journal broke the story, reporting that on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, the Emiratis purchased 49 percent of a Trump family cryptocurrency company for $500 million. It’s difficult to see why anybody would pay so much for a fledgling company — unless the point was to enrich the Trumps.

Most of the money in effect went to the Trump family, but some found its way to the family of Steve Witkoff, a co-owner of the venture. Trump had selected Witkoff to become the United States’ special envoy to the Middle East.

Read the rest here.