A federal judge ruled today that Donald Trump’s name must be removed from the Kennedy Center. The decision says the Trump appointed Kennedy Center Board acted illegally when it voted to add Trump’s name to the Center. The court also ordered a halt to a plan to temporarily close the center for renovations.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper sided with Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), a member of the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees, who challenged both the name change and the proposed two-year closure. Her lawsuit, filed last December, argued that “[b]ecause Congress named the center by statute, changing the Kennedy Center’s name requires an act of Congress.”
In his 94-page decision, Judge Cooper wrote, “The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
Trump’s response came quickly in a post on his social media platform:
Most of Trump’s “facts” in the post are lies. As usual, Trump’s rant speaks for itself.
Memorial Day is a day for reflection. The day honors the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Observed every year on the last Monday of May, Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day in a nod to the tradition of placing flowers or other decorative displays at gravesites.
Memorial Day dates back to the Civil War, in which 620,000 soldiers died. The high death toll due in part to the fact that the total includes the fallen from both sides. Approximately 360,000 Union soldiers and 260,000 Confederate soldiers. All Americans.
What we now call Memorial Day became a federal holiday in 1971. Today, we remember our fallen from all our wars.
It is common on this day to visit cemeteries and memorials, such as the Arlington National Cemetery, to place American flags and wreaths on the graves of the fallen. At 3:00 p.m. local time, all Americans are encouraged to pause for a minute of silence to reflect on those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Many communities host local parades and commemorative ceremonies to honor their local fallen heroes.
It is also common for the civilian leaders of our government to pay tribute by placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Solder. Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Pete Hegseth performed those duties at Arlington on this day. Trump paid special tribute in a formal address at Arlington to the thirteen soldiers killed, so far, in our current war in Iran.
The United States has a long tradition requiring the military to answer to the civilian leadership. The Constitution makes the president Commander-In-Chief but at the same time assigns to Congress the power to declare war. Congress hasn’t done that since June 4, 1942, when it declared war against Axis-aligned Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania during World War II. Prior to that, Congress declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, followed by Germany and Italy on December 11, 1941.
Yet at least in my lifetime, we almost always seem to be at war. Since World War II, the United States has engaged in major conflicts—such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the post-9/11 wars—without formal declarations of war. Instead, military actions have been conducted under Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMFs) passed by Congress. Or via unilateral executive action. Congress did pass a so-called War Powers Resolution which is supposed to give the legislative branch the ability to stop a president’s unilateral military actions. But historically, Congress has rarely been willing or able to invoke it. And presidents, including the current administration, argue the Act is UnConstitutional.
The Framers feared concentrating the decision to go to war in the hands of a single person. James Madison noted that the executive branch was “most interested in war, and most prone to it,” which is why they entrusted the power to the legislature. The original draft of the Constitution gave Congress the power to make war. The Framers specifically changed this to declare war, with Madison recording that this substitution empowered the president only to repel “sudden attacks” on the country.
Presidents have gone well beyond that “original intent.”
What Would Tom Say? That’s the question running through my mind as I watched Charles III, King of Great Britain and Ireland and lots of other places, address a joint session of the Congress of the United States of America.
Tom is Thomas Jefferson, founding father, first Secretary of State, third President, and principal author of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain by the thirteen colonies henceforth to be known as the United States of America.
In the Declaration, written 250 years ago, Jefferson accuses Britain’s then King George III of being a tyrant, “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
Did you file your tax return? Are you getting a refund or do you owe money? Did you fill out the form yourself? Did you use tax software? Did you hire an accountant?
Each year we spend an average of $240 to prepare and file our annual tax returns, according to the IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service. We spend on average thirteen hours filling out the forms. People in other countries think we’re nuts.
What were you doing in the evening of December 31, 2025? Were you sitting around waiting for major news to drop in Washington? I didn’t think so. I was noting the passing of 2025 and the arrival of 2026, as I suspect most of the people in the country were doing that New Year’s Eve. As least, that’s what Donald Trump and the Republicans were hoping.
That’s when the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee released former Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s deposition as part of their oversight investigation into the alleged “weaponization” of the Department of Justice. The committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), was looking into the January 6 denier‘s belief federal law enforcement resources were misused for partisan purposes. Republicans claimed the investigations were politically motivated and intended to interfere with the 2024 election.
We already know how 2025 has ended. Donald Trump has made it a wall-to-wall disaster with his illegal exercise of power with the goal of trashing the government and sweeping aside the norms of law and reason by which we have governed for 250 years. Even on New Year’s Eve he has vetoed a bipartisan law aimed at providing drinking water to tens of thousands. He has also reposted social media attacks on the memory of Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy, who tragically died of cancer at the age of 35.
These acts of retribution, jealously, and sheer cruelty are standard procedure for Trump, who seems to draw perverse pleasure from these vile acts.
But there is hope that 2026 can be different. the new year is also an election year. That means we the people get a chance to reverse the mistake made in 2024 and strengthen the roadblocks that keep Trump from putting a crown on his head. in 2025 the Republican majority in Congress abdicated its traditional role as legislative partner and overseer of the executive. But every member of the House of Representatives faces reelection in 2026. So does one-third of the members of the Senate. Voters can make their disapproval heard loud and clear.
Buckle up. 2026 will be a rough ride. But we can make a difference. Some assembly will be required.
The Supreme Court, or rather the six Republican justices on the Supreme Court, have handed Donald Trump another victory. They issued a stay, blocking the order of a three-judge panel in Texas, which found the recent reapportionment of the state’s Congressional districts to be racially motivated and therefor illegal. The six, has been their pattern all year, issued their order in the dark of night on the “shadow” docket without an explanation or opinion. Greg Abbott, et al. v. League of United Latin American Citizens, et al.
The map the lower court panel blocked was seen as one of the most aggressive mid‑decade gerrymanders in recent history. The Supreme Court stay allows Texas to proceed with the new map, which analysts say could give Republicans five additional U.S. House seats in the 2026 midterms.
Gerrymandering 101
What, in a nutshell, is gerrymandering? The Encyclopedia Britannica has a wonderful explanation from which I have borrowed the graphic above. The American Constitution requires that every ten years we conduct a “census” to apportion representation in the House of Representatives. The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 2 begins, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”
Once the number of representatives is determined by the census, it is up to each state to draw the maps of legislative districts. Because the states have statewide elections for senators, governors, and to decide members of the Electoral College, there is data on how the state as a whole divides between the parties. Using the graphic above we find of a total population of fifty, thirty (60%) are orange voters while twenty (40%) are purple voters.
From that starting point, the state could draw “fair” maps which distributed the people in such a manner to generate three orange and two purple representatives, proportionate to the statewide electorate. But the state could also gerrymander, producing an outcome, using the example on the right above, of five orange and no purple representatives, or two orange and three purple representatives.
The term “gerrymander” was coined as a portmanteau of the name Elbridge Gerry and the word “salamander.” Gerry, who was the governor of Massachusetts, signed a redistricting law that redrew district lines in a way that favored his party. Critics said the new map created a weirdly shaped district which resembled a salamander. A satirical cartoon published in the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1812, popularized the word. The cartoon depicting the irregular shape helped turn a local political attack into a lasting political term.
The Donnie-Mander
The political parties have a long history of manipulating their maps to various degrees every ten years when the new census requires a reallocation of seats. But two things make this year’s manipulations unusual. First, this is a mid-census reapportionment. The last census was in 2020 with new maps taking effect in 2022 in most states. Second, this mid-census revision to the 2022 map came at the direct demand of Donald Trump. Texas’s Republican Governor Greg Abbott heeded Trump’s call and generated a new map that may add as many as five Republicans to the House in 2026. That is the map the Supreme Court now says can be put into place. With the Republican control in the House hanging on a tiny seven vote majority, Trump is clearly afraid the Democrats could gain control in the next election.
This Trump inspired Donnie-Mander, now sanctified by the Supreme Court, has set off an unprecedented arms race of mid-decade redistricting across the country. Missouri and North Carolina have passed their own Republican leaning maps. California voters approved a map designed to cancel out the Texas gains. Virginia and Maryland are working on new maps favoring Democrats. Illinois is considering one. Florida and Indiana are working on revisions on the Republican side.
National Public Radio has been keeping score on its web site. As of this writing they show a slight gain for Republicans on the basis of district voting patterns in next year’s election. Considering his atrocious polling numbers, Trump is going to need all the help he can get. The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, one of my favorite pollsters, sees 2026 shaping up to be much too close to call.
Congress has over the years tried to set standards and take control of the redistricting process. It has never been able to pass a law to bring order out of the chaos.
The majority on the Supreme Court, by allowing these partisan mid-decade redistrictings, has created a free-for-all which is a lose-lose for the American people. But 2026 does promise to be a good show.
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