Fire Starters Sometimes Get Burned

Posted on November 14, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 14, 2025

The playbook written by disgraced lawyer and consigliere, Roy Cohn, who died in federal prison, was essentially about starting fires. Fires, among other things, are effective distractions. The more fires you start the more chaos and confusion you create. Start as many fires as you can, so many that your opposition can’t possibly fight them all, and the ones they can will stretch their resources. Create so much confusion that no one can tell truth from fiction, and delay every legal proceeding as long as possible. If innocent people get hurt (or dead) along the way, that only adds to the chaos.

That’s the strategy Cohn used to keep mobsters out of prison for decades and the lesson Donald Trump learned in the 1980s and 90s, when his friends were mafia dons and other criminals like Jeffrey Epstein. Think about it – his friends were murderers, rapists, pedophiles, traffickers, and prostitutes. He was tutored in how to evade inconvenient laws, regulations, and convictions by Cohn, himself. And that strategy is the basic operating plan for Project 2025 which drives everything the current Trump administration does.

But that strategy is not without risk. If the fires they start get out of control, they might burn everything down both physically and metaphorically. More importantly, the more fires they start the more likely they are to get burned, themselves.

Trump started two conflagrations before the election. He claimed his tariffs would make America rich, and all Americans would benefit. As anyone reading this already sees whenever they purchase anything, it’s not working out that way; none of the “deals” Trump claims credit for have done anything to lower prices or put money in average people’s pockets.

The second huge blaze was arresting and deporting immigrants with criminal records. The objective sounded good and righteous, but the execution was something else. Stephen Miller, a Trump sycophant who was never elected to anything, decided that ICE had to fulfill quotas that would result in a million deportations this year. Does anyone believe that besides entering our country illegally, there are a million immigrants living here who are criminals? A thousand? The reality is that nearly all the arrests have been of people with no criminal records. They have torn families, communities, and major cities apart. It’s deliberate, wanton mayhem that is an international embarrassment.

Trump claims he ended seven wars (do you have any idea who was fighting whom?) and would end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza on his first day in office. Nearly ten months later, Gaza is in ruins, because Trump gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a blank check and turned a blind eye to what most of the world, including half of Israel, views as genocide. And after publicly wooing Vladimir Putin like a lovesick teenager, only to have Putin humiliate him repeatedly in front of the entire world, Russia is now pounding Ukraine mercilessly, recklessly killing civilians and destroying vital infrastructure in major cities as winter approaches. When was the last time you heard Trump mention Ukraine?

There were many other blazes aimed at undoing the principles and institutions on which on republic rests. Attacking law firms that Trump perceived as too liberal, extorting major universities to bring their education agendas in line with MAGA philosophy, ignoring court orders, emasculating Congress, using the Justice Department as a tool of political revenge, and threatening the sovereignty of other nations. And presently, bringing the United States to the brink of war with Venezuela and murdering the crews of boats leaving that country without any consideration of laws or due process.

And now the piece de resistance, the growing firestorm over the Epstein files. One fire too many, even for MAGA. Trump attacked and alienated so many people, he’s lost track of who his enemies really are. By courting evangelists and other right-wing extremists with his disingenuous claims of trying to create a white Christian America, Trump lost sight of the fact that many of his supporters include deeply religious people with moral centers, things Trump cannot relate to except as transactional tactics.

Trump badly miscalculated his base’s reaction to pedophilia. The possibility that the Epstein files might implicate Trump in the grooming and rape of underage girls, or that he was fully aware of what Epstein was doing, but chose to look the other way, is something much of his base will not ignore.

The lesson: if you start enough fires, you’ll eventually go up in smoke. The fact that many sources are predicting at least a hundred House Republications intend to vote for full release of the Epstein files over the frantic, desperate demands of the president, and the Senate’s refusal to obey Trump’s order to end the filibuster clearly demonstrate that the Democrats’ waiting game of letting Trump run wild until he hangs himself may be bearing fruit. Trump is not invulnerable.

Perhaps Americans will once again rise up in defense of the values we were raised with and turn Trump into a lame duck before the first year of his term is over. Maybe we really are the good guys, after all. Maybe the sun will rise tomorrow.

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Did Eight Senators Save the Country or Sell It Out?

Posted on November 12, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendelll, November 12, 2025

The eight Democratic Senators who voted with Republicans to end the government shutdown all had heartfelt reasons for their decisions. But they’re politicians, and one thing we can be sure of is that every career politician has prepared a list of excuses for every decision they might have to defend.

Tim Kayne claimed he did it for the many federal workers in Virginia, to assure that Donald Trump cannot fire them during the shutdown. I’m not clear how that benefits those workers, however. If Kayne’s vote helps end the shutdown, the issue is instantly moot.

As a former federal employee, I lived and worked through several shutdowns, including both Ronald Reagan’s draconian attempt to reduce the federal work force and budget, and the Y2K debacle. We faced the same threats every time, but neither I nor any other federal employee lost their job or a single dollar of salary during any of the shutdowns, and people who were supposed to be on leave during that time had that “unused” leave restored to their accounts, even though they didn’t work during the shutdowns. No Congress is going to anger millions of voters of both parties when a simple vote can avoid it.

New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen’s primary issue was Obamacare premium subsidies, without which millions of families will not be able to pay for health insurance. But in the end she decided to accept a pledge from Majority Leader John Thune that the Senate would vote on those subsidies in December rather than hold out for a better deal.

I believe that after saving our democracy from Trump, Americans’ ability to acquire health insurance is presently our nation’s highest priority. As I and many others have noted, the only reason health care wasn’t included the First Amendment is that there wasn’t any real health care in 1789, an oversight long overdue for correction. We’re the only major industrialized nation that doesn’t assure basic health care for all its citizens. Beyond that, I’d ask Senator Shaheen if she trusts that Thune’s promise has merit. Will Republican Senators be free to vote their consciences, or will they be whipped into line by threats from the White House?

Illinois’ Dick Durbin used fully restoring SNAP payments as his excuse, the weakest argument I’ve heard. The courts are already engaged in that battle, ordering the president to direct OMB Director Russell Vought to release the funds already appropriated by Congress. Trump’s defiance of the court’s orders is appalling, but that battle is between Trump and the Judiciary, not Congress. We all decry political decisions that treat child nutrition as acceptable collateral damage, especially in light of Trump’s assertion that he want’s America to be a Christian nation.

Both Shaheen and Durbin are leaving the Senate next year, which many people suggest is why they had the courage to undermine their party’s stand against MAGA principles. Most Americans think standing up to Trump is where they should have invested that courage.  When you’re involved in an existential fight for the future of the republic, after a power-mad president like Trump has created so many hardships for Americans, collateral damage is a foregone conclusion, and any suggestion that the Democrats are responsible for families going hungry is absurd. These Senators were simply wrong.

Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire was another who justified her vote by the need to restore federal food assistance, while Maine’s Angus King thought accepting Thune’s promise of a health care subsidy vote was a better option than using the shutdown as a negotiating tool. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada were clearly influenced by the air traffic controller madness which might have potentially crippled holiday air transportation during the holidays, consequently trashing Nevada’s tourist economy. And finally, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman lamented over SNAP payments and federal workers not being paid. Nonsense!

Because the Trump administration has set an example of lack of transparency for the rest of the government, we really don’t know what John Thune promised the Democratic turncoats. It’s no secret that many Republican Senators and nearly 80% of Americans support affordable health care. Will the vote Thune promised be an honest reflection of what every Senator believes, or is the promise as empty as the bigger, better health plan Trump has dangled for ten years, without offering even a rough outline of how it would work?

I believe what drove this compromise was the growing anger and chaos created by flight reductions. That issue hits people where they feel it: disrupted holiday plans, canceled and delayed cargo flights that carry all manner of consumer goods and packages. MAGA can marginalize hungry children and unpaid workers, and they can use deceptive tactics to avoid the transfer of wealth that subsidized health care represents, but make people afraid of flying or prevent timely deliveries of millions of products, and they might have a revolution on their hands.

There is a huge risk that caving to MAGA to end the shutdown may have removed the last major obstacle to implementing Project 2025, and dismantling the safeguards built into our Constitution.

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Voters Still Have a Voice

Posted on November 5, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 5, 2025

The Democrats and everyone else who abhors Trumpism scored a great victory yesterday. It was the best outcome they could have hoped for. It sent a clear message that voters who are not extreme ideologues see through the charade that is Donald Trump. The less clear message is that despite yesterday’s success, this was only one battle, and the challenges of the next twelve months until the 2026 midterm elections are daunting.

Drawing on personal experience, the best way I can describe what Americans who care about preserving our Constitution are facing is that it’s like deciding you need to lose forty pounds after years of abusing your body, and waking up one morning to find that you’ve shed ten pounds. You’re elated until the reality sinks in that you still have thirty stubborn pounds to go.

Virginia has been a purple state since the turn of the century, but Abigail Spanberger won the Governor’s race by fifteen points. That’s the definition of a landslide victory, which in part was a reaction to outgoing Governor Glenn Youngkin’s commitment to MAGA. Does that mean Virginia is now blue? No. It means that Virginia, which is home to 300,000 federal employees and twenty-seven military  bases including the Pentagon, Quantico, and Norfolk, and more than 600,000 veterans are angry about Trump’s attempts to dismantle the federal government and his view of the proper role of the military. It also means independents and moderates of both parties are furious with Republicans’ attempts to make Obamacare so expensive that most of the nearly 400,000 Virginians who rely on health insurance through the Affordable Care Act will not be able to afford the premiums. And then there are those nasty food stamps.

In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill won the governorship by thirteen points, not quite a landslide, but highly significant in that it reversed gains made by Trump in 2024. That’s extremely important, because the 2024 gains in reliably blue New Jersey threw a real scare into fans of democracy. It’s also extremely important that both Sherrill and Spanberger are women who outperformed Kamala Harris’ 2024 results. Does that mean America is ready to embrace a woman as president in 2028? No, but it silences those who are certain a woman can’t win. Not only is Spanberger the first woman ever elected Governor of Virginia, but Ghazala Hashmi, who won the Lieutenant Governor’s race by eleven points is the first Muslim woman to win statewide office in Virginia.

As a former New Yorker, I am as shocked as anyone that Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist Muslim won a mandate-level victory in New York CIty’s mayoral race. One could argue that after the scandals incurred by outgoing mayor Eric Adams and the fact that Mamdani’s strongest opposition came from Andrew Cuomo who resigned as Governor in the midst of a sexual harassment scandal made Mamdani’s victory easy. But that would be naïve.

Mamdani ran a a grass roots campaign that addressed the most important issues New Yorkers have lived with for a century. Most people simply can’t afford to live in New York. The city kept kicking its housing crisis down the road with tactics like rent control, but it was clear to many New Yorkers that the status quo was unsustainable. Whether Mamdani can deliver on promises like affordable housing and free public transportation remains to be seen, but he demonstrated that focusing on those issues wins elections.

To reinforce Mamdani’s victory, Trump threatened that all but the minimum necessary federal assistance will be withheld from New York, including a transit tunnel under the Hudson River that is critical to easing congestion in the city. And since Mamdani’s election was a clear rebuke of Trump, the president immediately posted on Truth Social that the election must have been rigged.

California voters spoke, too. While Trump has made California the symbol of every progressive idea he despises, there has always been a strong minority conservative streak in California politics. While it’s not surprising that voters approved Governor Gavin Newsom’s redistricting map in response to Trump pressuring every red state to maximize gerrymanding for the 2026 election, a margin of victory of two-to-one sends a powerful message. Average Americans, regardless of their politics, are horrified by the way ICE is approaching  our immigration crisis, looking more every day like the embryo of an American Gestapo. And Trump’s use of the military in Los Angeles galvanized California and every other state Trump threatened with military occupation.

Yesterday’s elections were a clear wake up call – to Republicans, that Trump’s autocratic leanings and attacks on our Constitution are not invulnerable, and to Democrats that it’s time to select a charismatic leader and start fighting Trumpism at every turn. They have a long way to go before they can justify feeling optimistic, but there’s no longer any excuse to roll over and play dead.

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Elections (2025 and 2026)

Posted on November 3, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 3, 2025

For several months, there has been growing speculation throughout both social and traditional media about the 2026 midterm elections. Donald Trump, just a few days ago in Asia, was still denying that he lost the 2020 election, and he has launched an all-out campaign demanding that red states gerrymander their voting districts to minimize chances of Democrats winning seats in the House. His trolling about a third term is probably no more than that – Trump is famous for creating chaos by threatening to do outrageous things – but it’s clear that whether or not everything he says can be taken seriously, he is obsessed with elections and landslides that exist only in his mind.

Back in February, when Elon Musk was using a chain saw to hack up federal agencies, Democratic icon James Carville predicted two specific things about tomorrow’s elections. The first was that by November 4th, Trump’s popularity would tank to its lowest levels, and news services, today, reported that his approval rating is twenty-six points under water, (63% disapproval versus 37% approval,) and voters polled said they had more confidence in Democrats to manage our economy by 61% to 39%. Carville’s second prediction, more than eight months ago, was that tomorrow’s gubernatorial election in Virginia would be a powerful refutation of Trump himself and Project 2025.

Virginia has been hovering over the purple line that separates blue and red states for two decades, and outgoing Governor Glen Youngkin was a strong MAGA supporter. Many who oppose MAGA feared that Youngkin’s election in 2022 meant Virginia had swung red again, a warning sign that Trumpism was growing in strength. Carville, who believes elections turn on how average people see their own lives being affected – remember “It’s the Economy, Stupid?” – recognized that northern Virginia is home to about 150,000 federal employees and at least 100,000 veterans who were angry that Trump wasn’t keeping his promises to address veterans’ issues. He predicted a backlash against Trump’s attempt to disassemble the federal government and  ignore the problems of veterans who suffered severe psychological damage in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that a Democratic win in Virginia would be the inflection point that reversed MAGA’s momentum.

It’s not a stretch to say that tomorrow’s elections are a partial referendum on Trump’s second term. Not least is whether California voters will pass Proposition 50 which would temporarily redistrict the state to favor Democrats in response to Trump’s actions. But it’s important to note that the red states who answered Trump’s call needed only to take legislative action to redistrict, while California and other blue states required affirmation from voters. Texas’ redistricting required only the votes of a bright red legislature. Tomorrow, as food stamp recipents struggle to feed their families, we’ll see what voters think.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has mounted the only public Trump resistance campaign in the country, making tomorrow’s vote about the dependence of the state’s economy on immigrants and the likely unconstitutional use of the military in Los Angeles. However the vote goes, it will be difficult to deny that it was really about Trump demonizing every state and city that refuses to bend the knee to him.

There’s no way to tell whether a few victories, tomorrow, including the near-certain win by a socialist Muslim as Mayor iof New York, will turn the tide for Democrats, who have done an excellent imitation of the red carpets Trump likes to walk on all this year. Will a leader other than Newsom emerge who is willing to take up the mantle of defender of our democracy? If the specter of attacking boats in international waters based on unproved suspicions of drug-running, or threatening to invade other countries doesn’t wake up the Democrats, they deserve to go down in flames. The problem is that if they do they might take the entire country with them. As of today, Trump is on record as threatening the sovereignty of Canada, Mexico, Greenland, (and by implication, Denmark,) Venezuela, and Nigeria. The president who brags about ending seven wars no one was even aware of and demanding the Nobel Peace Prize would wantonly start five new ones without the benefit of Congressional approval as the Constitution requires.

In reality, tomorrow’s elections are only a dress rehearsal. Trump, who has no filters and even less respect for the rule of law, will stop at nothing to dominate the midterms. If it looks like he’s going to lose Congress, all indications are that he will find some pretext, some phony emergency and use it as a basis for postponing the midterm elections or using military presence to intimidate voters the way his idol Vladimir Putin does. Far too many Americans fear the country being under martial law by this time next near.

Angry, fearful Americans have been waiting on the sidelines, hoping the Supreme Court would save them from Trump. It’s time to re-engage.

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Our Changing Relationship with Canada

Posted on October 26, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 26, 2025

I have a cherished photograph taken in 1944, of my father and my favorite uncle, looking sharp in their U. S. Army infantry uniforms. I always loved that picture when I was a kid, but there was something I never understood about it until many years later. My uncle was Canadian. Why was he wearing an American army uniform? I naively assumed he had come to the States and enlisted as a romantic, patriotic, not to say courageous gesture, and I grew up believing our solidarity with Canada was unshakable. (I only learned as an adult that my uncle had been born in Brooklyn, but he grew up in Alberta.)

Apparently, most of America felt as I did during and after World War II. Futurists and sci-fi writers in the sixties and seventies frequently predicted that our nations would eventually merge into a single North American confederation, and I was all on board with that notion. It seemed like a match made in heaven. Clichés and silliness aside, in all the times I’ve been in Canada, I literally never met a Canadian who wasn’t “nice.” That includes an RCMP officer who pulled me over for speeding in British Columbia, then spent fifteen minutes helping my wife and me map a scenic route through the Canadian Rockies.

My love affair with Canada grew teeth when my wife and I took a road trip from New York to Quebec and Montreal, in 1966. It flourished, when we moved to the Seattle suburb of Bellevue in 1974, where we frequently engaged with families from Vancouver, BC and many of our neighbors were Canadians who worked for Boeing.

The first chink in that romantic fantasy occurred a few years later, when Washington State and federal officials announced plans to raise Ross Dam, which provided massive amounts of hydroelectric power to Seattle. The problem was that raising the dam would also raise Ross Lake, which would result in flooding a thousand square miles of BC farmland. When Canadians raised the issue, I was appalled at the callous reaction on our side of the border. No one cared.

A lot older and at least a little wiser, I couldn’t believe my ears when Donald Trump, early in his first term, attacked Canada for allegedly trying to bankrupt Wisconsin dairy farmers. Of course, that was typical Trump hyperbole, seizing on an economic competition that had been going on for decades, and turning it into divisive, hate-filled rhetoric. Against Canada, our staunchest and most reliable ally in the world? In his second term, Trump has vilified Canada more than any other nation except China, simply because they wouldn’t accept his ambition to be Emperor of North America.

Trump began this unsolicited fight by claiming Canada has been ripping off the United States since World War II, and he would punish them with tariffs. Then he decided that Canada, a nation comprised of ten provinces and three territories that is rich in critical rare earth minerals, and whose total area is ninety percent of the United States’ should become our fifty-first state.

I have been communicating with Canadian friends during Trump’s tenure, and what they’ve told me surprised me, though it shouldn’t have. It always helps to see the other side’s point of view. While we see Trump’s attacks on Canada the same way as everything else he attacks – one massive extortion game after another – my Canadian friends don’t see it that way. Nearly eighty percent of Canadians want to move their trade relationships away from the U. S. toward Europe and Asia. That didn’t surprise me, but what did was their reason. What Trump accomplished was making Canadians painfully aware of how one-sided their dependency on the United States is, which they now see as a threat to their sovereignty. Even out of the mouth of Donald Trump sometimes comes wisdom, however inadvertently.

Last week, the government of Ontario released a 1987 video of Ronald Reagan explaining to Americans that tariffs are the worst possible way to manage an economy as part of his pitch for open markets, which Republicans pushed hard for the next thirty years. You can watch the speech here: https://nyti.ms/477ySrI. Ontario paid to run the video as a commercial during World Series games between Toronto and Los Angeles. Trump threw a tantrum and slapped an additional ten percent tariff on Canadian products.

The Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992 and 1993. Both times, the American president, first Republican George H. W. Bush, then Democrat Bill Clinton, invited them to visit the White House and both times they accepted. I’m sitting on the edge of my seat waiting to see what happens if Toronto wins this time, or even if they lose. Will Trump let his irrational anger at Canada govern his actions? It would be true to form for him to issue an Executive Order requiring all MLB teams to be based in the United States, just out of spite, one more item in Trump’s politics of the absurd.

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Gaza and the Nobel Peace Prize

Posted on October 13, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 13, 2025

Some people accuse me of despising Donald Trump so much that I can’t even see when he’s accomplished something positive. While there’s probably some truth in that statement, you won’t find it in anything related to the Gaza hostage/prisoner exchange. I watched our pompous President address the Israeli Knesset this morning, at least as long as I could stomach it. How nauseating! How inappropriate! How embarrassing to be an American and know most of the world is laughing at us, any respect they might had for the United States long used up by Donald the Clown.

Someone asked me how I felt about Trump’s expectation of the Nobel Peace Prize, this morning. My answer is the latest cartoon by the political satirist, Danziger:

 

Don’t be fooled by the raucous cheers of those Knesset members who attended. Israel’s legislative body is politically dominated by a right-wing coalition that hates all Arabs and would have been happy to see every last Palestinian driven into the Mediterranean Sea. Listening to them cheer for Trump was no different from MAGA echoing Trump cheering for Netanyahu or Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s outrageous demands over the last few months that he should receive the Nobel Peace Prize tell us all we need to know. Does anyone believe that saving lives, especially of Palestinian civilians, was uppermost in the mind of the ultimate narcissist? Does it matter that this cease fire agreement could have been achieved a year ago if Trump hadn’t pandered to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s need to destroy Gaza?

When the prize was finally awarded to Maria Corina Machado, who has worked for years to restore democracy to Venezuela, Trump erupted. Do you think he would have been as offended if Ms Machado had been a man, or white? What else would you expect from a man who has spent his administration attacking and firing every high-ranking nonwhite official he could, especially black women.

No one can dispute that Hamas’s attack on unarmed Israelis and visiting foreigners, including many Americans, two years ago, was a despicable act of barbarism. I have no sympathy for Hamas, whose leaders use their civilian population as human shields, and who would have stopped at nothing to remain in power. Similarly for the Iranian regime that continually funded and encouraged Hamas. Hamas needed to be destroyed or at least defanged, and most Middle-East nations will be only too happy to see them gone. But does that justify a death sentence on every Palestinian living in Gaza, even if they initially supported Hamas’s rise to power?

That would be like saying it’s okay for every blue/red state resident to hate every red/blue state resident, except that this isn’t just about hate or disaffection, it’s about genocidal disregard for more than two million people, most of whom are innocent. The Allies didn’t execute every German who supported the Nazi holocaust and no one tried to enslave the southern slave owners in retaliation for destroying millions of black lives and families after the Civil War. Far from deserving the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump is as guilty as Netanyahu of attempted genocide.

As Trump was explaining to Israel and the world that he is the greatest deal maker of all time, some of us were shaking our heads. Does anyone believe Trump had anything to do with the Cease Fire plan that was signed last week? Is it more likely that our more rational middle eastern allies like Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE along with the European Union were the driving forces behind an agreement that could only have been written with one goal: to remove Hamas as a formidable presence in the region? They were already in their death throes, politically, as Iran stopped funding them and re-supplying them with weapons months ago.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but my sense is that most American Jews are disgusted by Netanyahu’s policies, as are a majority of Israelis. It’s worth noting that a year ago, both Trump and Netanyahu were desperate to remain in or return to power to avoid being sentenced to prison for multiple felony convictions. Isn’t it time we stopped being blinded by all the MAGA lies and bullshit? We all, whether we like some of his policies or not, know exactly what Donald Trump is.

The agreement in Gaza was signed, now, because the war simply couldn’t go on any longer. It was killing hundreds every day and consuming scarce resources while accomplishing nothing but creating discord among other interested nations. Our closest allies sent a message to Trump when they recognized a Palestinian state, a mostly symbolic gesture, but one that was a slap in the face to Netanyahu and indirectly, Trump.

There was also a surreal echo to Trump’s outrageous address to the Knesset of George W Bush declaring a premature victory on the deck of an aircraft carrier in 2003. As any historian or political scientist will tell you, destroying something is the easy part. The hard stuff is rebuilding something better than what it replaced, and there’s not even an inkling of what the future of Gaza will look like, except for Trump’s fantasy of eighty miles of waterfront hotels and golf courses, but isn’t that exactly what you’d expect from him?

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An American Gestapo

Posted on October 3, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 3, 2025

In Nazi Germany, the Gestapo, (the State Secret Police,) was a force that varied in size over time, but averaged about 16,000 officers to police a population of roughly 66 million people. But it relied heavily on a system of snitches. Private citizens were encouraged, rewarded, and often coerced into spying and reporting on their neighbors and co-workers.

The Malicious Practices Act of 1933 made it illegal to criticize either the German government or any of its leaders, Adolf Hitler in particular. The law effectively made opposition political parties illegal and by 1934 both opposition parties and the free press no longer existed. After the Reichstag, the German Parliament building, burned to the ground, the Reichstag Fire Decree authorized the arrest and detention of all political opponents without specifying charges and with no guarantee of due process. The decree silenced all public opposition to Hitler and the Nazis.

I am amazed, daily, that the vast majority of Americans cannot see that the Trump administration is grooming ICE, the Government’s Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement agency, to evolve into a Gestapo-like secret police force that serves at the beck and call of Donald Trump. If this were Germany in 1934 I would likely be arrested and spend the rest of my life in a concentration camp just for writing this.

In 2025 America I would likely lose my livelihood and my ability to support my family. If I happened to look Hispanic, under recent guidance from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, there’s a fair possibility that I could be swept up in an ICE raid, regardless of having been an American citizen all my life. As we have all witnessed since Trump’s inauguration, they could label me a drug dealer, a sex trafficker, or a cartel murderer and ship me off to El Salvador, and unless I had a powerful legal network and skilled media influencers behind me, my family might never see me again.

To be honest, if I were still employed by the government or any contracting entity dependent on government funding, and I was still raising children, I might be one of those who caved and stopped writing. Would you? But at my age, the only one I’m placing at risk is myself, and indirectly, my wife. In other words, I would have no excuse besides laziness and cowardice if I quit calling attention to and fighting against the loss of our republic to autocracy. As Trump’s crimes against our republic grow in number and seriousness with no organized, effective opposition and a Supreme Court that as yet has shown no inclination to rein him in, where would we be if everyone like me simply gave up?

There are dozens of examples of how Russell Vought and Project 2025 are pulling out all the stops in Vought’s admitted intention to destroy our federal  government, but let’s get back to ICE. There are currently about 20,000 ICE officers on the job, but with Trump’s Big Ugly Bill authorizing $10 billion to hire and train more agents, that number could approach 100,000 without serious opposition. 16,000 Gestapo officers terrorized and controlled a population of 66 million in Germany. Nearly 100,000 ICE officers to police 350 million American just happens to be about the same ratio of secret police goons to population that controlled Germany until 1945.

But the Gestapo had help from all those snitches, from people who genuinely believed they were reporting national security threats, to those who simply wanted to screw someone they wanted to hurt, like a violent spouse or an employer they disliked. As Sinclair Lewis reminded us in 1935, if you think that can’t happen here, you’d better wake up and smell the roses, that is, unless Trump declares roses verboten.

As part of Trump’s extortion plots against American universities, the coerced agreements encourage exactly the same kind of snitching the Gestapo used. Similarly, whistleblowers who report that their employers or co-workers are insufficiently loyal to King Donald. If you were a military officer who was uncomfortable with Trump’s disregard of laws that lay out how our military can be used, would you have the courage to speak out, today?

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth harangued our senior military officers in Quantico this week, saying clearly, if you can’t support the president’s agenda you should do the honorable thing and resign. Former Defense Secretary William Cohen actually supported that notion, but he was wrong. If you’re a four-star general, you have an equal responsibility to refuse illegal orders. If you spent your entire career defending America and leading thousands of others who put their lives on the line to defend it, isn’t your primary responsibility to the Constitution and our Republic?

In the Spring it was university presidents and law firms. In the Summer it was our free press and media being threatened, and now, it’s our military leaders. Why can Americans not see clearly where this is headed? This is how great nations fail – through indolence, cowardice, and indifference.

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A Letter to Columbia University

Posted on September 25, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 25, 2025

I am a graduate of Columbia College, Class of 1964. We were always an extremely activist class, and at an average age of 82, this elite group of alumni still is. Fifty-six of us recently sent the following letter to the Columbia Board, urging them to declare the coerced agreement with the Trump administration void. The agreement is nothing more than a Mafia-style protection racket using a false pretext based on a bizarre definition of anti-Semitism that declares any University that permits criticism of the Israeli govenment to be anti-Semitic. It also requires Columbia to make an extortion payment of $221 Million.

While most of America wrings their hands in despair, some of us are taking positive action to fight back against Donald Trump’s quest for autocracy.

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Sept. 22, 2025

Dear Members of the Columbia University Board of Trustees, Acting President Shipman and Dean Sorett,  

Following up on our Class of 1964 alumni letter of last June to the University and College, published in the Columbia Spectator, we are  fully aware and sympathetic to the unprecedented and lawless pressures imposed upon the University by the Trump administration.  Yet we must express our concern that Columbia’s capitulation to tyranny has done grave damage to the University’s reputation, to academic freedom, to the cause of human rights, and to democracy in America.  We propose actions to undo as much of the damage as is still possible:  

  1. Disavow the coerced agreement with the Trump administration.  
  2. Sue in federal court to rescind all agreements made with the Trump administration and rescind the coerced payments.  
  3. Adopt an anti-Semitism definition that makes it clear that criticizing Israel for its policies or for committing war crimes is not prejudice against the Jewish people.  

Time is supposed to heal, but in the time that has elapsed since Columbia chose to bend the knee to a dangerous demagogue, the reverse has happened. Now that we have all read the agreement, and we’ve seen how another great university, Harvard, handled the same challenge Columbia faced, many alumni in the Class of 1964 are even more disappointed by the way the University was blackmailed.  

Unlike Harvard’s courageous decision to fight back, Columbia eschewed Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny first principle of opposition: “Do not obey in advance—most of the power of authoritarians is freely given.”  In a United States district court decision finding that Trump’s authoritarian assault aimed at Harvard, as well as Columbia and other universities, violated the First Amendment, amounted to unconstitutional coercion and retaliation, and violated  Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the court found that the Trump administration “used [anti-Semitism] as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country’s premier universities… jeopardize[ing] decades of research and the welfare of all those who could stand to benefit from that research, as well as reflect a disregard for the rights protected by the Constitution and federal statutes.” Subsequent reports state that withheld research monies will soon begin to flow to Harvard.,  

The agreement between Columbia and the Government begins with the disclaimer that it implies no guilt on the part of the University, yet it is very clear that Columbia was forced to acquiesce to the “smokescreen” charge of anti-Semitism to retain its medical research funding.     

 Without consulting either its own  faculty specialists, and contrary to the University’s own Task Force on Anti-Semitism,  Columbia adopted a controversial and politicized definition of anti-semitism that  would deem as anti-semitic faculty or student criticism of the policies of the state of Israel. See NPR’s report on its impacts on academic freedom at Columbia.  

The University coughed up extortion payments in the amount of $221,000,000. Having failed to enlist support and form alliances with other elite universities— which we urged in our June letter to you—the University was forced to capitulate with barely a whimper. The $221,000,000 “fine” was clearly agreed to under duress, and we urge the University to challenge that extortion in court. Don’t expect alumni to replace those funds – demand that the unwarranted fine be rescinded.  

We understand the pressure President Shipman faced, and we fully recognize that Trump’s extortionate actions jeopardized critical ongoing medical research. As former provost Jonathan Cole  concluded in his Times op–ed of last spring:   

“We are in a fight for survival, and appeasement never works. Despite platitudes to the contrary, Columbia’s leaders have weakened our community and our leadership among the greatest educational institutions in the world. This is not the way to fight Mr. Trump’s efforts at silencing our great American universities. If we don’t resist collectively by all legal means and by social influence and legislative pressure, we are apt to see the destruction of our most revered institutions and the enormous benefits they accrue to America.”  

An open admission that the University was forced to commit a grievous error is the only way it can move forward from here. Declare, especially in light of the Harvard court decision, that your coerced agreement with the Government is void, sue to rescind and recover any extortion payments, and ally ourselves with Harvard and any other schools that chose to fight. Adopt a depoliticized definition of anti-Semitism such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. 

Do so publicly and with contrition, and you will not only win back the support of your alumni, but should your court actions succeed, your victory could be the fulcrum that begins the process of overturning Trump’s attempt to dictate what educators, attorneys, in fact, every American may teach or say.

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Two Wars and a Cult of Personality

Posted on September 24, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 23, 2025

As Jews begin the ten holiest days of the calendar, we tend to be introspective. It’s more than tradition – it’s what Judaism requires of its followers. Nine days from now is Judaism’s Day of Atonement, a time when most of us, whether we generally observe the rules of our religion or merely subscribe to its humanistic values, honestly look within ourselves. We don’t need a priest to hear our confessions – we’re expected to assess ourselves honestly, learn from what we did wrong in the past year, and do better next year. If only our leaders, especially those who, despite being greedy, corrupt, and otherwise morally bankrupt, claim to be Christians, could be trusted to display such humility.

Nowhere is the lack of such moral clarity more visible than in the two wars raging in Europe and the Middle East. Instead of humility, what the leaders of the countries who are prosecuting these wars display is immense egos and lust for power. Central to both, of course, is Donald Trump, for whom every action is determined by his crippling narcissism. Trump’s desperate need for adulation and respect from people he perceives as genuine strong men – that’s neither chauvinism nor misogyny, it’s simply a reality that the most dangerous people in the world all presently are male – has contributed greatly to drawing both wars out indefinitely.

Trump asserts that his only concern is all the lives being lost, words for which he believes he should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, it’s clear that lives of Gazan and Ukrainian civilians, ill-trained Russian troops and their North Korean mercenaries, and Israeli civilians who have lived under constant bombardment and threats for as long as Israel has been an independent nation don’t matter to Trump at all. It’s equally clear that every action he’s taken with respect to these two horrific wars has been driven solely by his need to maintain his own cult of personality.

In Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has found a kindred spirit of sorts. They are very different people, but what they have in common is a willingness to put their own self-interest ahead of everything else. I don’t doubt that Netanyahu cares very deeply about Israel, but he cares more about staying in power, which is probably the only thing keeping him out of prison. He also believes that the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis justifies anything he wants to do, including genocide, to protect Israel. He’s smarter and far more complex than Trump, but their mutual need to support each other has dominated Trump’s bizarre attitude toward the war.

Gaza is no longer about hostages or the brutal, savage attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas. As much as anything else, it’s about an American President who sees political advantage in allowing Netanyahu to do whatever he wants, when it’s obvious that he is the only person with the power to rein him in. In today’s New York Times, former Israeli Defense Minister and member of Netanyahu’s War Cabinet, Benny Gantz addressed this conundrum. While he opposes many of Netanyahu’s policies, as do a majority of Israelis, Gantz points out that Israeli citizens are united in their distrust of Hamas and Iran and their rejection of a two-state solution. Of course, Trump sides with Netanyahu, while most of our major allies have chosen to recognize a Palestinian state. Do they know something we don’t or is this just an extension of Trump’s personality war, needing to dominate the leaders of our traditional allies?

It’s been eight months since Trump’s self-imposed deadline on ending Russia’s war in Ukkraine expired.  In reality, they have been eight months in which Trump has bent the knee to Vladimir Putin in every possible way to gain his love and admiration. That was never going to happen, although Trump seems to be the only world leader who didn’t recognize that. After being humiliated and severely embarrassed by Putin, Trump did what he always does.

Now that it’s clear even to Trump that Putin has no respect for him, he’s reacting in the only way he knows – by insulting and attacking Putin publicly, appearing to embrace Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and claiming Ukraine can defeat Russia with NATO’s support. Even in flipping overnight, however, Trump was still playing power games with our allies, suggesting that when it comes to standing up to Russia, NATO really means Europe. Need I say that we can’t trust Trump’s apparent support for Zelensky? It’s only his feeble attempt at annoying Putin.

If Trump had any sense of humanity or morality, he would use his unique status as President of the strongest country in the world to pressure all sides to end the fighting in Europe and the Middle East. Instead, he continues his failed ego-driven version of diplomacy. In the end, all that matters to Donald Trump is the size of the crowds that worship him.

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A Frightening Dystopian Idea

Posted on September 18, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 18, 2025

For the majority of Americans, and arguably, for most of the world, the history of Doanld Trump’s political career has been characterized by the old cliché, “Just when we thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse…” As I look back on ten years of Trump sucking all the air out of every media event, of his lies and outright distortions, and his shocklingly successful attempts to intimidate his enemies, one thing has become clear. Trump and his supporters have no filters. Any previous notions of basic decency, of the rights and wrongs of conducting political campaigns no longer exist.

We live in a era in which truth can be impossible to discern, and polarization is so severe, well-meaning people on both sides are unable to distinguish facts from political spin and influencing. In that environment, all motives are suspect. The circle of people we trust narrows until we descend into tribalism. If we don’t think the same way, pray the same way, or look the same, we’re defined as enemies.

But you already know all that. What’s worse is that our government of ideologues and MAGA loyalists is also largely incompetent. Diplomacy is a lost art, because, despite his abject diplomatic failures, Trump believes he is the ultimate diplomat who can achieve things the professionals, who actually know what they’re doing, can’t. Military strategizing and preparedness may be going in the same direction, as our Defense (aka War) Department is being led by someone who is more interested in removing anyone who is not a white male loyalist from key positions than understanding the first thing about our military.

What may turn out to be most damaging is the disregard for science and research, most obviously highlighted by RFK, Jr, who is leaving a permanent stain on the already fragile Kennedy legacy. Of all the unforced errors the Trump Administration has made, this is the one that most perplexes people. How, they ask, can Trump possibly benefit by destroying America’s faith in vaccines and medical research, and by canceling America’s war on cancer, simply because it was a Biden initiative? I’ve always responded by saying that although Trump understands the risks, cognitively, his psychotic narcissistic personality disorder blinds him to long-term consequences of his short-term power grabs and wealth acquisitions.

But yesterday, someone very close to me came up with a incredible insight. It was not only brilliant, but it represents the kind of thinking we all need to start engaging in if we are to survive Trump’s onslaught against America. We were talking about all the recent things HHS Secretary Kennedy has done, that are terrifying the medical establishment in our country: destroying our confidence in the CDC, replacing vaccine advisory committees with loyalist hacks, encouraging states like Florida to end requirements for vaccinating children against things like polio, measles, even small pox, not to mention childhood diseases we haven’t thought about in decades. When our conversation veered into my recent post about Margaret Atwood’s, A Handmaid’s Tale, she said, “I just realized what they’re trying to do.”

What she said makes far too much sense to disregard no matter how much we might want to. Her epiphany was that Trump’s long-term strategy to replace our democracy with his own version of a fascist oligarchy is to create another deadly pandemic. It really is brilliant.

Atwood’s novel started from the premise that an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases combined with ever-worsening pollution resulted in the loss of fertility for all but a tiny fraction of women, which resulted in a religious-based civil war that destroyed most of America and turned the rest into a twisted Christian dictatorship in which the remaining fertile women became the property of the ruling class of white men.

We already have the makings for an equally dystopian outcome in place. Trump and his MAGA people, especially those like the recently assassinated Charlie Kirk, have been spreading the idea that the left is out to destroy everything hard-working Americans have built. They blame every failure, whether real or fantasy on some monolithic, evil Left, and a frighteningly large minority of Americans believe them.

Here’s the scenario. First they destroy Americans’ confidence in all the things that might protect them  from a medical emergency. Then, they make their own fantasy of how COVID started a reality. Whether or not COVID really came from a release of the deadly virus by a Chinese laboratory, such a thing is clearly possible, even likely if unscrupulous people intent on undermining our Constitution prevail.

The rest is so simple it’s almost obvious. This time, there’s no vaccine, because the government doesn’t want a cure. This time, they let the economy crash and burn, because there’s no better pretext for martial law and declaring a national emergency, than blaming the radial Left for the pandemic. And what might have erupted into a real civil war, looks more like a coup. No more elections, no more representative government, no more rights, unless you’re a white, Christian male. And no more wealth or power unless you’re a member of the loyal, ruling elite.

What truly frightens me is that this wild idea is absolutely credible, and it conforms perfectly with everything Trump is doing.

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