Return To Gone Away

So this popped up in my stats, indicating a mild revival of interest in something I wrote 16 (!) years ago. And my first thought is: “Who was that masked man?” (IYKYK)

I would call it the earnestness of youth, but at 55, I was hardly young. Still, matters that seemed deeply important to me then, seem now as nattering and foolish as Dawkins and Hitchens did then. (Remember when they were Titans bestriding the globe? Except they never were; they were just the idols of a handful of people on the Intertoobs who were impressed by the pairs Oxonian tones. Neither Hitchens nor Dawkins ever knew what the fuck they were talking about; not when the subject was philosophy of religion.) My position now feels like Aquinas’ famous statement that, having finished the Summa, he had a vision that made all his efforts look like straw in comparison. The absolute figure of reason had a mystical insight that changed him utterly. Except I had no mystical experience; and I never claimed to be Aquinas redux.

I don’t now, either. I’m reading the Summa, casually. I follow all the arguments. I just end up thinking what I did reading Tillich in seminary: “Okay. But who cares?” I understand the foundation Aquinas laid. I even understand I stand on it. I’m not dismissing Aquinas. I’m just thinking about Kierkegaard. What does this mean for my life? How does it help me explain my existence?  Kierkegaard was attacking Hegel’s systemization of thought, his reduction of existence to an abstract system. As he put it in an example I’ll misrepresent from memory, there was a man who was so abstracted from his own existence by contemplating the teachings of Hegel, he awoke one day to find he was dead, a fact he’d missed because he’d quit paying attention to his existence.

I used to pay close attention to philosophy (and theology), in order to apply it to real life, to effectively return philosophy to its status as wisdom. That pursuit actually began to dissolve in seminary, when I learned (but didn’t quite know it) that wisdom and western philosophy had diverged almost ab initio. The Greeks focused on philosophy, while the Hebrews, even as they examined the word of God minutely and intensely (and very argumentatively), were more interested in wisdom, or Sophia. Ironic since the Greeks gave us the word “philosophy,” or philo Sophia.” A lover (philo) of wisdom. But wisdom became a hyper technical pursuit, divorced and abstracted more and more from human existence. Of course, the Greeks of Plato’s time were more concerned with abstractions and buggering boys, which they justified as being superior to base lusts of men for women. The Hebrews were concerned with the law of Moses, which focused (read the prophets) on care for the widow and the orphan and the alien among them.  For comparison’s sake, consider the play “Medea.” Or that the Hebrews gave us the “Song of Solomon.” And the Greeks? Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.”

So is wisdom about understanding the nature of the universe? Or about living in the human condition, and how best to do that? Aristotle’s answer to resolving the human condition in one’s life was to find the most successful person in your society, and emulate them. Trump? Elmo? There’s a reason few of us strive to learn from Aristotle’s Ethics. Then again, “ethics” just means “behavior.” It has precious little to do with justice.

The Hebrew prophets were first and last, and in between, about justice. To the Hebrews, Sofia was from God, with God, and essential to justice. Sofia was even essential to creation. John replaces Hebrew Sofia with the Greek Logos in his opening Hymn to the Logos. But it’s not really a one/to-one correspondence.

The more I lived with these teachings, the more I calved away from philosophy. Not that I’ve abandoned it. I was reading a recent New Yorker review of a book about modern philosophy and Derrida. The author didn’t seem to understand much about phenomenology or even Continental philosophy, but made one point that seemed stumbled upon rather than understood. Derrida’s deconstructionism (which he had largely mived beyond after using it to create a reputation. It’s not an unusual move in philosophy  or the arts, for that matter) was, the article rightly pointed out, a tool for critiquing prior philosophy. Again, something almost any philosopher or artist does. How else to establish something new, if you don’t distinguish from the old? But the argument of the reviewer was that Derrida was trying to break out of the Academy he literally spent his life in; but his arguments were so esoteric, only the Academy could understand them. 

Which, ironically, is why Plato set up his Academy: so the “right” people could understand him, and think as he did. It’s an unfortunate comparison, but three people in history, three very influential people, went the other way: Socrates, Jesus of Nazareth, Paul of Tarsus.  You will say Paul at least established house churches. True, but he never controlled them like Plato controlled his Academy. And he spent his time trying to teach them, even as he wandered the eastern fringe of the Roman Empire. In fact, maybe the central thread here is teacher, a peripatetic one. One engaging people, not other academicians.  It’s not that discussions among teachers is a bad thing. Midrash is a valuable record of analysis of the Hebrew Scriptures. It’s rabbis arguing with rabbis arguing with rabbis, and that record is instructive and insightful. But rabbi, which means “teacher,” is a person in a community, not an academy.

An academy is a community, too. But it’s one most of us pass through, isn’t it? It’s not where we live the rest of our lives.

Kierkegaard published his books for the readers of Copenhagen; admittedly, a small percentage of the population (those who could afford books, and were educated enough to understand what S.K. was on about). Sartre wanted his ideas popularized. It’s why he wrote his most famous, and accessible, essay on existentialism. Being and Nothingness, on the other hand, is a very technical slog. There’s nothing wrong with that. The Summa Theoligica is not a beach read, either. And Kierkegaard presumes a lot of knowledge about Hegelian thought, as well as Greek literature.

There is no royal road to geometry, as some Greek supposedly said. Then again, geometry is techne, not sophia. We need a modern form of philotechne (a portmanteau of my own poor creation), or at least a word to explain our devotion to it (to name it is to recognize it), but more than that we need a new appreciation, at least, of sophia.

It was Wittgenstein, if memory serves, who said of his Tractatus that he meant it to serve only as a ladder that those who understand would climb and discard. IYKYK, as the kids say now. I think that’s how I came to understand, or at least conceive, that philosophy had not disserved me, but in fact had served me. And I haven’t discarded it; I’ve just moved in another direction. I’m not even sure it’s a better direction, but that’s the way it goes.

"The sense of the world must lie outside the world....in it no value exists...” Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, §6.41.

“That's not all life tenure and zero accountability have produced lately. But it's enough.”

This is an interesting case that examines the authority of rules of evidence, and rules of procedure. It’s a case from the Hawai’i Supreme Court voiding a rape conviction from 1990 which rested on “CSI” type evidence that was not, in fact, valid evidence. (“CSI” wasn’t a thing in 1990, but most of us recognize the reference today.  In the 1960’s it was the FBI whose word was as sound as the gospel, thanks largely to Ford and Efren Zimbalist, Jr. Now CSI is the word of God. But as this case illustrates, it ain’t that simple.)

To state it plainly, an FBI expert testified at trial that hair and fiber samples taken from the clothing of the rape victim, matched samples from the accused himself, and the car where the rape allegedly took place. The problem arose in 2009, when a study of how such materials were analyzed found that, at best, they could be identified only as classes of material, but not as  material obtained from a specific source (rather than general sources).  This is where the rules of evidence enter the chat.

Courts run on two primary sets of rules which determine the application of laws and even constitutional provisions to cases. One set is procedural; how cases and appeals are conducted.  These are designed to insure justice, but also to promote judicial economy and even closure. Cases must come to conclusions. Endless appeals just for the sake of appeal are a waste of resources and punitive to some party’s interests. See, e.g., Trump’s continuous appeals of E.Jean Carroll’s judgements against him. In the defamation case, those appeals are now ended. Procedure prevails over petulance. A rare case proving clearly the value of such rules. In most cases, it’s not that simple.

The other set of rules are the rules of evidence. These are even more important to justice than the rules of procedure. “Change the facts, change the outcome,” is a basic principle of American law. Rules of evidence don’t determine the facts; the trial court does that (another matter for the rules of procedure). Rules of evidence determine what facts can be considered by the trier of fact. The Hawai’i Supreme Court holds that scientific evidence like hair and fiber analysis which can be shown, even 40 years later, to be an unscientific analysis, voids a criminal conviction. The act of voiding the conviction is a procedural matter. The determination that such “evidence” is not evidence, rests in applying the rules of evidence.

There’s an interesting parallel here to the “presumption of regularity” which is currently being shredded by the federal courts. The presumption is that the DOJ is professional and competent and sound, and its representations can be accepted as valid, absent strong contrary evidence. I would not argue that was ever an unalloyed good, but it was reality. Comparably, judges are not scientists. Under the general (there are federal rules, and each state has their own) rules of evidence, scientific analysis, once proven in court and accepted there, remains presumptively valid until strong contrary evidence is presented. In this case, the Hawai’i Supreme Court took judicial notice of that contrary evidence. Another procedural matter that I won’t belabor here.

The court ruled that the evidence presented in 1990 was not admissible, because it wasn’t scientifically valid. It was thought to be then, but the court holds that later proof it was invalid, means it was never admissible. Which is an evidentiary and procedural holding. Sometimes the two work to see justice done, however belatedly.

The court gets into a long, and valuable, discussion about “false evidence” v. newly found evidence. Again, a procedural issue. Courts cannot allow constant appeals based solely on “new evidence” claims. No case would ever be final, no court judgement trustworthy. But “false evidence,” the Hawai’i court holds, raises due process issues, and that is more fundamental than procedural issues. Failure to follow procedure can cost you a chance to appeal. New evidence can be denied review based on procedural grounds. Due process is more fundamental; the court must follow due process, or invalidate its own proceedings. The Hawai’i court rests its conclusion on U.S. Supreme Court decisions. and the Hawai’i constitution. Here’s an example of how the court puts it:

In contrast, court rules create the new evidence standard. HRPP Rule 40 reflects prudential concerns about when post-conviction relief is appropriate. The due diligence requirement and probability-of-different-outcome standard promote finality and deter “sandbagging,” the strategic withholding of evidence at trial only to raise it later. See McNulty, 60 Haw. at 268, 588 P.2d at 445 (“the composite knowledge of both the accused and his counsel will be considered” to determine whether the defendant diligently tried to locate the evidence); Eason v. State, 157 Hawai'i 252, 267, 576 P.3d 765, 780 (2025) (Rule 40’s limitations on post-conviction relief “provid[e] a balanced approach to post-convictions proceedings that maintain the integrity of criminal convictions while also comporting with constitutional due process requirements.”) (quoting Judiciary, Testimony to House Committee on Judiciary on S.B. 2, Proposed H.D. 1, 30th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Mar. 27, 2019)).

But these are not constitutional commands. They are judge-made rules that address prudential concerns appropriate only for discrete circumstances.

Newly discovered evidence is a prudential doctrine. False evidence is a constitutional violation. When the government obtains a conviction using false evidence, the conviction offends due process. Stone, 147 Hawai'i at 271, 465 P.3d at 718. Constitutional protections require applying the false evidence standard rather than McNulty’s prudential rule.

And a quick excerpt of how the state constitution controls in this case:

Granillo is not less wrongly convicted because everyone in 1990 acted in good faith. He sits in prison on testimony the science no longer supports. Good faith describes the lawyers. It does not describe the defendant's plight. A standard that requires fault before relief leaves them without a remedy. Article I, section 5 exists for cases like this one.

None of this is why anyone outside Hawai’i is paying attention to this case. And what I’ve quoted is the majority distinguishing the reasoning of the concurrence from the majority opinion. Which is the context for this blistering assault on the Roberts Court.

The concurring opinion looks outside Hawai'i for support. To a concurrence in Ex Parte Warner cautioning against side-stepping prosecutorial knowledge. 721 S.W.3d 436, 445 (Tex. Crim. App. 2025) (Finley, J., concurring). Warner is one judge's separate writing on a denied habeas petition. It binds no one. Not even in Texas. And the federal due process doctrine that animates it cannot tell this court how to read article I, section 5.

We are not side-stepping anything. We are doing what state constitutionalism asks us to do. Stand our ground.

The concurrence seizes on the federal precedent the Texas court's concurring judge cited. The United States Supreme Court has “never held that an unknowing use of false evidence violates due process,” that judge wrote. Warner, 721 S.W.3d at 443 (Finley, J., concurring). The concurrence also cites Glossip v. Oklahoma, 604 U.S. 226, 145 S.Ct. 612, 221 L.Ed.2d 90 (2025), as confirming a knowledge requirement. But Glossip addressed a knowing-use case. It involved a prosecutor who knew. Id. at 228, 145 S.Ct. 612. It did not confront what shakes out when an entire branch of forensic science collapses.

That statement is not a boundary. Glossip described the precedent as it stood. It did not shut the door on cases like this one.

The concurrence's insistence that the prosecution's knowledge concession in Butler counsels adoption of Stone in this context, like its reliance on Glossip, ultimately depends on the premise that federal constitutional doctrine controls this court's interpretation of article I, section 5. It does not.

We interpret the Hawai'i Constitution on its own terms. The United State Supreme Court's construction of the federal Due Process Clause does not define the protections of our state's due process clause. This court “reason[s] independently, untethered from the Supreme Court's analysis of the United States Constitution.” State v. Wilson, 154 Hawai'i 8, 14, 543 P.3d 440, 446 (2024).

The Court that now defines federal due process does not honor the work of 1954. It revives the work of 1857. The work of 1896. The Constitution must be interpreted “according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted.” Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 405, 19 How. 393, 15 L.Ed. 691 (1857).

Today's hubristic originalists use the same method to control modern life. See City & Cnty. of Honolulu v. Sunoco LP, 153 Hawai'i 326, 361, 537 P.3d 1173, 1208 (2023) (Eddins, J., concurring) (“A justice's personal values and ideas about the very old days suddenly control the lives of present and future generations.”).

The Court overrides what Congress passed. It overrides what the people chose. All to serve its own ends.

What this Court has done to constitutional rights, democratic institutions, and the rule of law explains why Hawai'i's Constitution takes no instruction from it.

Article I, section 5 provides versatile and sovereign protection. This court does not anchor Hawai'i's due process rights to the federal floor. Especially one that keeps sinking.

We take no guidance on the meaning of due process from a court that gutted due process protections in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org., 597 U.S. 215, 142 S.Ct. 2228, 213 L.Ed.2d 545 (2022). Zuffante called it straight. Dobbs erased a “generations-long constitutional right, stripping autonomy from half the population, and empowering states to force birth.” State v. Zuffante, 157 Hawai'i 194, 200, 576 P.3d 243, 249 (2025).

Article I, section 5 does not import that results-driven approach to due process. We follow principles, not agendas.

The Supreme Court's imperious ideology does not stop at due process. The same jurisprudence has cratered democracy itself. Start with the Voting Rights Act.

The Roberts Court did what Congress never would. It rewrote the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a cornerstone of American civil rights, democratically enacted and repeatedly reauthorized. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529, 133 S.Ct. 2612, 186 L.Ed.2d 651 (2013), began the judicial demolition, inventing a textually unsupported equal-sovereignty fiction and striking down preclearance on a hunch that the law worked too well. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 594 U.S. 647, 141 S.Ct. 2321, 210 L.Ed.2d 753 (2021), fabricated “guideposts” nowhere in Section 2 to greenlight racial discrimination in voting. Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U.S. ––––, 146 S. Ct. 1131, ––– L.Ed.2d –––– (Apr. 29, 2026), buried what remained of the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. Pretend law for a real statute.

The Court then ditched its own thirty-two day default for releasing decisions and hustled out its judgment mid-primary, a favor granted over objection only twice in twenty-five years. Callais v. Louisiana, 608 U.S. ––––, 146 S. Ct. 1111, 1113, ––– L.Ed.2d –––– (May 4, 2026) (Jackson, J., dissenting). Weeks later, on its shadow docket, the Court tossed an eleven-day trial record built on fifty-one witnesses, 790 exhibits, 2,600 pages of testimony, and a 270-page opinion by a three-judge court. See Singleton v. Allen, 782 F. Supp. 3d 1092, 1115, 1355 (N.D. Ala. 2025). It resurrected a tainted congressional map the three-judge factfinders found deliberately entrenched racial bias against Black voters. Allen v. Milligan, 608 U.S. ––––, 146 S. Ct. 1377, ––– L.Ed.2d –––– (June 2, 2026); see also Hilo Bay Marina, LLC v. State, 156 Hawai'i 478, 516, 575 P.3d 568, 606 (2025) (The “Court's frequent misrepresentation of the factual record and its throw-judges-under-the-bus disdain for district courts, the fact-finders of the federal judiciary, harm the justice system.”).

The Roberts Court sees only white. It refuses to acknowledge who the Equal Protection Clause was written to protect. The freed people, their descendants, and all others denied equal citizenship. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. It turns its back on what is in plain sight. The Fourteenth Amendment is not colorblind. It never was.

The Court calls the Constitution colorblind while engineering the dilution of Black votes, the unraveling of hard-fought civil rights remedies, and the erasure of Black history. That is not blindness. That is white sight, by design.

A Constitution interpreted this way is not colorblind. It is whatever the Court needs it to be. A way to advance its partisan project. The damage to democracy extends beyond the Voting Rights Act.

In Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm'n, 558 U.S. 310, 130 S.Ct. 876, 175 L.Ed.2d 753 (2010), the Court claimed fidelity to text, history, and tradition while invalidating yet another democratically vetted law, handing corporations the same speech rights as flesh-and-blood Americans and letting dollars talk louder than voters. See Sunoco, 153 Hawai'i at 362, 537 P.3d at 1209 (Eddins, J., concurring) (originalism applies selectively and vanishes inconveniently); Leo E. Strine, Jr. & Nicholas Walter, Originalist or Original: The Difficulties of Reconciling Citizens United with Corporate Law History, 91 Notre Dame L. Rev. 877 (2016) (Citizens United cannot be reconciled with corporate law history).

Other decisions followed. The Court abandoned partisan gerrymandering to the gerrymanderers, refusing for the first time to remedy a constitutional violation because it believed the task beyond judicial competence. Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U.S. 684, 139 S.Ct. 2484, 204 L.Ed.2d 931 (2019); see id. at 721, 139 S.Ct. 2484 (Kagan, J., dissenting). It placed a president above the law. Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593, 144 S.Ct. 2312, 219 L.Ed.2d 991 (2024).

Last month, Nat'l Republican Senatorial Comm. v. Fed. Election Comm'n, 609 U.S. ––––, ––– S.Ct. ––––, ––– L.Ed.2d –––– (June 30, 2026), made Citizens United look quaint, shredding coordinated spending limits Congress had enacted, and ensuring that those who bankroll elections drown out the ordinary person. Billionaires spend to be repaid. Everyone else just votes. The Roberts Court has made sure one's wealth counts more than another's vote.

Rulings run in one direction, time after time. Weakening protections for those with less power. Fortifying those with more. The pattern speaks for itself. A court that systematically dismantles democratic safeguards, steamrolls constitutional liberties, and tramples human dignity does not chart the course for the Hawai'i Constitution.

Our constitutional system was designed for times like these. Federalism is not a formality. It is the architecture. The framers built dual sovereignty into the structure of American government as an independent check against concentrated federal power. A Supreme Court driven by agenda and intent on swiping power that belongs to the people is exactly what that check was built for.

When six justices walk away from those they are supposed to protect, state constitutions hold the line. That is not defiance. That is the design.

State constitutionalism makes it easy to consider Roberts Court jurisprudence “white noise.” See Hilo Bay Marina, 156 Hawai'i at 518, 575 P.3d at 608.

Add it all up. Draining due process. Rolling back voting rights. Flooding elections with money. Rubber-stamping gerrymandering. Crowning a president. Blessing discrimination in the name of the Constitution. Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, Pa., 593 U.S. 522, 141 S.Ct. 1868, 210 L.Ed.2d 137 (2021); 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 600 U.S. 570, 143 S.Ct. 2298, 216 L.Ed.2d 1131 (2023). Looking at naked racism and seeing none of it. Mullin v. Doe, 609 U.S. ––––, ––– S.Ct. ––––, ––– L.Ed.2d –––– (June 25, 2026) (racist words not “overtly racial”). Making the country more dangerous with a Second Amendment unmoored from text or history and unrecognizable to the framers who wrote it. New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 142 S.Ct. 2111, 213 L.Ed.2d 387 (2022); Wilson, 154 Hawai'i at 22, 543 P.3d at 454 (“disabl[ing] the states’ responsibility to protect public safety, reduce gun violence, and safeguard peaceful public movement” with its deadly jurisprudence). Then striking down a careful law and showing disdain for Hawai'i's constitutional traditions. Wolford v. Lopez, 609 U.S. ––––, ––– S.Ct. ––––, ––– L.Ed.2d –––– (June 25, 2026).

Subverting congressional choices with a homemade “major questions” power grab that plays “get-out-of-text-free cards” to block agencies from doing what Congress told them to do. West Virginia v. Env't Prot. Agency, 597 U.S. 697, 779, 142 S.Ct. 2587, 213 L.Ed.2d 896 (2022) (Kagan, J., dissenting). Then commandeering the interpretive authority Congress gave federal agencies, overruling Chevron after forty years because, to this particular Court, precedent is advisory. Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369, 144 S.Ct. 2244, 219 L.Ed.2d 832 (2024).

This term, transmuting federal spending programs into private contracts, the Court forged the Spending Clause to “reduce[ ] some of Congress's greatest legislative achievements.” Landor v. Louisiana Dep't of Corr. & Pub. Safety, 609 U.S. ––––, 146 S.Ct. 1931, ––– L.Ed.2d –––– (June 23, 2026) (Jackson, J., dissenting). Days later, it freed the President to fire at will the very commissioners a law shielded from removal, discarding a unanimous opinion, Humphrey's Executor, on a cherry-picked slice of history - a century of settled practice recast as a mistake, competent governance sacrificed to the partisan cause. Trump v. Slaughter, 609 U.S. ––––, ––– S.Ct. ––––, ––– L.Ed.2d –––– (June 29, 2026). The next morning, fair-weather textualists – living constitution originalists, really - deserted the text and our nation's history the moment it promised citizenship, one vote from writing that right out of the Constitution. Trump v. Barbara, 609 U.S. ––––, ––– S.Ct. ––––, ––– L.Ed.2d –––– (June 30, 2026).

That's not all life tenure and zero accountability have produced lately. But it's enough.

Article I, section 5 needs no part of this. The Hawai'i Constitution was built to stand on its own. And so it does.

I pause to note the latest print issue of “The New Yorker” has an article about the Roberts court, which features the Chief Justice demurring that the justices get along very well. Which isn’t exactly the thrust of the criticism of his court; especially not here.

I have to say I appreciate the analysis, even as I question its place in a judicial opinion. It’s a sound critique, IMHLO, but the Voting Rights Act and Citizens United and Dobbs don’t really have anything to do with the legal issues in this case. They don’t even challenge the court’s interpretation of the Hawai’ian constitution.

OTOH, sometimes the soap box you have, is the one you have to use. As this case illustrates, there are rules of procedure, and rules of evidence, and constitutional requirements. And there is a principle of stare decisis that is as fundamental to the legal system as due process, procedure, and evidentiary rules. Those should shift slowly, as necessary, to be sure justice is not bending to convenience. This opinion makes a very good argument for that position, at a time when we need it.  Life time tenure and zero accountability do, indeed, breed a contempt for the law, and for justice. But when you start with racists who see only white….

Senators Have Thoughts

Sen. John Kennedy says his response to Iranian cyberattacks would be to "eat them up and spit the bones on the floor" pic.twitter.com/ANpjfUpFgs

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 2, 2026

You and what military, Sen. Leghorn? Certainly not the one run by Trump and Hegseth. You know, the guy who just announced another ceasefire, after announcing a major escalation, which he almost immediately cancelled.

WELKER: Trump now says he wants Congress to pass a bill making the anti-weaponization fund the law of the land. Would you support that?

KENNEDY: I'd have to read it first

WELKER: You'd be open to that?

KENNEDY: I'd be willing to look at it pic.twitter.com/w1MyjY4ZyP

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 2, 2026

WELKER: Do you think anybody who attacked police officers and stormed the Capitol on January 6 should get taxpayer money as a part of that fund?

KENNEDY: No, I'd take them off the table pic.twitter.com/2pqTMGVAvE

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 2, 2026

So, the fund would just be for Trump?

Follow up: given the way Trump has reappropriated funds authorized by Congress for other purposes (national parks entry fees), misappropriated other funds (the “ballroom,” the reflecting pool), and flat refused to spend others (DOE), what’s to keep Trump from simply pocketing the slush fund if he gets it? The threat of impeachment?

Don’t make me laugh.😹 

Sen. John Kennedy on Trump's blatant reflecting pool lies: "The president says it was caused by vandals. I don't know if he really believes that or it's part of his political messaging or he's just thinking out loud ... he grows anxious when he has an unexpressed thought." pic.twitter.com/4R0ADLE7po

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 2, 2026

The nation grows anxious when it’s so clear the President is disconnected from reality. We have a constitutional institution meant to correct for precisely that situation. Why won’t it, Senator?

Bernie Sanders: "The immediate issue of the moment is whether or not we continue to put tens of billions of dollars into the extremist Netanyahu government which has killed 75,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children ... " pic.twitter.com/YCK45c6xYs

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 2, 2026

Actually, the immediate issue of the moment is the price of gasoline, inflation, and economic growth (there isn’t any).  I know Israel is the topic du jour among online cognoscenti. But I doubt it’s top of mind among voters who don’t spend their days obsessing over D.C. gossip.

Bernie Sanders on Fetterman: "He's way out of touch with the people of America" pic.twitter.com/FFbRxslIA3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 2, 2026

(I can’t vote for or against Fetterman. I don’t give a wet snap how often he’s on Fox News), and who don’t know who Netenyahu is. Or much care.

But do know the Trump economy is beating them like they were a rented mule. These people:

"You do not know what you're doing to people who are struggling to live," Oklahoman Trinity Goodman said in comments directed at Trump. "You got money in the bank. You don't know how it feels to struggle. Live in my shoes for one day. You wouldn't be able to handle it."

Goodman told Kristof that she had less than $4 in her checking account and a cent in her savings account to keep it open, calling it her full assets. She said that her food stamps can't go toward buying toilet paper or feminine hygiene products.

She survives by selling her blood plasma twice a week, she said.

"I've never been to a barber or any of those places," Goodman said. "Never. I don't have that luxury."

Kristof noted Trump's cuts to benefits, including to Medicaid, food stamps, and early childhood education, adding the push to cut benefits for struggling Americans is "hard to square with the expense of the Iran war, as well as subsidies for private planes and tax cuts for the wealthiest."

The columnist said he was stunned by trip through America and the pressure caused by inflation and social benefit cuts.

"I talked to so many people who are losing food stamps and other benefits and increasingly desperate — and resentful, understandably, of elites who seem indifferent to their struggles," Kristoff said.

Latoya Foster, 31, a single mother raising six children in Arkansas, told Kristoff she was among those to lose food stamps before she broke down and wept.

“I hit rock bottom daily,” she told Kristoff. “The more I work, the harder stuff gets.”

No mention of “But American support for Israel is my biggest concern!,” there. So many voices claiming they know what the central Democratic message should be. Might I suggest this one?

IDEAS DON’T MATTER. THINGS DON’T MATTER. PEOPLE MATTER.

When You Don't Know The Subject, You Can Conclude Anything About It

The New Yorker attempts to review American ecclesiastical history:

The historic European Protestant traditions that were the forebears of the American church placed great emphasis on learning and on doctrine, but the result was a faith that tended to be aristocratic and élitist. Revivalism democratized Christianity. It elevated a new class of spiritual leaders—people who could hold a crowd in their thrall. They preached that salvation was open to all and exhorted congregants to forge their own moral destinies. Sutton argues that the effect of this movement was a distinctly American faith, one in which “the ideals of political democracy and religious democracy went hand in hand.”

Well, yeah. Maybe .But the Church of Rome started out far more democratically, too. Augustine converted to Christianity, and later was pressed into service as a bishop by the people. There were no “ideals of political democracy and religious democracy” in Europe, and especially in the Roman Empire, except among the first century Christians (Paul’s house churches put family and their slaves on equal grounds, at least for worship; and Luke describes early believers gathering together (apart from Paul’s influence), and holding everything in common, make and female. As Paul told the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Radical stuff even today. The Roman church took on the character of feudal Europe after Constantine, which is why the Desert Fathers fled to the desert: Christianity was becoming too worldly, i.e., too much like the world.  And feudal Europe owed a lot to the Roman Empire. French, Spanish and Italian are variants of Latin. Piccadilly Circus is from the Latin word for “circle.” The British admired the Romans so much they treated Latin as a “better” language than their own for over 100 years, because Willie the Shake had “little Latin and less Greek.” Bishops became “princes of the church” in order to stand equal to the feudal nobles, and the Bishop of Rome for some time held power over the monarchs of Europe, a power that began seriously ebbing with Henry VIII, a power Rome fought with Elizabeth I to recover. The church was very much of the world at that point. (Henry taking all their property in England to dole out to his dukes and earls and barons like the feudal lord he was didn’t help matters with Rome very much.)

Monks founded the great universities of Europe to keep literacy alive so the religious could read the scriptures and the works of the church fathers. Literacy was not widespread until about the time of Gutenberg (who needed it until then?), so education was, of course, connected to the church. The European churches that were not just the Anglican Church brought those traditions with them. In the 19th century German settlers in St. Louis, a city already dominated by the Roman Church (I spent a weekend in a retreat in a former Catholic seminary, built to house priests-in-training. The hallways were so wide I joked I could drive my MG Midget down them, and turn it around at either end. It was a much bigger facility than the seminary I would attend for four years.). Those settlers built a seminary, an orphanage, a hospital, and a mental health facility, all within a few years of their arrival. And all are still operating, over 100 years later. The break with that tradition is very American, but hardly a defining feature of American Baptists. One of my oldest friends grew up in the Baptist church and attended a Baptist seminary. I still remember his father talking about Baptist preachers he knew with doctorates. He spoke as if he expected his son to ascend to such lofty heights. Most of the pastors I know at the largest Baptist churches are referred to as “Doctor” (never “Reverend.” Too Catholic.)

Sorry to digress so long, and get so far from my point. The point is simply that the American church is distinct from the European model in some ways; but those differences stem from historical circumstances. Too many Americans assume they grow from “corrections” we made as “free men” (which never means quite the same as “free people”). For example, some denominations accept women as pastors, priests, or part of the church judicatory (bishops; Conference Ministers; titles vary). Others resolutely refuse to. Some accept LGBTQ+ as members and clergy. Some refuse to accept them into the latter category, some refuse to accept them at all. Why? Culture, primarily. The members start with culture, and then interpret scripture, traditions, teachings, as it suits them.

Same as it ever was.

But considering how many denominations in American Christianity are rooted in European culture (starting with the divide between Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches), and how many denominations in America are rebranded European denominations, starting with the Methodist Episcopal Church. John Wesley was an Episcopal priest, and the church still has bishops (an episcopate). The Lutheran church has bishops, too, though the ELCA is a merger of Lutherans and German Evangelicals, the latter itself a forced merger out of Prussia of the Lutheran and Reformed denominations in that country. The even more uniquely American Lutherans are the Missouri Synod, who broke from the rest of the Lutherans in America over questions of purity, and the Wisconsin Synod, who broke with the Lutherans and the MO Synod over the same questions.

That’s probably a more American distinction in churches, as they fight within themselves, and merge with other churches to survive (creating the ELCA or the United Methodists (a merger with the United Brethren), or even my church, the UCC.

I’ll stop now, but that’s the point. There is no one distinct American church, and dividing it on who has a theological education in the pulpit, and who doesn’t, is a mug’s game. Congregational churches were once (circa 17th century) divided between the men on the side with the pulpit, and the women and children on the other, every Sunday morning (I pastored a German Evangelical church (originally) where some members were old enough to remember the same divisions there, earlier in the 20th century). The men listened intently to the sermon, and later corrected the pastor on anything they considered apostasy, or error.  The first universities in America were founded by Congregationalists. You’ve probably heard of them.

It’s true there was (is still?) a Cumberland Presbyterian denomination, which didn’t require its pastors to be trained by a seminary, a distinction from other Presbyterian churches (or was before the merger of the “north” and “south” denominations, split by the civil war and not rejoining for 100 years or so afterwards.) The merger prompted a splinter group, the “Continuing Presbyterian Church (the north was too liberal; I don’t know why. This was long before “gay” meant anything but “happy,” so that wasn’t it.), and now I know of at least one “Evangelical Presbyterian Church. And they didn’t merge with an old German Lutheran/Reformed denomination. What education level they require of their pastors, if any, I don’t know. The Cumberland branch started because Presbyterians were heading west through the Gap and needed pastors. But if pastors weren’t following, they were going to raise up their own. Distinct American egalitarianism? Or hard necessity? Two conditions that often appear alike, and I’ve found circumstances drive decision making far more than ideals do. At least in the final analysis.

Mark Noll, a historian of religion, argues that revivalism in America brought vitality to the church but left it intellectually impoverished—a “scandal of the evangelical mind.” Nevertheless, the revivalists got their results. Religious adherence surged in the nineteenth century; by the twentieth, the majority of Americans belonged to a church.

When in the 20th century? In 1906 only 41% of Americans claimed church membership. 

As you can see from the chart, that number rose slowly until the 1940's.  Church membership exploded in the years after WWII, which is why the Boomers think everyone in America always went to church. The boom in churches was hardly because of revivalism or people passing out in worship. Middle America was not getting dressed up on Sunday to have ecstatic experiences. This was the age of Peter Marshall and Norman Vincent Peale; the age when TIME magazine declared Reinhold Niebuhr America’s theologian, and people knew what they meant. It was also the time, as Harvey Cox was pointing out at Harvard Divinity School, of the genesis of the Pentecostal movement, the “holy rollers” returned from the Second Great Awakening. Professor Cox, a Baptist himself, would argue that of such would be the future of Christianity in America. Except for a few TV preachers in the ‘70’s, though, who disappeared in scandal and sinking ratings, Pentecostals never really overcame their working class roots. This is America: we still prefer a distinction between labor and man, between first class and steerage. Even if we can’t afford first class ourselves.

I can tell you as a pastor at the end of the 20th century that most church rolls listed members who hadn’t been near the building in decades; if they were still alive. Claiming church membership from the mid-forties on had as much to do with business connections and social status as anything else. When I was younger and just out of law school, my father approved of me returning to a church because I’d make business contacts there, as he had done at my age. He was being practical, not baldly mercantile. Church had many purposes at the time. It has fewer of them now.

There were “revivals” in the Baptist churches where I grew up; usually week long events that didn’t involve glossalalia or passing out in divine ecstasy (the parts of that which don’t show up in Acts make their appearance in the lives of the saints, so, again, not peculiarly American, nor Protestant). I went with my Baptist friend (it was his church), and took notes like an anthropologist in New Guinea. The most emotional part was the altar call. I went to a Billy Graham revival in a stadium with a church group, for reasons I can’t remember, but mostly curiosity. It was the closest I came to feeling drawn to the altar during the call. But I wasn’t ecstatic, and I didn’t go.

The New Yorker article jumps to a quick summary of the birth and rise of fundamentalism, without noticing, as Martin Marty did decades back, that it is an international phenomenon largely in reaction against modernity and “the other.” That lacunae is important, because, well, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself:

It’s inarguable, however, that Donald Trump’s ascendance has nourished a darker, more volatile version of the phenomenon. Tapping into the lineage of white evangelicalism, with its charismatic leaders, anti-intellectualism, and political militancy, the maga movement has placed a nostalgia for a Christian past at the center of a grievance-based politics.

Barton’s pseudo-scholarship furnished Christian nationalists with valuable ammunition, but the movement needed foot soldiers. In 2012, an eighteen-year-old named Charlie Kirk founded Turning Point USA, a nonprofit organization meant to promote fiscal conservatism among young people. Kirk had been a Christian since childhood, but he was initially circumspect about his faith, arguing that religious conservatives had erred by imposing their beliefs “through government policy.” In 2019, however, Kirk met Rob McCoy, a pastor who challenged Kirk to more aggressively bring his Christian world view into the public arena. The following year, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Kirk lauded President Trump for understanding “the seven mountains of cultural influence”—an evangelical vision, dating to the nineteen-seventies, that calls on believers to influence the realms of family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government. Kirk embraced the idea himself, building a media empire and organizing a grassroots army to turn out Trump voters during the 2024 election. Last year, after a gunman shot and killed Kirk at a campus event in Utah, his wife, Erika, a former Miss Arizona who started her own ministry organization and a faith-based clothing company, vowed to carry on her husband’s legacy, “fighting the good fight for our country.”

We can ignore the “pseudo-scholarship” discussion for our purposes. What’s missing in this brief history of the rise of fundamentalism as "the unequivocal winner in America’s religious economy,” is the base reason for that rise. It wasn’t evolution in the ‘20’s (presented as the cause of fundamentalism in the first place. It actually had more to do with theology than Darwin) that made people accept it in the last decades of the 20th century; it was racism. The civil rights movement of the ‘60’s didn’t, as Dr. King stated, bring American churches to embrace desegregation. Church in America (except, ironically, among some Pentecostal churches when Cox was writing about them), was, and still is, the most segregated hour in America. King publicly lamented the refusal of white Christian churches to support his movement. There’s a reason white people still quote King’s Washington speech, but don’t know his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” And it’s the same reason they don’t remember why King was in D.C. to give that speech. Racism and classism go hand in hand in America. And it was racism that drove people out of “liberal” churches far more than it was the “embrace” of Darwin or science, at all. Pastors who could preach about evolution, didn’t dare preach about race in America. They still can’t.

Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump are both bluntly racist in ways Jesse Helms and George Wallace never were; and yet that goes unmentioned in the New Yorker article. We still can’t have an honest discussion about race, because it’s so polarizing all discussion ceases. It’s still the elephant in the American room we can’t admit is there. Ironically, the article mentions Jerry Falwell as an architect of the rise to cultural dominance of fundamentalism, without commenting on what a known racist he was.  Can’t clutter the discussion with such inconvenient truths.

Although only about two-thirds of Americans now identify as Christians—compared with just under ninety per cent in the nineteen-nineties—a recent Pew Research Center survey concluded that the erosion in belief has likely levelled off. New data from Gallup show a surge of religiosity among young men. It seems possible that Christianity is once again on the upswing in America.

If James Talarico is a harbinger, it’s probably of a more “liberal” Xianity, or at least one more counter to the religious culture fundamentalism created.  That goes a long way to explaining Dan Patrick’s concern, which I think leaves the mere political and jumps into the theological.

The sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark have argued that, historically, the most popular religious bodies tend to exert a countervailing force on the culture at large. They demand sacrifice from their adherents but also promise temporal and eternal rewards. Expecting churches that preach a distant, unresponsive God to be attractive to new believers is akin, Finke and Stark write, to believing that soccer fans would buy tickets to matches with “players who, for lack of a ball, just stand around.” In this way, they explain the extraordinary rise of evangelicalism.

Well, that’s certainly borne out by history, although the RC isn’t going anywhere, and it would appear “liberal” church ideas might yet have their day. Certainly the Church of Meaning and Belonging starts out as the Church of Sacrifice for Meaning and Belonging, but honestly, it can’t stay that way for long. Ask Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Or any sociologist of religion; or any ecclesiastical historian.

Part of the problem with this discussion is that fundamentalism has defined the popular notion of Christianity, but it has hardly supplanted other Christian churches.  Fundamentalism was largely popular from the 80's until the 2020's because it was espoused by TV evangelists first, and so became the image of Christianity in America (if it's on TeeVee, it must be true!).  And then journalists picked it up as normative, supplanting more traditional Protestantism and Catholicism.  But the ascent of Pope Francis and then Pope Leo shows something else is happening in the Roman church (which never, despite Opus Dei, accepted fundamentalism as a replacement for tradition).  And while some churches broke away from traditional "mainline" churches over "liberal" teachings (like accepting LGBTQ+, etc.), most of those churches found life no better outside the denomination than in it.  I've also seen many congregations close because no one was left there but the elderly.  The popular explanation for that, echoed in the New Yorker article, is that those congregations were too "liberal," i.e., not fundamentalist enough.  The realiy is something else entirely.  I pastored two congregations where I, in middle age, was one of the youngest people in the church.  And I was too young and "liberal," in the sense of different from the majority, for those congregations.  Both wanted to "grow," but both understood that to be necessary merely to survive.  They wanted, in other words, to be social clubs and hire a new director who would recruit new members.  But they didn't want to accept new members, especially younger members.  They wanted everything to stay the way it was, but new people to come and fill their coffers and make them feel a bit less alone and alienated.  But they were alone, and alientating, because they wanted to keep control of the ship (not an errant metaphor,  The nave of the church is the hold of a ship, the timbers of the roof (in most Protestant architecture, anyway, the beams of the ship upturned.  I did a whole sermon on this in one of my churches.)  In the church I grew up in, my parents' generation ran things, and there were a few "old people," in their '60's, maybe one or two in their early '70's.  Those people left the church operations to the "younger people," like my parents.  I was encouraged to be responsible for church governance when I was confirmed, so the church would pass to the next generation.  That encouragement faded at some point, as my generation stopped going to church, and returned only to raise their children there.  But by then, the "old guard" had settled in, and nothing was allowed to change without their agreement.  It could be small things, like how the church was decorated for Xmas; or big things, like what hymns should be sung every Sunday morning.  I had one church member insist to me that returning the denomination name on the sign to the one that no longer existed, but had in the 1950's, would bring people flooding back to the sanctuary.  No one but her remembered that denomination, and since it was "E&R," Evangelical and Reformed, it would have been very confusing in the present age.  Outsiders would have expected a very different church from the one they would find there.  The elderly members wondered why no new members joined, why young people stayed away; but they didn't want to know what the reason was.

Those congregations have "died."  Not because the elderly passed on, but because the congregation shrank so much, it couldn't stay open.  I knew people my age and younger who wouldn't come to "my" church because no one else there was younger than their parents.  The few who were, were not really welcomed in, and had no children for their children to associate with, as I did when I was young.

Demographics is killing the church much faster than theology.  My grandfather's died at 68.  My father lived to be 90.  People who knew they'd be dead before 70 tended to let go of the world, and leave it to others.  People who live longer and healthier, tend to think they should still be both active and "in charge," and there the real problem lies.  Would they attend a church with James Talarico as their pastor (he's a seminary student at Ausin Presbyterian Seminary)?  Probably not.  Would their grandchildren?  Maybe.

The issues, you see, are more granular and particular than they appear to be from 30,000 feet.  Is Xian fundamentalism still culturally powerful?  You might as well ask if Islamic fundamentalism is (I told you it was an international matter).  Was the latter ever the whole of Islam?  Was it ever the whole of Christianity?

Where you start determines where you end up.  Especially if you don't pay attention to the people you're talking about; or over.

Keeping Track

🚨🚨BREAKING NEWS: THE SENATE will go home until June, leaving the reconciliation bill unfinished.

THUNE just told senators in the room.

All because of the DOJ weaponization fund.

House is expected to follow suit soon.

me and @AndrewDesiderio

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 21, 2026

News — Nearly 2-hour meeting with Acting AG Todd Blanche and Senate Republicans was incredibly hostile, per multiple attendees.

As many as 25 GOP senators spoke (this is very rare for these meetings), all in opposition to weaponization fund.

R’s pitched specific ideas such as…

— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) May 21, 2026

GOP senators tell me they have no official guidance yet (Thune didn’t provide any during the Blanche mtg) but many of them believe they will be sent home for the recess because of how much time it will take to get agreed-upon language *and* have it scrubbed by the parliamentarian

— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) May 21, 2026

ha - here it really is. they just want the hubbub over the criminally corrupt slush fund to blow over before they do the ICE/ballroom funding bill https://t.co/iYdzPVeIaT

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) May 21, 2026

Sen. Cramer says it “would have been a good idea” for the Trump admin to announce the $1.8 billion fund AFTER the reconciliation bill passed. Instead it exposed the bill to all kinds of amendments because of its judiciary title

“we can't help the president with a budget…

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) May 21, 2026

BREAKING: Senate GOP leaders have postponed plans to pass a budget reconciliation package designed to fund ICE & CBP because of concerns around the DOJ weaponization fund. This is remarkable given that the weaponization fund was/is not part of the original bill.

— Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles) May 21, 2026

NOW: Sen John Hoeven (R-ND) says the issue of the $1.7 billion Trump fund for convicted criminals has caused trouble for Senate GOP spending bill. Hoeven says colleagues want “guardrails”

— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) May 21, 2026

Scott MacFarlane reports on Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund running into major resistance in the Senate.

Even Trump allies are uncomfortable with taxpayer money potentially going to January 6 defendants and cop beaters.

MacFarlane also reports growing concern on Capitol Hill… pic.twitter.com/zczKbsFfKS

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) May 21, 2026

Scott MacFarlane reports on Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund running into major resistance in the Senate.

Even Trump allies are uncomfortable with taxpayer money potentially going to January 6 defendants and cop beaters.

MacFarlane also reports growing concern on Capitol Hill that Trump may be using the controversy to distract from deeper issues involving his taxes and potential corruption exposure.

Castro: The last half of the year, especially in election years, we’re not in session, so most of the legislative days come before the end of July. You see these guys trying to fund this slush fund, trying to pay for that ballroom, and it seems to have broken down because of… pic.twitter.com/xlgwr67LUj

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 21, 2026

Castro: The last half of the year, especially in election years, we’re not in session, so most of the legislative days come before the end of July. You see these guys trying to fund this slush fund, trying to pay for that ballroom, and it seems to have broken down because of that.

So...

The windows are closing, and Congress is closed until June. Then there’s 4th if July, and nothing after 7/31 until after Election Day in November. The legislative calendar to the end of the year can be counted in days; almost on only the fingers of two hands. 

The Senate doesn’t want to kill the slush fund, but they want to control it. Sort of. Somehow. Trump said today he doesn’t need Congress for anything. So why wouldn’t he give the money to people who beat up police and terrorized Congress? Sure, Congress may try claw it back, or tax it at 100% (seriously, that’s one proposal), but what does Trump care? It’s Xmas, and he’s Santa Claus. Let Congress be the Grinch.

If Congress doesn’t kill it, what stops Trump using it?

2/3rds of the Senate is not up for reelection, so why shouldn’t they back Trump? The House is another matter, and more likely will press a law to kill this fund in the crib. But if the Senate won’t play, or Trump vetoes? Well, maybe 1/3rd of the Senate would vote to override…but that’s not enough. More likely they won’t play at all, and let Trump have his corruption.

At least, that’s where it’s going now. And that’s not even touching on the “Get out of tax review forever” card DOJ has issued to Trump, Jr., Eric, and the company. That one is not quite as urgent since the IRS won’t dare investigate those parties until 2029. But it’s more of the corruption GOP Senators seem to be fine with. Now, Congress is out of session for two weeks. Will Trump until they’ve resolved this issue to start tapping the Treasury and issuing checks?

Is the Pope a Cubs fan?

The God Saturated Universe

 My father was a CPA. I was an adult before I fully understood what that was. I knew he “did taxes” every year, because his workload increased exponentially between January and April. Otherwise, as a child, I could never explain to my friends what he did for a living. Well, he wasn’t a doctor or a police officer or a fireman, so….

He would explain his role this way: a bookkeeper, he said, would say “2+ 2 =4.” An accountant would say: “what do you want it to be?”

I used to think our quest for absolute certainty was the problem. We want 2 +2 to always equal 4, except we all know that’s often not the answer best suited to the task. It matters if it catches up to reality: consider Spirit Airlines, which by all accounts was always running just ahead of the financial calculation by any means possible, until sharply rising fuel prices put the bookkeeper in charge over the accountant. But even then, some blame, not arithmetical certainty, but any scapegoat we can find. (Preferably Joe Biden, who’s DOJ sued to block the merger of Spirit and Jet Blue, which in hindsight would have absolutely saved Spirit from extinction. Or the blame falls on Sen. Warren, who praised the judgement of the court in upholding antitrust laws. Others argue Spirit would have soon bankrupted Jet Blue, whose business model is not much stronger anyway.)

Reality is always a matter of “what do you want it to be?”

So now we have LLMs and always someone in replies on Twitter asking seemingly empty air (I never see the answer in replies) named “Grok” whether the assertion in the original tweet is “true.” Because a computer program only deals in “objective knowledge,” and therefore only discerns truth. Or some such nonsense. 

My interaction with "AI," much of it involuntary and unwilling, leads me to the conclusion that it's just a souped up search engine that copies and regurgitates content that is posted online. Some have noted it is an automated stealer of content that is then automated to repackage it, seemingly on the basis of its currency based on how often it is clicked on in web searches - so it probably is also stealing the results of automated searches of the past instead of evaluating the quality of what it steals. It has the same relationship with original thought that Temu has with original design in that regard.

TC crystallizes my thoughts exactly; although I can’t say I’ve ever interacted with AI, I’ve just seen the results. And I’m not impressed, precisely because it’s clear to me AI is not thinking: it’s just regurgitating. 

I knew a student in graduate school who was a perfect example of AI, although at the time even PC’s didn’t exist. He had not a single thought of his own; well, not about the subject matter of our seminars. He simply repeated whatever the professor had said, sometimes practically verbatim. The difference between him and AI was that, he didn’t fool anyone. I encountered a similar student in seminary. She came in trailing clouds of glory. The rumor mill immediately dubbed her the smartest student in the school. The word from the professors, however, soon trickled down that, no, she wasn’t. And, as in graduate school many years before, her performance in seminars soon proved she was just parroting ideas with absolute confidence, but no idea what the words meant. 

She was very confident in her authority. She was vacuous in her knowledge. (She graduated, btw. After all, she displayed knowledge, even if she didn’t really have any. Ultimately, schools can neither guarantee knowledge nor wisdom. That’s another disturbing reality.)

We like authority because it removes responsibility from us. Why struggle to learn, and think, and reason, if you can just ask an LLM for the answer? And if it gives you the answer you like, well, you must have been right all along!  And certainly the LLM is authoritative. Look how much it “knows”! But LLMs just regurgitate content, or assemble content to fit the request, like law cases in legal briefs that don’t exist. The LLM is not a lazy law clerk; it simply doesn’t understand the difference between reality and request for output.  It doesn’t think; it simply provides patterned responses. The AI on my phone has learned to “anticipate” the words I will use in a sentence, based entirely on pattern recognition. It’s not eerily sentient, it’s just convenient, since I’m typing with one finger on a virtual keyboard. (My thumbs are way too fat for that two thumbs technique.) An LLM has access to more data than my phone, but that’s it. Otherwise, there’s not much difference between the two.

But we want there to be, because we want an authority to relieve us of the uncertainty of reality. Richard Dawkins has always tried to reduce existence to an either/or. And to reduce that to an absolute certainty he can leave alone. So, a little time with an LLM, and he’s done. Consciousness solved, the whole matter put to bed. The universe is explained by how much it approves of Richard Dawkins.  Or, at least, how much a computer program does. Reality is not reducible to an arithmetical equation. (Bertrand Russell spent years establishing the logical basis for 1+ 1 =2. Turned out his argument had nothing to do with reality at all.) And it really does come down to: “What do you want it to be?” Because aside from the few analytical statements Hume said we could make (and they aren’t really significant), the rest is a matter of argument. And it’s that uncertainty that makes us seek authority to establish a certainty we can cling to. Because the alternative is responsibility; our responsibility.  Responsibility for determining who we are, responsibility for determining what we should be doing. Responsibility for determining how we should then live. 

Which is a much more frightening matter, indeed.

 

And There Our Troubles Began…Anew….

 Speaking of history….

I stumbled across a Netflix documentary on the “debates” between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal in 1968.  I remember this as an historical matter, not because I was keenly watching third-rated ABC News coverage of the 1968 conventions when I was 13. The background is, ABC needed to generate a reason for people to watch their coverage of the conventions, and Buckley had established himself as a TeeVee presence on PBS with “Firing Line.” ABC needed someone for Buckley to respond to, and asked him for suggestions. Buckley responded, basically: anybody but Gore Vidal. So ABC responded, quite appropriately: “Let’s get Gore Vidal.” And they did.

And invented the television we now all know and… love?

The advocates of Buckley insist he was the greatest debater of his time. Which makes me more and more dismissive of the concept of debate. James Talarico and Pete Buttigieg are excellent champions of their point of view, because they are very persuasive. Debate is not about persuasion, it’s about scoring points and appealing to the mob, usually via ad hominem. It’s about clever retort, not reasoning; and it’s about having about half the audience on your side before you start. It can work, in limited circumstances, but it usually doesn’t. It just sets everything in quick drying cement. Talarico or Buttigieg leave you thinking. Buckley just left you annoyed or, if you already agreed with him, impressed with his arrogance.

Buckley basically had a position, and insisted against the world and all comers, that his was the correct position. He hated the civil rights movement, (the documentary is about 1968, and I’m no Buckley scholar), probably hated the women’s liberation movement, certainly hated the gay rights movement (in anger at being called a “crypto-Nazi” by Vidal on camera, Buckley calls Vidal a “queer.” And there our media troubles began.), and generally had little regard for anyone who wasn’t an ultramontane Catholic. (I’m sure Leo has Buckley rolling in his grave.)  He actually said once that his purpose was to stand athwart history and yell “STOP!” If that isn’t fascistic, I honestly don’t know what is.

He was not a persuader, in other words. Talarico’s opponents fear him precisely because he is so persuasive. Reason actually is persuasion, when wielded correctly. Buckley never sought to persuade. Buckley merely insisted. His reasoning was, his opinions were right, and that was the end of it.

Vidal, in his own words (in the documentary), was an analyst of power. He thought people weren’t driven by sexual appetite or desire, but by the desire for power. It’s how he explained his thesis in Myra Breckenridge. A book, by the way, Buckley wrote about reading, but dismissed it out of hand. Not after a careful analysis, but just as a matter of personal distaste and a personal refusal to accept that such ideas could even exist in the world.* (There are noxious ideas that shouldn’t exist, but they do. Racism, for example. But if you think you can banish it, you actually just make it harder to recognize. Ideas can’t be killed, or banished.) For Buckley the personal was not just political, it was the only reality. As he thought, so should we all think; and if we didn’t, well, more fool us. In Buckley’s view, as is apparent from his “review” of Vidal’s most famous book, all ideas Buckley rejected should be expunged from the world, as evil. Not just bad or disappointing; actually evil. It is, ironically, a very Manichean vision. (His brother appears in the do, and argues, bizarrely, that more overt racist contemporaries of Bill were “gnostic” in their conservatism.) Vidal’s arguments about the nature, and importance, of power, make a great deal more sense. I don’t mean they are ultimately persuasive, or that Vidal is impressive as a thinker. But Vidal has ideas: Buckley just has a position.

Buckley is largely forgotten these days. His show has been resurrected by Margaret Hoover, who does a much better job being reasonable and seeking insight, than Buckley ever did. He has, like Barry Goldwater, vanished into history; which is ironic because, as the documentary notes, the fall of Goldwater spurred the reactionary movement in American politics which is always present, if sometimes moribund, and has produced the present moment (which is prompting the counter-counterrevolution; but, ‘twas ever thus.). His debates with Vidal really did create the modern media culture Twitter knows and loves to hate (what would we do without CNN’s panel “discussions” to complain about?). Especially because they weren’t debates. But then, we don’t really want those. Exchanges of ideas aimed at achieving some kind of consensus are… dull television. 📺  And, according to Twitter, shouldn’t even be a part of our politics.

But then, unsocial media is a product of the Buckley-Vidal debates, too.

*Buckley could have been insightful and countered the ideas he disliked in the book. Instead, he just discards it. It was, at the time, a very popular book. Telling people they shouldn’t accept its existence, is hardly an argument, much less a debating strategy, for why they should reject it. But Buckley’s “method” was:,if he couldn’t accept it, it was rejected, no further explanation necessary. This is what passed for intelligent debate. Buckley’s supporters didn’t want to listen to Vidal. They didn’t see any reason to bother. This, too, is as American as cherry pie.

He Is Legion, Because There Is Only Him

So I’m catching up on “Legion.” The FX show that aired some time back. I caught part of season two back then, but didn’t see it all and never really knew what was going on. Then again, I literally grew up watching Patrick McGoohan’s “The Prisoner,” a summer replacement show back when there were summer replacement shows. That one intentionally never completely made sense, so I got used to it. Still, you gotta have a program if you wanna know who the players are.

The antagonist of the show, the villain, is a guy who talks. A lot. It’s supposed to be a Marvel superhero show, and the villain’s supposed to have superpowers, but they never really show. Anyway, the details don’t matter. The villainy does.

The second season includes a narrator, who provides “lessons” that elucidate the action; what there is of it. In the tradition of the science fiction I grew up on, it’s a story of ideas; not technology or the “future,” but, really, what it means to be human. It’s mostly adolescent stuff; the stuff children think are “hard questions” and harder truths because… really, they have no idea. Children think it’s all good and evil, and the distinction is easy if you just remember the rules. Which works for the show because while the villain is supposedly centuries old, the good guys are “young people,” still struggling to figure out how to be adults in an adult world.

So, if you’re old enough, the ideas aren’t that interesting, either. Except the last one; the last lesson. The second season lessons are all about delusions, the mistaken assumptions young people, inexperienced children, as it were, are especially susceptible to. And the final delusion, is the idea that people don’t matter; that selfishness is the default setting of all of us, and we are stuck in it. The lesson is Plato’s allegory of the Cave, with a parallel modern version. The cave allegory is twisted a bit: the dwellers in the cave can’t look at the source of the shadows because reality would overwhelm and confuse them. They stick with the simple familiar, because the truth is too hard to see. “Humankind cannot bear very much reality” as Eliot said. But that’s where the final delusion enters in; the fear of reality. 

In the modern allegory, reality is a phone screen, where other people are not real, and so can be treated as badly as, well, children treat other children on social media (or adults treat anyone who isn’t in full agreement with them). But what if you put the phone down, and see a world full of people looking at the screens in their hands? That’s literally the endpoint of the”lesson.”

It’s an interesting allegory. But the point is: people are real; and people matter. Two things the villain denies.

He’s clever, the villain. He manipulates people. That’s his real “power.” Manipulation. Because he’s never the villain. He’s the “good guy.” He’s not the victim, whining about how unfair everything is. But he’s careful never to take responsibility for his actions. His actions are selfish, but he thinks they’re justified. He describes himself as a lion, at one point, except lions are predators; they have a place in the ecosystem. They don’t live to slaughter, to rule, to do exactly as they please to every other creature in the veldt. That’s what the villain wants to do. He thinks he’s a god, but to him that only means power. He has no other concept. He isn’t good, but he presents his story as if he is, and the protagonist is the real villain. But he uses everyone for his purpose. His actions are justified because other people don’t matter. And that, as the narrator says, is the greatest delusion of all.

Does this start to sound familiar? Like, maybe, an even more modern allegory? Because the villain, left to his own devices, would control the world, and treat every person on the planet as something that doesn’t matter; except as he can use them. The only thing that matters to the villain, is that he can manipulate other people.  And that is the true villainy.

IDEAS DON’T MATTER. 

THINGS DON’T MATTER.

 PEOPLE MATTER.

But the villain can’t possibly see that; can’t ever see that; can’t begin to conceive that. He thinks he’s a lion. He thinks he’s a god. He’s self-justified. 

Except he isn’t. No one ever is, are they?

I’m Not Part Of The “Flying Public”

Nothing makes screening lines go faster than keeping the number of screeners the same insufficient level but adding lots of people wearing idiotic Rambo gear to just stand off to the side and look at the lines. Peak American Ideas here. https://t.co/i5QADwyBam

— Patrick Skinner (@SkinnerPm) March 24, 2026

Mostly because I remember when air travel was convenient because there weren’t more people in the air than on the road.

But Trump had the NG in DC raking leaves and declaring that “law  enforcement” (when most street crime is a matter of tolerance for crime in the neighborhood. I’ve lived in this street 25 years. I’ve seen a police car here 4 times, at best. Each time they were called. Once I did it, because a drunk driver drove into my house, and I wanted a police report for the insurance company. The driver was fairly sober by the time the police arrived, but the cop had been handling a shooting, so I didn’t complain. There was a shooting on this street. A crazy guy shot a postal worker. No cops on the street to stop that, but you can’t stop crazy. I’m not saying police are unnecessary. I’m saying Trump is full of shit.), so, sure, send ‘em to stand around airports. I’m sure Greg Abbott would approve. Of course, he sent the Guard to the border, and eventually guardsmen starting going AWOL and attempting suicide because they had nothing to do, and lives to get back to. The Guard is not law enforcement.

But I’m sure ICE and the Guard will make travelers feel safer as they stand in line for three four hours, for the privilege of getting loaded into a flying cigar tube acting as a cattle car.

Thanks Donald https://t.co/9eAAZWNHN4

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) March 24, 2026

Can We Wrap This Up?

ROME (Reuters) - Peter Thiel, the U.S. billionaire venture capitalist and early supporter of President Donald Trump, launched on Sunday a series of closed-door lectures in Rome exploring the concept of the Antichrist, drawing scrutiny from Catholic commentators, @crispiandjb…

— Phil Stewart (@phildstewart) March 15, 2026

ROME (Reuters) - Peter Thiel, the U.S. billionaire venture capitalist and early supporter of President Donald Trump, launched on Sunday a series of closed-door lectures in Rome exploring the concept of the Antichrist, drawing scrutiny from Catholic commentators, @crispiandjb reports.

The invitation-only conference, which runs until Wednesday, is not open to the press and its venue has not been publicly disclosed. Organisers quoted in the media say participants are drawn from academia, technology and religious circles.

A co-founder of Palantir Technologies, an AI software company with deep ties to the U.S. defense and intelligence agencies, Thiel has in recent years devoted increasing attention to religious and philosophical ideas.

Last year he held a similar series of talks in San Francisco exploring the possibility that the Antichrist - a figure who opposes or denies Christ - could emerge on the global stage.

In particular, Thiel has said he is wary that an Antichrist will emerge who will create a one-world government on the promise of something like stopping nuclear, AI or climate-induced disaster.

Thiel, 58, grew up in an Evangelical Christian family and has said Christianity shapes his worldview.

His visit has caught the attention of the Roman Catholic Church, which, under Pope Leo, the first U.S. pontiff, has openly criticised some of Trump's right-wing policies. Leo has also warned of the dangers posed by AI.

Catholic universities in Rome denied press speculation that they might be hosting the event and no meeting is scheduled between Thiel and Leo, according to the pope's official agenda.

 Long, long ago, I knew this stuff, and actually could rattle off the differences between premillennialism and post-millennialism, and amillenialism. And critique them intelligently. How long ago? I wrote the paper about it in college. Circa 1975, IIRC. Too long ago to remember anymore (it’s an obtuse and, frankly, stupid topic; we’ll get to that), so now I have to rely on this:

Dispensationalism is a Christian theological framework for interpreting the Christian Bible which maintains that history is divided into multiple ages called dispensations in which God interacts with his chosen people in different ways.[1]: 19  It is often distinguished from covenant theology, the traditional Reformed view of reading the Bible.[2][3] These are two competing frameworks of biblical theology that attempt to explain overall continuity in the Bible. The coining of the term "dispensationalism" has been attributed to Philip Mauro, a critic of the system's teachings, in his 1928 book The Gospel of the Kingdom.[4][5]

Dispensationalists use a literal interpretation of the Bible and believe that divine revelation unfolds throughout its narrative. They believe that there is a distinction between Israel and the Church, and that Christians are not bound by Mosaic law. They maintain beliefs in premillennialism, Christian Zionism, and a rapture of Christians before the expected Second Coming of Jesus, whom Christians believe to be the Messiah, generally before the Great Tribulation.[6]

Dispensationalism was systematized and promoted by John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren in the mid-19th century.[7]: 67  It began its spread in the United States during the late 19th century through the efforts of evangelists such as James Inglis, James Hall Brookes and Dwight L. Moody, the programs of the Niagara Bible Conference, and the establishment of Bible institutes. With the dawn of the 20th century, C. I. Scofield introduced the Scofield Reference Bible, which crystallized dispensationalism in the United States.

Dispensationalism has become popular within American evangelicalism. In addition to the Plymouth Brethren, it is commonly found in nondenominational Bible churches, as well as among Baptist, Pentecostal, and Charismatic groups.[8] Protestant denominations that embrace covenant theology, such as the Reformed churches, tend to reject dispensationalism.

Don’t worry, I’ll be explain. And sorry, but I’m too lazy to remove the footnote numbers in that. 

Let me first explain that “Biblical theology” was an attempt to find a consistent theology throughout the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. You might think that would be “God” or even “salvation,” but the first is the subject of theology (“Theo-logos,” words about God), the other is sterility (theology focused on issues of salvation). There is, from Genesis to Revelation, no consistent presentation of the nature of the God of Abraham, anymore than there is of the Christ (Christology, if you’re wondering). No surprise in the latter, because Jesus of Nazareth doesn’t show up until the Gospel of Matthew. There really isn’t any consistent thread in the Bible, except people telling stories about what they consider encounters with God. And that’s really not enough to make a theme, much less a Biblical theology,

But one of the more useful things that came out of BT (nobody calls it that, but I’m tired of typing), is covenants theology, mentioned in the quote.  God makes a covenant with Abraham (think “contract,” but ever so much more so. It’s actually a theological as well as a religious concept, so don’t sweat it beyond “contract.”), and that covenant continues through Moses (who leads Israel out of slavery in Egypt, and gives Israel the law); through Saul (the first king), and David, and Solomon (this isn’t a complete history of biblical Israel?; that’s not what the scriptures are about, either); to the Exile (which does not break the covenant; the prophets testify that it cannot be broken), to the restoration (off stage; entre act between the end of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospels), to the arrival of the Messiah, and what that means (the gospels, and all those letters). Covenant theology impinges here, in the idea that the Messiah presents a new covenant) “testament;” get it? Don’t worry about the consistency of that; it’s a whole other course in biblical and church history, and theology. See what I’m sparing you? The covenant, in short, is an old idea that predates BT, but has served several purposes over the millennia.

As Wiki said, the “alternative” way of seeing the Biblical narrative (and what it means) is “dispensationalism, a 19th century piece of nonsense (cards on the table). Add a Tech Bro who named his surveillance (I call it) company after a corrupted device in LOTR, now thinks he can lecture on the End Times. Which Hal Lindsey was going to bring about with a book (Google it; I’m older than you), and brought about again in a series of bad novels about 30 years later (because the second millennium was supposed to usher in “The End”). And now Thiel.

The consistent thread is the arrogance/narcissism of people who think they are to be the witness to the End Times. Dispensationalism adds on a bunch of nonsense that includes The Tribulation (the reign of the Antichrist, the Rapture (where all the right people get to escape the Tribulation, and probably sit in heaven eating heavenly popcorn while watching the 1000 year horror show.) 

You begin to see what I think about it.

There are variations on this idiotic theme (post millennialism, amillenialism; and no, I still don’t remember the distinctions. And don’t care; the whole subject is crap, IMHTO. Nobody needs it.

So what Thiel has to say on it is of no interest to me. He can’t be any better informed than C.I. Scofield, who foisted this crap on us. Per that Guardian article, Thiel’s spiel is the usual stew of proof-texting and bullshit and “I am alive at the precise time to see these signs and understand them, thanks be to God (who put me in the right place at the right time).”

The problem with this is, Biblical prophecy is not a blueprint to the future. The prophets were not Nostradamus writing about “Napoloron” and “Hister” in some far future. It was Matthew who turned Isaiah’s promise that the future included the hope of eventual recovery from the exile (“a young woman will bear a child”) into the miraculous virgin birth to establish Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. Before that, the prophets were understood as people telling the truth of God (“the word of the Lord “) for Israel. After that, among Christians, they became predictors of the future. We had only to wait for history to come about. Here, I’ll give you a taste of Thiel’s argument:

Thiel devotes a large section of his second lecture to a quote from the Book of Daniel that involves a prophecy about the end times, which he equates to modern advances in technology and globalization.

Let’s go on to ‘many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased.’ It means science progressing, technology improving, globalization, people traveling around the world. Of course in some sense, I think these things … I’m not sure they’re completely inevitable, but there is some direction to it. Where there’s a linear progression of knowledge and something like globalization that happens. But of course, the details matter a lot. Knowledge increasing, science progressing, technology improving can be a very good thing. No disease, death, protect people from natural disasters. Then, of course, we can destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons, bioweapons, etc. And similarly, globalization is … you have trade in goods and services. There’s certain ways to escape from tyrannical governments. And of course there is danger in the one-world state of the antichrist.

First, that’s prooftexting: plucking bits of scripture out of context and declaring they mean what you want them to mean.  You can argue that’s what Matthew was doing to establish the miraculous birth of Jesus, but his efforts were, and long have been, reviewed and reflected wby a community that found them validated. And rejected by other communities that did not. I’m not arguing for the absolute truth of Matthew’s gospel. I’m saying Thiel fits easily in a line of cranks.

I remember in the’70’s when Nostradamus was all the rage, and his writings were evidence that was then a chaotic time was actually explainable if you just interpreted Nostradamus in light of current events. It’s funny how the present always happens to be the key that finally turns the lock to open the secrets and reveal them. Secrets that always have to do with the European world because the interpreters are… well, you get the idea. 

There have been predictions of the End Times going back to Paul. There was always a school of thought that Messiah would usher in the time of Isaiah’s holy mountain. John of Patmos linked it to the return of the New Jerusalem, but saw that coming only after trials and tribulations. It would, however, wash that away, and bring a time when mourning and crying would be no more. I’ve used that passage at a lot of graveside services. As I grow older, I begin to think of that entire hopeful conclusion in metaphorical terms of human existence. Life is struggle (who can deny it?) and conflict if only between your ideals and reality, and sometimes hope is merely dogged persistence. But if you win your way to the end of the struggles, you can see that death and crying are no more. For you, I mean. You can see that, like the third brother in the Deathly Hallows story, a time when you embrace Death like an old friend. “Death, be not proud….”

It is our pride that makes us think we can know the future, predict the future, protect ourselves from the disaster of the future. It is pride that we think God means a dreadful future for everyone except those of us wise enough to find the key (finally!) and turn the lock and escape the calamity that’s to come (that’s the Rapture, when the good people get to go straight to heaven, no death needed, to, I guess, watch the 1000 years of tribulation, or Reign of the Antichrist, which has to happen because human beings haven’t made things hard enough for themselves throughout history? Because some of us still have to earn Isaiah’s holy mountain? Because the New Jerusalem has to rest on the bones and the dust of a thousand years of God ordained misery and horror? And what did those generations do to deserve that?)

The whole thing very quickly stops making sense.

The prophets told Israel that the Exile was a consequence of their actions. But it wasn’t revenge God sought; it was reconciliation. The holy mountain was the result of Israel finally doing what God required: do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God. The covenant, in a nutshell. And the blessings that would flow from life lived on those terms would draw the peoples of the earth to learn from it. No force, no head bashing, no thousand years of torment to get the point across. No waiting for God to finally teach those people the lesson they desperately needed to learn. Because we all need to learn it. 

Interpreting predictions is putting yourself outside history. Nice work, if you can get it. But it’s an illusion; it’s a mirror of self-importance. What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God? You can’t do that by presuming you can see history from 3000 feet up. You can only do that by living in the quotidian days, among the people who Matthew’s parable told you is where you would find, and serve, God.

Which is what Peter Thiel professes to think is important, since he seems to think interpreting scripture is the most important thing he can do.

How To Win Friends And Influence People

Trump: Our Country was unnecessarily RANSACKED by the United States Supreme Court, which has become little more than a weaponized and unjust Political Organization. pic.twitter.com/Cd9crbW5Fo

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 16, 2026

Trump: The Courts treat Republicans, and me, so unfairly, always seeming to protect those who should not be protected. They are highly politicized. Cases don't matter, the Judge does! As an example, how is this absolutely terrible Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome "Too Late"… pic.twitter.com/XlMsFO8Stj

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 16, 2026

Trump: The Courts treat Republicans, and me, so unfairly, always seeming to protect those who should not be protected. They are highly politicized. Cases don't matter, the Judge does! As an example, how is this absolutely terrible Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome "Too Late" Powell, not even allowed to be investigated for the horrible job he does?

In case after case, Boasberg has displayed open, flagrant, and extreme partisan bias and contempt against Republicans and the Trump Administration. To preserve the integrity of the Judiciary, he should be removed from all cases pertaining to us, and suffer serious disciplinary action, as should numerous other Corrupt Judges that, unfortunately, our Country has had to endure!

“Any court that doesn’t rule as I demand is unmutual!”

Trump on Supreme Court: The Democrats on the Court always stick together… but Republicans do not do this. They openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the Land pic.twitter.com/92z6FLhnWu

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 16, 2026

Trump: "Our Country was unnecessarily RANSACKED by the United States Supreme Court, which has become little more than a weaponized and unjust Political Organization. The sad thing is, they will only get worse! They wouldn’t even call out The Rigged Presidential Election of 2020,… pic.twitter.com/uHIa52IMJ3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 16, 2026

Trump: "Our Country was unnecessarily RANSACKED by the United States Supreme Court, which has become little more than a weaponized and unjust Political Organization. The sad thing is, they will only get worse! They wouldn’t even call out The Rigged Presidential Election of 2020, because they said that I, as President of the United States, did not have 'standing' to challenge it, and now, with time, it has been conclusively proven to be stolen — And look what happened to our wonderful Nation by allowing a grossly incompetent man, Sleepy Joe Biden, to be our 'President.'"

Donald Trump just posted a lot of words about the Supreme Court and other courts — many of which were not true.

1) The court did not bless his alternative tariff plan
2) The 2020 election was not “conclusively shown to be stolen
3) The court did not say Trump lacked “standing”…

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) March 16, 2026

Donald Trump just posted a lot of words about the Supreme Court and other courts — many of which were not true.

1) The court did not bless his alternative tariff plan
2) The 2020 election was not “conclusively shown to be stolen
3) The court did not say Trump lacked “standing” in 2020. It said Texas did not have standing.

The rest is one of the most incendiary attacks on the court in memory.

D’ya think he’s decompensating over Iran closing the strait?

Trump: Those that speak ill of Mark Levin will quickly fall by the wayside, as do the people whose ideas, policies, and footings are not sound. THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM pic.twitter.com/RY7IxTdjBQ

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 16, 2026

Nah, it couldn’t be that.

Trump: "THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM, and MAGA includes not allowing Iran, a Sick, Demented, and Violent Terrorist Regime, to have a Nuclear Weapon to blow up the United States of America, the Middle East and, ultimately, the rest of the World. MAGA is about stopping them cold, and… pic.twitter.com/QVQQfx3Fkt

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 16, 2026

Trump: "THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM, and MAGA includes not allowing Iran, a Sick, Demented, and Violent Terrorist Regime, to have a Nuclear Weapon to blow up the United States of America, the Middle East and, ultimately, the rest of the World. MAGA is about stopping them cold, and that is exactly what we are doing. GOD BLESS OUR GREAT MILITARY, WHICH I HAVE REBUILT SINCE THE BEGINNING OF MY FIRST TERM, TO ACHIEVE EVERLASTING PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH"

Something else must have triggered him.