Latest News & Updates

Just finished reading a sobering article about the last 18 months at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). I never really quite understood why DOGE and administration officials would choose emergency response and disaster assistance as a target, but it is clear that they did, unfortunately with long term negative consequences. With the appointment of new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and the re-nomination of Cameron Ha

A story last night on 60 minutes about insider trading on decisions of war and peace using the new generation of prediction markets started a remarkable 24 hour deluge of alarming and depressing information. With that as a scene setter, today we learned that President Trump's stock trading, supposedly in a blind trust, made over 3600 stock trades in the first quarter of 2026, a rate over 300X his historical average. Stocks his account traded in include Palantir (critical to

It's crazy how much the situation in Cuba encapsulates so much of the Trump Administration's ethos. For those just tuning in, at the beginning of this year, the United States effectively imposed a blockade on the oil that has driven Cuba for decades. Point 1 - another case of the U.S. bullying a small, basically helpless nation. The latest reports include 40 hour power outages, threatening vulnerable citizens. Point 2 - Why? What is the justification? That it is a "communi

Absolutely beautiful day for a run here on Sunday afternoon. Took the opportunity to catch up on the How to Fix It podcast, with the episode featuring an interview with Rep Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who is challenging the state's senior senator (from his own party) in the Democratic primary. I've heard Rep Moulton, a Marine veteran of Iraq, talk before and have always been impressed, but this interview was really stunning. He - a Democratic member of the House of Repre

Today's see-saw between optimism and pessimism about the Iran war (reflected in see-sawing oil and stock prices) wasn't anything new. But it had me in a reflective mood - have we reached full Pravda mode? For those too young to remember, in the 1970s and 1980s, Pravda was the official news agency of the Soviet Union - they put out what the government wanted them to put out. And the thing was - it was basically 90% lies, and everyone knew it, including domestic and foreign

Disturbing reporting today from the New York Times regarding the suppression of reports that indicated the Covid vaccine was effective in reducing Covid's effects on those had received the vaccine. Obviously many people during and after the pandemic accused the Biden adminstration of suppressing negative information about the vaccine. Yet here we are several years later, when peer-reviewed journal articles (the standard for scientific articles) were pulled, apparently becaus

Today at the gym I listened to an interview of Democratic National Committe chair Ken Martin on Pod Save America. I'd heard references to it on other shows, so I wanted to check it out for myself. Let's just say, it wasn't the kind of discussion to fill Democrats with confidence. The main topic was the release of the DNC's "autopsy" report on the 2024 election, which Martin had promised to release. However, he has only released the "lessons learned" from the report - certa

The War Powers Act is the law of the land, passed by Congress in the wake of Vietnam to ensure that it played the role laid out for it in the Constitution when it came to matters of war. Should the Trump Administration fail to comply with the Act's requirements within the next 24 hours (the 60 day mark of the Iran conflict), it will have expanded its disregard for the rule of law into a whole new venue - one where the Founders clearly wanted Congress to have the lead. By all

Fail, fail again. The news today that the former FBI Director James Comey was indicted by a federal grand jury at the request of the Department of Justice could not be more ridiculous, and is bound for the same dust bin as DOJ's first indictment of Comey. If it were not so harmful, it would be funny. At a time when the Department of Justice has jettisoned or shed major portions of its professional legal staff, and those prosectors who are left are compelled by higher autho

The news came out yesterday that the latest Trump Administration soap opera episode led to the firing of Secretary of the Navy John Phelan. While being a billionaire contributor and veteran of the finance industry are wonderful credentials these days, they didn't make him a good pick to be SECNAV, so I shed no tears at his departure. But it's just another demonstration that SECDEF Pete Hegseth is interested only in assembling a team of pushovers and yes men who are willing

Interesting article about Mark Cuban in Politico today, noting that his reaction to Kamala Harris' potential entry into the Democratic Presidential race for 2028 was underwhelming, at best. I'm with you 100% Mark. Over the last three election cycles, the major party nominees for President have been Hilary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, and Donald Trump. Really? If you were trying to stir up partisan anger, polarization, and a resistance to

Around 9 PM this evening, both AP and the Washington Post called the results for the redistricting referendum, declaring "Yes" the winner, thereby allowing the proposed map to be implemented by the legislature. As I noted in a letter to the editor on Friday, this is a highly partisan, extremely gerrymandered map - one I would never vote for under normal circumstances. But these are not normal circumstances. The attempt by President Trump and the Republican party to steal as

Interesting article today from Nicolas Rohatyn, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, CEO of a major financial firm, and a trustee of New York's Citizen Budget Commission . I'd never heard of the CBC before, but its mission as a "nonpartisan, nonprofit civic think tank and watchdog whose mission is to achieve constructive change in the finances, services, and policies of New York City and New York State government" is hard to argue with. It's also hard to argue with his central pre

This morning's New York Times had a head turning byline, with a short essay published by Mike Lee and Dick Durbin, the first an extremely hard line Republican senator from Utah and the second a liberal Democrat senator from New York. What could these two find to agree on? They both are calling for reforms to a specific section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that has been used by federal investigative agencies to probe the communications records of American ci