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The Felon's "Drug Boat" Strikes Are Legally Indefensible

There are a number of constants with the Felon: (i) he is a totally self-absorbed malignant narcissist, (ii) he lies incessantly - a piece at The New Republic notes "The standard Trump lie is a simple blanket assertion of non-fact as fact. . . . He sometimes veers into the deeper, more Goebbels-y lie of saying the exact opposite of the truth - (iii) he has absolutely no respect for the rule of law and sees himself as above the law, and (iv) he enjoys engaging in performative acts to please the most devoted, Kool-Aid drinking MAFA cultists.  In this latter category we have the stationing of National Guard units in blue cities simply to intimidate and thrill the unwashed MAGA base - and putting guardsmen at unnecessary risk as was tragically borne out this past week.  Most horribly, the Felon and his misfit Secretary of Defense have been engaged in the destruction of alleged "drug boats" that have murdered 80 people to date, two of whom survived the initial attack and who were then murdered in contravention to international law and the Geneva Conventions.  No proof whatsoever has been offered to confirm these boats were even involved in drug trafficking and we are supposed to believe the Felon's declaration that such is the case without evidence.   Indeed, these lawless acts have caused the United Kingdom to cease sharing intelligence information with America and are setting a very, very dangerous precedent for bad actors on the international stage.  In addition, these actions expose the members of the military following the Felon's and Hegseth's illegal orders to potential criminal prosecution in the future. A piece at USA Today looks at these legally indefensible murders. Here are highlights:

When the United States began sinking boats on suspicion of drug trafficking – with no warning, no arrests and no evidence recovered – we crossed a line. These so-called narco-terrorist strikes may be politically popular, but they are legally indefensible.

Now, reports indicate that the British government has stopped sharing intelligence with Washington, DC, over fears that the U.S. operations violate international law. If true, one of America’s oldest allies is signaling what many of us who served in uniform already know: Justice and lasting security cannot be achieved through lawlessness.

For more than two decades, the U.S. Coast Guard’s HITRON program has proved that there’s a better way. Helicopter-based marksmen disable engines on fleeing drug boats, allowing suspects to be arrested, evidence recovered and intelligence exploited.

More than 1,000 vessels have been stopped this way, without deliberate loss of life. It is effective, lawful and consistent with both our national values and our obligations under the law of the sea.

The only flaw is that we have not assigned enough ships and aircraft to this effort. This new approach – destroying boats outright and killing the occupants – abandons that model and the principles behind it. In addition, it sets a frightening example for other nations throughout the world.

In any legitimate military or law enforcement operation, rules of engagement exist to ensure that force is necessary, proportionate and discriminate. These rules are designed to protect innocent life, preserve evidence and maintain compliance with the Law of Armed Conflict – the body of international law that governs when and how force may be used.

The supposed justification, that these boats pose a “clear and present danger” to Americans, falls apart under scrutiny.

The Wall Street Journal reported a secret memo invokes an unsubstantiated “chemical weapons” threat to justify these strikes. Even if the report is correct, this is not a recognized basis under the Law of Armed Conflict, nor is it the kind of imminent threat required for a president to employ lethal force without congressional approval.

In addition, it appears to be lacking in factual basis, as government assessments have shown this is not a route for trafficking fentanyl.

Under the Law of Armed Conflict, deadly force is lawful only when an imminent armed threat exists. Drug traffickers, however violent or corrupt, are not conducting military attacks against the United States and are not interested in deliberately killing their “customers.” Under criminal law, force must be the minimum necessary to compel compliance, not missiles or munitions that leave no survivors. . . . . Calling drug smugglers “terrorists” or claiming without evidence that they are transporting chemical weapons does not create a state of armed conflict. It creates a constitutional problem.

[The Felon's] President Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to conduct lethal strikes outside a declared conflict raises profound constitutional questions. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress, not the chief executive, the power to declare war and authorize the use of military force.

Labeling narcotics traffickers as “narco-terrorists” and launching missile strikes without congressional authorization or judicial oversight stretches executive power beyond its legal bounds.

The Founding Fathers understood the dangers of allowing a president to wage undeclared wars. So did the framers of the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which requires that military action be tied to either congressional notification/approval or legitimate acts of national self-defense. Neither applies here.

And now the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group has entered the Caribbean Sea – a breathtaking escalation for an operation the White House still insists is merely law enforcement. Carrier groups are sent to deter hostile states or prepare for war. To deploy one without congressional authorization pushes the United States closer to an undeclared conflict with no debate and no plan. . . . This is not a partisan debate; it is a constitutional one. The rule of law, not political convenience, must govern how America wields lethal force.

Operationally, these strikes make America less safe. By destroying the vessels and everyone aboard, we eliminate not only the evidence of what those boats were actually doing, but also the intelligence that could be gathered from arrests and interrogations. In doing so, we lose legitimacy – the very currency that sustains international cooperation.

If Britain no longer believes that our operations meet international legal standards, others will not be far behind – and the United States will be left chasing shadows without allies or credibility.

Worse yet, autocratic regimes will see this as an invitation to stretch the bounds of international law even further in order to strike at their perceived enemies.

Trump's administration argues that these strikes will save lives by cutting off the flow of drugs killing Americans. The data presents another story.

Nearly 70% of overdose deaths involve fentanyl, not cocaine. And fentanyl isn’t coming from Venezuela or small “go-fast” boats. It’s coming from Asia, through Mexico, by land.

Killing alleged traffickers in the Caribbean will not stop overdoses in Ohio, but it will erode the moral credibility that has long defined the United States as both powerful and principled.

When the legal justifications for lethal campaigns, especially when the targets are unarmed, are cloudy at best, constantly shifting and widely decried, we dishonor our men and women in uniform.

Justice is not achieved through explosions. It’s achieved through evidence, law and accountability. We can be tough on traffickers without becoming what we claim to oppose.

When America trades the rule of law for the illusion of strength, it doesn’t just sink boats. It sinks its own legitimacy.

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Trump Faces Realities of Aging and Signs of Dementia

Remember how the Felon raged about Joe Biden being too old for office and claimed Biden suffered from dementia in the run up to the 2024 elections?  He called Biden "sleepy Joe".  Now, back in office himself, the Felon increasingly appears to be dozing off during meetings and at some public events.  As for speaking in coherent sentences, this has never been the Felon's strong suit as he speaks at about an eighth grade  level or less, but his incoherence has increased.  For someone incredibly vain and self-impressed, it's a touch subject and the Felon had a fit over a piece in the New York Times that focused on his physical and mental failings. The reality is that even the best of us start losing some of our level of energy and strength as we move into our 70's and at 79, the Felon is definitely no exception and the signs of aging and declining mental acuity are showing.  Here are highlights from the piece in the New York Times that sent the Felon raging:

The day before Halloween, President Trump landed at Joint Base Andrews after spending nearly a week in Japan and South Korea. He was then whisked to the White House, where he passed out candy to trick-or-treaters. Allies crowed over the [Felon's] president’s stamina: “This man has been nonstop for DAYS!” one wrote online.

A week later, [the Felon] Mr. Trump appeared to doze off during an event in the Oval Office.

With headline-grabbing posts on social media, combative interactions with reporters and speeches full of partisan red meat, Mr. Trump can project round-the-clock energy, virility and physical stamina. . . . . The reality is more complicated: [the Felon] Mr. Trump, 79, is the oldest person to be elected to the presidency, and he is aging. To pre-empt any criticism about his age, he often compares himself to President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who at 82 was the oldest person to hold the office, and whose aides took measures to shield his growing frailty from the public, including by tightly managing his appearances.

[N]early a year into his second term, Americans see [the Felon] Mr. Trump less than they used to, according to a New York Times analysis of his schedule. Mr. Trump has fewer public events on his schedule and is traveling domestically much less than he did by this point during his first year in office, in 2017, although he is taking more foreign trips.

He also keeps a shorter public schedule than he used to. Most of his public appearances fall between noon and 5 p.m., on average.

And when he is in public, occasionally, his battery shows signs of wear. During an Oval Office event that began around noon on Nov. 6, Mr. Trump sat behind his desk for about 20 minutes as executives standing around him talked about weight-loss drugs.

At one point, Mr. Trump’s eyelids drooped until his eyes were almost closed, and he appeared to doze on and off for several seconds. At another point, he opened his eyes and looked toward a line of journalists watching him. He stood up only after a guest who was standing near him fainted and collapsed.

Mr. Trump has prompted additional questions about his health by sharing news about medical procedures he has had, but not details about them. While in Asia, Mr. Trump revealed that he had undergone magnetic resonance imaging at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in early October.

“I have no idea what they analyzed,” Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One recently after he was again asked about his M.R.I. “But whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well, and they said that I had as good a result as they’ve ever seen.”

[The Felon] Mr. Trump also applies makeup to a bruise on the back of his right hand, adding speculation about a medical condition that his physician and aides say is caused by taking aspirin and shaking so many hands. In September, the bruising on his hand, coupled with swollen ankles, caused observers on the internet to speculate wildly about his health. . . . After this article published, Mr. Trump called it a “hit piece” in a post on social media.

For years, concerns and questions about Mr. Trump’s health have often been met with obfuscation or minimal explanation from the people around him. Mr. Trump’s physicians have not taken questions from reporters in years, including when he was seriously ill with Covid in 2020. There were no medical briefings held after an assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pa., last summer.

Many of the facts that concerned critics about Mr. Trump’s physical health during his first term are present now. He does not get regular exercise, in part because he has a long-held theory that people are born with a finite amount of energy and that vigorous activity can deplete that reserve, like a battery. He enjoys red meat and is known to eat McDonald’s by the sackful.

According to his physician, however, he has lost weight. In 2020, Mr. Trump tipped the scales at 244 pounds, a weight formally deemed obese for his 6-foot-3 frame.

The number of Mr. Trump’s total official appearances has decreased by 39 percent. In 2017, Mr. Trump held 1,688 official events between Jan. 20 and Nov. 25 of that year. For that same time period this year, Mr. Trump has appeared in 1,029 official events.

Mr. Trump has long rambled in his speeches; during his 2024 campaign and in his second term, the meandering has often been noticeable. He can veer off script to share stories that are sometimes riddled with untruths, such as his false claim that his uncle, John Trump, had taught the domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski at M.I.T.

Presidents, in general, try to paint the best picture possible of their health. Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, said that Mr. Trump was following examples set by his predecessors, including his most recent one.

“The people around him are similar to Biden’s aides,” Mr. Dallek said. “They would talk as if we’re living in a little bit of a fantasy world. Trump, in that way, with the help of his aides and his doctors have created this fiction about his health to hide the hard, cold truth that he is 79 and one of the oldest people to ever occupy the Oval Office.”

Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman, who served as a White House physician from 2000 to 2013 and wrote a book about presidential health care, said that [the Felon's] Mr. Trump’s schedule contrasts with those held by George W. Bush, who was 54 when he took office, and Barack Obama, who was 47. Both built exercise into their daily schedules; Mr. Bush was in the Oval Office by 6:45 a.m. every day, Dr. Kuhlman said, and Mr. Obama would arrive by 10 a.m., though his days often went later, until 7 p.m. or so, when he would meet his family for dinner.

“They show him as effective,” Dr. Kuhlman said of Mr. Trump’s aides, “but every time he’s in the Oval Office, he’s sedentary.”

Dr. Kuhlman added that it is “commendable” that, at his age, Mr. Trump still boards Air Force One using a long flight of stairs, “but you don’t know what he does as soon as he walks in the door.”

With his approval rating falling among voters and more Americans reporting dissatisfaction with the economy, Mr. Trump’s allies have urged him to direct his focus back to domestic affairs. The president’s aides say they expect him to do more travel through the United States ahead of the midterms, but Mr. Trump is also considering a trip to Davos, Switzerland, to attend a conference alongside global leaders and corporate titans in the winter.

It will likely be years before we learn the full truth about the Felon's failing health and mental cognition.

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The Felon's and Hegseth’s Hysterical Self-Incriminating Reaction

One never ending aspect of the Felon's lawless regime is that it always accuses other's of what it is itself doing.   The latest example is the unhinged reaction accusing six congressional Democrats of sedition for merely stating what the law is and has long has been: servicemembers' first loyalty and obligation is to act in accordance with the U.S. Constitution and the law and to NOT obey illegal orders from superior officers.  Making the shrieks of sedition from the Felon is his own attempted coup attempt in 2021 that should have landed him in prison or worse.  Add in the extra-judicial killing of individuals all small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific which many believe are illegal and the Felon - along with his likely alcoholic Secretary of Defense - is the last individual to talk about sedition.  Indeed, in the disturbed mind of America's would be dictator, anything he orders is "legal" because the monarch has commanded it. It's perhaps ironic that the movie "Nuremberg" is currently in theaters and that the movie should be required viewing for members of the Felon's Mafia-like regime who need to be enlightened that the defense of merely "following orders" will not save one from prison or perhaps even execution. The Felon, Hegseth, and the likes of Stephen Miller ignore the reality that the Felon will not be in power for ever and that down the road their cruel and illegal actions may well come back to haunt them.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at this self-incriminating behavior (another article argues that Mark Kelly, not Hegseth should be secretary of Defense):

When a group of Democratic military veterans who serve in Congress released an ad last week urging service members to refuse orders if they are illegal, the Trump administration could have deployed an obvious defense: What are you talking about? We’re not issuing or planning any illegal orders.

Instead, the administration has opted for a rebuttal that is considerably more self-incriminating. President Donald Trump [the Felon] swiftly took to social media to call out these lawmakers for “seditious behavior” that is “punishable by death.” “It is insurrection,” the White House adviser Stephen Miller charged. “It’s a general call for rebellion.”

In light of the administration’s undeclared military campaign in the Caribbean, which has included extralegal strikes against boats that are allegedly smuggling drugs, it might have made sense to let this controversy die down. Instead, Pete Hegseth’s self-styled Department of War took to X yesterday to announce that Senator Mark Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot and one of the Democrats who appeared in the ad, will be investigated for a possible court-martial owing to “serious allegations of misconduct.” The post goes on to remind military retirees that they are still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibits “actions intended to interfere with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces.”

It bears noting that the ad does not call for ignoring legal orders. It’s merely a public-service announcement reminding members of the military and the intelligence community of their right to avoid implication in crimes. The ad can be interpreted as a call for rebellion only if the orders coming from above are in fact illegal.

The problem is that the president seems to think that an action is [legal] just as long as he calls for it. Trump ran for office in 2016 openly and repeatedly calling for the military to illegally torture prisoners for intelligence purposes. “If I say, ‘Do it,’ they’re going to do it,” he insisted. Though he later conceded that the U.S. is in fact bound by “laws and treaties,” he regularly pardoned service members in his first term who were credibly accused or convicted of war crimes, often against the advice of his own military leadership.

In 2019, Trump reportedly told the head of Customs and Border Protection that he would pardon him for crimes he committed in service of Trump’s immigration-enforcement agenda. He has devoted much of his second term to making good on promises to pardon allies imprisoned for crimes committed in his service. Ed Martin, the U.S. pardon attorney at the Justice Department, publicly articulated this attitude when he claimed, “No MAGA left behind.”

In Hegseth, Trump has found a willing partner. In his book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth argues that the military should enjoy a wide berth to commit war crimes. He came away from his time at Guantánamo Bay firm in the belief that people detained by the military do not deserve due process, and dismisses “the debate about the ‘rights’ of assholes (I mean, ‘detainees’) at Gitmo.” Hegseth goes on to mock the notion that wars should follow rules: “Our enemies should get bullets, not attorneys.”

In sum, the ad’s premise—that the Trump administration’s commitment to the law is less than unshakable—is well-founded.

Why the administration has responded so hysterically to this ad is obvious. Trump and Hegseth do not merely believe that they should be free to give illegal orders and that the rank and file should have to follow them. They are also keen to use the power of the state to suppress political dissent.

In his first term, Trump was rebuffed by top military officials when he suggested the military might shoot peaceful protesters. In his second term, he has placed the Defense Department under Hegseth, whose only qualification is a fanatical partisan loyalty. Hegseth has proceeded to carry out a purge that is driving out suspected non-loyalists, stripping the military of talent and sending a message to remaining officers that the faintest signs of political disloyalty could end their careers.

Trump’s purge of the armed forces and his “l’etat, c’est moi” approach to the law all spring from a single impulse to merge the state with his own interests. An ad instructing members of the military that they serve the United States and its Constitution, and don’t have to act as Donald Trump’s capos, strikes at the heart of his ethos. His demand to punish anybody who merely endorses the Constitution vindicates the charge that he is the document’s greatest enemy.

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The False Equivalences That Prop Up the Felon

For years now this blog has complained about the false equivalencies far too much of the mainstream media employed when comparing the Felon to other politicians  or contrasting Republican reverse Robin Hood policies with Democrat initiatives. Similarly, news outlets give the Felon a platform from which to lie incessantly without ever pointing out to viewers the falsity of the lies spewing from the Felon's mouth.  Then, of course, there is Fox News - a platform that paid billions to settle defamation cases for untruths it pushed and admitted it was "entertainment" as opposed to news in open court - and its imitators who falsely promote story lines that are utterly false and/or not supported by objective fact.  The end result is that the Felon too often is depicted as "another politician" when in reality no president, even Richard Nixon, ever engaged in such unlawful and abnormal conduct.  The sooner the Felon is routinely exposed for what he is, the sooner America may recover from the damage the Felon is wreaking. A column in the New York Times looks at some of these false equivalencies as opposed to objective reality and normal political norms.  Here are excerpts:

While [the Felon] President Trump certainly has supporters who adore him and feel no need to justify that, he survives — and too often prospers — with the crucial help of voters who basically regard him as the lesser of evils.

They tell themselves something like this: Trump has shortcomings, but those are merely mirrors of the corruption and craziness on the other side. Almost any accusation leveled at him is lodged as easily — and often more righteously — against his opponents. In a government of bad apples, he’s no mealier than the rest.

But those claims insist on a symmetry that doesn’t exist. They’re equivalences not merely false but fantastical. They ignore the severity, the prevalence, the consequences of the misconduct in question. Imagine defending a suitor who’s a serial arsonist because the other guy has a jaywalking citation; both bachelors are lawbreakers, after all. That’s the perverse moral arithmetic of more than a few Trump apologists.

I find two of their rationalizations especially preposterous, starting with this: Trump is merely using his Justice Department as President Joe Biden used his and persecuting opponents in the fashion that Biden did.

That isn’t some random, cherry-picked absurdity. That’s practically every hour of Fox News. Trump’s supposed mimicry of Biden when it comes to politically motivated investigations and prosecutions is more than an article of faith on the right. It’s the dogma that washes Trump’s authoritarianism clean.

And it’s bunk. I don’t recall evidence that Biden ordered the prosecutors who filed charges against Trump to do so. In contrast, Trump’s commandments that Attorney General Pam Bondi and her unctuous underlings go after James Comey, Letitia James and others are a matter of Truth Social record.

Show me where, during Biden’s presidency, you find anything analogous to Trump’s purge of Justice Department lawyers who have failed or might fail to quench his thirst for vengeance. Anything like the series of events by which Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was pushed out of his job in September after he hadn’t produced the indictments against Comey and James that Trump so fervently desired.

Trump installed, in Siebert’s place, one of his personal lawyers, Lindsey Halligan, who had zero experience as a prosecutor. She raced to indict Comey before the statute of limitations ran out. That heedless sprint entailed an embarrassment of errors and a mockery of jurisprudence . . . . Try to locate Halligan’s doppelgänger in the Biden administration. Best of luck.

Trump’s launderers insist that partisanship, not wrongdoing, motivated the legal cases against him. To accept that magical thinking, you must erase the photographs of classified documents keeping company with a commode at Mar-a-Lago. You must delete the recording of Trump telling Brad Raffensperger, the top election official in Georgia, to figure out some way to reverse Biden’s victory there in 2020. And you must persuade yourself that Trump’s emphatic proclamations that the 2020 election was being stolen, his haranguing of former Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the election results and his support of Big Lie conspiracy theorists were just politics as usual. That’s a sequence of moral calisthenics so arduous they burn more calories than an hour at CrossFit.

They’re good training for the other juicy rationalization that most infuriates me: Trump’s grifting merely echoes the graft of his predecessor, who was not only a senator, vice president and then president but also the don of the “Biden crime family,” in the cracked MAGA parlance.

It’s true that several of Biden’s relatives prospered in ways that surely traded on his name; . . . . But it’s a lie to say that Trump is simply doing likewise — that the main difference between him and other wealth-greasing, self-dealing politicians is the zeal with which Trump haters scrutinize and vilify him.

No, the main difference is how relentless, boundless and unabashed Trump’s monetization and merchandising of his political station are. In an article in The New Yorker in August, David D. Kirkpatrick estimated that Trump’s businesses, business associates and projects tied to him or his family members had pulled in some $3.4 billion during his time in the White House. But even that dollar figure doesn’t do justice to the crass details and to the ancillary ugliness.

Trump and his kin are all over the Middle East all the time, immersed in high-ticket real-estate projects and not so much ignorant of the conflicts of interest as intent on them. Only chumps let such niceties impede them. Champs realize when they’ve been given the key to a gilded till and hasten to rob it.

Some Trump supporters undoubtedly grasp his greed but deem it a small price to pay for a less porous border, for less punishing regulations, for a stand against progressive excess. Others just aren’t paying attention. We political analysts never adjust sufficiently for the percentage of voters who are so busy, so distracted or so uninterested that they have little idea what politicians are really up to — the good, the bad, the blundering, the plundering.

But then there are the voters who respond to Trump’s antics and outrages — whether those involve executive overreach, defiance of Congress, brazen pardons, suppression of dissent — as familiar transgressions in festive new attire. Hardly. They’re more and worse than that. But cynicism and tribal loyalty have a way of replacing discernment with delusion.

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Republicans Have No Response to Skyrocketing Obamacare Premiums

When Republicans gleefully passed the wrongly named "big beautiful bill" earlier this year in order to give massive tax cuts to the very wealthy and large corporations they knew the bill would savage funding for SNAP, Medicaid and cause Obamacare premiums to soar and that many would lose healthcare coverage either due to slashing Medicaid funding or skyrocketing Obamacare premiums many would be unable to pay.  The GOP mindset was one of celebration and indifference to those being severely harmed.  Now, after the GOP losses in the November elections all across the country, more of the MAGA base whining that the Felon has not lowered prices - his tariffs have increased prices - and millions now facing huge health insurance premium increases, some in the GOP are belatedly waking up to the reality that the 2026 mid-term elections could prove disastrous to GOP control of the House and the Senate. As the steamroller approaches, congressional Republicans still have absolutely no plan of how to deal with the soaring premiums they set in motion.  A piece at Politico looks at the GOP's lack of any plan to address what will be a crisis for millions of Americans. Here are highlights:

Republicans have said for months they had plenty of time to figure out what to do about Obamacare subsidies expiring at year’s end. During a six-week government shutdown that ended last week, they said they’d talk about it after. Now, with five weeks to go before New Year’s, they’re scrambling and divided.

Moderates and lawmakers in competitive seats are anxiously throwing bills together, worried about the political fallout that could await them if the subsidies expire and premiums skyrocket. Other Republicans simply want to have some bill to offer when the Senate votes next month on a likely Democratic plan to extend the subsidies as is. Republicans rejected that when Democrats offered it during the shutdown, but agreed to hold the vote.

Republicans in the Senate are latching onto President Donald Trump’s last-minute idea to send the money directly to consumers. But they’re finding it hard to build consensus with such a tight timeframe, and their frustration is showing. POLITICO’s new poll this week found Democrats retain a solid edge on health care affordability going into the 2026 midterms in which both House and Senate control are at stake. “I want all the Obamacare subsidies to be gone,” retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters Thursday. . . . . Republicans have opposed Obamacare from the start, and some disagree that they will be blamed for major premium spikes. But other GOP lawmakers, especially in the House, are stressing about the political fallout.

POLITICO’s November poll of 2,098 U.S. adults gave Democrats a nine-point edge as the party more trusted to bring down health care costs, with 42 percent favoring Democrats, 33 percent the Republicans and the rest trusting neither or having no opinion. The poll, from London-based Public First, had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

Democrats, for their part, remain unified behind a straight-up extension of the increased subsidies, which made health insurance plans free for some and also offered subsidies for the first time to people earning more than 400 percent of the poverty level. Democrats shut down the government in October to demand an extension — their party had set the Dec. 31 expiration date in a 2022 law for budgetary reasons — but eight in their caucus relented last week on the condition that the Senate vote on the issue. . . . . Wednesday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing on affordable health care suggested limited prospects for a bipartisan deal.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) likened the debate to that which accompanied the original Affordable Care Act in 2009. No Republicans voted for it. The committee Democrats spent their time defending Obamacare on the merits, and Republicans did little but attack it.

Democrats had hoped that President Donald Trump might step in and urge at least a temporary extension of the subsidies. Instead, he’s continued to blast Obamacare — which he unsuccessfully sought to repeal in his first term. . . . . He blasted the subsidies as a handout to “BIG, FAT, RICH INSURANCE COMPANIES.”

Republicans in the Senate have taken up Trump’s charge.

Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who’s chair of the health committee and has a seat on Finance, has floated converting funding for the enhanced subsidy into a health savings account Americans can purchase if they opt for a bronze tier Obamacare plan, which can have higher cost-sharing such as a large deductible. An HSA can help cover deductibles, but consumers would still have to pay the premium. The unsubsidized price for the bronze plans varies by state, but runs from a few to several hundred dollars a month for each person in a household.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said he’ll hold the vote on a subsidy extension in the second week of December.

It remains unclear what the terms of the Democratic bill will be, whether a permanent extension or a temporary one, but Republicans want to have their own plan to offer at the same time.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) proposed a bill Thursday that lets the subsidies expire and enables states to get a waiver to offer “Trump Freedom Accounts.” The accounts would resemble HSAs, but could be used to pay premiums. States that opt in could redirect Obamacare subsidies at the original 2010 levels into the accounts. Scott’s proposal would also enable insurers to sell plans across state lines, long a GOP goal. Democrats oppose that, arguing it undermines state autonomy in regulating health insurance.

Some Republican senators told POLITICO that despite the scrambling on their side, they aren’t worried. “Obamacare has failed Americans,” said Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the party’s second-ranking leader.

Vulnerable House Republicans don’t sound so confident.

A quartet of bipartisan representatives introduced legislation Friday to extend the subsidies for two years, but include an income cap and other changes. The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus is exploring its own legislation to extend the subsidies and expand flexibility for HSAs. The bill could also include a stalled bipartisan overhaul of rules governing drug middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers. Many lawmakers blame them, in part, for America’s high drug prices.

A group of thirteen vulnerable lawmakers reached out to House leadership during the shutdown about the importance of an extension.

But House GOP leaders are cool to one and have backed their Senate counterparts in preferring a new approach to helping Americans pay for health care.

Conservatives are especially locked in against an extension. Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) said Tuesday the party should pursue a budget process that makes it possible for Senate legislation to skirt a Democratic filibuster in order to make changes to Obamacare. He said that would be better than trying to work with Democrats who cannot come up with “a plan that is competitive, transparent and actually reduces costs.”

But any package using that process, known as reconciliation, would be hard to get done before the end of the year. It took months for Republicans to use reconciliation to pass their One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July.

Open enrollment has already started for Obamacare plans and consumers are facing an average increase of 114 percent to their out-of-pocket premiums, according to an analysis from the health policy research group KFF.

Some House Republicans are even taking Democrats’ side. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) said he preferred Republicans agree to a one-year extension if they can’t come up with something better.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a moderate who is retiring after this term and backs a bill calling for a two-year extension of the subsidies, predicted Republicans will need 60 votes in the Senate for any legislation and suggested making a deal.

“We’ve got to have a better long-term plan. I don’t really want people’s premiums to go up,” Bacon said.

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The Intellectual and Moral Decline of the American Right

As I have often noted, I grew up in a family that overall was Republican and for eight years I held a Republican City Committee position in Virginia Beach. I left the Republican Party well over two decades ago for interrelated reasons: (i) the rise of the wrongly named "Christian Right" within the GOP and (ii) the increasingly anti-LGBT rhetoric and the racism, hate and division that is a hallmark of white evangelicals by the larger party.  Since my departure from the GOP, the moral collapse of the party has accelerated, pushed by the quest for power by evangelicals and their self-styled, often self-enriching leaders, and ultimately the party's embrace of Donald Trump, a/k/a the Felon on this blog, a man utterly devoid of morality and basic decency.  Now, the party is slowly embracing neo-Nazi, admirers of Hitler, and advocates for the position that segregation was good for blacks.  While some have objected to this embrace of such ugliness, the Felon has stated that he is fine with such far right extremists.  A lengthy piece in The Atlantic by a former Republican with past ties to the Heritage Foundation looks at the GOP's rejection of both intellect and expertise and seemingly all moral standards (for disclosure, I knew Kay James who is mentioned in his piece during my years in the GOP). Here are excerpts:

Last month, Tucker Carlson, the host of one of the country’s most popular podcasts, interviewed Nick Fuentes, a white-nationalist influencer, for more than two hours. The two men got along famously, and it was little wonder why. Carlson has become a fierce and obsessive critic of Israel; he has interviewed a Holocaust revisionist and said that “Christian Zionists” have “been seized by this brain virus.”

Not everyone on the right was pleased. So in the aftermath of the Carlson-Fuentes conversation, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, put out a video defending Carlson, a “close friend” of the institution, against the “venomous coalition attacking him.” Heritage’s proper role, according to Roberts, is to “focus on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right.” . . . . What Roberts didn’t anticipate is the backlash he received, from both within and outside Heritage.

“An old political poison is growing on the new right, led by podcasters and internet opportunists who are preoccupied with the Jews,” the conservative editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote. “It is spreading wider and faster than we thought, and it has even found an apologist in Kevin Roberts, president of the venerable Heritage Foundation.”

Roberts, clearly unprepared for the outrage, backtracked, first blaming his staff for what happened but eventually admitting, “I made a mistake and I let you down and I let down this institution. And I am sorry for that. Period. Full stop.” Roberts, however, has yet to utter a critical word about Tucker Carlson.

The Heritage Foundation is as good an institution as any in which to study the intellectual and moral decline of the American right. Founded in 1973 by Edwin Feulner, Paul Weyrich, and Joseph Coors, it became the most influential think tank in America in a matter of a few years. . . . After the Ronald Reagan years the influence of Heritage waned, though it continued to be a potent political and ideological force in politics, and especially within conservatism.  

But in the mid–Barack Obama years, Heritage, to align itself with the Tea Party movement, began to lean hard into populism. A conservative intellectual who is a keen observer of the happenings on the right, and who asked for anonymity in order to speak candidly, told me that in the process, Heritage “changed altogether their basic conception of what the institution's purpose was.” In place of policy research and advocacy, “they transformed themselves into a kind of grassroots populist group that is fundamentally hostile to the institutions of our government.” . . . Heritage dictated populist messaging to its policy teams rather than letting them help policy makers find more effective ways to govern.

In 2015, as Donald Trump began his march toward the Republican presidential nomination, Heritage became even more radicalized.

“The institution came to organize itself around Trump’s person rather than any set of ideas he might usefully advance,” the conservative intellectual told me. “They were unwilling to criticize him, which was never their approach to prior Republican presidents, even Ronald Reagan, and essentially forced their scholars to endorse whatever the administration was doing or else keep quiet.”

Kay James, who became president in 2018, made efforts to restrain some of these excesses, but to little avail. Heritage viewed its role as assisting Trump in his transformation of the right, to the point that by the end of Trump’s first term, Heritage was doing all it could to provide cover for Trump in the aftermath of the January 6 assault on the Capitol and had embraced absurd conspiracy theories about a stolen election.

James left in 2021. Heritage’s new president, Kevin Roberts, pushed the institution in an even more populist, MAGA-friendly direction. By 2024, it was clear that Trump would win the GOP nomination for a second time; there would be no daylight between him and Heritage. The latter would conform to the wishes of the former, under any and all circumstances, even if it meant jettisoning conservative principles.

Something else was happening as well. In 2021, the Heritage Foundation allowed Tucker Carlson, then the most popular cable-news host in the country, to gain a “stranglehold” over it, as the journalist Michael Warren has detailed in The Dispatch. As a result, according to Warren, “Heritage has institutionally abandoned many conservative principles—free enterprise, American leadership on the world stage, constitutionalism—in favor of a grab bag of positions that track both with the priorities of the Trump administration and the particular whims of Carlson.”

The criticisms directed at Roberts for his defense of Carlson came from politicians, historians, and public intellectuals; from pundits, magazine editors, radio-talk-show hosts, and podcasters. It was as if a light switch had been flipped. For a moment at least, large parts of the American right wanted to publicly distance themselves from Fuentes—a white supremacist, an anti-Semite, and a defender of Hitler—and from those who promoted him. A decade into the Trump era, it turns out that there is still a faint moral pulse to be found on the right, a belief that some lines shouldn’t be crossed.

But even this dim hope comes with qualifiers. For one thing, speaking out against a white nationalist who praises Hitler and Stalin, who says “a lot of women want to be raped” and who insists that segregation was “better for them, it’s better for us,” seems like a pretty low bar to clear.

But it’s actually worse than that. In 2022, Trump hosted Fuentes and Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort. A source familiar with the dinner conversation told Axios that Trump “seemed very taken” with Fuentes.

“There was a lot of fawning back and forth,” Axios reported. At one point during the dinner, Trump turned to Ye and said of Fuentes, “I really like this guy. He gets me.” I’m sure he does.

Sunday, Trump said he did not have a problem with Carlson interviewing Fuentes to “get the word out” so that people could make up their mind. When asked, “What role do you think Tucker Carlson should play in the Republican Party and the conservative movement?” Trump responded, “Well, I found him to be good. I mean, he said good things about me over the years. He’s—I think he’s good.” Fuentes, meanwhile, sent out a four-word message on social media: “Thank you Mr. President!”

Trump, then, continues to provide cover to the worst among us, and the voices of conscience who screwed up the courage to speak out against a podcaster and a Holocaust denier, and even the president of a think tank, do what they have always done, which is to shrink back when it matters most. When it comes to taking on Trump—the dark, dominant figure in MAGA world—the majority go sotto voce. That’s a fight they’d rather leave to others.

The reason Trump has been the dominant figure in world politics for the past decade rests in part on the MAGA true believers. They have a cultlike devotion to Trump, as unshakable as anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. Their moral blindness is almost incomprehensible to me. From what I can tell, they live in a twilight zone, a place of unreason, detached from reality, at least regarding politics. It’s a world where black is white, where up is down, and where Trump is good.

But at least as responsible for the Trump era are the people who knew better, or should have known better; who had concerns about Trump but kept them to themselves; and who felt most comfortable embracing the mindset of “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

When confronted with inconvenient facts, they reject them. When Trump does cruel and wicked things, they ignore them. When they need Bible verses to justify their support for Trump, they find them. When reminded about their criticisms of Bill Clinton for his ethical lapses, they dismiss them. There is always a reason to stick with Trump, to vote for him, to justify his actions, to look the other way when needed. However bad Trump was, they assured themselves and others, the Democrats were far, far worse.

I long ago lost track of the number of people I know on the right who have expressed frustration with my warnings about Trump. One of them, a former Republican member of Congress who served during the Reagan era, wrote to me on December 7, 2020, after I published an article titled “Trump’s Most Malicious Legacy,” and told me this: “Advice from a friend. You need to liberate yourself from Trump hatred.”

So we are where we are. Those who aided and abetted an arsonist are now expressing shock that the city is turning to ashes. The very people whose support for Trump’s reelection paved the way for the rise of what they call the “fascistic, neo-Nazi, radical right” are now in a panic. People who said, in the aftermath of Trump’s 2024 victory, that this “could be an emerging new golden age for the country” are now warning that the GOP is “being eaten by its radicals.” Those who were “unbelievably relieved” that Trump was reelected now lament “the new radicalism racing through the young Right” and warn that young Christians are “neck-deep in anti-Semitism.” They’ve recognized that “the Groyper thing”—a term associated with Fuentes and his followers—“has infiltrated young conservative Washington networks to a significant degree.”

Unnerved by this, some people on the right are now, belatedly, trying to draw boundaries. . . . . But what boundaries can you effectively draw when the movement you are part of has for a decade embraced the most unethical and transgressive political figure in American history?

Martin Niemöller was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. In 1920, after having served in World War I, he decided to follow the path of his father into the ministry and began seminary training at the University of Münster.

Niemöller’s sermons reflected his politics, which were strongly nationalist. The year that Hitler came to power, 1933, he wrote that the Weimar Republic had been “years of darkness.” Hitler would lead a national revival, Niemöller believed. The führer would return Germany to Christian morals, act as a bulwark against secularism, and usher in a new and glorious era.

But Niemöller, despite holding anti-Semitic views, soon broke with the Deutsche Christen, or “German Christians,” a pro-Nazi faction within the German Protestant Church, because of their interference in Church matters and attacks on “non-Aryan” Church members.

His imprisonment by the Nazis was an inflection point; in 1945, he was a prominent figure in the creation of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, which confessed the Church’s collective guilt for its insufficient opposition to the Nazi regime.

In a sermon a year later, Niemöller said, “We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries.” This guilt, he continued, “lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom. For in our world and in our name have these things been done.”

In that same year, 1946, Niemöller shared words that would soon become immortalized. “First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist,” he said. “Then they came for the trade unions and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”

America is not Nazi Germany and Trump is not Hitler. But one can act in ways that are a good deal less malevolent than the Nazis and still do an awful lot of harm. Niemöller’s words can apply to nations quite different from Germany in the 1930s and ’40s. And Niemöller’s warning about passivity and indifference, about the dangers of silence and inaction in the face of injustice, about going along to get along and speaking out too late, is enduring.

The Trump era is far from over. There will be many more occasions on which American conservatives will face Niemöller’s test, and be asked whether they have the courage to stand opposed to Nazism and Hitler apologists. And those who criticized Carlson and Fuentes this time will have the chance to speak out again, and to speak out against the president for the first time. Perhaps condemning his call for the death of Democratic lawmakers could be a good place to start.

It may or may not be too late to salvage the American right and the Republican Party. But it’s never too late to speak against cruelty and lawlessness, and to speak up for justice and compassion and human dignity.

 For my former Republican colleagues who remained blindly in the GOP, it's time they realize that our differences are not matters of politics but instead differences of morality.  

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