#libraryofcongress — Public Fediverse posts

What To Watch On YouTube Right Now – Part 138

Welcome back my readers, YouTube viewers and all others who followed this series of articles focused on YouTube videos worth watching.

Have you been searching for something fun or interesting to watch on YouTube? Do you feel bored right now and you crave for something to see on the world’s most popular online video destination?

I recommend you check out the following videos I found.

#1 How To Get The Strongest And Most Optimized Spaceship Crew In Starfield – This year, Bethesda launched several important updates to make their 2023 science fiction role-playing game Starfield better and they also offered new DLC for those who crave for new content. One of the more defining aspects of the game is space travel and this includes setting up your own crew for your spaceship and there is impact on its functions and capabilities. If you want to learn how to get the stronger and most optimized crew for your ship, I encourage you watch the video below.

https://youtu.be/vy8iOx7eqVU?si=gn7W1mZxTOQ4SSrd

#2 Mari Iijima And The Defining Song of Macross: Do You Remember Love? – I really love watching the 1984 anime feature film Macross: Do You Remember Love? Apart from the great animation, the spectacle, the memorable characters and the solid storytelling, the movie also has a great soundtrack made to delight the long-time Macross fans. Still, the movie has its very own song performed by none other than Mari Iijima (Minmay) and it is a classic among Macross fans. In the videos below, you will see Mari Iijima perform the song live in a 1980s TV broadcast and the song playing with selected footage of Macross: Do You Remember Love? Enjoy these!

https://youtu.be/OfuW_Wbt73c?si=Q1DE8eJxo4Zk90pc

https://youtu.be/uJBMYV9e1Nc?si=veDGYU4r7s0flQ_H

#3 The Tuna City In Japan Is Changing With Tourism In Mind – If you plan to visit Japan at all, you might want to discover Miura City located in Kanagawa Prefecture. Miura City is famous for its fresh tuna and in recent times there has been a series of changes as several room-only hotels and new trends have sprouted as the locality is finding new ways to turn visitors into overnight guests. This is a place I would like to visit someday if ever I get the opportunity to return to Japan. Watch and learn from the Nippon TV video below.

https://youtu.be/fUPP30fYH78?si=MrC6Dml3IRVe7fcV

#4 Women’s Rights Activist Marries Islamist And Things Went Wrong – Did you notice that there is a gradual rising number of feminists and women’s rights activists who not embrace Islam (wicked and ugly) but also marry Islamists believing that things will be alright and they can just continue their activism. Of course, many of them activists and feminists do not fully understand Islam nor the full content of the Quran. As such, when things go very wrong, they are get into deep trouble. Watch and learn from the video below.

https://youtu.be/bx3YvoyP6cw?si=omxqhyR8CQfpfhYK

#5 Islamists Violate Hindu Women In India And Get Arrested – Let’s be very clear here. Islamists are oriented to conquer others even though they may not be numerous within a locality. Believe it or not, a group of such people who wielded power inside a business violated the Hindu women (plus at least one male employee) with regards to cultural norms and doing things that go against their faith. Even forced religious conversion happened. Watch and learn from the video below.

https://youtu.be/9xjFS-3Vuws?si=xuDIivIonrp9tQux

#6 Meatballs Reaction And Retrospective – When it comes to cinematic comedy, Bill Murray is iconic and his early work in 1979’s Meatballs already involved the late Harold Ramis and the late director Ivan Reitman. That said, there is something about Meatballs – produced for less than $2 million – that helped it achieve tremendous commercial success with ticket sales of $70 million. Remember, three of the creative minds behind the classic Ghostbusters are involved in this old movie and you will see how You, Me and The Movies react to it in the video below. Be aware that as of this writing, there are not too many movie reaction videos about Meatballs on YouTube. Also posted below is an in-depth retrospective about Meatballs by GoodBadFlicks.

https://youtu.be/nhR9xUCvpAI?si=Zh6gjAX0SdIrtSfT

https://youtu.be/D0BS-K3K_vE?si=HtyR_VThLUKv0Wj6

#7 Ashleigh Burton Reacts To The Thin Man – Have you ever heard of The Thin Man? It’s not a UFO reference. It’s the 1934 American pre-Code comedy-mystery movie that was eventually named to the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress having been deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 1997. Apart from its reputation in American film history, The Thin Man also resulted in five sequels. If you want to discover the 1934 movie but you don’t have the time nor resources to watch the movie, watch Ashleigh Burton’s reaction video and see how it impacts her.

https://youtu.be/IJRQXuw–20?si=mSYY7_Eb4EK6reBY

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Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library

After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.

Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.

Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.

What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.

The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.

The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.

This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.

The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.

The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.

When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.

Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.

© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Sources used

• “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
• “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
• “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
• “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
• “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
• “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
• Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
• “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
• “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
• “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
• “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
• Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
• Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
• Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
• Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
• Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
• “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
• “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
• “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
• Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
• Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
• “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
• “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
• “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
• “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
• Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
• “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
•  “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
• “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
• “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
• “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.

#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons

The Roberts court broadly expanded Trump’s power in 2025, with these key exceptions – Los Angeles Times

Politics

The Supreme Court broadly expanded Trump’s power in 2025, with key exceptions

By David G. Savage, Staff Writer Follow. Jan. 1, 2026 3 AM PT

• For much of the year, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the five other conservatives were in the majority ruling for Trump.
• The court has been criticized for handing down temporary unsigned orders with little or no explanation.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ended the first year of President Trump’s second term with a record of rulings that gave him much broader power to control the federal government.

In a series of fast-track decisions, the justices granted emergency appeals and set aside rulings from district judges who blocked Trump’s orders from taking effect.

With the court’s approval, the administration dismissed thousands of federal employees, cut funding for education and health research grants, dismantled the agency that funds foreign aid and cleared the way for the U.S. military to reject transgender troops.

But the court also put two important checks on the president’s power.

In April, the court twice ruled — including in a post-midnight order — that the Trump administration could not secretly whisk immigrants out of the country without giving them a hearing before a judge.

Upon taking office, Trump claimed migrants who were alleged to belong to “foreign terrorist” gangs could be arrested as “enemy aliens” and flown secretly to a prison in El Salvador.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2025-12-23/supreme-court-trump-national-guard-chicago – See more at the above link.

Politics

Supreme Court rules against Trump, bars National Guard deployment in Chicago, Dec. 23, 2025

Roberts and the court blocked such secret deportations and said the 5th Amendment entitles immigrants, like citizens, a right to “due process of law.” Many of the arrested men had no criminal records and said they never belonged to a criminal gang.
Those who face deportation “are entitled to notice and opportunity to challenge their removal,” the justices said in Trump vs. J.G.G.

They also required the government to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been wrongly deported to El Salvador. He is now back in Maryland with his wife, but may face further criminal charges or efforts to deport him.

And last week, Roberts and the court barred Trump from deploying the National Guard in Chicago to enforce the immigration laws.

Trump had claimed he had the power to defy state governors and deploy the Guard troops in Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., Chicago and other Democratic-led states and cities.

The Supreme Court disagreed over dissents from conservative Justices Samuel A. Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Roberts court broadly expanded Trump’s power in 2025, with these key exceptions – Los Angeles Times

5 Startling Truths Behind the U.S. Showdown with Venezuela – A DWD Special Report

5 Startling Truths Behind the U.S. Showdown with Venezuela

Introduction: Beyond the Headlines

The news cycle is saturated with reports of escalating tensions between the United States and Venezuela. A significant U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean, officially dubbed “Operation Southern Spear,” is underway, featuring warships, advanced aircraft, and thousands of troops. President Trump has hinted that the days of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian regime are numbered, while Caracas has denounced the American presence as a prelude to an illegal intervention.

Behind the headlines of tough talk and naval movements, however, a far more complex and consequential story is unfolding. This is not just another geopolitical standoff. It is a flashpoint testing the very boundaries of international law, redefining the nature of modern conflict, and signaling what may be a dramatic and assertive shift in American foreign policy for years to come.

This confrontation is therefore a crucible for the future of warfare, one where legal definitions are being rewritten on the fly to justify lethal force, where sovereign airspace is treated as a bargaining chip, and where a massive military deployment becomes a high-stakes test of geopolitical will. To understand what is truly at stake, one must look beyond the immediate conflict and examine the startling truths that define this high-stakes confrontation.

Special Editor’s Note: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/bf1cb435-c733-4fd9-8c75-e30386b55563 takes you to my shared NotebookLLM on this matter and post. There you will find audio and video overviews; notebook notes; a mindmap; reports; flashcards; and, a quiz. I hope that helps you dig deeper into this major issue for America and Americans. –DrWeb

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1. An Alleged “Kill Them All” Order Pushes Legal and Moral Boundaries

At the heart of the escalating military action is a deeply disturbing allegation. Reporting from Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse details a verbal directive allegedly given by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a September strike on a suspected drug boat. According to two individuals with direct knowledge of the operation, the order was stark: “kill everybody.”

This directive reportedly led to a second strike after the initial attack. A live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to wreckage in the water; the special operations commander, to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, is said to have ordered a follow-on strike that “blew apart” the two men.

The legal and moral gravity of such an order is immense, a point articulated with startling clarity in an impassioned op-ed on the social platform Reddit by a respected, retired senior naval officer known as ‘SWO6’. Under the Geneva Conventions and the Law of Armed Conflict, attacking defenseless survivors is explicitly forbidden. Shipwrecked individuals are considered hors de combat—literally “out of the fight”—and must be treated as noncombatants. An order to show “no quarter,” or take no prisoners, has been prohibited for over a century. A former military lawyer, Todd Huntley, underscored this point:

“Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight ‘would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.’”

This principle is not an abstract concept. A key historical precedent is the Peleus trial of 1944, where the captain of a German U-boat was convicted of war crimes for ordering his crew to fire on the survivors of a sunken Greek merchant ship. The charges were specifically for attacking the survivors, not for sinking the ship itself, establishing a clear red line that has been upheld in international tribunals ever since.

The seriousness of the current allegations is not lost on Washington. The report has prompted bipartisan calls for “vigorous oversight” from the Senate Armed Services Committee, signaling that a full accounting of the September strike and the orders behind it will be sought at the highest levels.

2. It’s Not a “War on Drugs”—It’s a War on “Narco-Terrorists,” and the Distinction Matters

A critical element of the Trump administration’s strategy has been to officially reframe the conflict. The Maduro-tied Cartel de los Soles has been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), a move that fundamentally changes the legal and operational landscape.

Traditionally, international law views maritime drug interdiction not as combat, but as a law enforcement activity regulated by international human rights law. According to legal analysis on maritime security, this framework dictates that the use of deadly force is an absolute last resort, permissible only in cases of armed resistance or an imminent threat to life.

By relabeling the target from “criminal” to “terrorist,” the administration is shifting the legal paradigm from law enforcement to armed conflict. The FTO designation is not merely semantic; the Wikipedia entry on the administration’s foreign policy notes the designation is intended as a way to unlock additional powers to combat them, including military force. This move provides a legal justification for kinetic military strikes that would otherwise be considered illegal under the framework of maritime law enforcement. However, this FTO designation is disputed by experts who argue the gangs are motivated by money, not political ideology.

3. The Standoff is a “Giant Game of Chicken” with 15% of the Navy’s Deployed Fleet

Jeremy McDermott, co-director of the organized crime analysis group Insight Crime, has captured the core dynamic of the U.S.-Venezuela standoff with a simple but powerful metaphor:

“a giant game of chicken”

The scale of the U.S. commitment gives this metaphor its weight. As part of “Operation Southern Spear,” President Trump has dispatched the largest U.S. naval flotilla to the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to reporting from The War Zone, the assets involved are staggering:

• Approximately 15% of the entire U.S. Navy’s deployed surface fleet.
• The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group.
• A formidable array of aerial assets, including F-35B stealth fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, AC-130 Ghostrider gunships, and B-52 bombers.
• Roughly 15,000 U.S. personnel deployed to the region.

The “chicken” dynamic is a test of wills and resources. The U.S. is betting that this overwhelming pressure will either provoke a coup from within Maduro’s regime or force him to capitulate to U.S. demands. Maduro, on the other hand, is betting that he can simply “hang on.” He knows the U.S. cannot sustain such a massive and costly deployment indefinitely. So long as Maduro doesn’t blink, time is on his side.

4. Airspace is Being Weaponized, Turning the Sky into a Political Battlefield

The confrontation is not limited to the seas; it has extended into the sky above. President Trump declared on social media that “THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.” The Venezuelan government immediately denounced this as an “illegal and unjustified aggression” that violates the UN Charter and amounts to an explicit threat of force.

This political declaration is backed by real-world actions. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) warning civilian pilots to exercise caution in the region. The notice cites heightened military activity and interference with Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) that could impact critical aircraft systems.

As an academic study on the Russia-Ukraine conflict published in PubMed Central illustrates, airspace bans are a potent tool of “aero-political conflict.” They are non-kinetic weapons that have severe effects, forcing commercial flights to undertake costly and time-consuming rerouting. One example from the study showed a flight from Frankfurt to Tokyo having its flight time extended by nearly two hours to avoid Russian airspace. This tactic shows that the sky itself has become a domain for exerting political pressure and a key battlefield in this modern, multi-domain standoff.

5. This Isn’t Just About Venezuela; It’s About a New “Monroe Doctrine”

The pressure campaign against Venezuela is not an isolated incident but rather the opening move in a muscular reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine for the 21st century. According to analysis of the second Trump administration’s foreign policy, these actions are part of a dramatic pivot to prioritize the Western Hemisphere.

Administration officials have explicitly stated their overarching goal is to “reassert American dominance over the Americas.” This ambition has led some foreign policy experts to believe the moves express a desire to divide the world into distinct “spheres of influence” between America, Russia, and China.

This broader strategic goal reframes the entire conflict. The military buildup is not just an isolated action against a single rogue regime. It is a potential opening move in a new, more assertive era of U.S. foreign policy—one in which the U.S. seeks to re-establish and enforce its primacy in its own hemisphere.

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Conclusion: Who Blinks First?

The showdown with Venezuela is far more than a simple military standoff. It is a flashpoint where profound legal questions about the rules of engagement are being tested, new forms of political and economic warfare are being deployed, and a fundamental realignment of U.S. global strategy may be underway. The legal distinction between drug traffickers and terrorists, the use of airspace as a weapon, and an alleged order to kill defenseless survivors all point to a conflict that is pushing established norms to their breaking point.

This is not just about one country or one leader; it is about setting precedents for a new era of international relations. As this high-stakes game of chicken plays out off the coast of South America, the world watches to see who will blink first—and what the rules of this new era will be when they do.

Source: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/bf1cb435-c733-4fd9-8c75-e30386b55563

#2025 #america #cnn #departmentOfDefense #donaldTrump #establishedNorms #health #history #joyceVance #lettersFromAnAmerican #libraries #library #libraryOfCongress #nationalPublicRadio #opinion #peteHegseth #politics #resistance #science #television #theNewYorkTimes #trump #trumpAdministration #unitedStates #venezuela #youtube

5 Startling Truths Behind the U.S. Showdown with Venezuela – A DWD Special Report

5 Startling Truths Behind the U.S. Showdown with Venezuela

Introduction: Beyond the Headlines

The news cycle is saturated with reports of escalating tensions between the United States and Venezuela. A significant U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean, officially dubbed “Operation Southern Spear,” is underway, featuring warships, advanced aircraft, and thousands of troops. President Trump has hinted that the days of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian regime are numbered, while Caracas has denounced the American presence as a prelude to an illegal intervention.

Behind the headlines of tough talk and naval movements, however, a far more complex and consequential story is unfolding. This is not just another geopolitical standoff. It is a flashpoint testing the very boundaries of international law, redefining the nature of modern conflict, and signaling what may be a dramatic and assertive shift in American foreign policy for years to come.

This confrontation is therefore a crucible for the future of warfare, one where legal definitions are being rewritten on the fly to justify lethal force, where sovereign airspace is treated as a bargaining chip, and where a massive military deployment becomes a high-stakes test of geopolitical will. To understand what is truly at stake, one must look beyond the immediate conflict and examine the startling truths that define this high-stakes confrontation.

Special Editor’s Note: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/bf1cb435-c733-4fd9-8c75-e30386b55563 takes you to my shared NotebookLLM on this matter and post. There you will find audio and video overviews; notebook notes; a mindmap; reports; flashcards; and, a quiz. I hope that helps you dig deeper into this major issue for America and Americans. –DrWeb

——————————————————————————–

1. An Alleged “Kill Them All” Order Pushes Legal and Moral Boundaries

At the heart of the escalating military action is a deeply disturbing allegation. Reporting from Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse details a verbal directive allegedly given by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a September strike on a suspected drug boat. According to two individuals with direct knowledge of the operation, the order was stark: “kill everybody.”

This directive reportedly led to a second strike after the initial attack. A live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to wreckage in the water; the special operations commander, to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, is said to have ordered a follow-on strike that “blew apart” the two men.

The legal and moral gravity of such an order is immense, a point articulated with startling clarity in an impassioned op-ed on the social platform Reddit by a respected, retired senior naval officer known as ‘SWO6’. Under the Geneva Conventions and the Law of Armed Conflict, attacking defenseless survivors is explicitly forbidden. Shipwrecked individuals are considered hors de combat—literally “out of the fight”—and must be treated as noncombatants. An order to show “no quarter,” or take no prisoners, has been prohibited for over a century. A former military lawyer, Todd Huntley, underscored this point:

“Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight ‘would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.’”

This principle is not an abstract concept. A key historical precedent is the Peleus trial of 1944, where the captain of a German U-boat was convicted of war crimes for ordering his crew to fire on the survivors of a sunken Greek merchant ship. The charges were specifically for attacking the survivors, not for sinking the ship itself, establishing a clear red line that has been upheld in international tribunals ever since.

The seriousness of the current allegations is not lost on Washington. The report has prompted bipartisan calls for “vigorous oversight” from the Senate Armed Services Committee, signaling that a full accounting of the September strike and the orders behind it will be sought at the highest levels.

2. It’s Not a “War on Drugs”—It’s a War on “Narco-Terrorists,” and the Distinction Matters

A critical element of the Trump administration’s strategy has been to officially reframe the conflict. The Maduro-tied Cartel de los Soles has been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), a move that fundamentally changes the legal and operational landscape.

Traditionally, international law views maritime drug interdiction not as combat, but as a law enforcement activity regulated by international human rights law. According to legal analysis on maritime security, this framework dictates that the use of deadly force is an absolute last resort, permissible only in cases of armed resistance or an imminent threat to life.

By relabeling the target from “criminal” to “terrorist,” the administration is shifting the legal paradigm from law enforcement to armed conflict. The FTO designation is not merely semantic; the Wikipedia entry on the administration’s foreign policy notes the designation is intended as a way to unlock additional powers to combat them, including military force. This move provides a legal justification for kinetic military strikes that would otherwise be considered illegal under the framework of maritime law enforcement. However, this FTO designation is disputed by experts who argue the gangs are motivated by money, not political ideology.

3. The Standoff is a “Giant Game of Chicken” with 15% of the Navy’s Deployed Fleet

Jeremy McDermott, co-director of the organized crime analysis group Insight Crime, has captured the core dynamic of the U.S.-Venezuela standoff with a simple but powerful metaphor:

“a giant game of chicken”

The scale of the U.S. commitment gives this metaphor its weight. As part of “Operation Southern Spear,” President Trump has dispatched the largest U.S. naval flotilla to the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to reporting from The War Zone, the assets involved are staggering:

• Approximately 15% of the entire U.S. Navy’s deployed surface fleet.
• The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group.
• A formidable array of aerial assets, including F-35B stealth fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, AC-130 Ghostrider gunships, and B-52 bombers.
• Roughly 15,000 U.S. personnel deployed to the region.

The “chicken” dynamic is a test of wills and resources. The U.S. is betting that this overwhelming pressure will either provoke a coup from within Maduro’s regime or force him to capitulate to U.S. demands. Maduro, on the other hand, is betting that he can simply “hang on.” He knows the U.S. cannot sustain such a massive and costly deployment indefinitely. So long as Maduro doesn’t blink, time is on his side.

4. Airspace is Being Weaponized, Turning the Sky into a Political Battlefield

The confrontation is not limited to the seas; it has extended into the sky above. President Trump declared on social media that “THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.” The Venezuelan government immediately denounced this as an “illegal and unjustified aggression” that violates the UN Charter and amounts to an explicit threat of force.

This political declaration is backed by real-world actions. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) warning civilian pilots to exercise caution in the region. The notice cites heightened military activity and interference with Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) that could impact critical aircraft systems.

As an academic study on the Russia-Ukraine conflict published in PubMed Central illustrates, airspace bans are a potent tool of “aero-political conflict.” They are non-kinetic weapons that have severe effects, forcing commercial flights to undertake costly and time-consuming rerouting. One example from the study showed a flight from Frankfurt to Tokyo having its flight time extended by nearly two hours to avoid Russian airspace. This tactic shows that the sky itself has become a domain for exerting political pressure and a key battlefield in this modern, multi-domain standoff.

5. This Isn’t Just About Venezuela; It’s About a New “Monroe Doctrine”

The pressure campaign against Venezuela is not an isolated incident but rather the opening move in a muscular reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine for the 21st century. According to analysis of the second Trump administration’s foreign policy, these actions are part of a dramatic pivot to prioritize the Western Hemisphere.

Administration officials have explicitly stated their overarching goal is to “reassert American dominance over the Americas.” This ambition has led some foreign policy experts to believe the moves express a desire to divide the world into distinct “spheres of influence” between America, Russia, and China.

This broader strategic goal reframes the entire conflict. The military buildup is not just an isolated action against a single rogue regime. It is a potential opening move in a new, more assertive era of U.S. foreign policy—one in which the U.S. seeks to re-establish and enforce its primacy in its own hemisphere.

——————————————————————————–

Conclusion: Who Blinks First?

The showdown with Venezuela is far more than a simple military standoff. It is a flashpoint where profound legal questions about the rules of engagement are being tested, new forms of political and economic warfare are being deployed, and a fundamental realignment of U.S. global strategy may be underway. The legal distinction between drug traffickers and terrorists, the use of airspace as a weapon, and an alleged order to kill defenseless survivors all point to a conflict that is pushing established norms to their breaking point.

This is not just about one country or one leader; it is about setting precedents for a new era of international relations. As this high-stakes game of chicken plays out off the coast of South America, the world watches to see who will blink first—and what the rules of this new era will be when they do.

Source: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/bf1cb435-c733-4fd9-8c75-e30386b55563

#2025 #america #cnn #departmentOfDefense #donaldTrump #establishedNorms #health #history #joyceVance #lettersFromAnAmerican #libraries #library #libraryOfCongress #nationalPublicRadio #opinion #peteHegseth #politics #resistance #science #television #theNewYorkTimes #trump #trumpAdministration #unitedStates #venezuela #youtube

5 Startling Truths Behind the U.S. Showdown with Venezuela – A DWD Special Report

5 Startling Truths Behind the U.S. Showdown with Venezuela

Introduction: Beyond the Headlines

The news cycle is saturated with reports of escalating tensions between the United States and Venezuela. A significant U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean, officially dubbed “Operation Southern Spear,” is underway, featuring warships, advanced aircraft, and thousands of troops. President Trump has hinted that the days of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian regime are numbered, while Caracas has denounced the American presence as a prelude to an illegal intervention.

Behind the headlines of tough talk and naval movements, however, a far more complex and consequential story is unfolding. This is not just another geopolitical standoff. It is a flashpoint testing the very boundaries of international law, redefining the nature of modern conflict, and signaling what may be a dramatic and assertive shift in American foreign policy for years to come.

This confrontation is therefore a crucible for the future of warfare, one where legal definitions are being rewritten on the fly to justify lethal force, where sovereign airspace is treated as a bargaining chip, and where a massive military deployment becomes a high-stakes test of geopolitical will. To understand what is truly at stake, one must look beyond the immediate conflict and examine the startling truths that define this high-stakes confrontation.

Special Editor’s Note: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/bf1cb435-c733-4fd9-8c75-e30386b55563 takes you to my shared NotebookLLM on this matter and post. There you will find audio and video overviews; notebook notes; a mindmap; reports; flashcards; and, a quiz. I hope that helps you dig deeper into this major issue for America and Americans. –DrWeb

——————————————————————————–

1. An Alleged “Kill Them All” Order Pushes Legal and Moral Boundaries

At the heart of the escalating military action is a deeply disturbing allegation. Reporting from Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse details a verbal directive allegedly given by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a September strike on a suspected drug boat. According to two individuals with direct knowledge of the operation, the order was stark: “kill everybody.”

This directive reportedly led to a second strike after the initial attack. A live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to wreckage in the water; the special operations commander, to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, is said to have ordered a follow-on strike that “blew apart” the two men.

The legal and moral gravity of such an order is immense, a point articulated with startling clarity in an impassioned op-ed on the social platform Reddit by a respected, retired senior naval officer known as ‘SWO6’. Under the Geneva Conventions and the Law of Armed Conflict, attacking defenseless survivors is explicitly forbidden. Shipwrecked individuals are considered hors de combat—literally “out of the fight”—and must be treated as noncombatants. An order to show “no quarter,” or take no prisoners, has been prohibited for over a century. A former military lawyer, Todd Huntley, underscored this point:

“Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight ‘would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.’”

This principle is not an abstract concept. A key historical precedent is the Peleus trial of 1944, where the captain of a German U-boat was convicted of war crimes for ordering his crew to fire on the survivors of a sunken Greek merchant ship. The charges were specifically for attacking the survivors, not for sinking the ship itself, establishing a clear red line that has been upheld in international tribunals ever since.

The seriousness of the current allegations is not lost on Washington. The report has prompted bipartisan calls for “vigorous oversight” from the Senate Armed Services Committee, signaling that a full accounting of the September strike and the orders behind it will be sought at the highest levels.

2. It’s Not a “War on Drugs”—It’s a War on “Narco-Terrorists,” and the Distinction Matters

A critical element of the Trump administration’s strategy has been to officially reframe the conflict. The Maduro-tied Cartel de los Soles has been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), a move that fundamentally changes the legal and operational landscape.

Traditionally, international law views maritime drug interdiction not as combat, but as a law enforcement activity regulated by international human rights law. According to legal analysis on maritime security, this framework dictates that the use of deadly force is an absolute last resort, permissible only in cases of armed resistance or an imminent threat to life.

By relabeling the target from “criminal” to “terrorist,” the administration is shifting the legal paradigm from law enforcement to armed conflict. The FTO designation is not merely semantic; the Wikipedia entry on the administration’s foreign policy notes the designation is intended as a way to unlock additional powers to combat them, including military force. This move provides a legal justification for kinetic military strikes that would otherwise be considered illegal under the framework of maritime law enforcement. However, this FTO designation is disputed by experts who argue the gangs are motivated by money, not political ideology.

3. The Standoff is a “Giant Game of Chicken” with 15% of the Navy’s Deployed Fleet

Jeremy McDermott, co-director of the organized crime analysis group Insight Crime, has captured the core dynamic of the U.S.-Venezuela standoff with a simple but powerful metaphor:

“a giant game of chicken”

The scale of the U.S. commitment gives this metaphor its weight. As part of “Operation Southern Spear,” President Trump has dispatched the largest U.S. naval flotilla to the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to reporting from The War Zone, the assets involved are staggering:

• Approximately 15% of the entire U.S. Navy’s deployed surface fleet.
• The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group.
• A formidable array of aerial assets, including F-35B stealth fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, AC-130 Ghostrider gunships, and B-52 bombers.
• Roughly 15,000 U.S. personnel deployed to the region.

The “chicken” dynamic is a test of wills and resources. The U.S. is betting that this overwhelming pressure will either provoke a coup from within Maduro’s regime or force him to capitulate to U.S. demands. Maduro, on the other hand, is betting that he can simply “hang on.” He knows the U.S. cannot sustain such a massive and costly deployment indefinitely. So long as Maduro doesn’t blink, time is on his side.

4. Airspace is Being Weaponized, Turning the Sky into a Political Battlefield

The confrontation is not limited to the seas; it has extended into the sky above. President Trump declared on social media that “THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.” The Venezuelan government immediately denounced this as an “illegal and unjustified aggression” that violates the UN Charter and amounts to an explicit threat of force.

This political declaration is backed by real-world actions. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) warning civilian pilots to exercise caution in the region. The notice cites heightened military activity and interference with Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) that could impact critical aircraft systems.

As an academic study on the Russia-Ukraine conflict published in PubMed Central illustrates, airspace bans are a potent tool of “aero-political conflict.” They are non-kinetic weapons that have severe effects, forcing commercial flights to undertake costly and time-consuming rerouting. One example from the study showed a flight from Frankfurt to Tokyo having its flight time extended by nearly two hours to avoid Russian airspace. This tactic shows that the sky itself has become a domain for exerting political pressure and a key battlefield in this modern, multi-domain standoff.

5. This Isn’t Just About Venezuela; It’s About a New “Monroe Doctrine”

The pressure campaign against Venezuela is not an isolated incident but rather the opening move in a muscular reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine for the 21st century. According to analysis of the second Trump administration’s foreign policy, these actions are part of a dramatic pivot to prioritize the Western Hemisphere.

Administration officials have explicitly stated their overarching goal is to “reassert American dominance over the Americas.” This ambition has led some foreign policy experts to believe the moves express a desire to divide the world into distinct “spheres of influence” between America, Russia, and China.

This broader strategic goal reframes the entire conflict. The military buildup is not just an isolated action against a single rogue regime. It is a potential opening move in a new, more assertive era of U.S. foreign policy—one in which the U.S. seeks to re-establish and enforce its primacy in its own hemisphere.

——————————————————————————–

Conclusion: Who Blinks First?

The showdown with Venezuela is far more than a simple military standoff. It is a flashpoint where profound legal questions about the rules of engagement are being tested, new forms of political and economic warfare are being deployed, and a fundamental realignment of U.S. global strategy may be underway. The legal distinction between drug traffickers and terrorists, the use of airspace as a weapon, and an alleged order to kill defenseless survivors all point to a conflict that is pushing established norms to their breaking point.

This is not just about one country or one leader; it is about setting precedents for a new era of international relations. As this high-stakes game of chicken plays out off the coast of South America, the world watches to see who will blink first—and what the rules of this new era will be when they do.

Source: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/bf1cb435-c733-4fd9-8c75-e30386b55563

#2025 #america #cnn #departmentOfDefense #donaldTrump #establishedNorms #health #history #joyceVance #lettersFromAnAmerican #libraries #library #libraryOfCongress #nationalPublicRadio #opinion #peteHegseth #politics #resistance #science #television #theNewYorkTimes #trump #trumpAdministration #unitedStates #venezuela #youtube

5 Startling Truths Behind the U.S. Showdown with Venezuela – A DWD Special Report

5 Startling Truths Behind the U.S. Showdown with Venezuela

Introduction: Beyond the Headlines

The news cycle is saturated with reports of escalating tensions between the United States and Venezuela. A significant U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean, officially dubbed “Operation Southern Spear,” is underway, featuring warships, advanced aircraft, and thousands of troops. President Trump has hinted that the days of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian regime are numbered, while Caracas has denounced the American presence as a prelude to an illegal intervention.

Behind the headlines of tough talk and naval movements, however, a far more complex and consequential story is unfolding. This is not just another geopolitical standoff. It is a flashpoint testing the very boundaries of international law, redefining the nature of modern conflict, and signaling what may be a dramatic and assertive shift in American foreign policy for years to come.

This confrontation is therefore a crucible for the future of warfare, one where legal definitions are being rewritten on the fly to justify lethal force, where sovereign airspace is treated as a bargaining chip, and where a massive military deployment becomes a high-stakes test of geopolitical will. To understand what is truly at stake, one must look beyond the immediate conflict and examine the startling truths that define this high-stakes confrontation.

Special Editor’s Note: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/bf1cb435-c733-4fd9-8c75-e30386b55563 takes you to my shared NotebookLLM on this matter and post. There you will find audio and video overviews; notebook notes; a mindmap; reports; flashcards; and, a quiz. I hope that helps you dig deeper into this major issue for America and Americans. –DrWeb

——————————————————————————–

1. An Alleged “Kill Them All” Order Pushes Legal and Moral Boundaries

At the heart of the escalating military action is a deeply disturbing allegation. Reporting from Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse details a verbal directive allegedly given by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a September strike on a suspected drug boat. According to two individuals with direct knowledge of the operation, the order was stark: “kill everybody.”

This directive reportedly led to a second strike after the initial attack. A live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to wreckage in the water; the special operations commander, to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, is said to have ordered a follow-on strike that “blew apart” the two men.

The legal and moral gravity of such an order is immense, a point articulated with startling clarity in an impassioned op-ed on the social platform Reddit by a respected, retired senior naval officer known as ‘SWO6’. Under the Geneva Conventions and the Law of Armed Conflict, attacking defenseless survivors is explicitly forbidden. Shipwrecked individuals are considered hors de combat—literally “out of the fight”—and must be treated as noncombatants. An order to show “no quarter,” or take no prisoners, has been prohibited for over a century. A former military lawyer, Todd Huntley, underscored this point:

“Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight ‘would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.’”

This principle is not an abstract concept. A key historical precedent is the Peleus trial of 1944, where the captain of a German U-boat was convicted of war crimes for ordering his crew to fire on the survivors of a sunken Greek merchant ship. The charges were specifically for attacking the survivors, not for sinking the ship itself, establishing a clear red line that has been upheld in international tribunals ever since.

The seriousness of the current allegations is not lost on Washington. The report has prompted bipartisan calls for “vigorous oversight” from the Senate Armed Services Committee, signaling that a full accounting of the September strike and the orders behind it will be sought at the highest levels.

2. It’s Not a “War on Drugs”—It’s a War on “Narco-Terrorists,” and the Distinction Matters

A critical element of the Trump administration’s strategy has been to officially reframe the conflict. The Maduro-tied Cartel de los Soles has been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), a move that fundamentally changes the legal and operational landscape.

Traditionally, international law views maritime drug interdiction not as combat, but as a law enforcement activity regulated by international human rights law. According to legal analysis on maritime security, this framework dictates that the use of deadly force is an absolute last resort, permissible only in cases of armed resistance or an imminent threat to life.

By relabeling the target from “criminal” to “terrorist,” the administration is shifting the legal paradigm from law enforcement to armed conflict. The FTO designation is not merely semantic; the Wikipedia entry on the administration’s foreign policy notes the designation is intended as a way to unlock additional powers to combat them, including military force. This move provides a legal justification for kinetic military strikes that would otherwise be considered illegal under the framework of maritime law enforcement. However, this FTO designation is disputed by experts who argue the gangs are motivated by money, not political ideology.

3. The Standoff is a “Giant Game of Chicken” with 15% of the Navy’s Deployed Fleet

Jeremy McDermott, co-director of the organized crime analysis group Insight Crime, has captured the core dynamic of the U.S.-Venezuela standoff with a simple but powerful metaphor:

“a giant game of chicken”

The scale of the U.S. commitment gives this metaphor its weight. As part of “Operation Southern Spear,” President Trump has dispatched the largest U.S. naval flotilla to the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to reporting from The War Zone, the assets involved are staggering:

• Approximately 15% of the entire U.S. Navy’s deployed surface fleet.
• The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group.
• A formidable array of aerial assets, including F-35B stealth fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, AC-130 Ghostrider gunships, and B-52 bombers.
• Roughly 15,000 U.S. personnel deployed to the region.

The “chicken” dynamic is a test of wills and resources. The U.S. is betting that this overwhelming pressure will either provoke a coup from within Maduro’s regime or force him to capitulate to U.S. demands. Maduro, on the other hand, is betting that he can simply “hang on.” He knows the U.S. cannot sustain such a massive and costly deployment indefinitely. So long as Maduro doesn’t blink, time is on his side.

4. Airspace is Being Weaponized, Turning the Sky into a Political Battlefield

The confrontation is not limited to the seas; it has extended into the sky above. President Trump declared on social media that “THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.” The Venezuelan government immediately denounced this as an “illegal and unjustified aggression” that violates the UN Charter and amounts to an explicit threat of force.

This political declaration is backed by real-world actions. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) warning civilian pilots to exercise caution in the region. The notice cites heightened military activity and interference with Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) that could impact critical aircraft systems.

As an academic study on the Russia-Ukraine conflict published in PubMed Central illustrates, airspace bans are a potent tool of “aero-political conflict.” They are non-kinetic weapons that have severe effects, forcing commercial flights to undertake costly and time-consuming rerouting. One example from the study showed a flight from Frankfurt to Tokyo having its flight time extended by nearly two hours to avoid Russian airspace. This tactic shows that the sky itself has become a domain for exerting political pressure and a key battlefield in this modern, multi-domain standoff.

5. This Isn’t Just About Venezuela; It’s About a New “Monroe Doctrine”

The pressure campaign against Venezuela is not an isolated incident but rather the opening move in a muscular reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine for the 21st century. According to analysis of the second Trump administration’s foreign policy, these actions are part of a dramatic pivot to prioritize the Western Hemisphere.

Administration officials have explicitly stated their overarching goal is to “reassert American dominance over the Americas.” This ambition has led some foreign policy experts to believe the moves express a desire to divide the world into distinct “spheres of influence” between America, Russia, and China.

This broader strategic goal reframes the entire conflict. The military buildup is not just an isolated action against a single rogue regime. It is a potential opening move in a new, more assertive era of U.S. foreign policy—one in which the U.S. seeks to re-establish and enforce its primacy in its own hemisphere.

——————————————————————————–

Conclusion: Who Blinks First?

The showdown with Venezuela is far more than a simple military standoff. It is a flashpoint where profound legal questions about the rules of engagement are being tested, new forms of political and economic warfare are being deployed, and a fundamental realignment of U.S. global strategy may be underway. The legal distinction between drug traffickers and terrorists, the use of airspace as a weapon, and an alleged order to kill defenseless survivors all point to a conflict that is pushing established norms to their breaking point.

This is not just about one country or one leader; it is about setting precedents for a new era of international relations. As this high-stakes game of chicken plays out off the coast of South America, the world watches to see who will blink first—and what the rules of this new era will be when they do.

Source: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/bf1cb435-c733-4fd9-8c75-e30386b55563

#2025 #america #cnn #departmentOfDefense #donaldTrump #establishedNorms #health #history #joyceVance #lettersFromAnAmerican #libraries #library #libraryOfCongress #nationalPublicRadio #opinion #peteHegseth #politics #resistance #science #television #theNewYorkTimes #trump #trumpAdministration #unitedStates #venezuela #youtube

5 Startling Truths Behind the U.S. Showdown with Venezuela – A DWD Special Report

5 Startling Truths Behind the U.S. Showdown with Venezuela

Introduction: Beyond the Headlines

The news cycle is saturated with reports of escalating tensions between the United States and Venezuela. A significant U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean, officially dubbed “Operation Southern Spear,” is underway, featuring warships, advanced aircraft, and thousands of troops. President Trump has hinted that the days of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian regime are numbered, while Caracas has denounced the American presence as a prelude to an illegal intervention.

Behind the headlines of tough talk and naval movements, however, a far more complex and consequential story is unfolding. This is not just another geopolitical standoff. It is a flashpoint testing the very boundaries of international law, redefining the nature of modern conflict, and signaling what may be a dramatic and assertive shift in American foreign policy for years to come.

This confrontation is therefore a crucible for the future of warfare, one where legal definitions are being rewritten on the fly to justify lethal force, where sovereign airspace is treated as a bargaining chip, and where a massive military deployment becomes a high-stakes test of geopolitical will. To understand what is truly at stake, one must look beyond the immediate conflict and examine the startling truths that define this high-stakes confrontation.

Special Editor’s Note: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/bf1cb435-c733-4fd9-8c75-e30386b55563 takes you to my shared NotebookLLM on this matter and post. There you will find audio and video overviews; notebook notes; a mindmap; reports; flashcards; and, a quiz. I hope that helps you dig deeper into this major issue for America and Americans. –DrWeb

——————————————————————————–

1. An Alleged “Kill Them All” Order Pushes Legal and Moral Boundaries

At the heart of the escalating military action is a deeply disturbing allegation. Reporting from Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse details a verbal directive allegedly given by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a September strike on a suspected drug boat. According to two individuals with direct knowledge of the operation, the order was stark: “kill everybody.”

This directive reportedly led to a second strike after the initial attack. A live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to wreckage in the water; the special operations commander, to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, is said to have ordered a follow-on strike that “blew apart” the two men.

The legal and moral gravity of such an order is immense, a point articulated with startling clarity in an impassioned op-ed on the social platform Reddit by a respected, retired senior naval officer known as ‘SWO6’. Under the Geneva Conventions and the Law of Armed Conflict, attacking defenseless survivors is explicitly forbidden. Shipwrecked individuals are considered hors de combat—literally “out of the fight”—and must be treated as noncombatants. An order to show “no quarter,” or take no prisoners, has been prohibited for over a century. A former military lawyer, Todd Huntley, underscored this point:

“Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight ‘would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.’”

This principle is not an abstract concept. A key historical precedent is the Peleus trial of 1944, where the captain of a German U-boat was convicted of war crimes for ordering his crew to fire on the survivors of a sunken Greek merchant ship. The charges were specifically for attacking the survivors, not for sinking the ship itself, establishing a clear red line that has been upheld in international tribunals ever since.

The seriousness of the current allegations is not lost on Washington. The report has prompted bipartisan calls for “vigorous oversight” from the Senate Armed Services Committee, signaling that a full accounting of the September strike and the orders behind it will be sought at the highest levels.

2. It’s Not a “War on Drugs”—It’s a War on “Narco-Terrorists,” and the Distinction Matters

A critical element of the Trump administration’s strategy has been to officially reframe the conflict. The Maduro-tied Cartel de los Soles has been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), a move that fundamentally changes the legal and operational landscape.

Traditionally, international law views maritime drug interdiction not as combat, but as a law enforcement activity regulated by international human rights law. According to legal analysis on maritime security, this framework dictates that the use of deadly force is an absolute last resort, permissible only in cases of armed resistance or an imminent threat to life.

By relabeling the target from “criminal” to “terrorist,” the administration is shifting the legal paradigm from law enforcement to armed conflict. The FTO designation is not merely semantic; the Wikipedia entry on the administration’s foreign policy notes the designation is intended as a way to unlock additional powers to combat them, including military force. This move provides a legal justification for kinetic military strikes that would otherwise be considered illegal under the framework of maritime law enforcement. However, this FTO designation is disputed by experts who argue the gangs are motivated by money, not political ideology.

3. The Standoff is a “Giant Game of Chicken” with 15% of the Navy’s Deployed Fleet

Jeremy McDermott, co-director of the organized crime analysis group Insight Crime, has captured the core dynamic of the U.S.-Venezuela standoff with a simple but powerful metaphor:

“a giant game of chicken”

The scale of the U.S. commitment gives this metaphor its weight. As part of “Operation Southern Spear,” President Trump has dispatched the largest U.S. naval flotilla to the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to reporting from The War Zone, the assets involved are staggering:

• Approximately 15% of the entire U.S. Navy’s deployed surface fleet.
• The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group.
• A formidable array of aerial assets, including F-35B stealth fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, AC-130 Ghostrider gunships, and B-52 bombers.
• Roughly 15,000 U.S. personnel deployed to the region.

The “chicken” dynamic is a test of wills and resources. The U.S. is betting that this overwhelming pressure will either provoke a coup from within Maduro’s regime or force him to capitulate to U.S. demands. Maduro, on the other hand, is betting that he can simply “hang on.” He knows the U.S. cannot sustain such a massive and costly deployment indefinitely. So long as Maduro doesn’t blink, time is on his side.

4. Airspace is Being Weaponized, Turning the Sky into a Political Battlefield

The confrontation is not limited to the seas; it has extended into the sky above. President Trump declared on social media that “THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.” The Venezuelan government immediately denounced this as an “illegal and unjustified aggression” that violates the UN Charter and amounts to an explicit threat of force.

This political declaration is backed by real-world actions. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) warning civilian pilots to exercise caution in the region. The notice cites heightened military activity and interference with Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) that could impact critical aircraft systems.

As an academic study on the Russia-Ukraine conflict published in PubMed Central illustrates, airspace bans are a potent tool of “aero-political conflict.” They are non-kinetic weapons that have severe effects, forcing commercial flights to undertake costly and time-consuming rerouting. One example from the study showed a flight from Frankfurt to Tokyo having its flight time extended by nearly two hours to avoid Russian airspace. This tactic shows that the sky itself has become a domain for exerting political pressure and a key battlefield in this modern, multi-domain standoff.

5. This Isn’t Just About Venezuela; It’s About a New “Monroe Doctrine”

The pressure campaign against Venezuela is not an isolated incident but rather the opening move in a muscular reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine for the 21st century. According to analysis of the second Trump administration’s foreign policy, these actions are part of a dramatic pivot to prioritize the Western Hemisphere.

Administration officials have explicitly stated their overarching goal is to “reassert American dominance over the Americas.” This ambition has led some foreign policy experts to believe the moves express a desire to divide the world into distinct “spheres of influence” between America, Russia, and China.

This broader strategic goal reframes the entire conflict. The military buildup is not just an isolated action against a single rogue regime. It is a potential opening move in a new, more assertive era of U.S. foreign policy—one in which the U.S. seeks to re-establish and enforce its primacy in its own hemisphere.

——————————————————————————–

Conclusion: Who Blinks First?

The showdown with Venezuela is far more than a simple military standoff. It is a flashpoint where profound legal questions about the rules of engagement are being tested, new forms of political and economic warfare are being deployed, and a fundamental realignment of U.S. global strategy may be underway. The legal distinction between drug traffickers and terrorists, the use of airspace as a weapon, and an alleged order to kill defenseless survivors all point to a conflict that is pushing established norms to their breaking point.

This is not just about one country or one leader; it is about setting precedents for a new era of international relations. As this high-stakes game of chicken plays out off the coast of South America, the world watches to see who will blink first—and what the rules of this new era will be when they do.

Source: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/bf1cb435-c733-4fd9-8c75-e30386b55563

#2025 #america #cnn #departmentOfDefense #donaldTrump #establishedNorms #health #history #joyceVance #lettersFromAnAmerican #libraries #library #libraryOfCongress #nationalPublicRadio #opinion #peteHegseth #politics #resistance #science #television #theNewYorkTimes #trump #trumpAdministration #unitedStates #venezuela #youtube

Vanderbilt Student Government and the Vanderbilt chapter of American Association of University Professors host campus Teach-In in response to Trump administration’s higher education compact – The Vanderbilt Hustler

Vanderbilt Student Government and the Vanderbilt chapter of American Association of University Professors host campus Teach-In in response to Trump administration’s higher education compact

Professors and graduate students gathered at the Teach-In to speak out against the compact.

By Ella Crocco, Staffer-in-Training, Oct 24, 2025

Vanderbilt Student Government and members of Vanderbilt’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors hosted a Teach-In on Oct. 17 regarding the higher education compact Vanderbilt was sent from the Trump administration. Students and faculty at the event discussed how they believe the compact could endanger academic freedom, education policy and the university’s core values, among other topics.   

Jessie Hock, associate English department chair and associate professor of English, opened the Teach-In with contextual remarks. Carwil Bjork-James, associate professor in social movements, indigenous rights and political anthropology, then spoke to the crowd about how he believes that if Vanderbilt agrees to the compact, it could have negative financial impacts for the university.  

“I think that our administrators are being misled by the promise of more research funding by an administration that is clearly cutting off research funding and restricting it at every level,” Bjork-James said.  

In an interview with The Hustler, Bjork-James said that the compact will not help ensure Vanderbilt is a space where students and faculty can freely express their thoughts.  

“I would say faculty are really committed to maintaining this campus as a place where [students] can speak freely, where [students] can come here with any political opinion, with any perspective, get an open education and where there are viable places to do scholarship and research and this compact is not the right way to do that,” Bjork-James said. 

Jada Benn Torres, associate professor in genetics, race and genetic ancestry, followed by speaking about how she believed Vanderbilt signing the compact would limit scientific research and free speech. In a message to The Hustler, Benn Torres said that the compact could contribute to the marginalization of communities and hopes Vanderbilt will continue to be a place where freedom of discussion is practiced.  

“I am very concerned that the compact will upend academic freedom and freedom of expression. Additionally, there are elements of the compact that further marginalize communities that are already marginalized,” Torres said. “Overall, I think that the university needs to be a place where we are free to ask difficult questions and grapple with uncomfortable answers.” 

Rebecca Epstein-Levy, assistant professor of Jewish studies and gender & sexuality studies, spoke about how she believes the compact has anti-trans provisions which would limit her ability to teach and research certain topics about Judaism and sex, sexuality, gender and disability.   

“I’m a Jewish ethicist, and I research and teach courses at the intersection of Jewish text, Jewish thought, and sex, sexuality, gender and disability,” Epstein-Levy said. “The compact’s claim that there are only two genders — a claim which is bigoted, venal and spectacularly wrong — would make it impossible for me to teach these subjects accurately and responsibly.” 

Jonathan Gilligan, earth and environmental studies and civil and environmental engineering professor, spoke about how he believes the compact could limit research and what is taught in science classes because topics may offend conservative policies. 

Gilligan shared in an interview with The Hustler that he and many of his colleagues are worried about government overreach. They believe that if the government enforces politicized versions of science upon universities, they will not stop with the biology of sex and gender.

Editor’s Note: I am proud of hopeful of American higher education. Stand up for your rights, and protect us all with your views and passion for Democracy. –DrWeb

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Vanderbilt Student Government and the Vanderbilt chapter of American Association of University Professors host campus Teach-In in response to Trump administration’s higher education compact – The Vanderbilt Hustler

#2025 #AAUP #AcademicFreedom #America #DEI #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #StudentGovernment #TeachIn #TheVanderbiltHustler #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpSCompact #UnitedStates #VanderbiltUniversity

Shutdown Update; Senate Votes – GovTrack.us

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Shutdown Update; Senate Votes, Oct. 10, 2025 · by Amy West

Shutdown Update

Still going. 

The Senate voted for a seventh time on the two competing continuing resolutions in front of it to allocate funds to federal agencies (one Democratic, one Republican) and both failed again to reach the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. It’s possible that Republicans are beginning to soften their positions. On X, Igor Bobic posted about Democrats’ ask to extend expiring health care subsidies:

“[Sen.] Tillis says a deal on ACA subsidies wouldn’t be hard once government is funded, with mix of retiring senators & those up for reelection. “You’re telling me you can’t find eight people that could walk the plank?” “As a veteran plank-walker, it’s not near as bad as it seems””

One might reasonably ask why not walk the plank now in order to end the shutdown? However, if Senate Republicans have been asked this kind of question, no one has publicly recorded their responses.

(By the way, in a previous post we incorrectly wrote that these subsidies would affect low-income Americans. But that was wrong: It would affect middle class Americans who get health care through the ACA marketplace exchanges.)

The House remains in recess. Many House Democrats are in D.C. anyway to make a messaging point and to push Speaker Johnson on why Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva hasn’t been sworn in yet. Earlier this year, Republican representatives-elect Patronis (FL-1) and Fine (FL-6) were sworn in immediately after election while the House was in recess. Why won’t Johnson swear her in? Punchbowl takes a stab at answering the question. Maybe it’s not about Epstein files; maybe Johnson is just really committed to this stop-work action he’s making the House take during the shutdown. A few Republican House members are expressing dissatisfaction with Johnson’s strategy.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Shutdown Update; Senate Votes – GovTrack.us

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Education #GOP #GOPShutdown #GovTrack #GovTrackUs #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #RepublicanShutdown #Resistance #Science #SenateVotes #Shutdown2025 #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USSenate #UnitedStates

Opinion | Rail trails offer space to reconnect with community – The Washington Post

Opinion

Meet us on the rail trail

A place to gather as Americans, not partisans.The Island Line Trail on the Burlington, Vermont, waterfront, which Howard Dean played a role in creating. (Courtesy From Rails to Trails Film, LLC)

By Tommy Thompson and Howard Dean – Tommy Thompson, a Republican, is a former governor of Wisconsin. Howard Dean, a Democrat, is a former governor of Vermont.

September 28, 2025 at 7:00 a.m. EDT, Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EDT, 3 min

Life in much of America today seems fractured, offering fewer opportunities for people to meet, mingle and feel part of the same community. But there is at least one exception: local rail trails — quiet, leafy greenways that follow the paths trains once traveled.

Over the past six decades, a citizen-led movement has transformed more than 26,000 miles of abandoned rail corridors into thousands of public paths for walking, biking and recreation. Tens of millions of people use these trails each year — in the countryside, in small towns and in big cities. This successful effort to convert rails to trails has never belonged to just one political party.

We know this because we’ve lived it; rail trails have been important to both our lives. One of us (Thompson) grew up along the nation’s first rail trail: the Elroy-Sparta State Trail in Wisconsin, which ran through his family farm. The other (Dean) helped create the Island Line Trail in Vermont, which swings from Burlington out onto a causeway far into Lake Champlain.

It was Thompson’s father who helped bring the Elroy-Sparta trail to life, setting in motion a project that revived local communities and became a model for the nation. And it was Dean whose leadership helped secure a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that validated the concept of saving rail corridors.

These trails do more than repurpose land. They restore communities. They promote health, tourism and local business. They give Americans a place to meet as neighbors, not partisans.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Opinion | Rail trails offer space to reconnect with community – Washington Post

#2025 #America #Biking #community #Education #Health #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #OpenSpaces #Opinion #PublicPaths #RailTrails #Railroads #Rails #Reconnect #Recreation #Science #TheWashingtonPost #Travel #UnitedStates #Walking

The US veers toward Christian nationalism – CNN What Matters

The First Amendment, after all, in addition to guaranteeing free speech, says that Congress shall “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

US leaders talk about Jesus Christ at Kirk’s funeral

Never in recent memory have Americans seen more top government officials speak so openly about Jesus Christ as they did at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, which Trump described as “an old-time revival” rather than a funeral.  It makes sense that Kirk’s funeral would feature religious overtones: Conversion was at the core of Kirk’s conservatism, something praised by the country’s assembled top political leaders who attended his funeral, including the president, the vice president, the speaker of the House of Representatives and much of the president’s Cabinet.

Saying God is on their side

The podcaster Benny Johnson talked about the idea of “Godly government” and pointed down at Trump’s assembled Cabinet secretaries.  “God has given them power over our nation and our land,” he said, adding it was God who saved Trump from a different assassin’s bullet “for this moment.” Trump officials said God is on their side as they go after their political enemies.

“We are on the side of goodness. We are on the side of God,” White House adviser Stephen Miller said in a speech that, like Trump’s, promised retribution against an unnamed evil, though evidence release so far suggests Kirk’s alleged killer acted alone.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a sermon that concluded with discussion of the Second Coming.  Vice President JD Vance, who referred to Kirk as a “warrior for country, a warrior for Christ,” counseled Americans to “live worthy of Charlie’s sacrifice and put Christ at the center of your life.”
Where does religious belief veer into Christian nationalism?

Christian nationalism is the concept — rejected by many scholars — that the US was formed as a Christian nation and that Christianity should imbue its laws.  Many Trump administration actions have blurred the lines between church and state.

In the days before Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University, Trump delivered a speech at the privately funded Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, where he promised to protect prayer in public schools through forthcoming guidance from the Department of Education. “To have a great nation, you have to have religion,” Trump said.

“I believe that so strongly. There has to be something after we go through all of this — and that something is God.”

Religion at the Department of Justice
After that September 8 speech, Trump met with the Religious Liberty Commission he created by executive action at the Department of Justice. Among the commission’s charges is “Exploring the foundations of religious liberty in America,” and “identifying current threats to domestic religious liberty.” Trump labeled previous Justice Department prosecutions of anti-abortion rights protesters outside clinics as a form of anti-Christian bias.

A pastor with pull on Christian nationalism

Last month, CNN’s Pamela Brown profiled self-described Christian nationalist pastor Douglas Wilson, who has ties to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Wilson is based in Idaho, but his organization has opened an outpost in the nation’s capital. Wilson, who appeared at Kirk’s “The Believer’s Summit” in 2024, told Brown he would like the US to be a Christian theocracy.

He would also like to make homosexuality illegal.

New IRS rules for pastors in politics

In July, Trump’s IRS declared that pastors who endorse political candidates should not lose their tax-exempt status.

Proselytizing in the federal workplace

That same month, the Office of Management and Budget said that federal workers can now bring religion into the federal workplace, including promoting their religious beliefs to colleagues. Hegseth has hosted working-hours prayer services at the Pentagon. One in May featured the pastor of his Tennessee church, which is affiliated with Wilson’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. 

Many Americans wouldn’t agree

The Public Religion Research Institute has tried in recent years to gauge Christian nationalism and how it is spreading in the US. In 2024, it estimated that about 30% of Americans would qualify as either adherents of or sympathizers to Christian nationalism, according to their definition, including a majority of Republicans.  But the portions vary widely across the US.

About half of the people in some Southern states like Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Alabama are either adherents or sympathizers, compared to only about a third in red states like Florida and Texas. In many blue states, less than a quarter of residents either adhere to or sympathize with Christian nationalism, according to PRRI, which means a large portion of the country also does not share their philosophy about the role of Christianity in the government.

Continue/Read Original Article: https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/1758579883240693bb2790a23/

#2025 #America #CharlieKirk #ChristianGovernment #ChristianNationalism #CNN #DonaldTrump #FederalGovernment #Health #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #MemorialService #Opinion #Politics #Religion #Resistance #Science #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #WhatMatters

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance – Sunday Morning Wrap-Up

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Sunday Morning Wrap-Up

By Joyce Vance, Sep 14, 2025

This was a week punctuated by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which seemed to sweep all the other news we’d been following off the table.

Debates about political violence and the First Amendment emerged rapidly. In one of the key pieces I wrote this week, I reacted to the violent murder in real time, arguing that political violence is never the answer, even for those who, like me, reject Kirk’s views as repugnant.

If you missed that piece on Wednesday, I hope you’ll read it now.

If you missed any of this week’s other columns, here’s your weekly wrap-up:

• The Week Ahead: We looked at some remarkable comments by a key advisor to Chief Justice Roberts, reviewed Trump’s threat to go into Chicago with the National Guard (he’s since reconsidered and now seems to be looking at Memphis, a blue dot in a red state, and hence an easier target for expanding his use of police powers), and discussed an issue that dropped almost entirely off the radar screen in the wake of Kirk’s murder, Trump’s failure to release the Epstein files.
• Substack Live with Heather Cox Richardson: Monday, I got together for an almost hour-long chat with the eminent (and incredibly fun) historian who writes Letters from an American, and I left feeling both smarter and more certain than ever that as Americans, we can use our history and traditions to outlast the foes of democracy we are facing. The prescription is hard work, no sugar coating, lots of commitment.
• Affirmed: E. Jean Carroll Case: The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the $83.3 million verdict Carroll won in her defamation case against Trump; the one where he denied he’d sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room and denigrated her as “not his type,” although in a deposition, he subsequently misidentifed a photo of her at the time as his second wife, Marla Maples. The court wrote a lengthy opinion. This piece summarizes key points to be aware of as the appeal moves towards the Supreme Court, which can choose to hear the case or let the lower court’s opinion stand.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Sunday Morning Wrap-Up – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

#2025 #America #CivilDiscourse #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #JoyceVance #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #PoliticalViews #Politics #Resistance #Science #Substack #SundayWrapup #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance – Sunday Morning Wrap-Up

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Sunday Morning Wrap-Up

By Joyce Vance, Sep 14, 2025

This was a week punctuated by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which seemed to sweep all the other news we’d been following off the table.

Debates about political violence and the First Amendment emerged rapidly. In one of the key pieces I wrote this week, I reacted to the violent murder in real time, arguing that political violence is never the answer, even for those who, like me, reject Kirk’s views as repugnant.

If you missed that piece on Wednesday, I hope you’ll read it now.

If you missed any of this week’s other columns, here’s your weekly wrap-up:

• The Week Ahead: We looked at some remarkable comments by a key advisor to Chief Justice Roberts, reviewed Trump’s threat to go into Chicago with the National Guard (he’s since reconsidered and now seems to be looking at Memphis, a blue dot in a red state, and hence an easier target for expanding his use of police powers), and discussed an issue that dropped almost entirely off the radar screen in the wake of Kirk’s murder, Trump’s failure to release the Epstein files.
• Substack Live with Heather Cox Richardson: Monday, I got together for an almost hour-long chat with the eminent (and incredibly fun) historian who writes Letters from an American, and I left feeling both smarter and more certain than ever that as Americans, we can use our history and traditions to outlast the foes of democracy we are facing. The prescription is hard work, no sugar coating, lots of commitment.
• Affirmed: E. Jean Carroll Case: The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the $83.3 million verdict Carroll won in her defamation case against Trump; the one where he denied he’d sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room and denigrated her as “not his type,” although in a deposition, he subsequently misidentifed a photo of her at the time as his second wife, Marla Maples. The court wrote a lengthy opinion. This piece summarizes key points to be aware of as the appeal moves towards the Supreme Court, which can choose to hear the case or let the lower court’s opinion stand.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Sunday Morning Wrap-Up – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

#2025 #America #CivilDiscourse #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #JoyceVance #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #PoliticalViews #Politics #Resistance #Science #Substack #SundayWrapup #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance – Sunday Morning Wrap-Up

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Sunday Morning Wrap-Up

By Joyce Vance, Sep 14, 2025

This was a week punctuated by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which seemed to sweep all the other news we’d been following off the table.

Debates about political violence and the First Amendment emerged rapidly. In one of the key pieces I wrote this week, I reacted to the violent murder in real time, arguing that political violence is never the answer, even for those who, like me, reject Kirk’s views as repugnant.

If you missed that piece on Wednesday, I hope you’ll read it now.

If you missed any of this week’s other columns, here’s your weekly wrap-up:

• The Week Ahead: We looked at some remarkable comments by a key advisor to Chief Justice Roberts, reviewed Trump’s threat to go into Chicago with the National Guard (he’s since reconsidered and now seems to be looking at Memphis, a blue dot in a red state, and hence an easier target for expanding his use of police powers), and discussed an issue that dropped almost entirely off the radar screen in the wake of Kirk’s murder, Trump’s failure to release the Epstein files.
• Substack Live with Heather Cox Richardson: Monday, I got together for an almost hour-long chat with the eminent (and incredibly fun) historian who writes Letters from an American, and I left feeling both smarter and more certain than ever that as Americans, we can use our history and traditions to outlast the foes of democracy we are facing. The prescription is hard work, no sugar coating, lots of commitment.
• Affirmed: E. Jean Carroll Case: The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the $83.3 million verdict Carroll won in her defamation case against Trump; the one where he denied he’d sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room and denigrated her as “not his type,” although in a deposition, he subsequently misidentifed a photo of her at the time as his second wife, Marla Maples. The court wrote a lengthy opinion. This piece summarizes key points to be aware of as the appeal moves towards the Supreme Court, which can choose to hear the case or let the lower court’s opinion stand.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Sunday Morning Wrap-Up – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

#2025 #America #CivilDiscourse #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #JoyceVance #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #PoliticalViews #Politics #Resistance #Science #Substack #SundayWrapup #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance – Sunday Morning Wrap-Up

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Sunday Morning Wrap-Up

By Joyce Vance, Sep 14, 2025

This was a week punctuated by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which seemed to sweep all the other news we’d been following off the table.

Debates about political violence and the First Amendment emerged rapidly. In one of the key pieces I wrote this week, I reacted to the violent murder in real time, arguing that political violence is never the answer, even for those who, like me, reject Kirk’s views as repugnant.

If you missed that piece on Wednesday, I hope you’ll read it now.

If you missed any of this week’s other columns, here’s your weekly wrap-up:

• The Week Ahead: We looked at some remarkable comments by a key advisor to Chief Justice Roberts, reviewed Trump’s threat to go into Chicago with the National Guard (he’s since reconsidered and now seems to be looking at Memphis, a blue dot in a red state, and hence an easier target for expanding his use of police powers), and discussed an issue that dropped almost entirely off the radar screen in the wake of Kirk’s murder, Trump’s failure to release the Epstein files.
• Substack Live with Heather Cox Richardson: Monday, I got together for an almost hour-long chat with the eminent (and incredibly fun) historian who writes Letters from an American, and I left feeling both smarter and more certain than ever that as Americans, we can use our history and traditions to outlast the foes of democracy we are facing. The prescription is hard work, no sugar coating, lots of commitment.
• Affirmed: E. Jean Carroll Case: The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the $83.3 million verdict Carroll won in her defamation case against Trump; the one where he denied he’d sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room and denigrated her as “not his type,” although in a deposition, he subsequently misidentifed a photo of her at the time as his second wife, Marla Maples. The court wrote a lengthy opinion. This piece summarizes key points to be aware of as the appeal moves towards the Supreme Court, which can choose to hear the case or let the lower court’s opinion stand.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Sunday Morning Wrap-Up – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

#2025 #America #CivilDiscourse #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #JoyceVance #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #PoliticalViews #Politics #Resistance #Science #Substack #SundayWrapup #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance – Sunday Morning Wrap-Up

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Sunday Morning Wrap-Up

By Joyce Vance, Sep 14, 2025

This was a week punctuated by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which seemed to sweep all the other news we’d been following off the table.

Debates about political violence and the First Amendment emerged rapidly. In one of the key pieces I wrote this week, I reacted to the violent murder in real time, arguing that political violence is never the answer, even for those who, like me, reject Kirk’s views as repugnant.

If you missed that piece on Wednesday, I hope you’ll read it now.

If you missed any of this week’s other columns, here’s your weekly wrap-up:

• The Week Ahead: We looked at some remarkable comments by a key advisor to Chief Justice Roberts, reviewed Trump’s threat to go into Chicago with the National Guard (he’s since reconsidered and now seems to be looking at Memphis, a blue dot in a red state, and hence an easier target for expanding his use of police powers), and discussed an issue that dropped almost entirely off the radar screen in the wake of Kirk’s murder, Trump’s failure to release the Epstein files.
• Substack Live with Heather Cox Richardson: Monday, I got together for an almost hour-long chat with the eminent (and incredibly fun) historian who writes Letters from an American, and I left feeling both smarter and more certain than ever that as Americans, we can use our history and traditions to outlast the foes of democracy we are facing. The prescription is hard work, no sugar coating, lots of commitment.
• Affirmed: E. Jean Carroll Case: The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the $83.3 million verdict Carroll won in her defamation case against Trump; the one where he denied he’d sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room and denigrated her as “not his type,” although in a deposition, he subsequently misidentifed a photo of her at the time as his second wife, Marla Maples. The court wrote a lengthy opinion. This piece summarizes key points to be aware of as the appeal moves towards the Supreme Court, which can choose to hear the case or let the lower court’s opinion stand.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Sunday Morning Wrap-Up – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

#2025 #America #CivilDiscourse #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #JoyceVance #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #PoliticalViews #Politics #Resistance #Science #Substack #SundayWrapup #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’ | Charlie Kirk shooting | The Guardian

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’

The far-right commentator didn’t pull his punches when discussing his bigoted views on current events.

• Charlie Kirk shooting – follow the latest updates
• Full report: Utah governor confirms arrest of suspect
• A video, a pastor and a tense meeting: timeline of arrest

Chris Stein, Thu 11 Sep 2025 20.56 EDT

Charlie Kirk, the far-right commentator and ally of Donald Trump, was killed on Wednesday doing what he was known for throughout his career – making incendiary and often racist and sexist comments to large audiences.

If it was current and controversial in US politics, chances are that Kirk was talking about it. On his podcasts, and on the podcasts of friends and adversaries, and especially on college campuses, where he would go to debate students, Kirk spent much of his adult life defending and articulating a worldview aligned with Trump and the Maga movement. Accountable to no one but his audience, he did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion and stereotyping.

Here’s Kirk, in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative media.

Editor’s Note: This is a tough post to read, if you go to the article and read the quotes. They are anti-immigration, racist, sexist, and more, very harsh words. Read to know the words. If you need to speak with someone about it, talk to your family, your friends, or health professional. The Truth is sometimes very harsh, but we cannot hide the Truth.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’ | Charlie Kirk shooting | The Guardian

#2025 #America #CharlieKirk #Comments #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #PoliticalViews #Politics #Quotes #Resistance #Science #TheGuardian #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’ | Charlie Kirk shooting | The Guardian

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’

The far-right commentator didn’t pull his punches when discussing his bigoted views on current events.

• Charlie Kirk shooting – follow the latest updates
• Full report: Utah governor confirms arrest of suspect
• A video, a pastor and a tense meeting: timeline of arrest

Chris Stein, Thu 11 Sep 2025 20.56 EDT

Charlie Kirk, the far-right commentator and ally of Donald Trump, was killed on Wednesday doing what he was known for throughout his career – making incendiary and often racist and sexist comments to large audiences.

If it was current and controversial in US politics, chances are that Kirk was talking about it. On his podcasts, and on the podcasts of friends and adversaries, and especially on college campuses, where he would go to debate students, Kirk spent much of his adult life defending and articulating a worldview aligned with Trump and the Maga movement. Accountable to no one but his audience, he did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion and stereotyping.

Here’s Kirk, in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative media.

Editor’s Note: This is a tough post to read, if you go to the article and read the quotes. They are anti-immigration, racist, sexist, and more, very harsh words. Read to know the words. If you need to speak with someone about it, talk to your family, your friends, or health professional. The Truth is sometimes very harsh, but we cannot hide the Truth.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’ | Charlie Kirk shooting | The Guardian

#2025 #America #CharlieKirk #Comments #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #PoliticalViews #Politics #Quotes #Resistance #Science #TheGuardian #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’ | Charlie Kirk shooting | The Guardian

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’

The far-right commentator didn’t pull his punches when discussing his bigoted views on current events.

• Charlie Kirk shooting – follow the latest updates
• Full report: Utah governor confirms arrest of suspect
• A video, a pastor and a tense meeting: timeline of arrest

Chris Stein, Thu 11 Sep 2025 20.56 EDT

Charlie Kirk, the far-right commentator and ally of Donald Trump, was killed on Wednesday doing what he was known for throughout his career – making incendiary and often racist and sexist comments to large audiences.

If it was current and controversial in US politics, chances are that Kirk was talking about it. On his podcasts, and on the podcasts of friends and adversaries, and especially on college campuses, where he would go to debate students, Kirk spent much of his adult life defending and articulating a worldview aligned with Trump and the Maga movement. Accountable to no one but his audience, he did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion and stereotyping.

Here’s Kirk, in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative media.

Editor’s Note: This is a tough post to read, if you go to the article and read the quotes. They are anti-immigration, racist, sexist, and more, very harsh words. Read to know the words. If you need to speak with someone about it, talk to your family, your friends, or health professional. The Truth is sometimes very harsh, but we cannot hide the Truth.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’ | Charlie Kirk shooting | The Guardian

#2025 #America #CharlieKirk #Comments #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #PoliticalViews #Politics #Quotes #Resistance #Science #TheGuardian #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’ | Charlie Kirk shooting | The Guardian

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’

The far-right commentator didn’t pull his punches when discussing his bigoted views on current events.

• Charlie Kirk shooting – follow the latest updates
• Full report: Utah governor confirms arrest of suspect
• A video, a pastor and a tense meeting: timeline of arrest

Chris Stein, Thu 11 Sep 2025 20.56 EDT

Charlie Kirk, the far-right commentator and ally of Donald Trump, was killed on Wednesday doing what he was known for throughout his career – making incendiary and often racist and sexist comments to large audiences.

If it was current and controversial in US politics, chances are that Kirk was talking about it. On his podcasts, and on the podcasts of friends and adversaries, and especially on college campuses, where he would go to debate students, Kirk spent much of his adult life defending and articulating a worldview aligned with Trump and the Maga movement. Accountable to no one but his audience, he did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion and stereotyping.

Here’s Kirk, in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative media.

Editor’s Note: This is a tough post to read, if you go to the article and read the quotes. They are anti-immigration, racist, sexist, and more, very harsh words. Read to know the words. If you need to speak with someone about it, talk to your family, your friends, or health professional. The Truth is sometimes very harsh, but we cannot hide the Truth.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’ | Charlie Kirk shooting | The Guardian

#2025 #America #CharlieKirk #Comments #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #PoliticalViews #Politics #Quotes #Resistance #Science #TheGuardian #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’ | Charlie Kirk shooting | The Guardian

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’

The far-right commentator didn’t pull his punches when discussing his bigoted views on current events.

• Charlie Kirk shooting – follow the latest updates
• Full report: Utah governor confirms arrest of suspect
• A video, a pastor and a tense meeting: timeline of arrest

Chris Stein, Thu 11 Sep 2025 20.56 EDT

Charlie Kirk, the far-right commentator and ally of Donald Trump, was killed on Wednesday doing what he was known for throughout his career – making incendiary and often racist and sexist comments to large audiences.

If it was current and controversial in US politics, chances are that Kirk was talking about it. On his podcasts, and on the podcasts of friends and adversaries, and especially on college campuses, where he would go to debate students, Kirk spent much of his adult life defending and articulating a worldview aligned with Trump and the Maga movement. Accountable to no one but his audience, he did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion and stereotyping.

Here’s Kirk, in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative media.

Editor’s Note: This is a tough post to read, if you go to the article and read the quotes. They are anti-immigration, racist, sexist, and more, very harsh words. Read to know the words. If you need to speak with someone about it, talk to your family, your friends, or health professional. The Truth is sometimes very harsh, but we cannot hide the Truth.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’ | Charlie Kirk shooting | The Guardian

#2025 #America #CharlieKirk #Comments #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #PoliticalViews #Politics #Quotes #Resistance #Science #TheGuardian #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

3 Pillars of Trump’s Power—Including Tariffs—Head to Supreme Court | TIME

Sep 10, 2025, 4:00 AM PT

3 Pillars of Trump’s Power Are Tested, as Pivotal Cases Head to Supreme Court

• Politics
• Trump Administration

By Brian Bennett, Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME.

The Brief September 10, 2025

The Brief September 10, 2025

Editor’s Note: Audio on the linked article/site. Not available to embed.

In early September, President Donald Trump’s White House sent out a press release laying out ways Trump has been “delivering historic results.” It outed $158 billion in tariff revenues coming into the U.S. since Trump took office. It said that Trump’s border crackdown has led to a 97% drop in northward migration from Central America and that his use of the military for law enforcement in Washington DC is a “model” for other cities.

It was just the latest example of the Administration highlighting how Trump is following through on his campaign promises to aggressively deploy tariffs, ramp up deportations, and send the National Guard into U.S. cities. But a recent drumbeat of court rulings have called those three central actions of Trump’s presidency into question. Lower courts are repeatedly finding that Trump has exceeded his powers as President under the Constitution. In just the last two weeks, federal courts ruled that most of his tariffs are illegal, that he violated a law prohibiting the use of soldiers for law enforcement inside the U.S., and that many of his most high-profile deportations were based on a faulty reading of law.

The White House is challenging all of those decisions, setting the stage for the Supreme Court to ultimately determine if if Trump may have to rein in his efforts in those areas The high court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority thanks to the three justices Trump hand-picked during his first term, has so far taken an expansive view of Trump’s ability to act.

Here are three major actions Trump has taken that are in jeopardy and appear destined for the Supreme Court:

Issuing Tariffs

A federal court ruled in late August that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal because they were imposed without Congressional approval. But that lower court held off on enacting its order to give the Trump Administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the high court announced it was expediting the tariff case, demanding briefs from all sides from the government and the plaintiffs by Sept. 19 in order to hear in-person arguments in early November.

The case was brought by a group of small businesses that said the tariffs Trump imposed so far “amount to an average tax increase of $1,200-$2,800 per American household.” The business owners argued that issuing those tariffs were beyond the President’s powers under the Constitution. Article I of the Constitution empowered Congress to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and demands that bills for raising revenue “shall originate in the House of Representatives.” (CONTINUED)

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: 3 Pillars of Trump’s Power—Including Tariffs—Head to Supreme Court | TIME

#2025 #America #DemocraticStates #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #NationalGuard #Opinion #Pillars #Politics #Resistance #Science #SpeedingDeportations #Tariffs #Three #Time #TimeMagazine #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpSPower #USCities #UnitedStates

Former Trump prosecutor Jack Smith faces investigation by Office of Special Counsel – The Washington Post

Former Trump prosecutor Jack Smith faces investigation by Office of Special Counsel

Jack Smith, who pursued two cases against Donald Trump, is being investigated for potentially violating the Hatch Act.

By Maegan Vazquez and Meryl Kornfield

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel said Saturday it is taking the unusual step of investigating Jack Smith, the former Justice Department official who oversaw two federal prosecutions of Donald Trump, for potentially violating the law barring federal officials from political activity.

The independent agencytasked with overseeing investigations into partisan influence and coercion confirmed its investigation of Smith over potential Hatch Act violations.

The Hatch Act prohibits most federal employees from using their official authority to influence elections or engage in overt political activity on the job. If the office concludes a federal employee has violated the law, it refers the case to the president. Discipline can range from a reprimand to a removal from federal service.

Trump presidency

Follow live updates on the Trump administration. We’re tracking Trump’s progress on campaign promises and legal challenges to his executive orders and actions.

The Washington Post

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) on Wednesday called for an investigation into Smith, asking acting special counsel Jamieson Greer — who is also serving as Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative and acting director of the Office of Government Ethics — in a letter to look into whether Smith “unlawfully took political actions to influence the 2024 election to harm then-candidate President Donald Trump.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Former Trump prosecutor Jack Smith faces investigation by Office of Special Counsel – The Washington Post

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #Science #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpAttacks #TrumpSEnemies #UnitedStates

Former Trump prosecutor Jack Smith faces investigation by Office of Special Counsel – The Washington Post

Former Trump prosecutor Jack Smith faces investigation by Office of Special Counsel

Jack Smith, who pursued two cases against Donald Trump, is being investigated for potentially violating the Hatch Act.

By Maegan Vazquez and Meryl Kornfield

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel said Saturday it is taking the unusual step of investigating Jack Smith, the former Justice Department official who oversaw two federal prosecutions of Donald Trump, for potentially violating the law barring federal officials from political activity.

The independent agencytasked with overseeing investigations into partisan influence and coercion confirmed its investigation of Smith over potential Hatch Act violations.

The Hatch Act prohibits most federal employees from using their official authority to influence elections or engage in overt political activity on the job. If the office concludes a federal employee has violated the law, it refers the case to the president. Discipline can range from a reprimand to a removal from federal service.

Trump presidency

Follow live updates on the Trump administration. We’re tracking Trump’s progress on campaign promises and legal challenges to his executive orders and actions.

The Washington Post

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) on Wednesday called for an investigation into Smith, asking acting special counsel Jamieson Greer — who is also serving as Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative and acting director of the Office of Government Ethics — in a letter to look into whether Smith “unlawfully took political actions to influence the 2024 election to harm then-candidate President Donald Trump.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Former Trump prosecutor Jack Smith faces investigation by Office of Special Counsel – The Washington Post

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #Science #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpAttacks #TrumpSEnemies #UnitedStates

Le renvoi brutal d'une icône sans explication. Carla Hayden, 1ère femme et personne afro-américaine à occuper le poste de #bibliothécaire du Congrès aux US a été la cible d’un groupe conservateur militant l’accusant de promouvoir des contenus radicaux #CarlaHayden #LibraryOfCongress #Diversité‍ #LibertéIntellectuelle #LeadershipFéminin #Bibliothèques

#Trump limoge #CarlaHayden, directrice de la #BibliothèqueduCongrès #libraryofcongress #LC
https://actualitte.com/article/123695/international/trump-limoge-carla-hayden-directrice-de-la-bibliotheque-du-congres
Trump poursuit son entreprise de purge au sein de l'administration Sa dernière victime est Carla Hayden, nommée directrice de la Bibliothèque du Congrès par Barack Obama, en 2016 1ère femme, & 1ère personnalité afro-américaine à assumer cette fonction, Hayden a été visée pour ses positions libérales en matière d'accès aux ouvrages, à l'encontre du mouvement de censure des livres

#Trump limoge #CarlaHayden, directrice de la #BibliothèqueduCongrès #libraryofcongress #LC
https://actualitte.com/article/123695/international/trump-limoge-carla-hayden-directrice-de-la-bibliotheque-du-congres
Trump poursuit son entreprise de purge au sein de l'administration Sa dernière victime est Carla Hayden, nommée directrice de la Bibliothèque du Congrès par Barack Obama, en 2016 1ère femme, & 1ère personnalité afro-américaine à assumer cette fonction, Hayden a été visée pour ses positions libérales en matière d'accès aux ouvrages, à l'encontre du mouvement de censure des livres

#Trump limoge #CarlaHayden, directrice de la #BibliothèqueduCongrès #libraryofcongress #LC
https://actualitte.com/article/123695/international/trump-limoge-carla-hayden-directrice-de-la-bibliotheque-du-congres
Trump poursuit son entreprise de purge au sein de l'administration Sa dernière victime est Carla Hayden, nommée directrice de la Bibliothèque du Congrès par Barack Obama, en 2016 1ère femme, & 1ère personnalité afro-américaine à assumer cette fonction, Hayden a été visée pour ses positions libérales en matière d'accès aux ouvrages, à l'encontre du mouvement de censure des livres

#Autumn #Suite
#violin #piano
#live #recording

Today's #mood is #calm and #melancholic

May this music #cherish you during the #coldest and #darkest days of the #northern hemisphere.

#music #classical #classicalmusic #live #libraryofcongress #Coolidge #bernecoli #Corazza #Italy #usa #Washington #dc #kluge #modernclassical #chamber #chambermusic #Bandcamp #bandcampcodes

@classicalmusic

https://elijax.bandcamp.com/album/autumn-suite-live-at-coolidge-auditorium-washington-dc-10-11-2018

#Autumn #Suite
#violin #piano
#live #recording

Today's #mood is #calm and #melancholic

May this music #cherish you during the #coldest and #darkest days of the #northern hemisphere.

#music #classical #classicalmusic #live #libraryofcongress #Coolidge #bernecoli #Corazza #Italy #usa #Washington #dc #kluge #modernclassical #chamber #chambermusic #Bandcamp #bandcampcodes

@classicalmusic

https://elijax.bandcamp.com/album/autumn-suite-live-at-coolidge-auditorium-washington-dc-10-11-2018