Trump warned that Iran’s “civilization will die” if it doesn’t take his deal, which includes opening the Strait of Hormuz and freezing Iran’s nuclear development. Iran rejected both conditions and accused Trump of violating their agreement. Israel is far from on board. The cease fire is disintegrating.

Oddly, Trump said Iran’s  proposal  is “workable” even though it requires passage through the Strait be coordinated with Iranian’s Military, which leaves Iran in control of its traffic. It also requires an acceptance of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, which Trump blithely claims, “will be … taken care ⁠⁠of.” 

Iran has already won. The Pentagon’s addiction to expensive sophisticated weapons that take long to produce has shifted the military advantage to Iran’s drones which take much less time to produce and at a fraction of the cost of America’s Tomahawk missiles. Their drones are capable of more precision at short and long ranges. Putin has helped Iran fight until it exhausts America’s military, which is already draining our supply of precision-guided munitions.

Iran, now in the driver’s seat, won’t agree to liberate the Strait or freeze its nuclear program. Although it’s unlikely that Trump will incinerate Iran, we should remember that General Milley had to prevent Trump from resorting to our nuclear arsenal during his first term. 

The other option is to declare victory and pull out, which leaves Iran in control of the Strait to charge tolls that rebuild its infrastructure and strengthen its economy and increase its treacheries. It’s clear who won and who lost. 

Voters must replace the Republican detritus with candidates who aren’t Trump’s slaves. 

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The post WHAT THE HELL ARE REPUBLICANS WAITING FOR? first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Trump is letting Vladimir Putin  send Iran intelligence on American military movements and  give Iran technology that makes Iran’s drones more accurate and deadly. Our President is helping Iran fight until it exhausts America’s military. It’s already draining the Pentagon’s supply of precision-guided munitions designed to hit specific targets.

 Putin denied it, but Trump took his word over his administration’s own security experts, and he continues to waive oil sanctions against Russia – another pitiful accommodations to his idol. 

Ironically, Trump’s many treacheries are more the fault of sitting Republicans who, among their many oath violations, confirmed the least qualified and most dangerous cabinet in American history. Unlike sitting Republicans however, Trump can’t help himself. He checks all the boxes mental professionals use to diagnose sociopaths and narcissists. Among them:

• Narcissists focus exclusively on are their own needs and nothing else. The ugly truth is that Trump’s bombing was self-serving – to distract voters from the Epstein scandal and his punishing economy, and for leverage to declare an emergency as an excuse to deploy American troops on U.S. soil, delay the midterm elections, and prove he can do anything he wants. The attack had nothing to do with Trump’s stated goals of regime change or denuclearization. Both were lies. Preventing the latter was already accomplished by his last attack on Iran, and achieving regime change doesn’t work for the U.S. It certainly didn’t in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. 
• Both narcissists and sociopaths are delusional. Trump insisted regime change had already occurred in Iran when it’s people and  military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, have consolidated around the Ayatollah. He also said the Strait will “open up naturally,” reminiscent of his promise that Covid would “disappear like a miracle.” But by the end of his first administration the U.S. accounted for just 4.2% of the world’s population but 30% of COVID  cases and 19% of COVID deaths. Whether he believes what he says or is lying, he shouldn’t be America’s President.

I blame the sitting Republican cowards for putting our country, our allies and most of the Gulf nations in this near-irreversible disaster. There are no good outcomes. Trump might take a politically motivated escape that leaves Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz and subjects the U.S. and the rest of the world in a devastating oil shock. 

Unlike every other U.S. President, Trump never consulted with our allies before bombing Iran. So we won’t be able to rely on their cooperation for decades to come, even, perhaps, if a more reliable government replaces the current one. That’s because American voters elected a rouge president and a complicit Republican majority to Congress, and our allies worry that it could happen again. 

Another unspeakable outcome is that Trump continues the war and deploys American troops in Iran which would extend the war indefinitely and ensure a more obvious U.S. loss given Iran’s rugged mountains and uninhabitable deserts.

There have been many courageous Republicans  that have done great things for our country, even saved us from several crises. We need them now more than ever to save us from this Iran train wreck  and to restore the Republican party to its respected standing at home and internationally. 

Perhaps the most difficult challenge to a new Congress will be to recapture the honor, trust and respect that sitting Republicans allowed Trump to reduce a respected global leader to a nation widely mocked, distrusted, and shunned.

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The post REPUBLICANS CAN  KEEP THEIR MAJORITIES BY VOTING IN THE PRIMARIES FOR REPUBLICANS NOT ON TRUMP’S LEASH.  first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

You can add the Iran war to the list of Trump’s betrayals that were enabled and then tolerated by his subjugated Republicans in Congress. They need to be replaced by Republicans he doesn’t control. So, vote for them in the upcoming Republican primaries. 

Many Republicans have strengthened the world’s respect, trust for and cooperation with America with thoughtful and effective foreign policy:

• President Theodore Roosevelt, aided by his Republican Congress, established the United States’s right to intervene in Latin America in order to maintain stability. Unlike Trump’s war, Roosevelt’s administration  was quickly successful in reducing European interference in Latin America and the Caribbean. Roosevelt’s foreign policy was clear — to “Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick,” meaning,negotiate peacefully while maintaining a powerful military. Trump launched his attack while he was pretending to negotiate.

• Arthur Vandenbergas chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee worked with Democratic President Truman to forge bipartisan support for NATO and the Marshall Plan – a plan that rebuilt Europe after World WAR II and spread American influence throughout the globe. 

• Unlike Trump, President Reagan won the cold war without military action. And while standing at the gate of the Berlin Wall, Reagan successfully admonished Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “to open the gate and tear down this wall.”

• John McCain warned the U.S. of Tehran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons early on, and that they would be used to sponsor and provoke terrorism. He also advocated a tougher stance with North Korea, prevented Trump’s repealof Obamacare, saving21 Americans their health insurance, and was a dominant voice in building America’s global influence and strong military.

• Richard Nixon was the first President to visit China, meet with its leaders and open diplomatic relations. The improved relationship was key to counterbalancing Russia’s global influence. It also  developed in to a broader policy of détente between the major powers.

Historically, European countries have played central roles in maritime security operations of the type they denied Trump. They possess  advanced naval capabilities and have a long record of participating in securing international waterways. Indeed, Europe joined the United States in NATO-led and ad hoc missions to maintain global stability.

But Trump trashed those relations with his constant disparagement of NATO, his withdrawal from international agreements, including the Iran nuclear deal, his insults of European countries and their leaders, the surprise (and illegal) tariffs and not alerting our allies in advance of the bombings. It all exhausted Europe’s diplomatic trust in America. History shows that when the United States consults allies to align strategies before acting, they are much more willing to help.

It’s a pity because securing the Strait requires coordination with other countries, intelligence sharing, and a legitimate political purpose that Trump never had. First he told us he’s bombing Iran to achieve regime change, then switched his reason to preventing Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, all while claiming he had productive talks with Iran on the “complete and total resolution of hostilities” in the Middle East. Iran denied it.

All were lies. Preventing Iran from developing a nuclear bomb was already accomplished by his last attack on Iran. His real reasons for bombing and killing thousands were to distract voters from the Epstein scandal and his punishing economy, for leverage to declare an emergency as an excuse to deploy American troops on U.S. soil, to delay the midterm elections, and prove he can do anything he wants. Had he not trashed those relationships, the United States might have assembled a powerful multinational force and cleared the Strait. 

Sitting Republicans could have prevented this war by joining Democrats in impeaching and convicting Trump. Waiting for them to rein him in is foolish. 

Perhaps the most difficult challenge to a new Congress will be to recapture the honor, trust and respect that sitting Republicans allowed Trump to diminish a respected global leader to a nation widely mocked, distrusted, and shunned.

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The post OUR EUROPEAN ALLIES WOULD HAVE HELPED TRUMP CLEAR THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IF HE HADEN’T ALIENATED THEM  first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Republicans safeguarded the continued existence of the United States before during and after the Civil War. It’s Congressional majority passed the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, and it strengthened post-civil war America by promoting industrial expansion and free labor. Those policies together with Republican President Abraham Lincoln’s leadership pulled America through a crisis that threatened its survival. 

We’re in a different crisis now and need those kinds of Republicans, even if it takes impeachment; although there are less extreme measures.

All Presidents sought Congressional Declarations of war or Authorizations for Use of Military Force before they attacked another country. Trump did neither. 

Nor did he let Congress know what he was about to do. In fact, it wasn’t Trump, it was Benjaman Netanyahu who decided we should bomb Iran. Trump complied without input from Congress or consulting with or informing our European, Asian and  Persian Gulf allies, all of whom spurned Trump’s plea for help in liberating the Strait of Hormuz. 

Yet Trump’s obedient Republicans tolerated all of it, including letting a foreign leader launch the Iran war, and Trump’s brazen contempt for the Constitution. Worse, they enabled Trump’s bombing by confirming the most corrupt, sycophantic, dangerous and unqualified cabinet in America’s history. 

The key components of every President’s cabinet are expertise, competence, experience, high ethical standards, the ability to challenge the president without repercussions and bipartisanship that’s solved the most contentious issues for more than two centuries but is sorely lacking today. Sadly, sitting Republicans confirmed a cabinet that fails dismally on every count.

Republican President Lincoln’s cabinet was intentionally bipartisan, representing different views on slavery. It helped Lincoln unite a fractured nation, and played key roles in the Union’s Civil War victory and the abolition of slavery. 

There’s an enormous amount of damage that needs to be undone and catastrophes that need to be prevented.  Non-Trump Republicans need to:

• Restore the FBI unit that tracks threats from Iran and that Kash Patel gutted days before Trump bombed Iran. 
• Prevent Trump from sending ground troops to Iran that could require the scale of troops in Vietnam and be to Iran’s advantage. Rugged mountains make up half of Iran. Its urban centers are inland and protected by the mountains and uninhabitable deserts.  
• Repeal cuts to Medicare and Medicaid Republicans passed as part of Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax cut that replaced lost revenues with cuts to both safety nets. 
• Narrow our shamefully wide wealth spread. Republicans’ $4.5 trillion tax cut will make it wider.
• Revive USAID which Trump shuttered. A year later, more than 762,000 people relying on medical aid died including more than 500,000 children.  Other crucial defense and economic benefits are now in jeopardy.
• Restore the  guardrails against corruption abolished by Trump . He then built his net worth from $4.3 billion to $7.3 billion, often ignoring bipartisan opposition to his actions. 
• Stem the threat to the dollar’s supremacy triggered by fiscal irresponsibility. Large countries have set up trade relationships using other currencies. The dollars share of reserve currencies is at a two-decade low. 
• Rebuild America’s ability to prepare for disasters hobbled by Trump that could have saved most – maybe all – of the 120 people killed in Kerr County, Texas.
• Restore budget cuts and reduce hostility towards immigrants that’s sent our best scientists and researchers to China. 
• Impeach and replace Trump’s cabinet of the most unqualified dangerous sycophants in the country’s history by not confirming Trump’s picks until he’s gone.
• Restore the two Democrats Trump fired from the NLRB to replace them with sycophants so it could no longer protect workers rights by not confirming his picks for replacements to any agency where Trump intends to replace members with sycophants until he’s gone.

There are less extreme measures than impeachment. But what demands impeachment is an honest look at Trump’s decisions to aggrandize his power and image instead of benefitting Americans, and his immorality and dishonesty. 

Consider his latest betrayal. Trump told us he’s bombing Iran to achieve regime change, then switched his reason to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. Both were lies. He had already accomplished the latter by his last attack. His real reasons for the bombing and killing thousands were to distract from the Epstein scandal and his punishing economy, for leverage to declare an emergency as an excuse to deploy American troops on U.S. soil, to delay the midterm elections and prove he can do anything he wants. 

He also told us he was shocked when Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz – also a lie. Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned him that an attack could prompt Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. officials long-believed Iran would deploy mines, drones and missiles to close the world’s most vital shipping lane, and Trump acknowledged the risk. 

His press secretary claimed “The Pentagon has been planning for Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz … well before Operation Epic Fury …” 

Perhaps the most difficult challenge to a new Congress is to recapture the honor, trust and respect that sitting Republicans allowed Trump to diminish a respected global leader to a nation widely mocked, distrusted, and shunned.

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The post REPUBLICANS CAN FIX OUR COUNTRY first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

The disaster will have consequences that American voters and even Trump’s enslaved Republicans should finally realize that Trump is a bigger threat than an advantage to keeping their Congressional seats and join the Democrats in removing him – in other words, regime change at home.

The momentum is building. The war is backed by the lowest number of Americans ever at 41%. Reuters poll has it as low as 27%. Support will continue to deteriorate as Iran increases its retaliation.

Videos showing Iran’s drones bombing a high-rise building in Bahrain, a Dubai hotel, Dubai’s airport, a Bahrain radar facility, the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, and Amazon data centers in the Emirates are plentiful and convincing that Iran’s threats are real and lasting. 

So is the economic damage to the U.S. and the world at large. Iran bombed critical oil-production facilities and the UAE had to shut down one of the world’s largest oil refineries. Shutting down the Strait of Hormuz reduced oil traffic by 75%, sending oil prices soaring globally and gas prices at the pump in every state.

Clearly, America’s military is far superior to Iran’s. But in this war, the U.S. lost that advantage to Iran’s drones which are much less expensive, more rapidly produced, more scalable at a fraction of the cost, and is capable of precision at short and long ranges. The Pentagon’s addiction to too-slowly producing sophisticated and expensive weaponry is a disadvantage. It’s unclear whether the 1000 Tomahawks ordered will be delivered on time. 

The Pentagon’s Switchblade drone was deployed in Ukraine with a range of less than 60 miles and costs around $120,000 each. By contrast, Iran’s drone has a range of 940–1,240 miles and cost around $35,000 each. Ukraine, copying Iran’s drone technology, brought Russia’s offensive to a halt.

The U.S. fired around 400 Tomahawk missiles to intercept Iranian drones –about 10% of U.S. drone inventory – at a cost of around $800 million, which could buy 23,000 Iranian drones. 

Sending troops to Iran is not the act of a sane man. Yet Trump’s ill-considered decision to bomb Iran has made a land invasion possible if not likely. 

A ground war in Iran will be near-impossible to win. First, the size of the ground force could exceed the scale of Vietnam. Rugged mountains make up half of Iran’s territory, and its urban centers are inland and protected by them and by uninhabitable deserts.  

Given Iran’s much larger population than Iraq’s, it would require as many as 1.6 million troops, equaling roughly three-quarters of the U.S. military, including combat forces America doesn’t have.

Deploying ground troops would provide Moscow and Beijing with an opportunity to weaken a rival superpower that is already overextended and domestically fractured. 

In the end, Trump’s goal of inspiring an uprising won’t be reached. American bombing has yet to create fissures in the regime. Nor has it inspired Iranians to demonstrate.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard remains firmly ‌in control of Iran’s strategy and battlefield. Demolishing their infrastructure only intensifies national solidarity. 

Trump’s ignored the lessons of America’s shameful failures in similar military attempts.

America’s experience in Vietnam bears a striking similarity to what Trump’s doing in Iran.  The U.S. dropped three times more tonnage of bombs in Vietnam than in World War II. U.S. air superiority destroyed the country’s crucial military facilities seemingly vital to the Vietnam’s military, and crushed any expectation that North Vietnam could fend off America’s imminent victory. Yet, just a few months later, Vietcong and Vietnamese forces attacked America’s presence in 100 cities and towns across South Vietnam and shattered the perception that an American victory was near. The Defense Department reported that the failed war cost the U.S. military $138.9-billion — over $1 trillion in today’s dollars. 

The U.S. war in Afghanistan was also a shameful failure, costing over $2.3 trillion and more than 20,000 American lives. And it set the stage for the Taliban’s rapid return to power.

The cost to the U.S. of the Iraq war totaled more than $3 trillion including direct government expenses and its impact on the U.S. economy. It also cost 4,492American lives.

Yet Trump declared “We won … It was over in the first hour.” Remember when he claimed Covid will disappear “within a couple of days and be near to zero,”  it would “disappear like a miracle.” But by the end of his first administration the U.S. accounted for just 4.2% of the world’s population but 30% of COVID  cases and 19% of COVID deaths.

The ugliest truth is that Trump’s attack on Iran has nothing to do with his goals of regime change or denuclearization. It’s that he’s sacrificing American lives, its economy, its honor and what’s left of its financial strength in order to distract from the Epstein scandal, for leverage to declare an emergency, as an excuse to deploy American troops on U.S. soil and to try to delay the midterm elections. 

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The post REGIME CHANGE IN THE U.S. IS MORE LIKELY THAN IN IRAN. first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Turns out it was a good idea for Trump, but a disaster for the country. 

The bombing of Iran quickly supplanted news about his sexually assaulting and hitting a minor, his corruption, Constitutional violations, more brutal ICE killings, and his election rigging. He can also claim emergency powers that he’ll try to use to deploy troops against protesters, postpone the midterm elections and give Republicans something to cheer about. 

This isn’t a political accusation. It’s a string of facts. Our president raged war against a country and fired the people who protect us from its retaliation.

The war is catastrophic for the United States. It’s already killed dozens of school children (who the Chairman of the American Conservative Union claims are better off dead), a thousand other civilians, will kill countless more, and cause major economic disruption throughout the world.

Trump claims he wants regime change. It didn’t work in Iraq and won’t in Iran. Like in Iran, we killed Iraq’s leader, it ended in decade-long brutal civil war and increased the region’s hatred towards America. 

The attack on Iran has also heightened the risk of a nuclear event either by intention or mistake. It could originate with Trump who wanted to nuke North Korea in the last month of his first administration. But General Mark Milley was there to stop him. There’s no Milley now, only a sycophant, alcoholic, unqualified Fox News co-host shockingly confirmed by Republican Senators. 

Trump is capable of hitting the button out of his anger at something unrelated to the issue at hand. He launched his tariffs his steel tariffs upon becoming “unglued” over  Hope Hicks’ testimony about Russia’s election interference and because his chief of staff dropped his son-in-law’s security clearance. There were no meaningful consultations, research or explanations, no alert of foreign trade partners or Congress. No one at the State, Treasury or Defense Departments were notified that tariffs were about to be announced — just like he started a war with Iran without the Constitutionally required Congressional approval. 

After becoming frustrated over his staff’s inability to reach a consensus on pardoning January 6 attackers, he threw up his hands and said, “”F–k it, Release ’em all,” and he released into the streets dozens of prisoners with prior convictions or pending charges for crimes of rape, sexual abuse of a minor, manslaughter, child pornography, drug trafficking. 

If Iran nears defeat and develops the capability, it’s final retaliation could be a nuclear bomb, perhaps not on America’s homeland, but within the region.  Most Western observers view Iran’s priorities as protecting their national interest, but they’re dictated more by religious doctrine. And many clerics preach that the deployment of nuclear weapons is permissible as a last resort.

An unintended nuclear launch has always been more likely than an intentional one. Of the 24 close calls where nuclear war was narrowly avoided, only the Cuban missile crisis involved one nuclear power threatening another. The other incidents resulted from faulty technology, misinterpreted data, human error, and a Soviet false alarm. A nuclear disaster could also result from Iran missiles and drones hitting U.S. and UK nuclear facilities in as many as ten of them. 

Iran still has lethal military power. It can fire hundreds of missiles at U.S. facilities in the Middle East and awaken its regional network of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian who share Iran’s animosity toward Israel the United States. Support from Tehran enabled the Houthis to fire missiles into Israel.

Intelligence assessments indicate that Iran has active sleeper cells throughout the United States.

As hostilities escalate, Trump’s war could plunge the global economy into an inflationary crisis led by the price of oil, especially if Iran cripples shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The consequences could be Trump’s worst. But will they be bad enough for his Republican toadies to find their consciences?

The post IRAN – A GREAT IDEA FOR TRUMP, A DISASTER FOR AMERICA first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

The fallout is likely to  upend the entire region, produce significant civilian casualties, cause major losses to the U.S. military and our allies in the region, result in major economic disruption in the United States and throughout the world, and leave the region destabilized for years to come.

The attack is also unlikely to lead to regime change. That and denuclearization of Iran are Trump’s stated missions. Regime change failed before – even backfired. Like Trump’s mission in Iran, the invasion of Iraq was aimed at regime change. We killed their leader and triggered a power vacuum, a brutal, decade-long civil war, regional instability a “dysfunctional kleptocracy,” and increased hatred towards America. 

Worse, the attack heightens the risk of a nuclear event, either by intention or mistake. A nuclear attack could originate right here at home with a President who wanted to nuke North Korea in the last month of his first administration. Fortunately, General Mark Milley was there to stop him. There’s no Milley now, only an alcoholic, unqualified Fox News co-host shocking confirmed by Republican Senators.

A nuclear disaster could also come in the form of Iran’s final retaliation. Most Western observers view Iran’s conduct through the lens of protecting their national interest, but its priorities are more consistent with the Mahdist religious doctrine,  which dictates that military might is central to its doctrines, and many jurists maintain that the deployment of nuclear weapons is permissibleas a last resort.

An unintended nuclear launch has always been more likely than an intentional one. Of the 24 close calls where nuclear war was narrowly avoided, only the Cuban missile crisis involved one nuclear power threatening another. The other incidents often resulted from faulty technology, misinterpreted data, human error during the Cold War and beyond, the 1983 Soviet false alarm, and the 1983 Nato military exercises. Eight of the closest calls stand out as among the most provocative of a  launch in the in the Middle East.

Iran still has lethal military power. Since last June, it has moved to rebuild its ballistic missile arsenal at what an Israeli military assessment described as “a rapid pace.” It can fire hundreds of missiles at U.S. bases and other facilities and awaken its regional network of partners and proxies, namely Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian who share Iran’s animosity toward Israel the United States and oppose the Jewish state’s existence. Support from Tehran has also enabled Yemen’s rebel Houthis to fire missiles at Israel and attack its commercial ships in the Red Sea — actions the Houthis called a show of solidarity with Hamas. 

Iran has sent missiles and drones to attack U.S. and UK facilities in Qatar,the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, Iraq and Cyprus, raising the danger of bombing nuclear power plants, reactors and fuel storage facilities in many of those countries.

Each of the countries under attack indicated high levels of preparedness to retaliate for the actions of Iran.

Iran has many ways it could respond to Trump’s attack, including cyber operations. Between 2012 and 2014, Iran targeted U.S. financial institutions, Saudi Aramco oil, and the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. It could also to attack critical infrastructure. 

Intelligence assessments indicate that Iran poses a threat in the U.S. through networks believed to be operating as sleeper cells.

If hostilities continue to escalate, Trump’s war could plunge the global economy into an inflationary crisis led by the price of oil. The conflict has disrupted shipping, leaving at least five tankers damaged and around 150 ships stranded around theStrait of Hormuz. Marine insurers are cancelling war risk coverage for vessels and oil shipping rates are set to surge further.

Trump’s reasons for the attack conflict with Marco Rubio’s and are contradicted by the facts, raising suspicions as to Trump’s motives. Heightening those suspicions, just days before Trump bombed Iran, his FBI Director, Kash Patel, fired the counterintelligence unit tasked with monitoring threats from Iran and its proxies, hobbling the United States ability to detect and subvert retaliatory actions against the United States, raising suspicions as to Trump’s motives.

Truth is who the hell knows why Trump bombed Iran? His denuclearization motive is contradicted by his claim that his attacks last summer obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity, a claim he repeated during his recent State of the Union address. Regime change is fruitless – witness Iraq. He also bizarrely accused Iran of interfering in 2020, 2024 elections to try to defeat him.

Was it to give the Republican party an edge in the midterms? Or to create a state of emergency in an attempt to delay them? Or to rev up his base? You decide. 

The post THE PRICE OF CONTEMPT FOR THE CONSTITUTION first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Bipartisanship is impossible when one party is bound by lies whether they believe them or not and are unencumbered by the truth. The Republicans’ unanimous standing ovations for Trump falsehoods demonstrates that they’re confined to them in their policymaking.    

The Republicans stood and cheered for his most blatant and pernicious lies – including his touting of policies that will upend the quality of life of nearly all Americans. For example:

Trump praised his “One Big, Beautiful Bill” as a “turnaround for the ages,” suggesting that it will spur economic growth and pay for Republicans $4.5 trillion tax cut for America’s wealthiest. The nasty truth is Republicans will replace the lost tax revenues by cutting Medicare, Medicaid and food assistance programs.

He claimed that undocumented immigrants were criminals who are responsible for importing drugs, murder, sex trafficking, rape and other  violent crimes.  

The truth is that undocumented immigrants are arrested less than half as often as native-born citizens for drug crimes and have the lowest homicide arrest rate of all people sur, according to a 2024 study funded by the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice.

As part of his obsession to undo everything President Obama accomplished he continued to claim it was unaffordable and claimed he had a better and cheaper [undisclosed] plan. The Truth: overturning Obamacare could leave 21+ million Americans without insurance. 

Also, Republicans refused to extend the Obamacare subsidies. As a result premiums would rise from $888 in 2025 to about $1,904 in 2026.

And he claimed that his tariffs are paid “by foreign countries,” but they are paid by U.S. consumers, farmers, and businesses. Now that the Supreme Court held the tariffs to be illegal, he will have to reimburse those who paid them. Interestingly, most Republicans remained seated for his tariff lie.

Most Americans know when Trump is lying (which is almost always). It’s a safe assumption that Republicans also know. So why do they endorse his lies with standing ovations? The most common answer is the same reason they pass his policies – that they don’t want to face a primary challenger backed by Trump. So they value keeping their seats more than keeping their oaths to their constituents and all other Americans. 

Trump is incapable of reversing course. Unless the Republicans find the courage to contain him, the U.S. will suffer lasting economic and geopolitical costs for years to come. What’s most alarming is that Trump checks all the boxes that mental health professionals use to diagnose a malignant narcissist, which combines  narcissism with sadism, paranoia, and antisocial behavior. They take pleasure in harming others, are ruthlessly manipulative, and seek to destroy others to maintain power, often showing no remorse for their abusive actions. Yet the Republicans have turned him loose to destroy the leadership, influence, trust and respect America has taken seven decades to earn.

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The post MORE FRIGHTENING THAN TRUMP’S LIES first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

A majority of each party is opposed to the mid-decade redistricting  to guarantee a party’s win in midterms. An overwhelming majority of voters nationally (77%) and in Florida (76%), Texas (74%), New York (78%), Illinois (75%), and California (80%) support independent commissions to draw district lines instead of state lawmakers. 64% of Republican and independent voters want a ban on mid-decade redistricting. 

Even 60% of the voters who supported Donald Trump in 2024 want Congress to ban mid-decade redistricting. Yet he threatened Indiana that if the state Republicans didn’t pass a district map that gave the Republican House delegation a 9-0 sweep, all federal funding will be stripped from the state, roads will not be paved and major projects will stop. His warning was a brazen attempt at election interference.

The Supreme Court held that it is unconstitutional for the federal government to place a “gun to the head” of a state by threatening massive funding losses. Those funds are not discretionary political weapons. Any threat to strip highway funding would require clear statutory authority. 

While both parties politically gerrymander, the Republicans make much more use of  it. In 2022 Congress nearly passed the Freedom to Vote Act, that included a prohibition on partisan gerrymandering. The transformative bill passed the House and had majority support in the Senate. It stalled only because the Senate failed by two Republican votes to modify the chamber’s archaic filibuster rules to allow the bill to advance to an up-or-down floor vote.

In some states, the party that wins the most votes overall doesn’t win a proportional number of seats. For example:

• Pennsylvania (2012): Democrats won roughly half the vote in House races, but Republicans won about 75% of the seats due to how the lines were drawn.
• North Carolina & Michigan: Similar representational mismatches have occurred.

The worst consequence of gerrymandering is that it frequently guaranties the election of the least qualified candidate. Take for example Jim Jordan, the 2024 Republican candidate for Ohio’s Fourth Congressional. The state Republican legislature mangled the district map to make it look like a jigsaw puzzle missing random pieces to make Jordan a sure winner even though he had the lowest score of all Republicans for legislative effectiveness, and despite that over the  800 bills he authored in 2023, none have passed and become law.

Sadly, Republicans will sail through the Supreme Court’s pro-Trump majority, even when Republicans violate the 15^th Amendment by “deny or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.”

In Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP the pro-Trump majority upheld the South Carolina Republicans’ legislature removal of 60% of Black voters from their Congressional District into a White-denominated District to ensure the election of the Republican candidate. The same majority, minus Barrett, previously held in Rucho. v. Common Cause that political gerrymandering is not the business of federal courts. The combination of these two rulings allows racial gerrymandering

because racial gerrymandering is always done to win elections.

In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee Trump’s majority held that Arizona’s voting restrictions that allowed the tossing ballots that didn’t comply with the restrictions didn’t violate the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and 15^th Amendment prohibitions against denying or abridging the right to vote based on race or color. Although Chief Justice Roberts admitted that Arizona’s restrictions fell more heavily on Native American minorities, he hedged by claiming that the number of ballots tossed would be immaterial to the outcome of the election, even though they exceeded the margins of victory in the 2018 and 2020 elections.

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The post ANOTHER ELECTION INTERFERENCE ATTEMPT BY TRUMP first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Although there have been only two outbreaks, and none in the US, Nipah is considered a public health threat because of its high fatality rate, potential for human-to-human transmission and the absence of approved vaccines or treatment. 

So how would Donald Trump come to our rescue if it or when, not if, any pandemic hits the U.S. again? The answer is poorly given his brutal cuts to medical research and his dismal Covid-19 performance. 

Trump recently announced  cuts of $4 billion in medical research funding at universities, hospitals, and other scientific institutions. Researchers have had to drop crucial projects and many consider switching fields due to Trump’s cuts and layoffs. The cutscanceled 383 clinical trials affecting research into COVID-19,  cancer prevention and heart and brain disease. 

Not to mention that Trump has sent our best medical scientists to China, weakening our ability to fend off pandemics and rapidly propelling China’s medical advancement beyond ours. The assault on our health will continue until Congressional Republicans find the integrity and courage to stop him. 

Trumps ruinous actions and failure to stop the Covid pandemic during his first presidency is alarmingly similar to what he’s doing today. At the end of his first administration, America had 4.2% of  the world’s population, 25% of Covid cases and 19% of Covid deaths. Shamefully, he abandoned over seven decades in which America played the leading global role in fighting infectious diseases, including Ebola, tuberculosis, malaria, yellow fever, AIDS, avian influenza and Zika. It was an unconscionable abdication of responsibility. He ignored the Defense Production Act, which gives the president the responsibility to force production and distribution of materials needed to arrest a pandemic. 

In 2014, President Obama coordinated world leaders to stop the Ebola virus at its source, sending more than 3,000 health officials to West Africa as part of a 10,000 team. Cases fell by 80% from peak levels. He also led the fight against Ebola at home, resulting in just 11 cases and two deaths in the United States. 

In sharp contrast, Trump abdicated his responsibility to the states, telling governors they’re on their own to find the critical equipment needed to fight the Covid, admonishing them that the federal government is “not a shipping clerk.” 

Having failed to control the spread of COVID, Trump turned to massive misinformation and  blamed  Obama, governors, Democrats, the media and, most bizarrely, the World Health Organization, from which he recently withdrew.

Trump predicted the mortality rate “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero” and would “disappear like a miracle” and that everybody “infected is getting better.” His BS led Americans to abandon caution and suffer more infections and death. 

This man checks all the boxes that medical professionals use to diagnose a sociopath. Whether his claims are lies or delusions doesn’t matter. Either way, he is out of control. Why the hell do we keep him as our President? 

Although Trump can’t help himself, the Republicans in Congress know exactly what they’re doing. They can stop the carnage, but they don’t because the value their Congressional and anatomical seats above their constituents and the country at large. So their complicity will be repeated when, not if, the next pandemic hits. 

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The post 2 NEW FATAL VIRUS CASES DISCOVERED WHILE TRUMP CUTS MEDICAL RESEARCH first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has equated opposition by state leaders and demonstrations with domestic terrorism and insurrection.

ICE’s budget tripled and its force doubled  in 2025 and will double again in 2026. There’s little doubt that Trump pardoned and recruited the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to carry out ICE executions. Who else would willingly and handily execute innocent Americans? They will continue to kill without cause.  

Martial law means the suspension of rights, lower bars for arrests, curfews, checkpoints, restricted travel and surveillance of anybody Trump and odious Stephen Miller want to know more about. Make no mistake, both of them are basking in the chaos and savoring the outcome. Don’t default to an oh-that-will-never-happen safe harbor. Aren’t you closer that you ever thought you’d be? 

The law prohibits bringing in the military and its consequences. But, tragically, we can’t rely on the Supreme Court’s Trump-favoring majority to stop him.

Even more unlikely is that Trump will act rationally – that’s because he’s emotionally unable of being rational. He checks all the boxes that mental health professionals use to diagnose a sociopath: He’s incapable of experiencing guilt, shame, remorse, or empathy. He exhibits aggressive behavior and verbally attacks his critics and won’t admit mistakes. He intimidates and threatens to maintain control, disregards rules and laws, has difficulty controlling impulses, acts without considering the consequences and his dreams are his realities and frequently nightmares for others.

So how do we stop the carnage? We can’t count on the Republicans that Trump has enslaved. There are however solutions. Voters could replace Trump-enslaved Republicans with Republicans not tethered to him in primaries. Democrats can help here. 24 states allow them to vote in Republican primaries.  Democrats can threaten sitting Republican seats more than Trump by threatening to vote for non-Trump primary candidates (and still vote for Democrats in national elections). If sitting Republicans feel the way the wind blows, they’ll seriously consider leaving Trump’s ship.

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The post DON’T RULE OUT MARTIAL LAW. WE’RE CLOSER THAN ANYONE THOUGHT  first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Trump also referred to Nazi protestors as “Very Fine People,” Mimicked the movements of a crippled reporter, said John McCain wasn’t a war hero because he was captured, and claimed he stopped several wars that never happened. The list of is long and, let’s say, not presidential.

Ty Cobb, a former member of the Trump Administration, noted Trump’s warning to Norway leaders that he could disregard peace with them because they didn’t give him the Nobel Peace Prize Cobb said, “I don’t think there’s anybody outside of the United States who believes that Trump is sane.” 

Mark my words. When Trump is gone and the complicit Republicans in Congress are blamed for the damage he’s done, they’ll create desperate fictions to disassociate themselves from him, just like the Nazis denied anything to do whatsoever with the Holocaust. 

The Republicans let him brazenly flout our laws, violate court orders and disassemble the blueprint of our governance. As Sir Thomas More, Arch Bishop of Canterbury, warned, “This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, … And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?” All will suffer, including those you took an oath to protect. 

More’s admonishments should also be heeded by the Supreme Court’s majority who mangled the Constitution to advanced Trump’s march to dictatorship.

To paraphrase a More admonishment of a man who perjured himself, “It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for [a seat in Congress]?” 

Impeachment may be a drastic step, but it is a necessary one. The Republicans should join the Democrats and impeach and convict Trump to stop and repair the damage he’s caused, and restore the honor, trust and respect that Republicans helped Trump strip away from our country by reducing a once respected global leader to a nation widely mocked, distrusted, and shunned.

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The post THE WORLD WONDERS WHY AMERICA KEEPS A DIFUNCTIONAL BUFFOON AS THEIR PRESIDENT, EVEN MORE SO AFTER DAVOS  first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

An ICE agent shot and killed a 37-year-old poet and mother of three because, according to Trump, she was “disrespectful to law enforcement.” Watch an ICE agent shoots and permanently blind a 21-year protester.

It’s more than likely that ICE hired many of the 1500 January 6 criminals, like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Who else would be capable of such cruelty? Oh. I guess Republicans are because they choose not to stop it.

Republicans “Big Beautiful Bill” widens the wealth gap to a record and takes money from Medicare and Medicaid to replace the trillions lost from their $4.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthiest.

Trump cut 90% of foreign aid that prevented fatal diseases while HIV and tuberculosis spread unchecked across the globe. So what if 14 million die. At least Republicans won’t face Trump-backed primary challengers.

No American President ever corruptly enriched themselves. Then along came the Republicans and Trump who built his net worth from $4.3 billion in 2024 to over $7.3 billion in 2025.

If you’re convicted of perjury, tax or bank fraud, election finance crimes, an insurrection, lying to the FBI, rigging an election with foreign help or impeding a Congressional investigation, Trump will pardon you. He pardoned nearly 1,500 individuals charged with offenses at the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, many of whom had been convicted of violent crimes. Now they are probably employed by ICE. Congress could impeach him if the Republicans would keep their Constitutional oaths to their constituents and the country.

Trump didn’t like Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) weak Jobs Report, so he fired the head of the BLS and released his own data. Reliable data have made of our financial markets the world’s the most reliable. Unreliable data will send them into free fall. Only the Republicans can stop him and sustain global confidence in our markets. But protecting Republican seats is more important to them.

Given the Republicans mission to cut Medicaid and Medicare and Trump’s obsession to undo everything Obama accomplished, Republicans will let Obamacare subsidies expire and healthcare premiums will jump from $888 to $1,904 in 2026.

Trump threatens to cut billions in medical research for cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes and has gutted key parts of the Department of Health and National Institute of Health. Republicans won’t oppose the move. I guess they’re more worried about losing their seats than a family member from a disease that could have been prevented.

Trump is paving the way for Putin to invade NATO members. He’s threatened to stop most military aid to Ukraine unless Zalenski agrees to Putin’s outrageous demands including:

• No promise that Russia won’t invade NATO members.
• NATO won’t expand its membership.
• Ukraine won’t join NATO
• European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland where they’ll be easy targets for the Russian military.

• Crimea and Donbas will be recognized as Russian,
• Ukraine to hold elections enabling Putin to install a puppet government and
• Western military aid to Kyiv will be halted during a 30-day cease fire, making it open season on Ukraine.

As former US Secretaries of State and Defense, Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates warned, “ If … Ukraine is defeated, Russia will almost certainly … attack NATO member countries.”

Probably most disastrous, is that Senate Republicans approved Trump’s cabinet picks who are the most unqualified and dangerous cabinet members in American history. They are threats to America’s health, security, governance, global trust, trade relations, economy and we’ve become an international laughing stock and hated at the same time.

Impeachment may be a drastic step, but it is a necessary one. Allowing the Republicans to continue to enable Trump’s treacheries is knowing homicide. Impeachment is the only meaningful way to repair the damage Trump’s wreaked and to restore the honor, trust and respect that Republicans helped Trump strip away from our country by reducing a once respected global leader to a nation widely mocked, distrusted, and increasingly shunned.

The solution: Replace the Trump-enslaved Republicans with Democrats or with Republicans that are not beholden to him. Then we can get back to the bipartisan politics that solved our problems for centuries.

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The post REMEMBER WHEN AMERICA WAS RESPECTED, ENVIED AND TRUSTED? first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Never mind that Trump’s attacks on Venezuela and capture of its leader violates the Constitution, international law, the War Powers Resolution and the Geneva Conventions. 

It’s worse than that. The United States is now ruled by a President who is an unhinged, delusional renegade who has run amuck against the country he was elected to lead. 

His delusions are many. His unshakable belief that his lies are realities is most evident in his lies at the Supreme Court.  So, is Trump’s claim that Venezuela is a significant trafficker of drugs into the United States a lie or a delusion. In light of the facts, I vote for delusion. 

More than 90% of all seized fentanyl, 97% of all seized cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine came in through legal entry points. Less common methods include tunnels, drones, and the international mail system. None of the DEA reports include Caribbean boats and don’t even list the entire sea as a significant source of drugs.

Fentanyl is overwhelmingly produced in Mexico. 84% of cocaine seized in the US came from Columbia, the world’s largest producer. Today almost none of the drugs smuggled into the United States enter via the Caribbean. 

Yet, Trump has deployed the largest military buildup since the Cuban missile crisis in Venezuelan waters and forcefully captured its leader. Certainly, Venezuela pittance of drug activity, if any, doesn’t come close to justifying Trump’s military aggression … unless of course he believes that Venezuela is a major drug trafficker into the United States.

Trump also checks all the boxes that mental health professionals use to diagnose a sociopath, including that they act without considering the consequences. Let’s take a look at what they’re likely to be.

Venezuela and other Latin American countries will seek more military support from Russia and China. Russia already provides Venezuela with military cooperation and is Venezuela’s strongest geopolitical backer. China, Venezuela’s largest importer of oil, already provides it with economic support.

Both Russia and China will leverage their relationships with Venezuela and other concerned countries in South America against U.S. interests. 

Tragically the Congressional Republicans are complicit in his treachery and willing to let him shred America’s governing blueprint to avoid losing their seats to a Trump-backed challenger. They have knowingly enabled his treachery by confirming the most dangerous and unqualified cabinet in America’s history and by tolerating his too-many-to count treacheries. 

The solution is to replace them with Republicans that Trump hasn’t enslaved, or by Democrats. Then, and only then, will America regain the bipartisan cooperation  that has solved its toughest issues for centuries.

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The post TRUMP’S ATTACKS ON VENEZUELA ARE BASED ON A LIE  OR A DELUSION. THE DEA DOESN’T MENTION VENEZUELA AS A DRUG TRAFFICKER first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

10 states have primaries that allow any registered voter to vote in the other party’s primary without having to change their party registration. 

14 states currently have primaries where voters who aren’t registered with any party can vote in any primary.

Democrats can always vote their choice in a national election no matter which primary they voted in.

Adding Democrat voters to those who vote against Trump-obedient candidates in primaries will increase the odds that Trump- obedient candidates will lose their seats to a non-Trump Republican.  And plenty of independents will join them.

 Among independents, 74% disapprove of congressional Republicans. Approval of Trump’s handling of the shutdown stands at 25%, with disapproval at 75%.

 76% of independents want the tax credits for the health care marketplace to be extended. And 55% of Americans have a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act. 

Of course, Democrats would need to decide whether they’re more likely to beat a non-Trump Republican than a Trump-obedient Republican in the national election.

Also, voters can vote in only one primary, so Democrats may  be less willing to give up their vote in a close Democratic primary than they would in a runaway primary. 

If Congressional Republicans can feel the way the wind blows, they’ll think seriously about leaving Trump’s ship.

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The post DEMOCRATS CAN THREATEN REPUBLICAN SEATS BY VOTING IN GOP PRIMARIES FOR NON -TRUMP REPUBLICANS first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

The Supreme Court’s Trump-favoring majority (“Trump’s Majority”) blocked both injunctions which freed Trump to replace Democrats with Republicans in the hundreds of agencies created by Congress in the face of Congress’s express prohibition against such firings without cause – something Trump never raised. The agencies were created to perform legislative policies with more expertise than Congress had. The majority’s holding also violated 90 years of  Supreme Court precedent in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States in 1935, followed by a unanimous decision in 1957 holding that Congress intended to create an agency that was “‘entirely free from the control or coercive influence of the Executive.”

Trump’s Majority’s holding allowed Trump to take the next step towards king status. He can now stack the agencies with his loyalists and usurp Congress’s policymaking authority. Take, for example, two feared possibilities: 

• Trump takes control of the NLRB which protects the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively. Good bye unions …that is that don’t vote for MAGA Republicans.
• The worst calamity would be if Trump’s Majority allows him to fire  Federal Reserve Board members without cause, which they’d have to to be consistent with their holding that let Trump fire the two board members. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for January. If the Court finds for Trump, he would control interest rates, the money supply flowing through the economy, and when to print money. He will have gained extraordinary power to reward his friends and destroy his enemies. 

The prohibition against a president’s firings reflects Congress’s belief that knowledgeable people from both parties [emphasis added] would make decisions that advance the long-term public good. Its intent couldn’t be clearer. 

Trump however dreads bipartisanship. So, confident that the Supreme Court Majority is on his team, he got it to stay the order reinstating the two board members on their boards. Trump’s Majority mangled the Constitution to accommodate him, holding that Congress’s restrictions on the President’s firing authority violated the Constitution’s separation of powers requirement.

The majority Justices also stated their hollow belief that the government faces more risk than the removed officer from allowing the removed officer to remain on their boards. The majority’s belief is credible only if the risk the majority referred to arises from Trump replacing Democrats with the type of unqualified sycophants Trump chose for his cabinet. 

The majority also omitted the obvious – allowing a president to fire employees without cause is as clear a violation as the Constitution’s separation of powers and of its mandate for the independence of the government’s three branches and its blueprint for checks and balances.

The majority Justices violated their Judicial Oaths  “to administer justice without respect to persons and .… impartially [emphasis added] perform all duties incumbent upon me under the Constitution…. So help me God.” By the way,  Its not the first time  Trump’s Majority butchered the Constitution to favor Trump.

In another recent case, the Supreme Court heard  oral arguments  regarding  whether Trump’s firing of Commissioners of the FTC, another independent bipartisan agency created by Congress with legislation prohibiting the President from firing its employs without cause. Sadly, Trump’s Majority is more than likely to overrule its own decision in the Humphrey’s case which would have prohibited Trump’s firings. 

If you’re wondering why Supreme Court Justices would enable Trump’s path to a dictatorship, here’s an answer: 

Every Majority Justice  (John Roberts, Brett Karnaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett), was funded and masterminded by the Federalist Society, piloted by reactionary billionaire Leonard Leo.  It’s not a stretch to say that these Justices repeatedly ruled in favor of their patron’s priorities rather than the Constitution. Take a look: 

• Keeping Trump in office: Trump’s Majority gave him broad immunity and delayed Jack Smith’s criminal trial against him for eleven months, until his win in 2024 election, after which the case was dismissed. In contrast, the Supreme Court took just 16 days to unanimously decide that Nixon wasn’t immune from prosecution and one day to decide Bush v. Gore. 
  
• Rolling back prohibitions against racial discrimination in voting: In Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP Trump’s Majority upheld a Republican legislature’s removal 60% of Black voters from their Congressional district into a White-denominated district to ensure a Republican win.
• Deregulation of corporations. For decades courts deferred to an agency’s interpretation of unclear legislation. The Trump’s Majority held that only the courts can decide if an agency’s interpretation of an unclear statute is correct. The holding transferred enormous amounts of policymaking to the Judiciary, which lacks the expertise and personnel to do the job — an indirect form of deregulation. 
• Restricting access to abortion.  Enough said.

Tragically, America has lost its last stop to unencumbered justice. If the country wants it back, either Trump-coddling Republicans need to find their true patriotism, or they must be replaced by Republicans not enslaved by Trump, or  Democrats must recapture their Congressional majorities. Then, Trump’s Majority can be replaced by justices – Republican or Democrat — with allegiance to the Constitution.

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The post SUPREME COURT ADVANCES TRUMP TO DICTATORSHIP. MANGLES CONSTITUTION TO LET HIM REPLACE AGENCY DEMS W/REPUBLICANS first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Trump is using our war against drugs as an excuse to invade Venezuela in order to gain control of the largest oil reserves in the world. It’s the exact type of treachery and violation of international law that we’re condemning and battling against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Trump’s claim that Venezuelan boats are carrying drugs is either uninformed or fabricated. More than 90% of all seized fentanyl, 97% of all seized cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine came in through legal entry points. Less common methods include tunnels, drones, and the international mail system. None of the sourced reports include boats. The U.S. doesn’t list the Caribbean as a significant source of drugs.

Moreover, fentanyl is overwhelmingly produced in Mexico. 84% of cocaine seized in the US came from Columbia, the world’s largest producer.

Nevertheless, consistent with Trump’s pattern of mendacity, he resorted to fictions. And consistent with the immutable devotion of Trumps disciples, they embrace his fictions. 

Trump’s bombings are anachronistic. They might have been useful in the era of Pablo Escobar when drug cartels made use of the Caribbean. Today almost none of the drugs smuggled into the United States enter via the Caribbean. 

There’s something else percolating. Trump has weighed options to strike inside Venezuela and warned US land action will start very soon.

Trump has deployed, off Venezuela’s coast, more than a dozen US warships, 15,000 troops, a fleet of aircraft carriers, destroyers equipped with guided-missiles, and amphibious assault ships. It’s the largest military buildup since the  Cuban missile crisis of 1962 . Certainly, Venezuela’s pittance of drug smuggling  doesn’t come close to justifying Trump’s military aggression.  It looks a lot more like preparation for a land invasion than drug interdiction. 

The fallout of Trump’s threats, or if he seizes control of Venezuela’s oil reserves, will be beyond troublesome. For example:

• The United States will become the Russian bully of the Western Hemisphere. Trump’s aggression will increase and spread the distrust and disrespect of the United States across the globe. 

• Venezuela and other Latin American countries (like  Venezuelan allies, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia) will seek military support from Russia and China. Russia already provides Venezuela with military cooperation and is Venezuela’s strongest geopolitical backer. China, Venezuela’s largest importer of oil, already provides it with economic support.

• Both Russia and China will use the relationships with Venezuela and other concerned countries against U.S. interests. 

• U.S. travelers will not be warmly received in most countries.

• our trading partners will switch to other partners, our access to international trade will suffer.
  

And what if Trump’s bluffing with the biggest military force since 1962 that’s costing $18 million per day and totaling $600 million since August. That sum that will grow to around $19 billion, given that the deployment is planned to last almost to the end of Trump’s term.

All this while Trump cuts Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition assistance for low-income families, and while the wealthy siphon billions from those safety nets to replace the estimated $4 trillion lost  from Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy.

Sadly, it won’t rally Trump’s enslaved Republicans to stop him, and his base won’t notice or care.

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The post TRUMP NEEDED TO SHORE UP HIS BASE, SO HE BOMBED VENEZUELAN BOATS HE SAYS WERE CARRYING DRUGS first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

The parallels between Donald Trump’s and McCarthy’s paths to pernicious power are undeniable. Both became the most visible public figures in America by spreading lies. McCarthy claimed communists had infiltrated the the entire Truman administration, the Voice of America, our universities, the film industry, the media   and the U.S. Army. 

McCarthy’s mendacity received wide credibility, and he was regarded as one of the most powerful men in government. Republican candidates feared that a confrontation with McCarthy would leave them vulnerable in upcoming elections (Sound familiar?). Even General Dwight D. Eisenhower who was running for President felt he had to support McCarthy’s reelection.

Truman’s Secretary of Defense, George Marshall, was the target of McCarthy’s most vitriolic attacks. Marshall was Army Chief of Staff during World War II, the architect of our victory and the post-war peace, accomplished by his Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Nevertheless, with audacious malevolence, McCarthy let go a tirade and authored a book charging Marshall with responsibility for the loss of China to Communism and of being part of “a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any of his [accomplishments] (admittedly, elegant rhetoric compared to Trump’s “shithole countries,” f***ing idiot,”“dumb son of a b****”). Marshall retired in outrage. 

Both Trump and McCarthy hurled insults at the news media and their reporters who criticized him. Trump flooded social media with his rants while McCarthy used the Senate’ chamber, calling the press an “unwitting handmaiden of the Communist Party.” 

Being labeled a “communist sympathizer” was enough to destroy anyone’s career as was the fallout from Trump’s false posthumous adulation of racist Charlie Kirk. Teachers and news reporters were fired for posting the truth. 

McCarthy’s attacks led to a purge of diplomats, including experts who could have helped the U.S. avoid or mitigate the Vietnam War.  Trump followed by purging several of our military generals.

By January 1954, Mcarthy’s 50% Gallup approval rating exceeded Trump’s highest ever. Then came the turning point. 

In response to McCarthy’s charges of because communist infiltration into the army was losing the war and that we were headed for a nuclear crisis, the Senate convened hearings that became known as the Army-McCarthy hearings. McCarthy stepped down as chairman and was replaced by Senator Karl Mundt. Importantly, the hearings were broadcast on national television. 

Enter Republican hero Joseph Welch, Chief Counsel for the Army. During the hearings, Welch demanded McCarthy’s lawyer, Roy Cohn, to provide the U.S. Attorney General with McCarthy’s claimed list of 130 Communists in the government “before the sun goes down.”

McCarthy menacingly retorted, if Welch was so concerned about aiding the Communist Party, he should check on Fred Fisher, a man in Welch’s law firm who had belonged to the National Lawyers Guild, allegedly a progressive organization. 

Welch shot back “Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to Harvard Law School, …. came into my firm and is starting a brilliant career … Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad…. I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you.” 

McCarthy resumed his attack and Welch interrupted, “Let us not assassinate this lad further. Have you no sense of decency?” Welch turned to the committee chairman and asked him to “call the next witness”. At that point, the gallery erupted in applause. 

McCarthy’s bravado visibly dissolved in front of millions of viewers. And it didn’t take long for McCarthy’s 50% approval rating to plummet to 34% and his unfavorable rating to surge from 29% to 45%. America saw the liar without his clothes. Can it be the final blow to Trump?

It would be hard to get Trump questioned in front of the cameras. Even if Republicans joined Democrats in subpoenaing him, given the Trump-accommodating Supreme Court majority  he probably would never appear.

But a televised joint meeting of Congress could be a forum where patriotic Republicans are forthright about Trump’s character and treacheries for all the TV viewers to watch.

There are signs Trump’s ship has begun to sink. The media turned against McCarthy’s in 1954 and it was followed by a sharp fall in news coverage. That history is repeating itself. 92% of Trump’s media coverage during his first 100 days was negative. The amount of his coverage has noticeably fallen. And Republicans are worried about losing their majorities in the midterms. 

If enough Republicans are honest about Trump, it won’t be long before other Republicans compete to redeem themselves for supporting him. 

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The post WE NEED ANOTHER REPUBLICAN HERO in the senate first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

• An “expectation” [emphasis added] butnot a promise that Russia won’t invade NATO  members 
• NATO will not expand its membership.
• Ukraine won’t join NATO 
• European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland where they’ll be easy targets for the Russian military.

Russia has included its own benefits:

• Russia will be re-integrated into the global economy.
• Russia will be invited back into the G8. 
• Crimea and Donbas will be recognized as Russian, including by the United States.
• Ukraine to hold elections in 100 days, likely enabling Putin to install a puppet government,
• The agreement’s implementation and enforcement will be Chaired by Trump. 
• That western military aid to Kyiv be halted during a 30-day cease fire, making it open season on Ukraine. 
• Putin will revisit a demand for NATO to halt the deployment of weapons in member states that joined after 1997, when NATO began expanding into former communist countries.

Trump’s accommodation of Putin is not surprising. It fits a pattern of favoring his idol Vladimir Putin over his own country, and over Zelensky 

Consequently, Trump is on the verge of letting Putin prevail in Ukraine and giving him a green light to invade European NATO members to fulfill Putin’s dream of  a Russian-led Eurasian empire. Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia is likely a first target because, just like Ukraine, they were parts of the Soviet Union and are home to around a million ethnic Russians. 

As former US Secretaries of State and Defense, Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates warned, “ If … Ukraine is defeated, Russia will almost certainly … attack NATO member countries.” 

Germany, France and the UK assured Zalensky of their continued support if the U.S. abandons Ukraine, and said, “the Ukrainian armed forces must remain in a position to defend …. Ukraine effectively.” But their success becomes more doubtful should Trump carry out his threat.

Importantly, there’s more at stake than Ukraine. China is carefully following what Trump does with Ukraine as a guide to what it does with Taiwan. It’s likely that Trump will give Xi his best opportunity to invade.

It boils down to Trump’s pursuing a cosmetic peace to garner primary votes for his chosen candidates, endear himself to his Russian idol and, laughably, win the Nobel Peace prize. It has nothing to do with defending Ukraine, Europe or, for that matter, what’s best for America.   

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The post US THREATENS UKRAINE IF IT DOESN’T ACCEPT PUTIN’S PEACE DEAL first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

A total of 759 rural U.S. hospitals are at risk of closure due to financial stress. 728 of them are in states that voted Republican in 2024. 188 rural hospitals have either closed or abandoned inpatient care.

Rural hospitals in states that will experience the largest reductions in Medicaid coverage are the most likely to fail.

So are rural hospitals that serve a large number of older adults due to aging populations and higher per-capita reliance on Medicaid.

In states that  don’t expand Medicaid its 53%. Hospital closures are more than twice as likely to occur in the Republican-controlled states that do not expand Medicaid. 

Although the Senate appropriated $50 billion in a “rural health fund” to help struggling hospitals, Trump appointee Dr. Oz who oversees Medicare and Medicaid” has wide discretion over how to allocate the $50 billion. It’s near certain his allocations will conform to Trump’s history of punishing Democratic states and favoring Republican states and will have little correlation with need.

Even if distributions were on the up and up, estimates are that the fund won’t be enough as the amount of aid to hospitals over five years is less than the $137 billion in lost healthcare revenues to rural healthcare systemsover ten years.

It may be hard to believe that an American President would let hospitals close and let people suffer and die. But we need to remember that Donald Trump cancelled  most of U.S. humanitarian aid abroad that prevented disease outbreaks while HIV and drug-resistant tuberculosis were now spreading unchecked in many countries reliant on USAID medications. 

I’ll leave MAGAs with one thought. I like to be wrong. If I’m never wrong, I’ll never learn anything. 

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The post 728 OUT OF 759 STRUGGLING RURAL HOSPITALS LIKELY TO CLOSE DUE TO GOP MEDICARE, MEDICAID CUTS AND HIGHER ACA PREMIUMS ARE IN  REPUBLICAN STATES  first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.