Finally?

Has the SCOTUS finally seen enough? Are they regretting they gave Trump near-unlimited immunity? Is someone's personal ox being gored here? But since this decision was on the "shadow docket" no explanation of the decision is forthcoming. While this decision was a rare "good" decision with this SCOTUS, this whole "shadow docket" nonsense should be discontinued. SCOTUS is using this shadow docket to decimate a lot of the norms and standards that have been widely accepted until now, without giving any explanation whatsoever. How can this be acceptable? 

This one is from Robert Reich, on Substack.

Finally, the Supreme Court stops Trump

ROBERT REICH

DEC 23, 2025

Friends,

Some good news to end the year on. The Supreme Court today blocked Trump from sending the National Guard into the Chicago area — finally setting a limit to Trump’s executive power.

The decision was 6 to 3, with Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joining the three liberal justices in a majority. Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas dissented. 

The court said that Trump had “failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” and, presumably, other states. 

Trump had said he needed the troops to protect federal immigration agents at a detention facility.

Existing law allows a president to call on the military if there is a foreign invasion or “danger of a rebellion,” or if the president is unable to execute federal laws with “regular forces.”

Trump’s Justice Department argued that “regular forces” means federal civilian law enforcement, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. And protests in Illinois prevented the president from enforcing immigration laws using ICE officers alone.

But a majority of the court found that the term “regular forces” refers to the nation’s standing military — and the authority to call the National Guard into federal service is meant as a backstop for the Army, Navy and other “regular” military forces.

The court noted that a president’s ability to use the military this way is limited to “exceptional” circumstances. That’s because another federal law, known as the Posse Comitatus Act, sharply restricts the use of the standing military to conduct domestic law enforcement.

Bingo. 

Because the decision came in the form of an unsigned order on the court’s emergency docket, that’s about all we can know of the court’s logic. 

But this is a big deal. 

Trump has won short-term rulings in more than 20 other emergency appeals this year — allowing him to follow through on an array of policies that lower courts had blocked (such as laying off thousands of federal workers, ending programs that had allowed immigrants to remain in the country legally, and terminating research grants and foreign aid). 

Trump’s Justice Department had argued that this case “falls in the heartland of unreviewable presidential discretion.” 

Wrong. The Supreme Court just put up a fence limiting that heartland. And finally a bulwark constraining a president’s power. 

It’s about time.

Original.

Speech? Breakdown?

Here's another one from Thom Hartmann, written after Trump's "Get off my lawn!" moment last week. Trump is a nightmare, but the American people are not going to let this bully, this thieving grifter, destroy their country. Unless they start mowing us all down with machine guns.

Was That a Speech or a Breakdown?

A stark look at the speech that blurred the line between leadership and losing control on the world stage…

Thom Hartmann

Dec 18, 2025

Let me take off my psychotherapist hat and simply speak as a parent, an adult, a businessman, a citizen, and a human being. 

There is something deeply and fundamentally wrong with Donald Trump, 

Last night’s speech demonstrated it. He didn’t need to trash-talk Joe Biden, or try to claim that the country was “dead” when he came into office, or exaggerate his accomplishments, or lie about the state of things. None of that was necessary.

He didn’t need to put deprecating comments under the pictures of prior presidents in the White House, or replace Joe Biden’s picture with a autopen. 

These are the kind of things junior high school boys do. And not even most junior high school boys; just the really dysfunctional ones. The bullies. The ones who are desperate to be part of the in crowd, but always on the outside looking in. The ones no one wants as friends.

This man is sick. And he’s inflicting his sickness on our country. And he’s surrounded himself with sick people, or at least with people willing to tolerate his mental, emotional, and spiritual sickness. 

As well as people who share his sickness: there’s also clearly something wrong with man-children like Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, and Kash Patel.

With these men, it goes beyond the normal sellout-type of person willing to do anything for wealth and power, the kind of behavior we see in people like Pam Bondi or the administration members who’ll swear that the 2020 election was stolen. 

There’s a deep cruelty combined with a pathological insecurity and a level of hate and intolerance for others that’s shocking. Anybody who’s ever played any sort of role in leadership is looking at this administration aghast. The leaders of the rest of the rest of the world must be in shock.

There’s a deep sickness at the head of this government. The childishness. The violence. The bloodlust that we see off the coast of Venezuela. The willingness to sanction rape and murder and land grabs in Ukraine. The enthusiasm to bring our country to the brink of war. Plastering gold-painted geegaws all over in the White House.

And then last night Trump goes off for 20 minutes quite literally shouting at the country like an old man yelling at kids on his lawn. Ranting about Black Somalis. Bragging about nonexistent victories and peace deals. Just making shit up.

No president of the United States has ever behaved this way. Probably no governor or mayor has ever gotten away with this kind of psychopathology and obscene behavior. 

It’s embarrassing. It’s humiliating America. 

It’s setting a terrible example for our young people. Children who were just entering the early years of public school when Trump first ran based on a racist rant in 2015 are now graduating from high school thinking that this is normal.

That, in and of itself, is a disaster for their and America’s future. 

And now he has an “armada” poised off the coast of Venezuela trying to provoke a war with that nation. 

It’s also becoming increasingly clear that he was right in the middle of it all with Jeffrey Epstein, and is now frantically trying to avoid questions about the teen modeling agency and talent show he owned back in those days. 

He’s gutted America’s principal agencies of soft power, The Voice of America and USAID, strung Ukraine along for almost an entire year as their people get slaughtered, and accepted hundreds of millions of dollars worth of naked bribes from foreign autocrats and American business leaders.

He’s deployed masked, secret police into our cities who are gleefully brutalizing brown-skinned people and anybody who tries to document their hugely unAmerican activity. 

He kowtows before Vladimir Putin and China’s president Xi, and embraces murderous dictators who’ve ordered the killing of an American journalist and routinely cut the heads off of their own people. He tore down the East Wing of the White House in defiance of federal and local law, history, and respect for “The People’s House.”

It’s reached the point where we’re now confronted with a hard truth: this isn’t about left versus right anymore or even politics as usual. It isn’t about tax policy or border policy or whose yard sign we prefer. 

This is now about whether we’re willing to normalize sickness in power. 

Whether we tell ourselves comforting stories because confronting the actual reality in front of us is frightening. 

Whether we allow cruelty, lying, and instability to become the cultural baseline simply because calling it out makes dinner conversations awkward or costs us friends or clicks or donors.

Turning points in history don’t usually announce themselves with marching bands. They creep in while decent people look away, hoping the fever will break on its own. 

But it never does. Fevers break only when the body fights back. Democracies survive only when citizens decide that character still matters, that truth still matters, that children deserve better examples than tantrums and threats and gold-plated vulgarity. 

Silence is not neutrality: It’s consent.

If you’re reading this, you still have agency. Use it. Talk to your neighbors. Support journalists and organizations willing to tell the truth. Show up, vote, organize, refuse to laugh it off, refuse to excuse it, refuse to become numb.

Demand leaders who are adults, not bullies. Who are steady, not sick. Who see power as a responsibility, not a toy. 

This ends when we decide it ends. When we stop treating pathology as entertainment and cruelty as strength. When we remember that democracy is not self-executing; it requires citizens who are awake, engaged, and unwilling to surrender their moral compass for the illusion of order. 

We don’t need to be perfect. We just need to be brave enough to say: this is wrong, and we will not accept it.

The future is watching us right now, and one day our children will ask what we did when it mattered. Let’s make sure we have an answer we can live with.

Original.

Paul Mrocka

US Army veteran and businessman Paul Mrocka wrote this one below. It breaks my heart, and it makes me angry at the same time. The end of Trump is coming.

The Smell of Decay Comes Before the Collapse

Paul Mrocka

I have spent a lot of time thinking about how this country has responded to tragedy. Not just reading about it, but living long enough to see it happen more than once. When America has been at its best, it was never because a president told us who to hate. It was because a president reminded us who we were.

During the Great Depression, people lost everything. Jobs, homes, dignity. Franklin Roosevelt did not point fingers at neighbors or political enemies. He spoke to the entire country like adults who were scared but capable. He calmed people. He told them the truth. He reminded them that we would get through it together. People disagreed with him, loudly, but they trusted each other, and they trusted the system.

After Pearl Harbor, America was wounded and furious. Roosevelt did not turn that rage inward. He defined the enemy clearly and honestly. Congress stood together. Americans stood together. We rationed. We served. We sacrificed. We did not tear each other apart.

When Abraham Lincoln stood at his second inauguration, the country was soaked in blood. Brother had already fought brother. And still, Lincoln spoke of healing. With malice toward none. With charity for all. He did not gloat. He did not humiliate. He tried to stitch the country back together, even knowing it might cost him his life.

After September 11, I remember the quiet. I remember the fear. I remember watching President Bush stand on the rubble and say just enough. No politics. No rage turned inward. Even then, he warned us not to turn on Muslim Americans who had nothing to do with the attacks. For a moment, we remembered that we were one people.

I am a veteran. I served this country during the Cold War. I stood watch against the Soviet Union, a real enemy with real consequences. We did not do that for a man or a party. We did it for the Constitution. For the idea that no one person stands above the law. For the belief that democracy is fragile and must be protected even when it is inconvenient.

That is why what I see today breaks my heart.

Donald Trump has not tried to unite this country in moments of stress. He has done the opposite. He continues to use racist language. He insults people openly. He attacks families even after unimaginable tragedy, including going after the Reiner family after their son murdered his parents. That is not leadership. That is cruelty used as a political tool.

He teaches Americans to fear one another. He calls fellow citizens vermin and enemies within. He attacks judges, elections, the press, and anyone who does not swear loyalty to him personally. He does not ask Americans to sacrifice for each other. He asks them to pledge allegiance to him.

And I keep asking myself a question that honestly hurts to even form. What kind of human being supports this?

What kind of person watches masked men pull people off the streets of American cities and calls it strength? What kind of person is comfortable with the military being used against civilians? What kind of person shrugs as food aid is cut to the poorest people in the world by shutting down USAID? What kind of person is fine with threatening to take SNAP benefits away from hungry children?

The hardest part is realizing that this is not some foreign enemy cheering this on. It is Americans. Our neighbors. People who fly the flag and talk about God and patriotism while supporting policies that dehumanize, starve, and terrorize others.

America was once a shining star to the rest of the world. Not because we were perfect, but because we tried. Because we believed human dignity mattered. Because when people looked to us, they saw possibility, not fear.

History shows us where this road leads. After World War II, Germans were forced to walk through the concentration camps and clean them up. Many claimed they knew nothing. I never believed that.

I know this because I was there in Jonestown. I helped with the cleanup. And I can tell you something that never leaves you. You can smell rotting flesh from miles away. It gets into your clothes. Into your lungs. Into your memory. Decades later, it still makes me sick to think about that cult and how ordinary people were pulled into something evil while telling themselves it was fine.

Cults do not begin with mass death. They begin with language. With dehumanization. With loyalty tests. With the belief that cruelty is justified because the people on the receiving end somehow deserve it.

We have seen this playbook before. In Germany. In Italy. In Venezuela. In Russia. Leaders who rise by dividing people always claim they alone can fix things. They always blame internal enemies. They always undermine institutions. And they always leave their countries weaker, poorer, and broken.

I did not serve this country to watch it be ripped apart from the inside. I served because I believed in something bigger than myself. I believed in the Constitution. I believed that power was limited. I believed that Americans could argue fiercely and still recognize each other as human beings. I built a business, employed people, and put my life savings on the line because I believed this country was still worth investing in.

Leadership is not rage. It is not cruelty. It is not humiliating the weak or cheering when families are destroyed. Leadership is steady hands in dangerous times. It is lowering the temperature when people are scared. It reminds us that we belong to each other, whether we agree or not.

So when this hell is finally over, and it will be over, supporters of this administration should not say they did not know. Do not say you could not see it. Do not say you could not smell it.

You always smell rotting flesh long before history writes the obituary, and history will remember who stood silent while the country decayed.

Paul Mrocka

Veteran of the Cold War

Builder, employer, citizen who refuses to stay silent!

Those wondering, I’m in that picture.

Vlad Kunko

When I first saw this name - Volodymyr Vlad Kunko - I was suspicious. I am suspicious about anyone with a Russian name, but after digging around for a bit, I think the guy is legit. Turns out he is Ukrainian and not Russian. You can find him on Facebook.

The worst thing that could happen to Putin.

The endless, slow, Russian grind forward has been turned or halted. In Pokrovsk and Kupiansk the Russian army is in retreat. Ground formerly gained at great cost is being reclaimed as Russia’s ability to maintain war is depleted.

Nineteen months of effort and still, after taking more than 60,000 casualties Russia has failed to take Pokrovsk. After nearly four years and 1.2 million casualties, Putin’s three-day military operation has nothing to show for the money and manpower spent.

Russian aircraft are falling out of the sky from lack of maintenance (Design Bureau parts only available from Ukraine). This week an Antonov-52, among the world’s largest transport aircraft, was filmed snapping in two and crashing to the ground. The fifty-year-old, six engine jet was a long way past it’s acceptable service date. Two fighter pilots of a Sukhoi SU 34 were killed when their ejection seats misfired in a hangar, and they were propelled into the concrete ceiling of the hangar. Poor servicing, tired maintenance staff or sabotage, the loss adds to the increasing failures of the Russian military machine.

The Russian Ruble is worthless on the international markets. One Ruble is worth about 0.01 US Dollars or one cent. In Russia, war economy companies are unable to pay staff. Some are two months behind in wages.

The Russian ‘Shadow fleet’ that is illegally transporting Russian oil is getting sunk in the Black Sea. Ukraine has been careful to strike empty tankers to avoid environmental catastrophes. Under this threat the ships cannot travel to Russian Black Sea ports to load up. Several ships left port only to suffer damage to crucial machinery while at sea. Russia depends on oil sales to maintain its economy. At heavily discounted rates these sales still provide just enough to keep the Russian economy afloat.

Desperate for hard cash Russia is trading gold reserves. As it’s air defences crumble in the west Russia is selling S300 air defence systems to Iran and there are reports of them trading an old Nuclear-powered Submarine to India. It’s car-boot sales at an international level.

Most Russian professional soldiers have died in the past four years. New replacements are pushed into formerly elite units and sent to the front lines to die quickly.

All the Fetal Alcohol Syndrom riff-raff and criminals taken from prisons and promised freedom after six months of service are dead.

The Koreans cheerfully supplied by Kim Jong Un are also dead.

The oil industry is dying. Refineries, storage depots, and pipelines have all been damaged. Russia’s refining capacity has been reduced by 17%. Gasolene and Diesel is in very short supply. Trucks cannot transport food to the cities; people cannot get to work. Trains cannot move towards the front lines as they are constantly derailed. The lights are going out in Moscow as electricity sub-stations and transformers are hit by drones.

Putin’s attempts to test his new Satan 2 nuclear delivery systems failed abysmally as the rockets crashed immediately after launch.

The Baltic became a NATO sea once Finland and Sweden became full members. St. Petersburg can be sealed off at a moment’s notice and little Kaliningrad sits lost and isolated with their supply lines cut from Belarus hoping for relief from god knows where.

$300 Billion in frozen Russian assets are being held in European Banks and the Europeans are figuring out how to manipulate that money to pay for future and present war reparations. That has legal issues, but we can be sure Putin will not get his hands on that money until he withdraws from Ukraine.

So how could it get much worse for Putin?

Trump could die.

Trump is Putin’s only remaining hope to drag some political recovery from this disaster. Even a blind man would see Trump is allied to Putin on the question of Ukraine.

Trump could die. He is obviously in a terrible sate of health. He shows clear signs of dementia and exhaustion. There are marks of intravenous infusion bruises on his hands, not the first place of choice for an IV. It must be hard t0 locate a vein elsewhere, indicating he has serious circulation problems. His grossly swollen ankles are another mark of a failing heart. Rumo
urs of a recent mini-stroke with brain bleeding risk amyloidosis medication are probably true considering his age and the pressure he is under every day. Hence MRI monitoring.

Trump’s FOX approved cabinet survives on fear. The minute he dies, surviving members will either run for the doors or aggressively compete to replace him. Whistleblowers will have a party day; hatreds and recriminations will explode. The MAGA walls will come tumbling down and Putin will have no cards left. Trump’s death would be the final nail in Putin’s coffin.

If Trump were to die, most of the world would take a sigh of relief and hope to start again but Bannon, Stone, Vance, Bondi. Hegseth, Patel, and Flynn (amongst others) only remain free while Trump breaths. Vance would maintain his living shell and present a virtual Trump to the world if it could keep them out of prison and in power.

With the GOP’s fear of Trump removed perhaps the Democrats could find a way to restore political stability but the damage the USA is comparable to the damage to Russia. Their leaders, economies and empires are failing. There is no going back.

If Trump dies Putin will be finished. Finished at home, and finished in Ukraine.

Thom Hartmann

Sometimes, Thom Hartmann is a bit hard to take. I mean, we humans can only ingest so much truth and pain at the same time. But Thom is an amazing historian and writer, and his voice is much respected, at least on the left. As for the right? They are still licking Trump's shoes.

I have Trump Derangement Syndrome and so does much of America and much of the world.

That’s not a confession of mental illness: it’s an indictment of a political era defined by cruelty, division, and the deliberate poisoning of democratic life.

“Trump Derangement Syndrome” is the phrase Donald Trump and his followers love to fling at anyone who dares to object to his behavior.

But the truth is simpler and far more damning: if millions of Americans and people across the globe are reacting with alarm, anger, and outrage, it’s because Trump has spent years earning that reaction.

Trump Derangement Syndrome isn’t a disease of the critics; it’s the predictable response to a leader who thrives on hate.

Just yesterday, after the brutal murder of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, Trump responded not with empathy, not with basic human decency, but with venom. He blamed Reiner’s death on what he called Trump Derangement Syndrome and implied that Reiner’s criticism of him somehow provoked the violence.

That’s a sitting president blaming the victim of murder for his own death because he was a political opponent.

That alone should disqualify any leader from public office; even Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene were horrified. But it fits a long and escalating pattern: Trump has turned cruelty into a governing philosophy that he’s trying to spread all across America.

He goes after the press relentlessly, calling journalists enemies, liars, and traitors. He recently called a woman reporter “piggy” in a public exchange. That isn’t strength: it’s bullying from a man who can’t tolerate scrutiny and knows that undermining the free press is the fastest way to weaken a democracy that might hold him to account.

He attacks Democrats without restraint, calling them vermin, communists, and enemies of the nation. He attacks Republicans who dare to disagree with him, labeling them disloyal, corrupt, or deserving of punishment.

In Trump’s worldview, disagreement is betrayal, dissent is psychological pathology, and loyalty to him personally replaces loyalty to the Constitution.

And he’s made it clear that he believes the machinery of justice should serve his vendettas. Trump openly brags about using the Department of Justice to go after his political enemies. Not criminals: enemies. That’s the language of authoritarianism.

In a democracy, the law restrains power. In Trump’s tyrannical vision, the law is a weapon of power.

Trump’s hate isn’t abstract; it hits real communities with real consequences. Somali Americans were singled out by name, accused of stealing, of not belonging, of being a “problem” population. Immigration enforcement actions followed the rhetoric, and suddenly entire communities live under suspicion. This is collective punishment based on race, religion, and nationality. It’s racism dressed up as policy.

Trump continues to demean Black and brown countries, describing them as undesirable, dangerous, or worthless. He’s revived the same toxic worldview that says some people matter less because of where they come from or the color of their skin. That worldview has always been poison to democracy.

And then there’s the constant mockery of tragedy. After a deadly shooting at Brown University, Trump responded with a shrug and the words “things can happen.” For survivors and grieving families, that wasn’t leadership, it was indifference. It was the sound of a man so consumed by grievance and narcissism that he isn’t capable of speaking to the pain of others.

This is what creates Trump Derangement Syndrome. Not disagreements over tax policy or trade deals, but his daily assault on empathy, truth, and democratic norms.

When a leader models contempt, his followers learn it. When a leader dehumanizes others, society fractures. When a leader tells millions of people that their neighbors are enemies, eventually someone believes him enough to act.

History teaches us this lesson over and over. Democracies don’t usually collapse overnight, they erode. They rot from the inside when leaders convince people that hate is strength, that cruelty is honesty, and that only one man represents the nation and everyone else is suspect.

We’re seeing that erosion in real time today. Trust in institutions is collapsing. Political violence becomes easier to justify. The idea of a shared national identity dissolves into warring tribes.

That is not an accident. It’s the direct result of rhetoric Trump specifically intend to use to divide us against each other.

So, what do we do?

First, we stop accepting the lie embedded in the phrase Trump Derangement Syndrome. Being alarmed by authoritarian behavior is not derangement, it’s citizenship and love of country. It’s moral clarity. It’s the immune response of a democratic society under attack.

Second, we demand leaders who heal rather than inflame. Leaders who speak to our better angels instead of our darkest fears. Leaders who understand that democracy depends on restraint, humility, and respect for human dignity.

Third, we show up. We vote. We organize. We defend the press, the rule of law, and the rights of those targeted by Trump’s hate. Silence is the fuel of authoritarianism; engagement is its enemy.

America doesn’t need or want a strongman. We need and crave a uniter, a president who understands that power is a responsibility, not a license to abuse.

If that means the world continues to suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, so be it. The real moral and political sickness is pretending this is normal.

Democracy survives only if we choose it. Now is the time to choose.