Let’s reflect just very briefly on the political demise of former Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem.  The first reflection is one I’ve already made here, and with regard to Ms. Noem, to me the most important:  I was genuinely sorry to see her go.  She had become such a caricature for the Trump Regime’s Nazi-like immigration enforcement activities that I considered every day she remained at her post a day in which millions of moderate Americans would be reminded that they had to vote against Republicans in the upcoming November elections, thus strengthening the chances for American democracy to survive.  I had never seen the $220 million ICE recruitment video starring Ms. Noem that was reportedly pivotal in getting her fired before the furor over it erupted during her recent Senate hearing; now that I have, my primary reaction was sympathy for Ms. Noem’s horse, who had to be both chagrined at being part of such an embarrassing spectacle and worried that Ms. Noem would shoot it when the video was completed, although at the same time being heartened that it wasn’t the biggest horse’s a– … er … behind …  in the production.

On to U.S. OK Sen. Markwayne Mullin, whom President Donald Trump is nominating to replace Ms. Noem as Homeland Secretary.  First, I truly wonder whether Mr. Mullin’s parents simply couldn’t decide whether he looked like a “Mark” or a “Wayne” when he was born.  Based upon what we’ve seen of and learned about him since Mr. Trump put his name forth, it would appear that the Senator’s parents would have been closer to the mark (so to speak 😉) had they named him, “Rocco,” “Spike,” or “Hugger,” but all of us parents understand that no one can predict these things in advance.  😊     

There are those who might rationally oppose Mr. Mullin’s confirmation as Homeland Secretary based upon his comments on Fox News about Alex Pretti the day after ICE Agents murdered Mr. Pretti in Minneapolis:  “A deranged individual who came in to cause massive damage with a loaded pistol was shot and killed.”  For Mr. Mullin to make such a declaration after there was sufficient video available to establish that such was false propaganda would, in a rational world, be sufficient to give any ethical Senator considering Mr. Mullin’s nomination concerns about Mr. Mullin’s judgement and veracity, but given the Trump Regime’s Rogue’s Gallery Cabinet, such a misrepresentation simply means that Mr. Mullin will fit right in.  If I were a Senator, I’d vote to confirm Mr. Mullin.  I still believe in the principle I first articulated in these pages years ago:  any nominee of a President to a senior Administration post should be confirmed, subject to two criteria:  whether the candidate is objectively qualified for the position; and the absence of any other objective disqualifying criteria (prior criminal conviction, demonstrable drug abuse problem, etc.).  Although Mr. Mullin reportedly has no background in homeland security issues, it is seemingly likely that he is no less qualified than any other nominee that Mr. Trump might put forward, and he is arguably less abjectly ill-suited for Homeland Security than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard are for their offices.  Additionally, as we are all well aware, immigration policy is set by Mr. Trump and his (let’s be gentle) autocratically-inclined Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller; whomever they put in the Homeland Security seat is simply going to execute their bidding.  The nominee’s subjective leanings – e.g., in this instance that he is arguably going to be too hardline on immigration policy – shouldn’t, in my view, be part of the assessment.  I hope that Democrats don’t spend too much emotion trying to contest a confirmation which, given Republican control of the Senate and Mr. Mullin’s being a sitting Senator, is a done deal.

Two final impressions:  the first – a parallel if not a repetition of the comment above regarding Ms. Noem — is that Mr. Mullin’s replacement of Ms. Noem, taken together with the Regime’s ICE’s recent withdrawal from “Blue Cities,” will almost certainly release some of the pent-up steam against the Regime’s thuggish immigration enforcement policies that has built up during the first part of this year. I consider this release, this far from November, to be an unfortunate outcome for our democracy. 

Second, if I could make any recommendation to Mr. Mullin, it would be this:  the Regime’s attack on Iran, no matter how one views it from a foreign policy perspective, has changed the fundamentals of your job.  Spend less of your and your staff’s energy on chasing down illegal immigrants who haven’t committed crimes following their initial illegal entry, and immediately bring back any experts in Middle East terrorism that Elon Musk’s moronic DOGE purges may have terminated from the federal government.  Start consulting Homeland Security veterans from the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations about how to best to detect and keep Americans safe from terrorist activities within the U.S. by Iranian sleeper cells.  To anyone who doesn’t believe that such quiescent cells haven’t been here for years, awaiting instructions from the Iranian Regime:  I envy you your life in CandyLand.  Hopefully, Mr. Mullin recognizes that he doesn’t have that luxury.

We’ll see what happens.

This post runs contrary to my general rule against writing and posting on the same day; it arises from an email exchange I had with a close friend earlier today.

President Donald J. Trump delivers his Presidential State of the Union Address to Congress this evening.  All who care are aware that Mr. Trump’s conduct of the presidency during the first year of his second term has been so disreputable that his approval rating has plummeted among all voter segments save his hardest-core supporters, and in even that segment he has sustained erosion.  I have heard commentators opine in recent days that because the speech will be watched by a wide swath of Americans across the political spectrum, the President’s advisors see this State of the Union Address as perhaps his last opportunity (think about that; he’s only been back in office a year) to right his sinking popularity and at the same time provide a campaign lifeline to Republican candidates representing swing areas (and possibly not-normally-swing areas) who seemingly currently face the prospect of a political bloodbath.  To achieve the result that Mr. Trump’s advisors and his terrified Republican officeholder supplicants hope for, Mr. Trump will need to project a reasonable tone, acknowledge the majority of Americans’ fears about their economic circumstances and the country’s future while laying out specific proposals to address these Americans’ financial plight, express regret about the Supreme Court’s recent ruling vitiating his tariff policy without descending into vituperation, point out the way his administration has shut down the border while perhaps indicating that ICE will be adopting a lighter touch in its activities within our cities, etc., etc., etc.

I am confident that these Republican worthies (obviously using that term loosely) fervently hope he will avoid a harsh, combative tone of denial, or claim that America is in a golden age, or claim that America is loved around the world, or any declaration that affordability is a hoax, or any declaration that his administration intends to take steps to prevent widespread voter fraud in the 2026 elections, or personal attacks on Democrats, or racially-tinged attacks on immigrants, or above all, personal attacks on the Supreme Court – including the two Justices he appointed — that recently struck down his fairly unpopular tariff policy.  (I admit that I felt perverse amusement when following the adverse decision, Mr. Trump referred to the three Republican-appointed Justices who rejected his claim to broad tariffing authority as “lapdogs”; I considered his comment an unwittingly indictment of the three Republican-appointed Justices who did vote to uphold his tariffing authority – Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh – who are, indeed, lapdogs.)  

You and I are both sufficiently aware of my fallibility, but I am nonetheless going to make a straightforward pronouncement here:  Mr. Trump is at this point congenitally incapable of performing in the manner his advisors wish and his Republican supplicants need to politically survive.  He will claim that under his leadership, that our union is strong; that the economy is strong; that the world is more secure, and he alone has been able to bring peace in about 100 countries (none of which actually seem to be at peace 😉); that he does intend to take steps to avoid voter fraud in certain areas (all Democratic strongholds); that ICE has made the country safer; and that the Supreme Court has acted shamefully and hurt our country by its recent tariff ruling, and he intends to impose more tariffs.  In short, he will adopt the combative tone and say all the things that his advisors and fellow Republicans want him to avoid. 

Although I have continued with my recent months’ habit of not watching or listening to Mr. Trump’s lies and loathsome diatribes – my heart is not that strong – I intend to watch the address tonight, hoping for the best – the best being that Mr. Trump will indeed perform as I have predicted.  Although one is heartsick at the hardship, the lost and ruined lives, the irreparable damage to innocent children’s psyches that this Regime has cruelly wrought, it is seemingly clear that each report of a new despicable outrage by the Regime – from its ICE’s Nazi-like activities and the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, to its continued refusal to even acknowledge let alone address many Americans’ economic plight, to its continued refusal to provide impoverished Americans with healthcare financial assistance, to its refusal to follow the Epstein law and provide justice to the Epstein victims, to its threats to invade Greenland, to its attacks on its own Supreme Court (which must make even some semi-perceptive MAGAs wonder if he’s acting legally), to its plastering Mr. Trump’s name on and flying banners with Mr. Trump’s picture from various federal buildings, to … you get it (I apologize if I have left out any of the Regime’s shameless activities you find the most offensive) – has, at one level, become means to an end.  As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the House of Commons in June, 1940 – and I make this analogy intentionally, and not lightly – “We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.” At this point, I don’t want to see Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., or Epstein-implicated Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick fired; they serve the same emotive rallying point for Regime opponents as MAGAs used to point to former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.  If Mr. Trump was savvy enough to jettison some of these subordinates, it would take some of the steam out of the Regime’s opposition.    

Returning to a theme you have heard me repeat here endlessly: given the majority of American voters’ selection of Donald Trump in November of 2024, I – like our European allies — have lost and will probably never regain confidence in the good sense of the majority of American citizens.  It is clear that in order to get the pivotal segment of our citizens who inexplicably thought Mr. Trump was the solution to their difficulties to continue to see reality, they must be regularly confronted with Regime outrages.  Ironically – and at the same time unfortunately and happily — Mr. Trump seems willing to accommodate this need.

I would suggest that we must face the fact that at this point there is no chance – zero — that we as a nation are in a position to face the myriad of pressing substantive problems we should be addressing – the economic insecurity of a large percentage of our people, what meaningful work can be developed for our citizens whose skill sets may be less well suited to the automated future, our federal debt, climate change, artificial intelligence, progress in the health sciences, the improvement and broadening of our education systems, a coherent immigration policy, our proper role in world affairs, you name it – until we manage to stifle the Regime of ignorance, denial and autocracy now governing our country.  We need to put our substantive concerns aside, and for the present absorb the future Regime outrages that seem likely to further distress the pivotal middle segment of our citizens as setbacks that might ultimately enable us to preserve our democracy.  Let the President continue to blithely deny that many Americans are suffering economically.  Let him idiotically withhold vaccines, moronically declare Tylenol unsafe for pregnant women.  Let him impose more illegal tariffs.  Let him withhold the last 2 million Epstein documents.  Let him fly his picture from every building in Washington.  Indeed, let him bulldoze the West Wing, erect a castle, and paint his face on it.  These are arguably means to an end. 

There are, of course, two exceptions to this rule.  The first is that we don’t want any more people’s lives sacrificed to Regime violence.  The second involves the measures that the Regime is almost certainly going to attempt to subvert free and fair 2026 federal elections.  These must be contested by all legal and peaceful means available.  I’ll venture that the culmination is likely to arrive this summer when Mr. Trump knows — when it absolutely sinks in – that a fair election will be a tidal wave against him; that he will be facing circumstances, unlike his loss in 2020 — which, although clear, was undeniably close in states such as Georgia and Wisconsin – where most citizens will intuitively know from their own feelings that despite Regime claims, Republican defeats weren’t “rigged,” weren’t due to “voter fraud.”  

That will be our most dangerous period.  At the start of the Regime’s term, I thought the struggle might be coming in 2028; as I’ve indicated more recently, I think that it will be upon us in 2026.  (Get ready to attend your next local NO KINGS rally on March 28.  😊)  In a positive statement in which I wholeheartedly believe:  if we can get through it, we are still the United States of America, the most democratic nation in the history of the earth, which despite its faults has through its goodwill, industry, and initiative done more good for more people than any other nation in history and solved the greatest number of the greatest problems humankind has faced.  The substantive and political challenges we now confront can be addressed – if not entirely during my generation’s lifetime, during the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren — if we manage to secure our democracy.

We’ll see what happens tonight.

Yesterday, it appeared that President Donald Trump and the NATO nations aligned against him over his attempts to extort Denmark, Greenland, and NATO into transferring control of Greenland to the United States were taking steps to move back from the brink of war.  Mr. Trump at one point apparently indicated that he would not attempt to use force to take control of Greenland.  Whether our Manchild President stepped back from the brink because the NATO nations found a way to placate Mr. Trump, as he claimed, or because somebody woke him up sufficiently to the possibility, as suggested in this post, that the conflict that would ensue if he ordered a military invasion of Greenland could effectively spell the end of his presidency, it does not appear – at least as this is typed – that the United States and its putative NATO allies are headed for any immediate armed conflict.

But who knows what the case will be by the time you read this?  We’ll have to see what happens today.  And then tomorrow.  And then the next day.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that the Regime’s ICE has started new operations in the state of Maine, targeting immigrants from Somalia.  Here we go again.

On a different note, I observed here recently that I very much enjoy receiving comments – even ones pointing out that I have erred in a post.  😊  I was informed yesterday by an unimpeachable source that I had erred in this original note when I casually referred to Greenland as a “colony” of Denmark.  Greenland is not a Danish colony; it is actually a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, although Denmark handles Greenland’s foreign policy and defense, and Greenland relies heavily on Denmark’s financial support, education and health care.

The record – at least on Greenland’s legal status, and at least in these pages – is now clear.  😊

 Now, let’s brace for today’s rollercoaster ride.

Clearly, a blizzard of impressions arise regarding the United States’ recent incursion into Venezuela, its capture and extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and what might come next.  This note isn’t about that.  (Some day, there may be a lengthy post on Venezuela that that tries your resolve and eyesight.)  That said, there is one point to be made here about the Venezuelan raid that is relevant to what follows:  President Donald Trump’s comment not long after the raid, reported by multiple credible sources, that “many” Cubans were killed in the process of capturing Mr. Maduro.  (The Cuban government later indicated that 32 Cuban military personnel were killed.) 

So much for the Cubans.  From both domestic political and geopolitical perspectives, nobody in America cares about dead Cuban soldiers.

This is about Greenland, the world’s largest island, sitting in the Western Hemisphere mostly within the Arctic Circle, a colony of Denmark – a member of NATO — since before the United States declared its independence from Great Britain.  As all who care are aware, given the Trump Regime’s repeated threats in recent weeks to capture Greenland by force if the Danes, Greenlanders, and other NATO nations are unwilling to voluntarily accede to the United States’ usurpation, some eight members of NATO have responded by stationing troops in Greenland on the professed pretext of assuring Mr. Trump that the island is safe from Mr. Trump’s expressed fears of a Russian or Chinese invasion (a completely fabricated concern; Vladimir Putin has his hands full in Ukraine and Xi Jinping is eyeing Taiwan; neither has imminent plans to invade a NATO territory now significantly less strategic to him), while clearly signaling their intent to militarily resist any assault on Greenland by American troops.  Today, Mr. Trump will be in Davos, Switzerland, at the world’s most renowned annual meeting of political and financial bigwigs.  If credible reporting is accurate, Mr. Trump plans to pressure NATO leaders to enable him to assume control of Greenland.

Make no mistake.  I remain a foreign policy disciple of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and there is a lot to be said about securing Greenland’s strategic position for all of NATO as well for the United States in areas such as missile paths, emerging commercial waterways, and rare earth minerals, most of which you already know, much and perhaps all of which could be achieved through deft diplomacy.  There is also a lot to say about Mr. Trump’s increasing erraticism and seeming detachment from reality as he completes the first year of his second term (there does seem to be something that’s changed in the President’s behavior in the last several months – even by the standards we judge him — beyond his aging reversion), but perhaps we’ll get back to that in a future post.  The focus here is on the impending – and extraordinarily silly, if the matter wasn’t so serious — military crisis brought about by the Regime’s thuggish, blatantly illegal approach to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark.  I was initially frustrated by the NATO nations’ response to the Regime’s bellicose overtures – to the effect that aggressive action by the Regime “would mean the end of NATO” – because such tepid responses seemed to indicate an obliviousness to the reality that Mr. Trump wants to destroy NATO, and to invite a Greenland assault would provide him a way to do so.  I have since been incredibly encouraged by the NATO nations’ stationing of troops in Greenland.  The question now is whether the NATO leaders have the internal fortitude to stand up to Mr. Trump’s formidable personal pressure.  If they do, I would submit that no matter how outraged Mr. Trump may be – unless he is now truly delusional, which one can no longer rule out – he will see that he has been checkmated.

The bulk of this note addresses somewhat antiseptically the domestic political ramifications Mr. Trump may face if he orders a military assault on Greenland – how such an order might affect him, which is all he cares about.  What can’t be ignored at the outset are the moral, legal, and potentially tragic personal consequences of what would be a deranged order to invade the island:  Denmark and Greenland control Greenland.  They have for centuries.  We don’t.  We’ve offered to take control of the island.  (If they were willing, I’d support it.)  They’ve said no.  There is no legal or moral gray area.  In a civilized world, that is the end of the story.  As to the potential personal consequences:  As the NATO nations with troops in Greenland make clear their readiness to confront any offensive American assault, I am outraged and terrified for the American troops and for the NATO troops — who have each sworn to serve their nations and NATO as a whole – whose lives may be forfeit, as was National Guardsman U.S. Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom’s to a Trump Regime publicity stunt, to Mr. Trump’s attempt to fulfill a totalitarian vision of hemispheric conquest which can no longer be distinguished from the Nazis’ 1930s claims of their need for Lebensraum (“Living  Space”).  (Don’t forget the President’s ongoing references to Canada, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s current spirited defense of Greenland.  Mr. Carney clearly recognizes that if Greenland falls – I deliberately use a wartime battle reference – Canada is next.)

Credible polls indicate that an overwhelming majority of Americans – including an unusually notable segment of Mr. Trump’s hardcore base — think his designs on Greenland are completely unwarranted.  Although many of these Americans may not have cared about dead Cubans, and may not understand the importance of preserving NATO for America’s security, I would submit that they will care about dead Danes, dead Canadians, dead Brits, dead French, dead Germans, dead Swedes, dead Finns, and dead Norwegians (I may be leaving a nation out; if so, I apologize) if we launch a military assault against an ally when we are so clearly in the wrong.    

And much more than that:  they will most certainly will care about dead Americans.  NATO troops know how to shoot.  I suspect that in the Greenland meetings taking place this week, one or more of the NATO leaders will make it clear to Mr. Trump — make it, as they say, crystal:  If the United States makes an aggressive incursion into Greenland, there will be dead Americans.

A second factor with which Mr. Trump should be considering when pondering his malign invasion:  that Congressional Democrats’ recent video reminding American military personnel about their obligation to disregard illegal orders, taken together with the Regime’s vitriolic counterattacks against those members, have made every U.S. service member acutely aware of his/her oath to disregard illegal orders.  Any order to invade Greenland – an ally — will place all American troops, from commander to grunt, in a grotesquely unjust ethical quandary.  If Mr. Trump orders the invasion, how many will demur?  Aside from the troops’ dilemma, Mr. Trump should realize from his own self-interest – again, all he cares about — that if he loses command of the military, his presidency is effectively emasculated.

The first dead American in Greenland – and perhaps even the first dead NATO soldier – will not only mean the end of NATO; I will venture that it will mean the end of Mr. Trump’s presidency (although it may be the beginning of his dictatorship).  Some Americans will reflexively jump to an “America, Right or Wrong” stance; I submit that the a vast majority will not.  The domestic paroxysm resulting from a Greenland invasion added to the continuing protests related to Renee Good’s killing and ICE’s brutal immigration enforcement activities will inflame protests and violent skirmishes across this country.

Unless Mr. Trump is willing to go the final mile – declare Martial Law, and declare himself a de facto dictator (again, assuming that the American military will even follow him) — a united NATO front in Davos will effectively checkmate his designs in Greenland.  I understand the NATO leaders’ continuous coddling of this President Manchild; they have seen it as their best approach to ensure that he continues to provide his lukewarm assistance to their efforts to support Ukraine.  That said – and I suspect that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would agree – no amount of appeasement will deter Mr. Trump from abandoning NATO and Ukraine if he gets it in his head to do so, and NATO leaders’ obsequiousness regarding Greenland is at least as likely to encourage Mr. Trump’s arbitrary abandonment of Ukraine as deter it.  I would further venture that Mr. Trump’s tariff threats against these NATO nations are strategically toothless.  He can tariff these NATO nations all he wants; but for a very brief respite in the 1990s through the early 2000s, they have lived under the threat of Nazi and then Soviet/Russian aggression since 1933.  Given principles of sovereignty and democracy as fundamental as exist here, tariffs are not going to cow them.  (Any Supreme Court decision hereafter holding that Mr. Trump cannot use tariffs to effect his whimsical non-economic initiatives will obviously sharpen an impending Constitutional crisis.)  Politically, these democratic NATO leaders can blame America for their citizens’ ensuing economic hardships, and their citizens will support them.

In the last months, I have obviously made a number of provocative comparisons between the designs and actions of the Trump Regime and past autocratic regimes, mostly in reference to the Regime’s ICE forces’ immigration enforcement measures.  It is clear that the Regime’s autocratic inclinations do not stop within our borders.  Although I could cite a dozen of Mr. Trump’s own comments to make the point, instead I’ll quote comments about Greenland made by Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller a couple of weeks ago.  As all who care are already aware, Mr. Miller, who wields tremendous influence in the White House, said the following in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper:

“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland. … We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.  These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Compare that to the following:

“In this case we must not let political boundaries obscure for us the boundaries of eternal justice.  … [L]et us be given the soil we need for our livelihood.  True, [the nations possessing the land we covet] will not willing do this.  But then the law of self-preservation goes into effect; and what is refused to amicable methods, it is up to the fist to take.”

Who do you think said that?  (I know; I made it too easy.)

• Adolf Hitler; Mein Kampf, Vol I, Ch. IV

In an earlier note, I commented that there was a lot to unpack in the Greenland situation; I was referring to the various substantive geopolitical issues related to the island.  In the context in which we are now speaking, there is very little to unpack:  there is right, and there is wrong.  My use of the checkmate analogy in this note is also arguably inapposite:  chess is an intellectual, antiseptic exercise; a player readily sacrifices pawns to win the game.  What we are facing here is not antiseptic.  It is about sovereignty and the rule of law.  It is about the potential sacrifice of innocent lives.  If Mr. Trump comes to understand this week that forces are resolutely arrayed against him, may he have enough remaining sense of reason – I have no illusions that he has any sense of humanity – to stand down.

We’ll see what happens.