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 that 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. And today we learned that Canada’s automobile industry is extricating itself from dependence on the U. S., and investing heavily in electric vehicles, and 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 to 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 the average American, 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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The Evolution of ICE

Posted on January 15, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 15, 2026

Every time I see ICE agents swarm through an American city, I feel like someone stuck an ice pick in my back. It always evokes the same image, my memory of visiting the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. In the bare, stark room in which she slept during the years she hid from the occupying Nazis, there’s a window that looks down on a wide boulevard. Prinsengracht. Next to the window hangs a photograph of that same window, with Nazi troops marching outside. It’s impossible to watch what ICE is doing in Minneapolis and not cringe at the obvious association.

Most Americans don’t seem to need that memory to stoke their anger and fear at what Trump and his lackey, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem are attempting to do. A CNN poll released yesterday showed that Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling immigration by a sixteen point margin, after approving what he said he would do during the 2024 election campaign by a small margin of three points. As polls go, that’s remarkable.

The thing Trump should really be concerned about is that a substantial majority of Independents also disapprove of ICE’s tactics. Those are the same Independents who will determine which party controls Congress next November. Outside of Trump’s MAGA base, which is less than a third of the electorate, every American is becoming uncomfortable with the administration’s unmistakable march toward a fascist oligarchy. It’s no wonder Trump has been reduced to begging Republicans to maintain his majority in Congress to keep him from being impeached for a third time.

If you think that’s an exaggeration, I’d direct you to Trump’s history with right-wing podcaster Joe Rogan, who has a huge following, especially with young men. In October of 2024, Trump sat for a three-hour interview with Rogan, who heartily endorsed him. Despite Trump’s absurd claim that he won in a landslide, the election was actually close enough that Rogan alone might have changed the outcome if he’d supported Harris. That should scare the Hell out of Trump and all those who hope he’ll be around to pardon them after their disregard of rules, laws, and their defiance of Congress come home to roost.

In 2024, most observers granted Rogan the status of a canary in a coal mine. If he turned on Trump, the result could be toxic. Lately, Rogan has been less than enamored with the president, joining a loud chorus of Americans who are thinking, “This is not what I voted for.” When vocal Trump critics Rob and Michelle Reiner were murdered, Trump exploded on his Truth Social platform, claiming that the Reiners died “due to the anger {Rob Reiner] caused through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME [sic].”

Many people, even those who have been desensitized by ten years of Trump’s inappropriate comments, were shocked by his self-serving lack of empathy, which Rogan likened to the right-wing blaming Antifa and the Deep State (whatever they are) for the murder of Charlie Kirk. Not surprisingly, the usual suspects, like disaffected Republicans Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene came down hard on Trump’s blatant cruelty. But eyebrows were raised when Rogan joined the damning chorus. “The Rob Reiner thing is not funny, right?… [W]hen you see it with no empathy, that’s when it’s hard to like [Trump]…[I]t just shows you how crazy it is the way Trump thinks and talks.”

Rogan has been even more critical of Trump’s use of ICE, echoing what a growing number of Americans are expressing out loud. “Are we really gonna be the Gestapo, ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?” That really says it all. A majority of Americans now believe Trump is attempting to expand ICE into a federal police force that usurps the authority of local and state law enforcement. The comparison to Hitler’s Gestapo is so stark, even the dimmest among us who remember World War II see it clearly. When Joe Rogan uses the term “Gestapo,” Trump ought to be quaking in his boots. There’s no clearer sign that the tide is turning against him.

There’s no way to sugarcoat this. Trump’s attempt to evolve ICE into his own secret police force is the logical conclusion of everything Project 2025, the thousand-page document written by the ultra-Conservative Heritage Society that’s driving this administration, is leading to. It was always going to come down to this, inevitably. When Americans see with their own eyes, that Trump is willing to terrorize whole cities simply because they voted for his opponent, when they see storm troopers harassing thousands of Americans and violating their civil rights, when they see a young mother murdered for the crime of being part of an ICE watch group documenting their activities, they get angry and they fear what we’ve been warning them about.

If this is allowed to continue, we might as well demolish the Statue of Liberty and convert Liberty Island to a playground for perverted billionaires and pedophiles.

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Is the Trump Administration Beginning to Unravel?

Posted on January 9, 2026 by alanpzendell

ALan Zendell, January 9, 2026

One of the basic strategies of Project 2025 was to strike against Progressive programs and agencies from every direction, unpredictably. It’s the same idea as attacking your enemy with a barrage of missiles. They can’t possibly defend against all of them at the same time, and if they try, they’ll expend all their resources and have to concede defeat. They started with tariffs, projecting an isolationist philosophy (we don’t need allies) and a tough guy stance that perfectly reflects Trump’s narcissistic personality (bend the knee or I’ll break you.)

The Heritage Society convinced Trump that the strongest country in the world with the most respected military and economy should use them both as weapons of mass intimidation. Why cooperate when we can dominate the entire world? Is it any surprise that Trump bought into that? They knew exactly how to play his megalomania.

Except, the people driving Trump knew there was no way the entire world would bow to Trump; they had their own agenda. Carefully threaded among all their other policies were several that had a single objective – increasing the wealth of the people running him. Based on what we’ve seen in year one of Trump-2, the amount of money they can steal, extort, or redirect during a four-year term could reach trillions of dollars. Who cares if the next administration goes after the sycophants who have been doing Trump’s bidding and incarcerates them? Neither Trump nor his handlers at Heritage care any more about them than they do about the rest of us. As long as they manage to avoid World War 3, they’ll be secure in their lavish estates and bunkers.

Project 2025 is a plan for a slow-moving coup orchestrated by right-wing billionaires to re-write the Constitution and return to a time when a few wealthy white men ran everything. But now that all the early pre-emptive strikes have been taken, and anyone with eyes and ears can witness the truth, it’s not working out the way they planned. Take Greenland, for example. We already have free reign to take any national security related action in Greenland based on a 1951 treaty with Denmark. Trump’s lust to acquire Greenland is about its vast supply of untapped minerals, particularly those essential to an expanding AI industry. That’s critical because his threats netted us nothing of value in negotiations with China and Canada, who also possess large amounts of those minerals. And if Trump thinks the rest of the world is ready to concede control of the Western Hemisphere to him…

…Yesterday, The European Union and the trade bloc known as Mercosur agreed to a Free Trade Zone agreement, effectively thumbing their noses at Trump’s ambitions. Mercosur is comprised of four South American countries with populations that total twice ours, (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, with Bolivia waiting in the wings to join,) and Canada has already determined that it’s best future requires similar economic agreements with countries other than the United States. All this reflects the rest of the world’s attitude toward Trump’s trade war: “You need us more than we need you.”

You have to wonder what they were thinking and how little Trump understands the situation. China is already South America’s largest trading partner, with a trade volume in excess of half a trillion dollars annually, and heavy investments by China in local infrastructure. With Russia already having a significant military presence in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, attempting to impose the “Donroe Doctrine” is more likely to result in dangerous military confrontations.

Trump’s plans to dominate America are also running into serious opposition. The House passed a resolution to restore cuts to federal health care premium subsidies against the direct orders of Trump. The House and Senate have both demanded the release of millions of pages of evidence about the culture of sexual abuse and pedophilia created by Jeffrey Epstein, which Trump seems desperate to keep from being made public. His immigration policy, based on the sham that millions of illegal foreign criminals are wreaking havoc in our cities, and whose real purpose is to create a federal police force that answers directly to Trump and can usurp local law enforcement, is sparking protests all over the country.

The Trump administration may have bit off more than it can chew. Their strategy of creating chaos for their enemies seems to be coming home to roost. Americans saw with their own eyes, yesterday, how dangerous ICE is, and millions of us are dealing with not being able to pay for health care. Opposition to Trump is better organized, his opponents less fearful of him. It’s hard to see this administration surviving intact for three more years.

This month, we may see another shoe drop as the Supreme Court is likely to rule on the legality of Trump’s tariffs. Everyone is waiting to see if the court gives him a free pass.

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The New Imperialism and Venezuela

Posted on January 8, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 8, 2025

I’ll leave the issue of whether using American military forces to attack Venezuelan President Maduro’s compound and spirit him away to New York under a federal indictment was legal to the courts. As important as adhering to the rule of law is, in this case it’s less important than the implications of the event.

Maduro is a really bad guy. The world will not be worse off without him, but we said the same thing about Saddam Hussein. We received a lesson in nation-building, more than twenty years ago, but we seem to have forgotten it. The cliché “break it and own it” applies here in spades. President Trump is being opaque and evasive about his plans, but he admitted to a New York Times reporter, yesterday, that the United States could be “running Venezuela” for years.

That is a terrible idea. In Iraq, we catastrophically misjudged the situation and discovered that putting the pieces back together was impossible. We either created or nurtured the rapid growth of ISIS, which has been plaguing us ever since. In Venezuela, the situation is potentially much worse. It’s a prescription for continuous anti-American guerilla action both in Venezuela and the rest of Central and South America. Well-armed revolutionary groups, some funded by our Communist adversaries, exist throughout the region, with eight major ones just in Venezuela and its neighbors, Colombia and Peru.

If nearly twenty years of unwinnable war in Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t enough, we’d be bogged down in Venezuela until our next president bit the bullet and withdrew. That’s exactly what drove the final nail into the coffin of the Soviet Union when they overextended themselves in Afghanistan. And if we’re not bankrupted by guerilla warfare, we risk a more serious war encountering Russian and Chinese ships in the Caribbean. A Russian submarine was tracking yesterday’s capture of a Russia shadow fleet oil tanker leaving Venezuela.

All these practical considerations and warnings are real, but of perhaps greater long-term interest are the global implications of Trump’s plans. Republicans, ever since the Tea Party emerged, have been plotting to reverse the post-World War II world order. Two main thrusts of that were easing international borders and free trade, the theory being that powerful nations that have mutual economic interdependencies are less likely to nuke each other. The European Union showed that free trade and soft borders could work, and the economic benefits of increased trade and tourism have both been excellent outcomes for Europe.

Ideologically, in the last sixty years, the world has paid lip service to the idea that no nation has the right to destroy another’s sovereignty, a principal tenet of the United Nations charter. When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, most of the world was shocked at the total disregard of Ukraine’s sovereignty, which had been guaranteed by Russia when Ukraine relinquished its nuclear missiles after the Soviet breakup. The other NATO nations took that very seriously, and still do, despite Donald Trump’s sympathies obviously being with Russia in the conflict.

There’s been much speculation about the relationship between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Conventional wisdom among non-MAGA people is that Putin has Trump under some kind of thrall, and that Trump worships strongmen, notwithstanding that most are brutal murderers with no shred of moral character. Everything Trump did in 2025 supports that view, and the administration’s total lack of transparency is right in character with it.

Americans have seemed puzzled by that since Trump took office, but the explanation is becoming clearer every day. Trump has long rhapsodized in public about being unfettered by federal laws and regulations, and worst of all, our Constitution. He publicly craves the kind autocratic power held by his greatest adversaries, Putin, and Xi Jinping. He’s furious that he cannot do whatever he pleases as president. He continually sucks up to Putin only to be humiliated at every turn, yet he seems unable to break his worshipful addiction to raw power.

All this brings us to the return of imperialism and the nineteenth century concept of Spheres of Influence. Nineteenth century imperialism didn’t work. It brought us two world wars and scores of minor ones. Imperialism is about greed and power-grabbing on an international scale. It respects neither sovereignty nor human rights, focusing instead on increasing the wealth and power of the leaders of the strongest countries. And it is the preferred world order of both Putin and Xi. Putin has worked hard to sell it to Trump, who has apparently bought into it without reservation. Renaming the Monroe Doctrine for himself, Trump couldn’t be clearer about his intentions.

MAGA and Trump would return us to a world order in which three major powers control everything within their spheres of influence. Putin wants Europe and Eurasia, generally leaving the rest of Asia to China. I wonder how India, Australia and New Zealand would feel about that as they watch Russia and China fight over carving up Africa. In that universe, Trump would be the Emperor of the Western Hemisphere.

It’s an insane fever dream, a world in which three powerful dictators run everything with complete disregard for the long-term health of our planet and 99% of its people. It’s a world we don’t want our grandchildren living in. We’ve already been there, and it doesn’t work.

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Hope For 2026

Posted on January 2, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 2, 2026,

The future of our democracy as our Declaration of Independence and Constitution framed it will depend on two things that will occupy most of 2026. The first half of the year belongs to the Supreme Court. The Roberts Court is expected to publish decisions on the constitutionality of several critical issues, all of which deal directly with the power of the president:

  • immigration
  • tariffs
  • birthright citizenship
  • domestic use of the army and National Guard
  • creating and staffing the Departments that comprise our federal government
  • attacking unarmed civilian boats and ships in international waters without following the rule of law or consulting Congress.

While many people have accused the Supreme Court of rubber-stamping anything Donald Trump wants, recent indications belie that. Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch all have reputations as strict constitutionalists or originalists. When serious matters that attempt to redefine the Constitution are before the Court, we are likely to see different outcomes.

The integrity of the Court matters very much to Roberts, who has been Chief Justice for twenty years. It is inconceivable that Roberts would let his legacy be the Chief Justice who tore up the Constitution. In his typically nuanced manner, without mentioning Donald Trump, Roberts concluded his 2025 year-end report by quoting Calvin Coolidge, and informing us that the rule of law is safe under his stewardship.

“Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken.” Roberts followed that with the simple statement, “True then; true now.” He concluded by thanking everyone involved in the Judiciary for “their dedication to upholding the rule of law.”

That’s enough for us to enter the new year with far more hope than we did last year, anticipating how Donald Trump would implement Project 2025. Confirming our worst fears. he spent all of 2025 attempting undermine the basic principles on which our founding documents were based, with OMB Director Russell Vought and people like Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller scrupulously following the fascist playbook that consolidated Adolf Hitler’s rule in Germany, translating it into 225 Executive Orders. The fate of the most dangerous of those now rests with the Supreme Court.

If the Supreme Court fails to rein in the autocratic ambitions of Trump and his MAGA base, that responsibility will fall to us, the voters, in November. It’s no exaggeration that this year’s midterm election will have a profound effect on the future of our country. Assuming Trump’s health issues enable him to finish his term, flipping the Congress away from MAGA control is the only way our democracy will survive it.

We elect the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate, this year. While the cliché that all politics is local usually prevails, this year we’ll be voting primarily either for people who support Trump’s attempts to undermine the rule of law or those who oppose it. And that will be happening amidst the most robust attempt to influence the outcome of the election we’ve ever seen. Adversarial governments, largely Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea will flood our online media with bots, lies, misdirections, and propaganda. Our adversaries believe MAGA policies will weaken us significantly. They all have more incentive than ever, especially Russia which is desperate to have American-driven sanctions removed. They will stop at nothing to keep MAGA in power.

When they cast their votes in November, voters should also be clear about Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. The Department of Justice, which has been weaponized as a political tool by Trump, released Prosecutor Jack Smith’s December 17th closed door testimony about Trump on New Years Eve, hoping no one would read it, while simultaneously issuing an order that he was prohibited from discussing it publicly.

Smith’s testimony is damning. He told Congress his team “had proof beyond reasonable doubt” that Trump was guilty of the charges in the 2020 election interference and classified documents cases.” He further said that “President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” and “when asked if Trump was responsible for the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Smith said, ‘Our view of the evidence was that he caused it and that he exploited it.’”

But for a Supreme Court ruling immunizing him against criminal prosecution, Trump would be standing trial for serious crimes for which any other American would be held accountable. Everyone who casts a vote for Congress this year must remember that any candidate who supports Trump effectively supports undermining the rule of law.

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A Fundamental Restructuring of our Relationship with Canada

Posted on December 29, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, December 29, 2025

Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney sat for a year-end interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Company addressing his brief tenure as PM. It’s twenty-four minutes long, and well worth listening to, especially if after watching Donald Trump’s version of 2025, you’re wondering if the entire world is losing its mind. If you can spare an additional half hour, I recommend George Conway’s analysis of the interview, and what it implies about Canada’s relationship with and attitude toward the United States.

I listened to Carney’s interview, first. The PM was straightforward and easy to understand. He is highly intelligent and well-informed about the issues facing Canada. He didn’t pull numbers out of the air, exaggerate, deflect responsibility, or seem the least bit angry or defensive, even when the tough, unrelenting interviewer pressed him on uncomfortable issues. He didn’t call her a pig, didn’t refer to his political opponents as enemies, and didn’t hurl insults at anyone. He didn’t ramble. He wasn’t incoherent. He addressed every question calmly and rationally.

When a prominent leader makes an important speech, I generally find it annoying that it’s immediately followed by network talking heads explaining what I just listened to. Conway’s analysis, however, is not like that. I found what he said nuanced and worth listening to.

Carney talked about Canada’s long term “junior partner” status and dependency relative to the United States, but he wasn’t accusatory, explaining that that’s just how the relationship between our countries evolved, without any negative agenda. Both he and Conway noted that the relationship worked well in the eighty years since World War 2, because it was in both nations’ mutual interest and both economies benefitted from it. It was based on trust and predictability, something both Americans and Canadiana believed was the normal way close allies treat each other – who has been a closer and more trusted ally than Canada?

Trump has treated Canada the same way he treated the rest of the world, accusing them of ripping us off and alternating between offensive derision and flattery as his ego perceived whether he was being addressed with sufficient respect and obeisance. His transactional approach to everything, however, undercut the basic trust that existed between our countries. Trump’s approach to Canada and every other nation except Russia has been to declare that America can dictate economic terms to everyone else, while changing those terms on mere whims whenever he feels like it. Trump considers all that a brilliant negotiating strategy, because he believes it keeps everyone else divided and on the defensive. His tough guy act, however, serves only Trump’s own narcissism.

For everyone else, it defines America as unreliable and untrustworthy, and without being at all negative, Carney made that point in several ways. He talked about Canada becoming more independent, which Conway explained in detail meant not allowing itself to remain overly dependent on America. He talked intelligently about energy independence and how that relates to climate change and Canada’s commitment reducing carbon emissions. He talked about expanding trade relationships with Asia and Europe which would make Canada stronger. Carney didn’t say it, but Conway explained that a strong, independent Canada would likely hurt America’s economy, first because some much of our automotive, steel, AI, rare earth mineral, and aerospace industries are interconnected, but more importantly, Canada intends to become a major trading partner with the rest of the world, and will not let negotiating deals with Trump dominate its future.

With no rancor toward the United States, Carney laid out his plan to make Canada stronger in the future. It’s about Canada’s survival and sovereignty. Carney knows what all of us know deep down. We all have to be self-reliant and never allow our survival to depend on someone else. Even if that someone else has been a reliable trustworthy friend for decades, nations aren’t people and diplomacy and trade agreements are not friendships. As we’ve seen this year, nations can change overnight. Your bigger, stronger neighbor upon you’ve relied for protections and economic stability, who the entire world has looked to for leadership isn’t what it was a year ago.

A personality like Donald Trump can completely upend a world order that has survived an eighty-year-old nuclear arms race. One thing Conway noted was that Canada remains part of the “coalition of the willing” who support Ukraine against Russian aggression, while Trump has removed America from it. This is a profound statement that historians will reflect on as a major inflection point, but Carney needn’t wait for the history books. He already understands its significance, and that requires Canada to effect a fundamental restructuring of its relationship with us.

I can’t lie about this. When I hear Donald Trump spew hate every time he opens his mouth and then I listen to Mark Carney, Trump seems like a monster who is out of control, and Carney sounds like the leader all of North America needs.

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