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The Trump Court’s Summer

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The Supreme Court is only two thirds of the way through its three-month summer vacation. But the conservative majority has kept busy facilitating Donald Trump‘s marauding destruction of the institutions of the government, both physical and abstract. In so doing they have supported his strategy to wreak havoc on the nation, sowing a path of destruction so quickly his opponents can’t mount a defense quickly enough to stop him from achieving his goals. Their embarrassingly rash decisions make a mockery of the judicial process and the rule of law.

Mail-In Ballots

Using the tool of the Executive Order Trump has directed the United States Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots only to people on a federal list of voters. Never mind the fact that the Constitution assigns to the states control over the election process absent specific legislation passed by Congress. Never mind the fact that the law establishing the USPS charges it with delivering the mail and little more, making any attempt by that organization to restrict the mailing of ballots by the states and their return by the voters illegal. Never mind the fact that in spite of  Trump’s whining that mail-in ballots lead to election fraud not a single court has ever found such fraud affecting the outcome of an election. The Supreme Court members who Trump refers to as “my judges” interrupted their summer vacation to do his bidding.

The Executive Order has been challenged in multiple courts. Several issued injunctions, stopping the order from being implemented pending a full court review. This is known as preserving the status quo and with less than 60 days until the election, agrees with past challenges to election law and procedure.

Which sent Trump running, as he has done so many times before, to “his” judges. They found, on their emergency docket and without any formal brief or public arguments, that the status quo meant don’t interfere with Trump while the case is pending. This stands the entire concept on temporary injunctions on its ear. Trump v. California was decided on a strictly partisan vote, 6-3.

A whistleblower report to Congress from inside the USPS says the service is rushing out “untested” technology that could “derail” the upcoming election. State officials, in many cases about to send out their mail ballots, have no idea how they should respond to the order’s requirements. They only know they face criminal charges for failure to comply.

That is clearly what the conservative majority wants. They did caution that their order was preliminary and not a final decision on whether the administration’s order “will necessarily be lawful” once the plans are complete. “On that score, time will tell,” the majority said in the 10-page, unsigned order. But of course, the election will have come and gone and who knows how many voters will have been kept from casting their ballots by Trump’s action. Which is what he wants. The Court could have dealt with the substantive issues right then and there and eliminated the uncertainly. But that is not their plan.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, with a separate 23-page dissent, considered the merits. “The President does not have any legal authority to require that elections be conducted in accordance with his preferences,” she says, “or to withhold delivery of mail-in ballots that are not formatted consistent with the President’s wishes.”

The Ballroom

And then comes the matter of the ballroom. Everyone who has ever rented a place to live knows full well the lease does not give you the right to damage the place, least you sacrifice your security deposit and be subject to a lawsuit for additional damages. So, what do you think “We the People,” landlords of The White House, should charge Donald Trump? He has trashed the joint from end to end.

The West Wing offices have been gilded to look like the French Palace of Versailles. The lawns and gardens have been paved over like a roadside motel. And the East Wing has been totally destroyed and rising in its place is some sort of monstrosity which will dwarf the historic residence the people loan every four years to their president.

The conservative majority which dominates the Court won’t stop it.

Again, a district court granted an injunction to stop the building pending a full hearing on the key question, “Can a president do what he wants with the White House?” Again, the conservatives on the Supreme Court stayed the injunction, finding that preserving the status quo meant letting Trump continue pending the court hearings. Trump has the workers on the job 20 hours day with the clear expectation that he will have his giant ballroom finished before the court issues a final ruling. That is characterized by another French term, a fait accompli.

In July 2025, the White House said the ballroom would be funded by private donations and cost about $200 million. Later, the cost was adjusted to $400 million. Now, the price tag is closer to $600 million, according to contractor invoices, and about half will be paid by taxpayers. No surprise. The ballroom will be built with missile-resistant columns and a drone-proof roof. What will it cost if the next president decides to pull it down?

The Supreme Court’s shadow docket ruling, National Park Service v National Trust for Historic Preservation, didn’t address the legality of the project. Lower courts said the construction required congressional approval. The decision focused on whether the plaintiff, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, had the standing to bring a lawsuit. The trust had to show that the ballroom’s planned construction would, among other things, cause board member Alison Hoagland “harm.” How can a building inflict pain, and how could such suffering be quantified?

In a declaration, Hoagland wrote: “I would suffer both professional and personal injuries, including to my aesthetic, cultural, and historical interests.” Hoagland, a historian, said she enjoyed walking past the White House and feared that Trump’s addition would distort the building’s character.

This shadow docket ruling was so disgusting even Chief Justice John Roberts couldn’t stomach it, breaking with his five conservative collogues to join the liberals 5-4 and writing the dissent.

Wrote Roberts, “The White House is not just any building, and — when it comes to historic preservation — Hoagland is not just any person. In failing to appreciate as much, the Court misconceives the plaintiff’s injury, allowing the Executive’s likely infringement of the Legislature’s power of the purse and authority to regulate federal property in the District of Columbia to continue.”

The Trump administration didn’t go through the usual review process. But the Republican-controlled Congress, as usual, is not willing to do anything about it. Trump’s desire seems to be to remake Washington in his image. And to leave his name and likeness on as many parts of the government as possible.

An overhaul of the East Potomac Golf Links is about to begin. Trees are already facing the axe. A 250-foot triumphal arch will, according to the White House, start construction within weeks. Trump threatens to tear down the Kennedy Center unless he can put his name back up under the name of the fallen president.

Designed by Trump. Approved by nobody.

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That Damn Debt

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The official U.S. total public debt outstanding breached $40 trillion for the first time in history. It stands at $40,047,426,000,000 according to data released by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It has increased by about three trillion dollars since January 20, 2025, when the current administration took office.

Considering how much he likes to brag about setting records you’d think Donnie Trump would be in front of the cameras proclaiming, “Biggest debt in history! No one has ever seen a debt as big as this. America is first! We’re winning.”

Instead, fearless leader is attending auto races and showing off his new helipad, $5 million dollars’ worth of big, ugly, granite adorned with his name and sitting on the White House lawn. Something else a future president will have to remove.

Trump left it to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to downplay the event, blame the record debt on Joe Biden, and insist the economy will “grow” out of it. The problem with that is obvious. The economy is growing at a rate of about 2%. The debt is growing at the rate of about 6%. As they say, the math ain’t mathin’.

To be fair, as the graph above makes clear, the debt has been growing steadily for decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Some of that is growth. Some of that is inflation. The key to watch is not the total debt amount but the ratio of debt to the nation’s total economic output, the GDP. The debt-to-GDP ratio compares a country’s total government debt to its gross domestic product (GDP). It shows a country’s ability to pay back its debts. The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is now roughly 124% to 125%.

Trump has stated dozens of times across his campaigns and presidencies that he would control, reduce, or completely eliminate the national debt and federal deficit, famously vowing during his 2016 campaign to wipe out the entire national debt within eight years. Despite these promises, Trump legislative actions, such as the 2017 and 2025 tax cuts, caused substantial increases in annual budget deficits and the overall national debt.

As this graph shows, there is a pattern which began in the Reagan years. The Republicans cut taxes without cutting spending. That increases the annual budget deficit and accelerates increases in the debt. Democrats take control and reduce the deficit, only to have the Republicans repeat the trend the next time they get in control. (By the way, I had AI assistance in doing the actual drawing, but I am responsible for finding the numbers and designing both graphs. The numbers come from the Federal Reserve and the Department of Commerce.).

While Republicans like to blame Democrats for the debt, the facts don’t bear that out.

This graphic summarizes the changes in the total debt going all the way back to the Reagan administration. It was then that I first heard the term “trickle-down economics.” The idea was that if you cut taxes for the top backets, they will spend more money, and the effects will pass down to the people in lower brackets. It sounded good to me at the time. But the evidence since has shown it doesn’t work. Nothing trickles. The rich just get richer and the gap between the rich and the rest of us grows larger.

To finance the debt the government borrows money., It does that by issuing securities, Treasury Notes and Bonds. The interest rate it pays is the “cost” of borrowing. More borrowing, more securities. To convince investors to keep buying trillions of dollars in new debt, the U.S. government must offer competitive interest rates. The 10-year treasury yield is currently about 4.7%. The bond market is struggling to meet the demand.

Bessent is doubling long-term government bond buybacks to curb rising rates and inject liquidity into the debt market. On August 19, 2026, the Treasury Department shocked Wall Street by announcing it will increase its buyback operations for 10-year to 30-year bonds to at least $4 billion per operation, up from the previous $2 billion cap. Bessent is executing a strategy he calls a “Treasury Twist“. By purchasing less-liquid, older (“off-the-run”) long-term bonds, the Treasury removes overall duration from the market. To fund these purchases, the Treasury issues short-term bills. This shifts supply to parts of the yield curve better equipped to absorb it. Critics argue that the sudden, unscheduled policy shift disrupts the Treasury’s traditional framework of being regular and predictable, causing further investor anxiety.

Bessent’s action is like putting a Band-Aid on a wound that needs a torniquet. He has joined Trump in an alternate reality. The market isn’t buying it.

When the government borrows hundreds of billions each month, it competes directly with private borrowers for capital. The massive government demand can push up overall interest rates across the entire economy. This means Americans end up paying significantly more for mortgages, auto loans, credit cards, and business loans.

And just like a household credit card, a larger balance means a larger monthly minimum payment. Net interest payments are quickly becoming one of the largest single components of the federal budget. Every dollar spent on interest is a dollar that cannot be spent on infrastructure, national defense, scientific research, tax cuts, or programs like Social Security and Medicare.

If investors eventually begin to worry that the U.S. will never be able to pay back its debt through normal revenues (taxes), they may fear that the government will simply print more money to cover the gap. Flooding the global economy with dollars to inflate away the debt devalues the currency. For us everyday Americans, this manifests as persistent, long-term inflation, reducing the purchasing power of our hard-earned savings and wages.

Time for Donnie and Bessent to play another round of golf.

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Angels of Death

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The United States is currently experiencing a historic resurgence of measles, reaching a 35-year high in 2026. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that measles cases have surpassed the record-breaking numbers of 2025, fueled by a multi-year decline in childhood vaccination rates and growing vaccine skepticism. Because measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases on Earth, it acts as a “canary in the coal mine” for public health, rapidly finding and spreading through pockets of under-vaccinated communities.

What are our leaders doing about it? Donald Trump is spreading vaccine skepticism. He overruled his qualified medical advisers in issuing an executive order urging Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. to cut the number of childhood immunizations. His plan includes 11 immunizations, down from a recommended 17. Vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella (MMR), tetanus, pertussis and polio would still be universal. But those for hepatitis A and B, dengue, flu, Covid and rotavirus would be advised only for “high-risk” children, or else would to be left to “shared clinical decision-making” between doctors and parents.

It also orders the government to recommend that the combination MMR vaccination, which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella, “should be administered in three separate singe-disease shots.”

Simply put, it means three trips to the doctor and three jabs of a needle for children. That means extra pain and cost. And that’s if the three separate vaccines are made available. Right now, only the combination shot is produced. It could take years to produce the three separate vaccines. The combination shot has been used in the United States for more than 50 years.

The effect will be to discourage parents from administering the vaccines to their children. That will lead to an increase in disease and death.

Trump calls his order the “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations.” It largely follows a much-disputed HHS report in January that advised fewer vaccines on the childhood schedule. Trump’s order isn’t based on rigorous science, or really any science at all. It is based only on his uninformed position, supported by the anti-vaxer with no medical training who he put in charge of the nation’s health, RFK, Jr. His statement announcing the new order was loaded with misleading claims and out and out lies.

The day after Trump’s announcement the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics blasted the new policy. “As measles cases reach a 35-year high in the U.S. and with cold and flu season quickly approaching, today’s executive order on vaccines is not only disheartening but dangerous,” Dr. Andrew Racine said in a release. 

The President’s executive order doesn’t compel states or schools to follow his pared regimen, but he threatens legal action against those that don’t adopt it. He directs Attorney General Todd Blanche to challenge state laws that conflict with “parental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under the law.”

Under Trump’s order, the Justice Department could sue states for infringing on parental authority if they require vaccines for school attendance that differ from his recommendations. State police powers to protect public health can sometimes be in tension with parental rights, and some states overstepped during the pandemic, though none mandated Covid shots for school-age children. Multiple studies have shown that the United States suffered twice the number of deaths and incurred twice the cost of comparable countries as a result of Covid. Trump consistently opposed medical advice on combatting that pandemic.

Trump’s order could inflame what has become a culture war over immunizations. That war was enflamed by the broad Covid vaccine mandates during the Biden administration. The mandates were vigorously opposed by conservatives and vaccine skeptics. But Trump is making the same mistake in trying to coerce states into following his line on vaccines. Kennedy and his plaintiff lawyer friends benefit from spreading vaccine skepticism. But Trump’s jab at children’s vaccines could alienate voters, especially parents of young children, as measles spreads.

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The Pirro Pivot

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In one area the Trump administration is remarkably successful. It is hard to imagine another national government where more unqualified, incompetent, and corrupt people have been assembled in one place. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Pete Hegseth take note.

Pictured above is Jeanine Pirro, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, one of the most important federal prosecutors in the Department of Justice. Pirro auditioned for her post in the usual Trump way. It is true that Pirro was Westchester County’s first female judge and district attorney. But that was two decades ago. Her key qualification for a post in the Trump administration was her longtime service as a Fox Channel personality hosting Justice with Judge Jeanine and co-hosting The Five. Pirro is also a best-selling author. One of her titles, “Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Trump Conspiracy,” surely caught Trump’s eye.

Since her appointment Pirro has consistently aligned her office with Trump’s aggressive law-and-order directives, specifically implementing the federal crime crackdown in D.C. Pirro publicly defended and credited Trump’s federal law enforcement enhancements for lowering crime statistics in the nation’s capital, stating that the administration brought much-needed safety after previous high homicide rates.

In this video from July 2, 2026, Pirro is holding a news conference to announce the indictment of David Hearn, a Maryland resident, charging he vandalized the famous Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the object of a high-priority renovation directed by Trump himself. Pirro told reporters that Hearn was seen by National Park Service employees making a “forcefully and violently” effort to rip up the pool liner with his bare hands. When reporters pressed her for details and asked how she would prove the damage exceeded the $1,000 felony threshold, Pirro snapped at the press and repeatedly clashed with reporters questioning the validity of the case.

Pirro had presented her case to a D.C. grand jury and personally signed the indictment. The charge carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison upon conviction. Hearn, 67, competed for the United States as a canoeist in 1992, 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympics.

In the month that followed Donald Trump and the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, who supervises the National Park Service and is responsible for the pool, insisted that the damage involved “multiple gashes” by vandals, first and foremost Hearn. Hearn insisted that all he did was pick up a piece of material floating in the water, which had peeled off from the bottom of the pool. Burgum said the pool suffered “multiple gashes” to the industrial liner that add up to 350 feet of damage. He said Interior Department employees had witnessed Hearn’s actions. In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Burgum said that the same contractor who installed the lining will repair it and that the peeling liner had nothing to do with faulty workmanship.

Fast forward to Friday, July 31. Jeanine Pirro was nowhere to be seen late in the afternoon, when the United States Department of Justice dropped off a 20-page document at the D.C. Superior Court. No news conference, no press release. This is known as “taking out the garbage.” You dump into public view something you hope will draw little or no notice, figuring late on a Friday reporters and the general public will be focused on the upcoming weekend and not paying too much attention. “Government’s Motion to Dismiss the Indictment” is the title. One of Pirro’s assistants prepared the dismissal motion, although the motion was submitted on her behalf.

The motion says that after the indictment came down the Interior Department (DOI) provided additional documents to the U.S. attorney’s office “indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings.” The DOJ said it “first became aware of information showing that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism” after reviewing more documents. “Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment.”

In other words, never mind.

The DOJ said when it presented the case to the grand jury, it was “not in possession of any information from DOI indicating that any damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by anything other than the actions of the defendant and other vandals who damaged the pool’s lining.” The filing continues, “it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt.”

So why did Pirro pivot? Why not just continue the case and hope it will fade away in the year or two it would take to get before a jury? After all, that is what the boss in the Oval Office clearly wanted. I can only speculate that Pirro is thinking about her future.

Presenting a case to a grand jury built on incomplete or misleading information, without a proper investigation, could invite sanctions for filing a frivolous proceeding. Pirro may be planning on returning to her Fox platform at the end of the Trump administration. But even Fox might look askance at hiring a commentator who had been disciplined or even disbarred for unethical behavior.

Pirro might be looking for a new job sooner than she planned. The boss is not happy. In a social media post, Trump writes, “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro… it was a pure case of VANDALISM.”

One would think Hearn would have some recourse here for what was done to his reputation and for what his defense may have cost. Think again. Statute and case law make it virtually impossible to recover against government officials no matter how outrageous their actions. He might be able to make a claim to recover his legal fees. But that is still an uphill battle.

Maybe he should sell the film rights. Or write a book. Maybe Pirro can give him some advice along those lines.

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Yearning to Breathe Free

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The poem on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor is a sonnet titled “The New Colossus,” written by American poet Emma Lazarus in 1883. Its famous lines, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” transformed the statue from a monument of generic liberty into a worldwide symbol of immigration, refuge, and hope.

Lady Liberty was the first thing millions of immigrants saw as they arrived in the New World. “Her name,” the poem declares, is “Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome.”

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It’s not Easy Being Green

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The economy, the war, the arch, the east wing, all of these controversies swirling around Washington these days seem to pale when compared to the saga of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The pool recently underwent a $14 million repainting project ordered by Donald Trump. However, within two weeks of refilling, the pool developed severe algae blooms that turned the water green, and its new blue paint began peeling in large chunks.

Trump insisted that the bottom of the pool be repainted “American flag blue” and that the work be completed well before the nation’s 250 birthday celebration on the Fourth of July. But the repainting did not address the well-known problems with the pool, which is more than one hundred years old.

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This is How It Should Be

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This is a great picture in these troubled times. All four of the living former Presidents of the United States, and First Ladies, gathering in Chicago for the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center. It was an uplifting event, full of hope and optimism for the future of a country about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its birth. The only downside was that we found ourselves noting how remarkable it was. This is how it should be.

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