Defending the 2026 Midterm Elections

Posted on February 27, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 27, 2026,

People who fear Donald Trump’s attempts to undermine our democracy recognized from the start that our greatest vulnerability might be the 2026 midterm elections. This is not hyperbole or speculation. Trump has been very clear that he considers a Republican victory the only evidence of a fair election, which he self-righteously points to as a mandate to ensure that Republicans use any means to maintain their majorities in Congress. That’s the circular reasoning of an extreme narcissist who believes his only obligation is to his own beliefs.

Trump has a number of election-related weapons in his tool bag. The first is his ongoing campaign of lies, distortions, and outright fantasies about election fraud and his oft-debunked contention that Democrats have been rigging elections for decades, and it’s his mission to stop them. The only people who still believe that are either too stupid or lazy to look at the facts, or who, having invested their fortunes or political futures in Trump are too mired in self-interest to do the right thing although they know the truth.

It’s clear from recent polling that the lies no longer influence the vast majority of Americans. Human nature being what it is, once a life-long deceiver is revealed, there’s no going back. Once people see Trump for the self-absorbed sociopath he is, he loses them for good. That won’t stop the lies or the fanatical influence on Trump of the White Nationalist Stephen Miller who continues to have Trump’s ear daily, but that approach doesn’t have the effectiveness it once did.

Thus, Trump turned to gerrymandering, something entirely unsurprising, yet foolish. In doing so, he fell into the trap that often upends zealots and extremists. Openly trying to convert blue seats to red in the most extreme manner is the kind of overreach that offends serious, fair-minded people. It exposes Trump as willing to use any immoral ploy to achieve his aims, and Americans don’t like that. Moreover, the move was not properly thought out and overlooked some obvious flaws.

First, Trump’s influencers assumed that the courts would back their gerrymandering in red states but somehow block similar efforts in blue states. Which idiot came up with that idea? And the result, according to most respected pollsters, is a two-fold loss for Trump. Our largest states are now gerrymandered beyond any reasonable measure, and the result appears to have benefitted Democrats rather than Trump, because the strategy relied, among other things, on Hispanic voters continuing to support him despite ICE’s racial profiling which Trump and his appointees fully support.

The next ploy people feared was Trump creating a crisis so severe it would (1) distract voters from his other misdeeds, like the apparent withholding of accusations against Trump in the Epstein files, and (2) possibly provide him with justification for declaring a national emergency that would give him extraordinary powers that could include postponing or canceling an election. Thus, he has spent months engaging in belligerent saber-rattling with both allies and adversaries.

He hasn’t given up on acquiring Greenland from Denmark, one of our most reliable allies. He is attempting to take over the government of Venezuela, with the implied threat that he can do the same to any nation in our hemisphere that offends him. He is loudly threatening a war with Iran that his generals warn might have open-ended consequences beyond our control and result in many American casualties. Finally, he’s talking about forcing a regime change in Cuba. All this from a president who accused Democrats of involving the United States in endless wars.

Finally, there’s a draft Executive Order going around, written by some of Trump’s most extreme handlers that would declare a national emergency based on China allegedly planning to hack the midterm elections. The Order would be an attempt to wrest control of the election away from the fifty states, to which our Constitution grants sole control of it.

How serious is this? That depends on a number of things. There’s no question that an attempt to undermine our election process has existential implications for our republic. The Supreme Court can stop it in its tracks if it chooses to, and the recent decision ruling Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional suggest they may do that. Conservative Justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch are now on record as valuing the Constitution over Trumps political shenanigans. But we can’t put all our eggs in that basket. The midterms are the red line on which Americans of all races, colors, and political persuasions must stand firm.

Every American citizen must be willing to defend fair, open voting this year, which includes the right to vote by mail, and the right to authorize their states to enable early voting, neither of which has ever shown evidence of fraud or cheating. You can write letters demanding action from your elected representatives. You can support peaceful demonstrations. And perhaps most important and effective, you can break through the barriers we’ve erected to interpersonal communication. Engage with people, especially those who don’t want to discuss politics. Make them hear you.

If we bury our heads in the sand, Trump wins.

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Neil Gorsuch Tells Congress and Trump the Court will Defend Separation of Powers

Posted on February 22, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, Frberuary 22, 2026

When Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court on January 31, 2017, he described Judge Gorsuch as having, “a superb intellect, an unparalleled legal education, and a commitment to interpreting the Constitution according to its text.” In other words, he described Gorsuch as a traditional, conservative Republican. His description was accurate, but it was also one of many examples of Trump practicing Orwellian Doublespeak.

As with the nominations of Justices Barrett and Kavanaugh, Trump cared about their education and other credentials only as a cover for his real reason for selecting him. Always transactional, Trump’s criteria were their loyalty and their commitment to strike down Roe v. Wade, guaranteeing Trump’s support from evangelists. But striking down Roe, while it reversed fifty years of precedent wasn’t a challenge to the Constitution, which doesn’t even mention abortion.

Trump throws around words like Conservative as if he actually were one, but he has no ideology at all except greed and an obscene lust for power. He proved that, yesterday, when he attacked Gorsuch for defending the Constitution because he joined five other Justices to rule that Trump’s tariffs were illegal. Gorsuch lived up to Trump’s 2017 words, but Trump had other intentions. He doesn’t want the Court to defend the Constitution, especially the part that assures Separation of Powers. He wants it to demonstrate its loyalty and gratitude by allowing him to do anything he wants to.

Yesterday, Trump described Gorsuch as a FOOL and a LAPDOG. The same Gorsuch whom he praised for being an originalist who would interpret the Constitution literally, he now labeled a RINO, Republican in name only. That, too, was classic Trump, who changed the definition of “Republican” to suit his narcissistic personality. Gorsuch is the same kind of Republican Barry Goldwater was. And like Goldwater, whose integrity assured that Richard Nixon was held accountable for Watergate and the ensuing coverup, he defended our democracy.

Gorsuch also went the extra mile to lecture Trump about bypassing Congress. His message was clear if indirect. He told Trump and his Heritage Society handlers that the Court will not permit them to skirt or undermine the Constitution. The Guardian put it differently. ”After an agonizing year in which the U.S. Supreme Court has stood aside and allowed Trump to run roughshod over the constitutional separation of powers, [it] has finally stirred itself to set boundaries on the president’s increasingly regal pose.”

The Guardian noted that in 2025, the Court issued twenty-four emergency rulings from its “opaque shadow docket…collectively [giving] the benefit of the doubt to Trump…[allowing] Trump, at least in the short term, to trample over powers reserved for Congress.”

Justice Gorsuch did more than join Justices Roberts and Barrett to vote with the three liberal Justices. He issued a concurring opinion of his own which directly rebuked Congress for failing to defend itself against Trump’s power grabs, and subtly told Trump the days of his imperial presidency are over, a moment the great majority of Americans were awaiting. He also attacked Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh for abandoning the “major questions doctrine,” under which any attempt by the executive to wield extradinary power must be preceded by an unambiguous delegation of the authority to do so.

The New York Times described Gorsuch’s concurring opinion as “a paean to Congress that read like a requiem for a bygone era of legislative power.” Gorsuch was explicit about the behavior of the Trump administration. “…[I]t can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design.” The deliberative nature of the legislative process is also the polar opposite of the knee-jerk whims of Donald Trump, who once changed the level of tariffs he imposed on China four times in one day.

America’s power in the world has depended on the stability and dependability of its policies. But that is anathema to Donald Trump who prefers feints and bluffs. Note to Donald: the future of the world is not a poker game. He brags that his unpredictability is his most powerful weapon. That might work when he’s being sued for breach of contract or fraud, but it’s not the way powerful nations conduct diplomacy. Diplomacy, and by implication, respect for other nations’ sovereignty, requires that diplomats understand each other. In 1962, lack of clarity over Nikita Khrushchev’s statements about removing missiles from Cuba almost led to a nuclear confrontation.

Trump’s governing is a reckless, high-risk attempt to change the structure of the American government and rework the world economic order. The hubris of a small group of right-wing extremists is remarkable. To succeed, they had to hijack a major political party, intimidate both the Congress and the Supreme Court, and then bully their way through the rest of the world, threatening other nations with our economic and military power.

They almost got away with it, and we can only hope that the Court’s decision on tariffs and Justice Gorsuch’s remarkable rebuke of both Congress and Trump will be enough to turn the tide for good.

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The Supreme Court’s Decision on Tariffs May Be a More Powerful Warning to Trump

Posted on February 20, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 20, 2026

On November 5, 2025, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about President Trump’s tariff policy. Six of the nine Justices, including Conservatives John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neal Gorsuch all expressed pessimism that the tariffs were legal. Today’s six to three decision confirming that they are illegal was exactly what most people expected.

The Justices’ reaction to oral arguments was clear enough that most observers predicted a decision could be released shortly after New Years. That it took so long suggests that the Court was concerned with Justice Kavanaugh’s warning that having to refund as much as $200 billion to the nations who paid the illegal tariffs and the complicating effect the ruling could have on trade agreements that stemmed from them could throw the government into chaos.

In a perfect world, Supreme Court decisions are always based on nonpolitical interpretations of the Constitution, but Courts have often let considerations of possible civic disruption or economic trauma influence their decisions. This decision came against a backdrop of Trump’s belief that presidents ought to be able to do whatever they want. He hasn’t been shy about beating that drum. Even if Trump’s approval rating were a hundred percent, allowing a president that kind of power would set a precedent that any unscrupulous successor in the White House could use to undermine the Constitution.

In today’s world, in which Trump’s policies are focused on changing our American democracy into a white Christian-dominated fascist oligarchy, the president’s approval rating is below water in every major category. The Court had to be aware that bending with his illegal tariffs would be a signal that it had no intention of trying to reign in Trump’s autocratic ambitions, and it would be opposed by at least two-thirds of Americans. Imagine Trump, J. D. Vance, and Stephen Miller with no guard rails and their own get out of jail free cards. On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t.

This view is supported by the opinions of Kavanaugh and many other legal experts that the president has several other legal avenues that might support most of his tariffs, which makes it clear that the Court’s ruling wasn’t about tariffs, but telling Trump that if he violates the Constitution, they will stop him. In a more subtle way, the decision divided the Court in two parts, one of which includes Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, both of whom have been enjoying lavish vacations and other gifts provided by right-wing billionaires. The six to three decision is a statement to Trump and the world that a strong majority of the Court will not permit Trump to tear up the Constitution.

It’s also interesting that the Court’s decision occurred just as Trump was teasing the idea that he would create a new pan-American trade bloc that excluded Canada, which has steadfastly rebuked his policy and seems on the verge of a major trade agreement with China. Perhaps the saner heads on the Court clearly saw that allowing Trump to weaponize tariffs whenever anyone opposed him was undermining both our diplomatic and economic standing in the world. That’s especially frightening, because with those powerful forces blunted, Trump can only achieve his fantasy of sharing the world with Putin and Xi militarily, which brings us, again, to Iran. Let’s not forget that in Trump, we have a president who will never give up trying to control everything. If he believes the Court is disloyal to him, and he only hears advice from Yes-people, we may find ourselves involved in a major war in the Middle East that could spread to the entire world.

Of great interest to many Americans is what this decision portends for other issues before the Court. Will the Court support Trump’s attempt to outlaw birthright citizenship? Will it give the White Supremacists pause in their quest to kill immigration from nonwhite countries to assure that white Americans are always in the majority? If Trump knows the Court will make him obey the law, perhaps his handlers will realize that it’s time to reconsider the bipartisan immigration bill he ordered House Majority Leader Mike Johnson to kill before the 2024 election. There was never any doubt among objective observers that that bill would have gone a long way to solving our immigration and border problems. But by scuttling the bill, Trump created a pretext for expanding ICE into a federal domestic strike force that answered only to itself.

Once again, we see evidence that the Trump administration is rapidly losing its mojo. Independents have turned on him, and he knows evangelists will when they realize the full implications of the Epstein files. Republicans have been pummeled in every special election since Trump took office, and now, MAHA mothers who have followed HHS Secretary Kennedy’s push to eliminate vaccines and change the way Americans view health and nutrition are turning against him. Relax, it’s only a matter of time.

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Congress’ Silence Over Iran

Posted on February 19, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 19, 2026

In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers resolution over President Nixon’s veto. It’s purpose, as the Vietnam conflict came to an embarrassing close, was to limit a president’s power to go to war without Congressional approval. It’s a conundrum I’ve never understood. The Constitution grants the exclusive power to declare war to Congress; yet, as Commander in Chief of the armed forces, the president can create a state of war simply by ordering an attack on another country.

The War Powers resolution requires a president to report to Congress within forty-eight hours of ordering an attack and to withdraw any forces involved in such an attack within sixty days if Congress does not declare war. It’s a situation that might have been designed for someone with Trump’s lust for power. In practical terms, he can start a major war any time he wants to, and given the scale of weapons likely to be used, there might be nothing left after sixty days. In the nuclear age, this is untenable. With someone as unhinged as Donald Trump often appears controlling things, eighty years of avoiding World War 3 could be completely undone with a single unwise presidential decision.

When Trump ordered an attack on Venezuela in January, Congress attempted to modify the War Powers Act to prevent just such an event. But the Republican majorities prevailed, barely, meaning that every Congressional Republican except for a handful voted to give Trump free reign over the lives of every human being on this planet – a terrifying prospect.

This would be a horrifying situation under any conditions, but against the backdrop of the administration’s panic over the Epstein files it’s worse. Celebrities, billionaire CEOs, diplomats, and politicians are falling at an accelerated pace. All it takes is for their names to be revealed in the Epstein files released by DOJ. The arrest in the UK of Prince Andrew over his association with Epstein, and the statement by his brother, King Charles, that no one is above the law and justice will be served must have Trump soiling himself.

In the list of prominent people falling every day, we’re seeing a developing picture of a world of wealthy elites that is rotten at its core. Most people would agree that there are few crimes more heinous than trafficking women and sexually abusing children, yet that is precisely the picture emerging of how these elites spend their time. They are the people who believe laws and basic rules of conduct do not apply to them. They represent the circles Trump has always moved in, the people he associated with and befriended. With only half of the Epstein files released and most of those heavily redacted, the fact that  Trump’s name has already been found in them over a million times makes his claim that he knew nothing about Epstein’s business or social activities seem absurd.

That’s why Republicans now fear major losses in November’s midterm elections. If the Democrats emerge with a majority in either house of Congress, Trump will be an impotent lame duck for the rest of his term. Thus, the obvious panic over the elections, with Trump sounding more desperate every day, trying to take control of them. His gerrymandering gambit backfired, with most polls now predicting that the effort will more likely net extra seats in the House for Democrats.

Do the math yourself. With a toothless War Powers Act, fear growing every day over the election, and Trump’s frequent assurances that he will treat any election he or his supporters lose as rigged and corrupt, it’s not hard to read between the lines. If Trump could get away with declaring a national emergency and canceling the election he would do so without batting an eye. Given all that, the military buildup in the Middle East and the implied and overt threats against Iran look increasingly ominous. What better pretext could exist than a prolonged war with Iran?

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are reportedly plotting a major strike against both Iran’s nuclear facilities and the regime’s leaders that will be nothing like the surgical strikes that damaged those facilities in January. The administration has been hinting that an attack could begin within the next couple of days. Even if such action is required to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, that is not a decision that should be made without the involvement of Congress and our NATO allies.

Yet Congress is largely silent, as are our news media. Are we really all going to all sit by and watch a terribly dangerous precedent be set as a president risks involving the United States and possibly the entire world in a major war based solely on politics? If that occurs, the rules-based world order we have lived with since 1945 will have been replaced by a future of chaos and uncertainty.

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Getting Tired of Hearing About the Epstein Files?

Posted on February 16, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 16, 2026

If you’re sick of hearing about the Epstein files, hang in there a little longer. They may be the quickest way to defang Trump. Judging by how people are reacting to the heavily redacted versions released by DOJ, we can make a pretty good guess about where this is leading.

In Europe, prominent people are dropping like flies. Apparently, Europeans, who have always been cavalier about things like affairs and mistresses have lines they won’t cross, and trafficking of women and pedophilia are high on that list. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emanuel Macron are both reeling because people at the ambassadorial level were found to have close ties with Epstein. The diplomats are gone, and public sentiment is so negative, the governments of those two allies might fall.

Today, the New York Times reported that my alma mater, Columbia University, the first major school to fall to Trump’s extortion to the tune of $221 million, punished two people in the Columbia Dental School for allowing Epstein to influence them to accept his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, into the school. “…Columbia said it was cutting all ties to Dr. [Thomas] Magnani and stripping Dr. [Letty] Moss-Salentijn of her administrative duties at the dental college, where she remains a tenured faculty member. Several other people implicated in the episode had already ended their affiliations with the school…”

Then there’s Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick. The Hill reported that “Republican senators are worried that revelations around Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein could balloon into a bigger political liability for the GOP heading into this year’s midterm elections.” Yet, Trump, who may never have admitted he was wrong in his entire life, is projecting indifference, posting support for Lutnick.

You can’t trust a word Trump says whether it’s spoken or incompetently typed on his Truth Social platform. More than likely, he’s scrambling with his fixers over this. Trump doesn’t give a damn about Lutnick any more than he cares about anyone else he’s ever done business with. What worries him is that a simple search of the released electronic Epstein files turned up Trump’s name more than a million times.

We don’t know whether Trump is guilty of a crime, but now that the unredacted files are available to Congress, we’ll find out before long. It may not always be true that where there’s smoke there’s fire, but Trump’s history and the remarkable number of women who have gone public to accuse him of various forms of sexual misconduct suggest otherwise. Remember the infamous hush-money payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels?

Former rabid Trumpers like Kentucky’s Thomas Massie and Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene have already broken with Trump over the Epstein files. All the major press outlets have reported that a significant group of other Republican Representatives and Senators agree with Massie and Greene but are laying low to avoid Trump’s ire. Trump’s hold on the Republican Party and his ability to intimidate any Congressperson who fails his loyalty test are declining. The accumulation of outrageous attempts to re-write our Constitution and undermine our democracy have unleashed unprecedented anger against the administration, even worse than the backlash Richard Nixon faced over Watergate.

Hang in there. This will take time, but Trump’s hold on his Congressional majorities is looking more and more fragile. The midterm elections are in nine months, and they will either end Trump’s reign of terror, or enable him to continue causing havoc in the United States and all over the world.

The Times editorial Board today published a warning that with the expiration of the last nuclear arms limitation treaty, this month, Trump appears determined to ramp up production of nuclear weapons, triggering another nuclear arms race. There are many in Congress who believe the same thing. While the Epstein files have no direct connection to nuclear weapons, if The Times is correct, anything that reduces or nullifies Trump’s influence must be taken seriously.

Trump has already shown his desperation about the midterms, making wild statements about federalizing the election, although the Constitution grants control of elections to the states. And his attempts to force Congress to pass a law requiring every voter to prove their citizenship is being rebuffed by red and blue state election officials. Like most of Trump’s bluster, the talk of taking over the election is just noise. It’s also misguided, since the percentage of people who have easy access to birth certificates and passports is much higher in blue states than red.

Republican Congress people in swing districts and some formerly red districts now fear defeat in November, which means that as the midterms approach, Trump will lose his razor-thin majority in Congress. The same spineless wimps who caved to him will now cave to the polls. If the Epstein files demonstrate that Trump was involved in the sickness perpetrated by Epstein, he’ll be done. Hang in there, folks. If they believe Trump is guilty of trafficking or pedophilia, his own party will impeach him this time.

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Report Card

Posted on February 5, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 5, 2026

Much like Donald Trump’s first term, his sole major accomplishment in term two was passing his Big Beautiful Bill, which assured that his billionaire supporters would pay little or no tax on their income and people truly in need would see all the programs designed to help them either cut or eliminated, at least until a different Congress changes that. And even that may turn out to be partly an embarrassing failure.

Even if Trump isn’t, his supporters at the Heritage Society are smart enough to have understood on day one that he really only had about eighteen months to effect their agenda of white Christian nationalism. They knew from the start that when Americans finally woke up to the reality of Trump’s attempt to increase presidential power (meaning his own) to a Putin-like kleptocracy of the rich, his policies would horrify many of them. That meant that if the 2026 midterm elections actually happened as the Constitution requires, he would likely lose his majority in the House and possibly the Senate as well. And that meant that his ability to bully everyone else would come to an end.

Never shy about cheating or stealing, it was clear that Trump was going to make a lot of noise about elections. He still hasn’t stopped whining about the 2020 election, insisting that it was stolen from him despite both partisan and nonpartisan recounts that proved he lost and there was none of the widespread corruption he claimed. When Trump began suggesting that he would clean up the imaginary corruption, conspiracy theories abounded.

Would Trump use RFK’s madness to undermine Americans’ confidence in science and medicine, which, compounded with our withdrawal from the World Health Organization suggested that he was hoping for a new pandemic which he could use as a pretext for canceling the election? Would he use the twenty-fifth anniversary of nine-eleven to declare a national emergency based on a fantasy of terrorists planning something worse? Though grandiose, sick plans like those surely appeal to his narcissistic character, neither of those trial balloons survived.

Instead, he seized on gerrymandering and demanded that Texas redistrict their electorate to add five more Republican seats. He also began pressuring other red states to do the same, and Missouri took action that would add another seat. But Indiana said Hell No, and California and New York retaliated. The Supreme Court ruled that both Texas and California could use their new maps, and CNN’s statistician, Harry Enten, now projects that Trump’s gambit is likely to give the Democrats at least two more seats. The recent upset of a State Senate special election in Texas, in which a Democrat won by fourteen points in a district Trump won by seventeen, makes the map even more ominous for Trump, because Texas’ redistricting assumed Trump would retain the Hispanic vote he got in 2024. But it was Hispanics that drove the Democratic upset.

Trump believed he could re-write the world’s economic and trade relationships by using the power of the American economy to impose tariffs. That plan had a couple of flaws. First, it almost surely violates the Constitution, which grants the power to levy tariffs to Congress. On top of that, while Trump has signed a few deals with countries that probably would have happened anyway, most of the industrialized world chose not to play Trump’s game. The first and most obvious casualty was our relationship with Canada, which has smartly been disengaging from the United States and signing trade deals with China and Europe. Today, we learned that Canada’s automobile industry is extricating itself from dependence on the US and investing heavily in electric vehicles, an industry sector Trump is trying to kill.

The Supreme Court has strongly suggested that Trump’s tariffs are illegal, but they have a real problem over what to do with the $200 billion that was collected improperly. No wonder their decision is taking so long.

Trump’s most glaring failure has been turning ICE into a federal thug force with clear instructions from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem that Americans’ First Amendment rights were no longer in play. Trump, who only knows how to use force to get things done, and really believed that his tough guy act would win out, badly miscalculated. His lack of respect for average Americans, especially his base, which he repeatedly lied to and stole from, came back to haunt him. Americans by margins of four to one reject an American Gestapo, enabling the Democrats to hold DHS funding back in last week’s budget vote.

I promised you a report card:

                Chutzbah – A plus

                Fulfilling his oath to support and defend the Constitution – F

                Reducing the cost of living – C minus

                Transparency – D (D instead of F because negative correlations are as meaningful as positive ones, so all the lies and misdirection are eventually seen through)

                Uniting America – F minus

                Ending the war in Ukraine – D minus

                Ending the war in Gaza – F for giving free reign to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to pursue genocide and physically destroy most of Gaza.

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Domestic Terrorism

Posted on January 26, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 25, 2026

I doubt that there are many Americans who would disagree that domestic terrorism represents an existential threat to our country. What they may disagree about is identifying who those terrorists are. They are clearly not people like Renee Good and Alex Pretti. It’s more than ironic that everything we learn about the two people who were killed by out-of-control ICE agents, tells us they were typical, average Americans who cared very much about their communities and families.

Pretti, apparently, was exceptional, a research biologist and VA ICU nurse with a reputation for caring for people. As we saw in the many videos that I believe prove that Pretti was murdered by ICE agents, his last willful act before he was shot was protecting a woman who had been thrown to the frozen pavement by one of the ICE thugs.

The actions of the Trump administration for a full year tell us that the real domestic terrorists are Deputy White House Chief of Staff, White Nationalist Stephen Miller, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel. The only way to regain the confidence of the American public is for the president to fire all four them immediately. They have all disgraced their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

Former Directors of ICE and the Border Patrol, Law Enforcement professionals, and opinion writers from all over the political spectrum are condemning the actions of ICE agents, who we see with our own eyes and ears, behave like thugs. I made two interesting observations, lately about this. One is that more and more people are using the word Gestapo to describe ICE agents. The other is that at first, many people were offended by that. One of my own relatives accused me of being un-American and even anti-Semitic of all things (he and I are both Jewish) for saying it.

But not so much anymore. For eighty years, Americans have watched re-enactments of how the Nazi Gestapo behaved in movies and documentaries. It almost seems as if the ICE agents running loose in American cities practiced imitating them. The same arrogant, sadistic cruelty we saw in the Gestapo and the Nazi regime’s genocide is on display right in front of us every day. But although they seem like vicious thugs, I can’t lay all the blame on the agents themselves. They’re commanded by people who deserve most of the blame for throwing thousands of agents onto our street without proper training.

As one law enforcement officer put it, today, either the behavior of ICE agents reflects incompetent management and training, or they’re doing exactly what they were intended to do, and either of those scenarios is catastrophic. I believe the latter. The thuggery they display is exactly what Stephen Miller and Donald trump envisioned in their quest to undo the protections and separation of powers in our Constitution.

I believe this because I remember January 6, 2021. On that day, as federal prosecutor Jack Smith told the Congress, last week, Donald Trump instigated an attack on the Capitol, encouraged rioters to murder Vice President Pence, who refused to break the law in service of Trump, and watched the insurrection on television for hours, making no attempt to stop the mayhem. We all saw and heard that, and many of us were surprised only by the audacity of the man. His actions were perfectly in keeping with the sociopath we knew he was.

It’s impossible not to compare Trump’s attitude toward ICE in Minneapolis with his intentions on January 6. Part of Trump’s obvious mental illness is an inability to feel empathy or care about people in the way most of us do. Trump obviously had no regard for the dozens of police who were killed or injured on January 6th. He only acted when his supporters in Congress and Fox News told him he had to stop the riot, in other words, when his own power was threatened. Even when he makes noises that sound sympathetic, he’s purely transactional – if he can’t profit from an action he won’t take it.

That’s exactly what’s happening in Minnesota, and what we saw in Los Angeles and Portland. If Trump wanted ICE to behave like a professional law enforcement agency all he needed to do was direct Kristi Noem to make it happen, but no matter how egregious ICE’s actions were, Trump defended them and the false narratives his lackeys have been circulating. Trump also sanctioned sidelining local and state police, and last night, after Pretti was killed and Noem and Patel lied through their teeth on international television, Trump posted a rant about how the 2020 election was stolen from him.

An attorney I know commented today that so many Congresional Republicans are appalled by Trump’s behavior, there’s a real chance he could be impeached and convicted by his own party for clearly ordering his people to ignore the First and Fourth Amendments, which is the only reason he’s backing down. Apparently, he doesn’t think much of the Second Amendment either, and his gun-loving base isn’t likely to forget that.

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A Light at the End of the Tunnel

Posted on January 24, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 24, 2026

Three days into Season 2, Episode 2 of the Trump reality horror show, there are clear signs that Trump is beginning to lose his hold on power and on what’s left of his ability to function rationally. His power was the result of a massive intimidation campaign dating back to Season 1. To people who have lately been asking when this madness will end, the answer is: when Trump’s ability to scare people ends.

We already see signs of that happening. Dyed-in-the-wool Trumper, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie drew the line at demanding to know the extent of Trump’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. The Congress forced a vote on modifying the War Powers Act to force Trump to get congressional approval before attacking any other countries. The effort failed, but by only a single vote in the Senate, and by a tie vote in the House, because a majority was required to pass it. Talk about clinging to power by his fingernails!

Trump’s greatest weapons are lies and chaos, but reality is beginning to take hold. Except for initial polling results at the beginning of a president’s term, the only times since World War 2 that a president’s popularity rating was lower than Trump’s is now was when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan went south during George W. Bush’s second term, and just before Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace.

I can’t wait to see Trump’s approval ratings following his performance in Davos, where every major foreign leader saw what Trump has become. He lashed out at our European allies, and attacked Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, directly on the world stage, following that up with a threat to impose 100% tariffs on all Canadian imports, which would violate the North American Trade agreement Trump forced on Canada and Mexico in Season 1. He posted that China would devour Canada if America wasn’t there to protect them on his Truth Social platform, to which Carney calmly replied: “Canada doesn’t live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian.”

New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a fascinating piece on January 23rd, “The Coming Trump Crackup.” He argued that extreme narcissists tend to get worse when they age “as their remaining inhibitions fall away. … [and] the effect is grandiosity, entitlement, lack of empathy and ferocious overreaction to perceived slights.” We’ve all seen this happening throughout 2025, and we’ve also seen clear signs that Trump’s physical and mental health are rapidly declining.

Trump, who mocked Joe Biden for struggling to walk up and down the stairs to Air Force One, now clings to the handrail himself and takes great care with each step, and the Trump who left Davos looked like a tired old man who could barely stay on his feet. You might laugh about him repeatedly confusing Greenland with Iceland during his opening speech at Davos but given the potential consequences of trying to take Greenland from Denmark, only someone on the verging of losing it completely could have been so unaware.

Of greater importance is that literally everyone at the Davos conference saw and heard all that live and in person. They heard what happens when a desperate man feels power slipping and begins lashing out in every direction, and most foreign leaders realized they were dealing with a seriously insane man. Our allies shuddered, but our principal adversaries rubbed their hands with glee. Trump is not viewed as a serious threat in terms of being a world leader, but like an out-of-control angry child with nuclear weapons.

Contrary to Trump’s bragging that because of him the United States has never been more respected, we are now seen by most of the world as a nation at serious risk of collapsing as a major force in world politics and economics. More important, our entire Congress saw all that, and most of them reached the same conclusions. In the final analysis, the greed and self-interest the caused almost every Republican in Congress to bow to Trump’s will is what will undo him in 2026.

Trump’s hold on Congress has been the threat of turning his rabid MAGA base against them in primary elections. But that’s history now. As of today, fifteen Republican House seats are considered toss-ups in November. Current polling shows that Democrats have an overall advantage in the generic ballot of between four and thirteen percent, and twenty-seven House Republicans have said they will not seek re-election. Even through all the Trump chaos, these facts imply a growing wave of resistance to MAGA among voters which means many of the craven Republicans who bent the knee to Trump now fear the voters more than they fear the President.

When you pull your head out of the sand and see a wave coming, it’s not a tsunami; it’s the surge of relief you’ll feel when Trump no longer intimidates Congress. The issue now is how more damage he can do to America before Season 2, Episode 2 ends.

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ICE vs The People of Minnesota

Posted on January 23, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 23, 2026

In 2025, a dear old friend moved to St. Paul, MN to spend his final retirement years with his family. For a few months, it was a joyous time, and he looked forward to the future. On January 19, he posted this on his Facebook account:

Situation here is getting tense. We are experiencing the shutdown of business where employees are scared to show up for work especially if you are a brown skin person. This is a big problem with restaurants and it doesn’t matter if you are an American citizen. Schools, hospitals, social service facilities, big box stores, large manufacturers, are facing serious disruptions. The streets are patrolled by armed and well protected thugs who show no affinity to the residents of this city and treat most as terrorists. Unless the government reduces its violent behavior, this will spiral into a civil war.

Today, a New York Times/Sienna poll reported that 61% of Americans believe ICE has gone too far in its tactics. Even one in five Republicans polled said that, though the more interesting number may have been that 56% of Republicans responding couldn’t answer yes or no. That tells me Republicans are so conflicted over the way the Trump administration is pursuing its goals, they’re simply in shock.

We’ve all been watching the protests against ICE in Minnesota for weeks. While the Trump administration calls the protestors domestic terrorists, and Trump himself, with Stephen Miller ranting in his ear, threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act, we, the public have seen no evidence that the protests are anything other than law-abiding demonstrations protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. On the other hand, we have seen ICE officers brutalize innocent people and violate their civil rights on a daily basis. When concerned American citizens form watch groups to peacefully document what ICE is doing, they are attacked, and in the case of Renee Good, murdered.

And now, it has come to light that ICE agents have been illegally instructed that the Fourth Amendment protections against search, seizure, and arrest unless those actions are performed under a warrant from a judge, do not apply to them. Homeland Security Secretary Pam Bondi, in a power grab typical of everything the administration has done this year, seems to have usurped the authority of the Fourth Amendment and claimed the authority to issue administrative warrants. That’s exactly the way Hitler’s Gestapo acted to purge Germany of all opposition to Nazi dominance.

According to today’s Times, the citizens of Minneapolis and St. Paul have now said, “Enough is enough.” Business leaders have called for a general strike and declared Friday, January 23rd a “Day of Truth and Freedom.” Does that sound like an insurrection? Compare it with the anti-government protests against the repressive regime in Iran, where whole neighborhoods have been set on fire, and more than 3,000 people have been killed, according to Iranian state radio.

Peaceful protests have been a hallmark of American life since the days of the Civil Rights Movement, when leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. responded to lynchings and church bombings with nonviolence. And while several recent American administrations have criticized other countries, like North Korea, Russia and China for violating the rights of protestors, ICE’s actions have now become the focus of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Its Chief, Volker Turk cites Trump and ICE for arbitrary and unlawful arrests that often tear apart families, violate the dignity of those arrested, and ignore due process requirements.

Vice President JD Vance visited Minnesota, claiming he was there to lower the temperature of the conflict between ICE and local authorities. But rather than seek a middle ground or try to bring opposing sides together, he merely repeated the talking points of Republican influencers and laid the responsibility for the violence and unrest squarely at the feet of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who accused Vance and Trump of deliberately trying to stir up civil unrest and disorder to justify further crackdowns. We’ve seen all this before with other actors in other places. It’s the way dictators undermine the rule of law.

Frey, for his part, claims that everything happening in his city is the result of retribution from Trump. When asked for proof of that assertion he referred to Trump’s own words in a recent Truth Social post: “FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”

It’s not just ICE and not just Minnesota. Our president is recklessly leading our nation down some very dangerous paths, and in the process alienating all of our major allies and delighting our principal adversaries, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. China is rushing to fill the economic vacuum created by Trump’s tariffs and Russia is killing thousands of Ukrainian civilians and leaving the rest without heat or power in a frigid winter. How much longer are we going to tolerate the disingenuous, self-serving madness of Trump and his supporters?

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Irresponsible Madness

Posted on January 21, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 21, 2026

“There is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along. To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety. It won’t.” With those words in a speech delivered in Davos, Switzerland, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney assured the world that at least one of our former allies has studied history and learned from it. Unlike American President Donald Trump, who would prefer to live in a fantasy world in which every other world leader bows to his will.

The Canadians I know are thankful to have a leader like Carney. I am, too. Carney is an economist who has served as the head of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada. He understands international economics and trade as well as any of his counterparts at Davos, and he understands the danger of smaller countries being overly dependent on larger ones.

While many NATO leaders have treaded lightly during the first year of Trump’s second term, hoping to avoid his wrath and crippling tariffs, Carney has been clear that Canada will not bend to his will. As Trump was landing in Davos, Carney, without directly mentioning him, warned that Trump’s actions placed the entire world at risk. “…the rules-based order is fading … the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must … The middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

He meant the last part literally, as Trump and his BFF Vladimir Putin have shown a voracious appetite for devouring other countries with no regard for their sovereignty, with China setting the stage to dominate the rest of Asia. Carney told the world he will not let Canada’s economic survival be dictated by Trump. His remarks came after Trump posted a map of the world with Canada and Greenland covered with American flags.

As a patriotic American, I am embarrassed and appalled at the spectacle of our president. To any objective observer, he appears totally deranged, and Carney is correct, that if the rest of the former western alliance doesn’t stand up to him, the world order that has existed for eighty years will crumble, to be replaced by a world dominated by three super powers, in which everyone else is chattel.

Responsible leaders like Carney understand not only that their own countries’ survival depends on preserving that world order, but that NATO, which is very much at risk of collapsing under Trump’s daily assaults, has probably kept the world from destroying itself in a nuclear World War 3. To replace that relative stability with one that is wholly dependent on the whims of three autocratically dominated, heavily armed nations puts everything at risk.

We’re about to find out how serious Trump is about Greenland, or whether he’ll finally muzzle Stephen Miller, who has been loudly saber-rattling, telling the world on behalf of Trump that we intend to make full use of our military superiority to take whatever he, Miller, thinks is in our interest. Recent revelations that Trump is permitting Miller to drive his aggressive world agenda make the situation even more dangerous. Miller, who has never been elected to any office, is completely out of control as he attacks journalists, Democrats, and foreign leaders on national television. He once worked in relative obscurity because of his hateful, bombastic nature, but has been let off the leash, and many believe he is responsible for Trump’s aggressive attitude toward our allies.

Trump has promised to pursue his desire to own Greenland at Davos, while Canada, France, the UK, Denmark, which owns Greenland, and several other NATO nations have asserted that that will never happen. In the snake pit that is Trump’s mind, it’s not clear whether he’s serious about this, or whether Greenland is just another chaos-making distraction.

The rest of NATO believes Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is the most important thing on their agenda, but Trump does not want his dysfunctional love affair with Vladimir Putin and his willingness to let him destroy that country be center stage at the world economic forum. Nor does he want his plans for dominating the entire Western Hemisphere, the possible consequences of having his tariff policy being declared illegal by the Supreme Court, or the impending release of the Epstein files to be on everyone’s mind.

But he’s fooling himself with the help of all the yes-people with whom he surrounds himself. The other leaders at Davos are fully aware that Trump’s popularity at home after one year in office is as low as that of any president who preceded him. They are also aware that privately, many Congressional Republicans have expressed their disdain for his actions, and he’s likely to have his power curtailed by the midterm elections in November.  

Of course, Greenland may all turn out to be a bluff. Trump fancies himself a master poker player, but his game is getting old. Everyone sees through it now, and most Americans are beginning to realize how dangerous he is.

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