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Eugene Volokh | 10.19.2025 3:00 AM
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Another "Trump is Hitler" weekend, and yet I am reminded of why the National Socialists did so well in the 1933 election -- people feared the Communists.
I think that the US is falling into the same trap -- it is so fearful of "fascism" that it is ignoring the actual fascists of the therapeutic state. The do-gooders. The social service industry. The NGOs.
These are the real fascists and they are being ignored while people fret about Trump...
Batya Ungar-Sargon has it about right:
"The "No Kings" rally isn’t protesting Trump but rather the agenda the majority of America voted for. The Left isn't protesting a king but their fellow Americans. They aren’t standing up for democracy — they are protesting against it."
https://x.com/bungarsargon/status/1979700419824869653?t=0vp-y6Y_tBARVVxhFohwiA&s=19
She says she used to have TDS but is now a MAGA-lefty.
So many costumes it looked like Halloween. Was anyone handing out candy?
Costumes are an expression of fear. They hide identities.
I'm sure she appreciates the endorsements of a guy who rants about do-gooders and another guy who styles himself after a serial killer.
The "No Kings" rally isn’t protesting Trump but rather the agenda the majority of America voted for.
Is this the Project 2025 Trump ran from and now embraces?
Not sure I understand the rationale of the left here. The bullshit hysteria and insults didn’t work in 2024 so let’s double down on stupid? The left used to be amusing as a minority. Of course, that was before many of their lot embraced political violence.
I'm a staunch conservative, and would am sympathetic, in theory, to the arguments that Trump is engaging in executive overreach. I hate the fact that Congress has delegated so much power to the President over the last 125 years.
That being said, I don't believe any of the protests to that effect were in good faith. These people had nary a peep to say when the executive branch under Biden flung the border open to 10 million illegals and granted legal status to millions more based on questionable grounds. They said nothing when he engaged in takings of private property by extending rent moratoriums for years longer than could possibly be justified. They said nothing when he commuted 37 death sentences, death sentences authorized by Congress and imposed by judges and juries, as the system is designed. They said nothing when he was doling out billions in taxpayer funds and calling it student loan relief. They said nothing when he used the DOJ to overcharge 1/6 protesters. They said nothing when he used government agencies to bully private media companies, private insurance companies, and private banks to de-platform or otherwise cancel conservatives.
The people protesting don't actually oppose unchecked executive power. They just don't want it used in ways they don't like. That's not any kind of principle.
In any case, I'm giving the protesters far more credit than I should. It seems like the bulk of the protests were against ICE enforcing immigration laws. Those actions are purely within the executive's purview. It's Congress that passed those immigration laws in the first place.
"It's Congress that passed those immigration laws in the first place." ...and Congress that has failed to pass a budget by regular order in decades.
Poxigah146 is spot on.
This is an excellent argument and I think we can agree for the sake of argument that Trump has done all the things that Biden did. I don't think it's reasonable to therefore conclude that this conduct is the reason for the protests.
What kings do is they use the military against their own people to put down protests. Kings remove from office anyone who puts professionalism over loyalty to the king.
Biden did not do these things, these are things kings do, and this is why people are protesting.
So who shot Ashli Babbitt? Peter Pan?
The Fiscal Year End Treasury MTS report was released last week.
Here are the highlights:
The deficit was 41 billion lower in 2025 than 2024. For Oct24-Jan24 (Biden Months) it was it was 308 billion higher that the previous year, for Feb25-Sept25 (Trump months) it was 349 billion lower than the same period in FY2024.
I'm sure that's the way Biden laid out the budget.
In terms of actual outlays we spent over 7 trillion, 7,009 billion v 6,735 billion last year. Biden's budget was 6.9 trillion, but he was already 319 billion ahead of the FY204 spending for the Biden months by the end of January.
Trump actually spent 59 billion less in the Trump months than in FY2024.
As for revenue, it was 316 million higher in FY25 than FY24, every month was higher than the previous year except Oct24.
None of the figures are inflation adjusted.
Bottom line is the Trump deficit blowout has not materialized yet, but we should keep cutting just to make sure. As a percentage of preliminary GDP the deficit 'only' 5.8% of GDP which would only look good next to last years 6.4%, but it is an improvement.
Guardian reports U.S. dollar down 9% against other currencies since Trump announced his first tariff policy.
Which currencies?
Good! makes our products easier to sell overseas.
Boston OCR is GONE! 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
The US Dept of Education's Offices of Civil Rights in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, Dallas, San Francisco, Boston, and Cleveland are all closed.
This is progress....
Graham Platner, the unknown challenging Susan Collins, is starting to look like what I always suspected he was.
He's 100% disabled because of PTSD and getting $57,600 a year, tax free -- essentially $70,000 -- which is good money for Hancock County, Maine. He said he was a Communist, that Mainers are "stupid racists", and that "all cops are bastards."
His campaign manager quit,
https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/politics/elections/candidates/graham-platner-maine-senate-race-election-social-media-reddit-posts-police-white-rural/97-92662cb7-f9b3-43a3-81de-c35bc19ea9f1
About six weeks to go for hurricane season and so far..... nothing despite the scare headlines of the usual media outlets. Has King Trump deployed a super secret Golden Hurricane Dome to protect the US (and of course Mar-a-Lago)? So far most of the storms seem to have bounced off a wall and headed toward Europe.
Bumble — If that, "wall," were to remain in place, it would portend a brutal winter along the Eastern Seaboard. Make it a permanent winter feature and you might get an incipient ice age out of it.
Interestingly, the first weather observer to begin to understand that phenomenon was Ben Franklin.
Stephen, nothing is permanent in this world but death (of course subject to religious beliefs of a hereafter or re-incarnation).
Bumble — I remain mindful that I live on land which was fairly recently buried under ice a mile deep. It is not evident whether return of that ice would be mediated by local cooling, or by local warming. Plenty of places in the world feature warmer climate than I get in winter, but lie under ice caps year round.
That happens because they get more winter moisture. Vice-versa, too. Plenty of places colder in winter get less snow and ice than I see. Some mountain ranges in the Northern Rockies get little snow, endure bitter winter cold, and remain nearly bare. Little moisture.
On the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, it is much warmer. Mountains there remain heavily glaciated. The parts not under ice are cloaked in dense temperate rain forest. Moisture, not temperature, is the difference.
As a climate feature, moisture is typically more variable, and less stable regionally, than temperature. But moisture levels prove highly sensitive to temperature changes.
In western Nebraska there is a region called the Sand Hills. Aptly named. Most of the western half of that state is little more than a Sahara, lightly veneered with grass. Google Earth shows the dune patterns clearly, ready to go back on the march the moment annual moisture drops just a bit more. The Nebraska dune field is the largest such feature in the western hemisphere.
Vast areas of the Northern Rockies look ready to transition back to desert. They are doing it during time scales noticeable over mere decades. Wooded mountainsides first dry out a bit, then weakened trees get attacked by insects, and then they burn. Not much vegetation comes back in the burned areas. Erosion takes over instead.
Same pattern across the Canadian taiga. You don't have to journey north to see the effects. They drift across the Eastern Seaboard in giant smoke clouds every summer.
That is a notably different result than seen in the volcanic Cascades. For exterminating life there is little to match a gigantic eruption. But Mount Saint Helens is greening up. More moisture.
To direct human experience, global temperature transitions feel gradual, to the point of seeming negligible. Resulting changes in moisture levels feel more like lights-on, lights-off. You do not have to look hard to see such moisture lights flashing all over the world.
With that experience in mind, legal complacency seems peculiar. Or, not uncommonly, opportunistic.
It is a fact that the law of the United States has long treated large parts of the national commons as potential or actual private property. That may be precedent, but precedent for what?
The choice seems to be on the one hand, precedent to keep those presumptions of private advantage under accustomed corporate controls. Or, on the other hand, to apply those same precedents of private property in the commons more broadly, and put some of that interest under the control of everyone. With the notion of, "everyone," interpreted to authorize individual legal standing at least as compelling as that of any corporation.
It is not evident to me what legal principle favors the former choice over the latter. I see dismissive commentary on that subject, like Professor Adler has supplied, I take that not as dispassionate legal analysis, but as advocacy of particular private interests. I do not understand why the law should favor accustomed private interests over more general ones not previously considered.
When does the "Global Warming" get here?
ME & NH are in severe drought.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/12/weather/noreaster-coastal-storm-flooding-wind-climate
Some interesting commentary from Garry Trudeau: https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury
Should Donald Trump hire a taste tester?
What's interesting is that you find this interesting.
Maybe Trudeau should.
I would say unhinged doesn’t begin to describe your comment here NG. Perhaps you would care to elaborate on your meaning?
If you were an authoritarian seeking to influence another head of state, you might offer him a luxuriously appointed Boeing 747 airplane. You might spend big at his hotels or invest in one of the many companies owned by him and his children. You might buy his sneakers, NFTs and other branded products. In the case of President Trump, a potential influence peddler has a vast menu of choices.
But why bother with all that? While campaigning, Mr. Trump announced his cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial, and, just days before his inauguration, his namesake memecoin. Anyone can indirectly deliver money to a Trump family entity simply by buying World Liberty’s tokens. Mr. Trump and his family have accrued billions of dollars in paper wealth through crypto ventures owned by the president, his sons and family friends.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/opinion/world-liberty-financial-crypto-trump.html
and yet he was preferable to a Candidate who's hubby "Dougie" slapped a girlfriend at the Cannes Film Festival. Which sums up the DemoKKKrat's dilemma so well, Dougie didn't slap his Girlfriend at a "Bord-ega" (HT J. Biden), at a Yankees game, on a busy Brooklyn Street, but at the friggin Cannes Film Festival. Suck it Queenie. Umm, that's an expression
Frank
Deranged.
No, I don't think "Dougie's" "Deranged" he's just one of those entitled rich guys, like Clinton, Ted Kennedy (who left a young woman to asphyxiate (NOT "drowned", there's a difference) in an upside down Oldsmobile) Al Franken, Chris Dodd, AlGore (at least when he was screwing Hotel Maids he didn't make them change the towels) Andrew Cuomo. OK, maybe Comes-a-lot IS "Deranged" she seems to think she's still got a (Political) future
The Haredim have historically been exempt from Israel’s draft, which is compulsory for most citizens, and over the two years of Israel’s war in Gaza, this became the source of considerable political strife. Ever since the most recent provision extending their exemption expired in 2023, the Haredi political parties — which made up nearly one third of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing right-wing, religious coalition — have pushed to enshrine a new exemption into law, despite widespread opposition. The Haredi parties backed the coalition’s controversial “judicial overhaul,” a sweeping program, unveiled in January 2023, that would strip the country’s judiciary of much of its power and shred Israel’s fragile system of checks and balances. They did so in order to shield any new draft exemption law from judicial review.
But if the images of Haredim standing alongside soldiers in Beit Shemesh suggested that the struggle over ultra-Orthodox conscription was headed toward resolution, it was an illusion. After Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in June of last year that the government’s refusal to draft the Haredim was unconstitutional in the absence of any legal framework to extend their exemption, the defense ministry began to issue draft orders. The Israel Defense Forces say they have so far sent out 80,000; barely 3,000 Haredim have complied…
As the Gaza war ground on, anger toward the Haredim boiled over, and not only among secular Israelis. For much of the “serving public” — those who send their children to fight or serve themselves — the refusal of the Haredim to shoulder any part of the war burden has been a scandal. A poll last year showed that nearly three quarters of Israelis believed exempting the Haredim from military service was unacceptable; a majority of Netanyahu’s Likud party voters share this view.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/magazine/israel-haredi-draft-netanyahu-war.html
It's none of your Bee's Wax, why don't you take care of your own People's problems first, allowing millions of their unborn to be murdered by (mostly white female doctors) for one. (So they can grow up and get murdered by one of their own kind) Anyway, Israel's military service system is far more DemoKKKratic than our own, where mostly the "Deplorables" (HT H. Rodman) serve for the "Benefits" (When you get killed in Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria/Ukraine you can get buried in a Veteran's Cemetery!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
The swastika flags are confirmed to be a hoax, appearing differently to the eyes than to a digital camera, much as Brett suggested previously.
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/10/17/swastika-flag-scandal-exposed-as-anti-republican-hoax-n4944974
While I'm fairly certain that sort of thing is technically possible, your link doesn't provide any actual evidence of means used, so I wouldn't actually regard it as "confirmation". It's just the same assertion published in a new location.
Assume American constitutionalism survives Trump, and political happenstance puts the government in the hands of the Ds.
Trump, out of office, and dead of natural causes, will leave behind a host of malign precedents, probably with most unaddressed by the courts. Would systematic posthumous impeachments make sense, to prevent a repeat of abusive Trump-stye executive governance by successors of whatever political stripe?
Any such process would be divisive, and consume resources needed elsewhere. But the downside of letting Trump's practices become time-honored by default is bad too.
Maybe figure out a way to do it almost pro-forma. Charge staff to break down executive abuses by categories chosen to support separate impeachment charges, collate evidence, and work the votes in among other business without affording parliamentary opportunity for grandstanding.
Just put everything abusive on the record, properly submitted as if for trial, and voted on quickly without debate. Let the reps and senators go on the record according to the way they want to be remembered by their constituencies, and by history.
Look, Lathrop, just give it a rest already. The sort of thing you're proposing isn't the stuff of an enduring democracy, it's what successful totalitarian revolutionaries do to the people who resisted them.
You're not going to get your posthumous show trials, just resign yourself to that.
Rather perjoratively described:
Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People
It might be better described as not systematically favoring people least likely to assimilate.
Notably, conforming to modern media principles, though they claim to have the documents, they're not going to share them with us, just their own take on them. "According to a draft of a third report, obtained by The New York Times," but where do they let us read it?
They don't, because we might not interpret it the same way.
https://officechai.com/ai/this-is-embarrassing-google-deepmind-ceo-demis-hassabis-roasts-openais-claims-of-gpt-5-solving-erdos-problems/
OpenAI people claimed that GPT-5 "found" solutions to challenging problems in Mathematics that were "open". Others claimed this represented an example of AI accelerating basic research. It turns out that it's just a case of AI helping to be a better search engine, in a case where the guy running the web site listing those problems as open vs solved didn't know that humans had punished solutions to those problems.
I guess that literally IS "finding" the solutions...
I'm just happy that it's solved Nuke-ular Fusion, and found a way to make Gasoline Engines run on tap water (Ask me how!!!!!)
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Eric Boehm | From the November 2025 issue
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