Month: August 2026
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Career Soldiers Want Out
When the people who have served longest start asking to leave on moral grounds, one may well ask: what are they seeing that is causing this? On Wednesday, MS NOW reported a surge in conscientious objector applications in the American military, six months into the Iran war. The director of the Center on Conscience and…
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Trump Kennedy Center Demolition?
In other words: give him his marble, or lose the building. Monday, Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge that the Kennedy Center may have to be torn down, making their argument in a brief defending Donald Trump’s name on the building. In Beatty versus Trump, Congresswoman Joyce Beatty is suing to stop the board…
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“Integrated Military” Ballroom
Donald Trump appears to be building against a court’s schedule. His term ends at noon on January 20, 2029. One may well watch the construction and wonder: which deadline does he think is real? The president now calls his $400 million ballroom a “military/ballroom complex.” On Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts allowed construction of the…
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Trump, Iran, $4.10 Gas
That sounds nothing like complete control. On Thursday, AAA put the national average price of gasoline at $4.10 a gallon. They say that is the highest figure they have recorded for that date. One year ago the average was $3.13. Crude oil is currently nearly $80 a barrel. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz to…
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Trump Haitian Arrests
One may well ask, what kind of dignity and respect are we exhibiting as a quarter of this city’s residents now fear to move about? On Wednesday, the mayor of Springfield, Ohio confirmed that federal agents are arresting Haitian immigrants in his city. Roughly 15,000 Haitians live in Springfield — about a quarter of the…
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Election “Fraud” Monitors
Come November, we may have arrived at that place. On Monday, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced the Justice Department will send approximately one thousand election monitors into polling places for the November midterms. She said the department is selecting jurisdictions where it believes voter fraud exists, promising “prosecutions in the pipeline” and claiming that…
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ICE Shock Gloves
New tech being deployed to make the compliance state more efficient. What could go wrong? On August 10, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to spend up to twenty million dollars on electric shock gloves for ICE officers. The device, called the Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter or G.L.O.V.E., is made by Compliant Technologies…
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Trump vs Nursing Home Voters
The administration is systematically making it harder and harder to hold it to account at the ballot box, targeting one vulnerable population after another. On July 20, the Trump administration threw out the federal rules that told nursing homes to help their residents vote. Two million Americans live in long-term care. Since 2020, federal memos…
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Children In Court Alone
Children, detained and alone, facing the government of the United States. This is what deporting the so-called worst of the worst looks like. On Friday, the Trump administration awarded a no-bid $158 million contract for legal services to unaccompanied immigrant children. It went to a group called Our Rescue. Multiple women have sued its founder…
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Building a Permanent Guard in DC
Our national capital has what appears to be a permanent occupying force. One year ago today, armed National Guard troops began patrolling the streets of Washington, DC. Donald Trump declared a crime emergency and moved to take over the city’s police. Courts pared that back but the troops stayed. Today there are 4,600 of them,…
Notes To My Future Self 