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This blog explores politics from a liberal/left perspective but also deals heavily with conspiracy theories and various unusual topics. Although I started this blog to research 9/11, my most pressing issue of concern now is anthropogenic climate change.

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The NY Times Certifies It: Trump is ‘Easily the Worst President in U.S. History’

 Thomas Edsall in the NYT:

The damage President Trump has inflicted on the United States and the world is so enormous and wide-ranging that it is hard to grasp. 

It runs the gamut from public and private institutions to core democratic customs and traditions, from the legal system to universities, from innocent targets of fraud to those duped into believing vaccines do more harm than good. 

One way to bring home the depth of Trump’s callousness is to look at a specific case. In May 2025, Anjee Davis, the chief executive of Fight Colorectal Cancer, a patient advocacy group, told CBS News:

We have a member who is being treated for Stage IV colorectal cancer. She had just qualified to enter a clinical trial that was going to be her last-chance effort to slow the spread of her cancer. Her trial was about to start when N.I.H. funding was pulled overnight, and the trial was canceled. Davis replied to my inquiry about the case by email. “This patient has since passed away without receiving the clinical trial she was counting on,” she wrote. “What we will never know,” Davis added, “is whether that trial could have given her more time with her children.” 

I have described in earlier columns bits and pieces of Trump’s destructiveness, but the list grows daily. Projections suggest there will be millions of dead men, women and children as a result of his budget cuts, which were made without direct congressional approval. 

A study published in The Lancet, the London-based medical journal, found that Trump administration cuts in U.S.A.I.D. funding “would result in approximately 1,776,539 all-age deaths and 689,900 deaths in children younger than 5 years” in 2025 alone. “Over the remainder of the period,” the study continues, “the complete defunding of U.S.A.I.D. would cause an estimated 2,450,000 all-age deaths annually, leading to a total of 14,051,750 excess all-age deaths and 4,537,157 excess under-5 deaths by 2030.” 

There are the fraud victims who will never get court-ordered restitution because Trump pardoned the guilty. In a June 2025 report, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee found that “Trump’s pardons cheat victims out of an astounding $1.3 billion in restitution and fines, allowing fraudsters, tax evaders, drug traffickers to keep ill-gotten gains.” 

It doesn’t stop there. America can thank the president for environmental deregulation that could sicken and kill people by the tens or even hundreds of thousands.

Everything happens in such a rapid and scattershot way with Trump that it is easy to forget what happened as recently as last year. 

An Associated Press investigation published in 2025 found that Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency was seeking to eliminate or weaken “at least 30 major rules that seek to protect air and water and reduce emissions that cause climate change.” If successful, the E.P.A. would gut pollution rules that were estimated, according to The Associated Press, to save “more than 30,000 lives annually.” 

At the same time, the administration has been canceling funding for lifesaving scientific and medical research. In November, JAMA Internal Medicine published “Clinical Trials Affected by Research Grant Terminations at the National Institutes of Health.” It said that “in the first half of 2025, the N.I.H. terminated grants supporting 383 unique clinical trials, affecting 74,311 individuals.”  

In an accompanying commentary, two researchers, Dr. Teva D. Brender and Dr. Cary P. Gross, wrote about the JAMA study: 

There is a more direct and sobering impact of premature and scientifically unjustifiable trial terminations: the violation of foundational ethical principles of human participant research. First and foremost, it is betrayal of the fundamental principles of informed consent for research” and “participants who have been exposed to an intervention in the context of a trial may be harmed by its premature withdrawal or inadequate follow-up and monitoring for adverse effects. 

In the October 2025 issue of Nature Medicine, Marianne Guenot reported that “at least 148 clinical trials have been impacted, with over 138,000 patients due to be enrolled or already enrolled,” as a result of cancellations. 

The word “impacted” falls far short of what’s needed to describe the plight of those 138,000 patients. 

In their steadfast disregard for scientific study, Trump and his appointees have purposely elevated unfounded fears of vaccines, effectively guaranteeing more childhood illness and infection epidemics. 

In addition to policies inducing sickness and death, Trump has undermined America’s ability to compete with China on clean energy. 

In September, CarbonCredits.com, an energy news platform, published “The A.I. Energy War: How China’s Solar and Nuclear Outshine the U.S.,” summing up the problem nicely. 

“China is on track for 1,400 GW, while the U.S. will reach only about 350 GW.” 

“China plans to add 212 gigawatts of solar and 51 GW of wind, compared to less than 100 GW combined” in the United States. 

“Offshore wind: China already has 42.7 gigawatts installed, compared with the U.S.’s Empire Wind project (816 megawatts in Phase 1, with a potential expansion to 2.1 gigawatts).” 

Trump makes no secret of his disdain for renewable energy and the concept of climate change. In a speech in September to the U.N. General Assembly, the president said climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He added: 

All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their country’s fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. 

Trump’s threats to pull out of NATO and his tariffs, not to mention his endless carping against and routine faulting of European leaders, have alienated allies who have stood with us for more than seven decades. 

Over the Trump years, European views of America have nose-dived. On April 8, Politico published the results of a survey under the headline “More Europeans See U.S. as Threat Than China.” The survey found:

Only 12 percent of those polled in March in Poland, Spain, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy saw America as a close ally while 36 percent saw it as a threat. By contrast, China was seen as a threat by 29 percent of those polled across the six countries. 

Trump has assaulted the integrity of the presidency, turning the White House into a corrupt enterprise, pardoning donors as his family’s companies receive millions through cryptocurrency purchases from foreign companies and crypto operators subject to U.S. regulation. 

Trump’s agenda reaches far into the private sector. Trump and his regulatory appointees cleared the way for his conservative allies Larry Ellison and Ellison’s son, David, to acquire CBS, Paramount Pictures, MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, along with the streaming service Paramount+.  

If, as expected, Trump regulators approve their acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, the Ellison media empire will grow further to include HBO Max, CNN and Warner Bros. 

From the comments 

1213 B Brett NC The only possible silver lining in all this is that Trump is poking a sleeping bear. Hopefully that bear will wake up and enact sweeping, permanent change. We need another New Deal and we need another Great Society. Incrementalism is not going to cut it any more. The next wave of Democrats elected to office had better deliver on that or America really will be a failed nation. Read 5 replies 

I asked Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and the author of “The Right-Wing Idea Factory: From Traditionalism to Trumpism,” which will be published in May, to assess — without regard to merit — how consequential the Trump presidency will be. On this measure he placed Trump in the Top 5 of American presidents, alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, noting, however, that “Trump’s consequences have been aggressive efforts to unravel the ideas of the other four presidents.” 

Kettl listed some of the same permanent or semi-permanent Trump legacies that I already described, but he added a few: 

He’s driven a deep divide into the country: between the states, between migrants and many others, between classes and between the intellectual elite and the rest of the country. He’s slashed the size of the federal bureaucracy and made federal jobs much less attractive. It will be a very, very long time until college students will trust the federal government with their careers. He’s fundamentally undermined the idea of an annual budget process and the concept of a balanced federal budget. These ideas were teetering before his presidency, but the Trump administration gave up on any pretense of seeking balance or an annual spending plan. 

Michael Bailey, a political scientist at Georgetown, prefaced his assessment of Trump’s consequentiality by pointedly noting that he would rank Trump “as easily the worst president in U.S. history. 

The corruption and damage to long-term U.S. institutions and reputation are far beyond anything we’ve seen before,” including Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan and Rutherford Hayes.  

As for being consequential, Bailey continued, Trump has been “highly consequential in an overwhelmingly negative way. He will leave a lasting negative legacy.” Bailey listed three of these legacies: “The erosion of trust in the U.S. by European and Asian allies; the erosion of U.S. dominance of higher education; and huge budget deficits (not only due to Trump, but exacerbated by him).” 

Kate Shaw, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, cited “Trump’s violation of numerous statutes passed by Congress” to note: 

It’s not that particular decisions to violate statutes can’t be undone or reversed; many, perhaps even most, can. But the combination of the president’s numerous and flagrant statutory violations and Congress’s failure to challenge those violations has created a permission structure for future presidents to disregard statutes any time they find those statutes inconvenient. 

Gary Jacobson, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of California-San Diego, expanded the case against Trump: 

He has done serious damage to many aspects of American government and politics that will be difficult and costly and, in some cases, impossible to undo. The mass firing of dedicated and experienced civil servants has made government dumber and weaker and will make it harder to attract talented replacements even if the next administration wants to make it smarter and more effective. The damage to scientific and medical research, the environment, relations with allies and trading partners, disaster preparedness, consumer safety, higher education, military leadership, civil rights, etc. will take years to repair even in cases where that is possible. 

It is already clear, Jacobson continued, that “Trump is among the most consequential presidents in U.S. history, and not in a good way.” 

In an email replying to my questions, Barbara Walter, a professor of international affairs at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California-San Diego, wrote: 

To flag one thing that belongs on your permanent list that likely won’t show up in the obvious places: norms. American democracy remained strong for so long because both its political parties and its presidents respected a set of unwritten rules. 

Adding that while formal checks “were essential, the oil that would grease the wheels of democracy would be norms,” Walter continued. Trump “has shown that you can violate them and survive politically. He’s torn down the invisible wall that kept the worst impulses of political life in check, and once that’s torn down, a new, ugly world emerges.”  

Yphtach Lelkes, a professor at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication, shares Walter’s concerns, writing by email:

 

I’m less confident about which specific policies or institutions belong on which list than I am about the broader effect on norms. My guess is that this is where Trump’s longest shadow will fall. Norms take a long time to develop because they rest on habits of restraint and on the expectation that violations will be punished. But they can disappear quickly once it becomes clear that punishment is not coming. 

As a result, Lelkes wrote, “Trump’s most consequential legacy may be less any single policy than the lesson he taught politicians: Norms can be broken, repeatedly and openly, without necessarily paying much of a price.” 

While Trump’s norm violations amount to a major assault on American democracy, I am less convinced than Walter or Lelkes of the long-lasting damage. In 2028, the Democratic presidential nominee and Democratic congressional candidates will all run on repudiating Trump, and even if a Democratic president is tempted to resort to arbitrary, Trump-like exercises of power, Democratic members of the House and Senate will be under strong pressure to put a halt to it. 

From the comments 1213 C Chester New Orleans All true but the most consequential impact has been the stunning acceptance by Congress of the actions by Trump making him the clear choice for worst president ever. I cannot overstate the historical judgement that will forever taint the current Congress. 100 years from now future generations will puzzle over the question: “Why, back in 2026, did Congress allow this?” Read 4 replies 

Even Republicans in Congress, who have been spineless under Trump, would rise in fury if a Democratic president followed Trump’s example. That doesn’t, however, mean that all will be well. The problem created by norm violations is less that they will become permanently accepted and more that it will take time — years and years — to restore the trust in government that Trump squandered. 

Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan‘s Ford School, addressed just this point in an email: 

Trump might be an empowered executive, but the effect is to weaken American government in any situation where people are asked to place trust in the long-term credibility of U.S. government commitments. This applies to private businesses, government employees and international allies. As Trump has created an environment where private businesses, universities or civil society can be threatened by the president, such organizations can assume that traditional norms of equal-handed application of the law, due process and fair treatment that they once took for granted no longer hold. For example, if the president says “My executive order allows me to fire civil servants for whatever reason I please,” how much does it matter if another president reverses it, because in the long-run potential civil servants know they no longer have job stability? 

The Supreme Court has been complicit in the undermining of trust, Moynihan argued: 

By allowing Trump to claim these powers, the Supreme Court is weakening the ability of a future president or Congress to repair the damage he is doing today. If the court goes all in on unitary executive theory, it weakens the ability of Congress to bind the president from doing bad things. 

By eroding America's government credibility and soft power, Moynihan concluded, “Trump can be both a hugely consequential president and a deeply damaging one.” 

All of which points to one more indelible bequeathal: the stain on America left by the record. Voters in this country twice elected a president with no ethics, no empathy and no end to his narcissism.

Trump says 'a whole civilization will die tonight' if Iran does not make a deal

  SOMEONE needs to stop this MONSTROUS, GENOCIDAL, GOP PSYCHOPATH!

 

 

 

Not to mention this utter madness on Easter

 

Trump Administration War Criminals-- God Help Us Get Through This Horror Show Madness

These maniacs have entered us into an insanely destructive war of choice that will set off an unpredictable chain of events that could lead to a true world war, a nuclear conflagration or a massive terrorist attack on the USA. 

This administration is breaking international law and committing war crimes to attack Iran and assassinate its leaders.  This war is unlikely to change the regime while countless innocent people will die. 

This war is costing MASSIVE amounts of money that could be put to better use domestically to help Americans. 

And of course this current administration is psychopathic, untrustworthy, arrogant and incompetent -- and will prosecute this war in the most careless and dangerous way possible.

 

US likely responsible for deadly strike on Iran girls’ school, say military officials-- Iran says the strike killed 150 students

Forensic analysis of videos and satellite imagery shows how the US-Israeli strikes damaged Iranian hospitals, schools and gyms near targets. 

Trump is not 'exonerated' as Republicans claim -- There are two sexual assault allegations against Trump involving minors

  Republicans lie all the time. Beyond any reasonable doubt, Trump is a pedophile rapist.

https://jkbjournalist.substack.com/p/trump-is-not-exonerated

But the files raise even more questions about the President’s association with Epstein — particularly about how much he knew and when he knew it — as well as his effort to protect the powerful people whose names are listed as suspected co-conspirators in the files.

To be clear, there are two sexual assault allegations involving minor girls who have accused Trump of rape that are part of the public record. Both are referenced in the Epstein files.

(snip)


Trump’s handlers at the time denied that [the Katie Johnson allegations] ever happened. But Michael Cohen, who was Trump’s fixer right before the election (he paid off porn star Stormy Daniels) has not adequately answered questions about whether he knew about or was involved with the Katie Johnson/Jane Doe case.

While some media outlets have reported her lawsuit was dropped because her allegations were found to be untrue — that is not the case. Her story has simply not been proven — or disproven. There’s no evidence it was investigated, even though one of her lawyers, Thomas Meagher, filed a report with the FBI in 2016 which was released in the files.

Seeing the FBI Covering Up Crimes by the President in the Epstein Files, Supports the Idea That The FBI Covered Up 9/11 Crimes

DOJ Removed Record of Multiple FBI Interviews with Underage Trump Accuser, Epstein Data Shows

The FBI spoke at least four times with a woman who credibly accused Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was a minor, Epstein files show. That document is no longer accessible on the DOJ website.

We should the clear that the FBI was tasked with redacting the Epstein files, and spent quite a bit of money doing it.

Let's be clear-- the FBI was in complete control of almost all 9/11 evidence and had clear motive and ability to cover-up evidence that didn't fit the official Al Qaeda hijacker narrative.

Does Anyone Still Think the US Government Can’t Cover Up Large Conspiracies?

To anyone who thinks that the government can’t cover up large conspiracies, like 911 being an inside job, the JFK assassination or UFOs, just look at how well the DOJ is covering up Epstein‘s crimes-- which a lot of people were involved in! 

When the government wants to cover something up, and it’s too awful for powerful people to admit, they can clearly cover something up! 

Yes, they’ve put out a lot of tantalizing tidbits that hint of a crime, maybe on purpose or maybe because they can't cover up everything. 

But at the actual heart of the matter, the real criminal parts, they have effectively covered those up, particularly crimes regarding the current president.

And we KNOW he is a pedophile rapist.

Ted Lieu: “Donald Trump is in the Epstein files thousands and thousands of times. In those files, there are highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children … of Donald Trump threatening to kill children. So I encourage the press to go look at these allegations.” 

33 of the Day: US Spending Millions to Deport People to 3rd party Countries

 Check out the URL for the article:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-spent-133-333-deportation-130000289.html

State Terror Has Arrived: The Murder of Alex Pretti

 Not just people of color are being killed now: Alex Pretti, a white male 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot multiple times after agents attacked him on the street.

 Fucking EVIL clear murder from ICE GOP assholes

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State Terror Has Arrived

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/opinion/state-terror-has-arrived.html

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Another Execution by Death Squad in Minneapolis

https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2026/01/another-execution-by-death-squad-in.html

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Alex Pretti: Analysing Footage of Minneapolis CBP Shooting

On January 24, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, was shot and killed by federal agents on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The shooting comes just over two weeks after Renee Good was shot and killed by a federal agent in the same city.

The United States Department of Homeland Security claimed Pretti was killed after an “armed struggle” with DHS officers and that it seemed he had wanted to “do maximum damage”. Yet video footage shared online, showing shortly before and during the incident, appears to contradict that claim.

Some of the earliest available footage of the encounter was posted to Instagram and shows an agent crossing the street to talk to Pretti who appears to be filming with his phone, which he is holding in his right hand. According to DHS, agents were conducting an immigration arrest in the area.

The agent can be seen placing his hand on Pretti’s torso to push him back and away from the middle of the road towards the sidewalk.

Another video shared on Reddit shows what happened after this initial contact, as well as the lead-up to the shooting. Pretti appears to put himself between two women after they were both shoved by a DHS agent. He is holding a cellphone, held sideways in his right hand.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/01/25/alex-pretti-analysing-footage-of-minneapolis-cbp-shooting/

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Heather Cox RichardsonJan 28, 2026 

The murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday morning at the hands of federal agents has put wind in the sails of those trying to rein in the Trump administration at the same time it has sent the administration scrambling to regain its course. Popular outcry over the killing of a beloved ICU nurse for the VA and popular organization over the general violence of federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol have unleashed pent up fury over the actions of the Trump administration. The outpouring has reached as far as spaces like a subreddit devoted to videos of people playing cats like bongos, as Drew Harwell and Scott Nover of the Washington Post noted. The anger has been so overwhelming that it has changed the course of national politics. Pretti’s killing has thrown into doubt the passage of a funding package that includes the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

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There Is No Compromise With State Terror

Julie Roginsky

An open letter to every Democratic elected official who still believes there is such a thing as working with a regime that murders with impunity and threatens dissent with the language of terror:

The moment has already passed. You are now governing in arrears.

A man is dead in Minneapolis. Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse and an American citizen, was executed by federal immigration agents operating like an occupying force in an American city. This is not a “tragic accident” and the ICE agents who murdered him are not “law enforcement officers.” They are terrorists. This is the predictable outcome of an agency designed to operate without accountability, armed with military equipment, shielded by impunity, and unleashed for political terror.

While Pretti’s blood was still warm on the pavement, Stephen Miller branded anyone who opposes this administration a domestic terrorist and insurrectionist.

https://saltypolitics.substack.com/p/there-is-no-compromise-with-state 

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Trump's DHS has shot 13 people during immigration enforcement operations since September. 

Here's what to know. Federal agents have shot three people in Minneapolis in recent weeks, killing two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Videos contradict the Trump administration's account of their deaths.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ice-shootings-list-border-patrol-trump-immigration-operations-rcna254202

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Trump’s Goons Are the Terrorists. This Is What We Must Do Now

As the world demonstrated in its rejection of Trump’s threats against Greenland earlier this week, there is only one way to stop Trump. He must face unified, courageous, unwavering resistance. Trump is keen on distracting from the controversial killing of Renee Nicole Good and turning the headlines back to himself, even if they make him look bad, Wolff has said.   

This will be hard for some in America’s opposition party who are more inclined to practice the politics of yesterday. They do not understand the different requirements that come with being in the minority in a functioning government and actively having to mobilize to stop the existential threat to their country. The seven Democrats who voted this week to fund DHS clearly fall into this category of misguided non-leaders. So too do some of their colleagues with fancy titles. 

But they must see that this is a country in profound crisis. They must recognize that halfway measures, aggrieved speeches, and strongly worded letters are no longer adequate. They must accept that the president of the United States and those close to him are no longer good-faith actors. They must show that the American people will not accept murderers and agents of pain roaming our cities. 

In short, the future of this country depends on the fact that more people at every level of our society appreciate, respect, and emulate the courage and resolve of genuine heroes like Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good. We must demonstrate that they did not die in vain by showing we understand why they showed up and stood up when they did. These people died seeking to aid their neighbors and to defend not only their communities, but the idea of an America that is now more at risk than at any time in living memory.

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Kash Patel: "You cannot bring a firearm ... to any sort of protest that you want."

What a lying piece of shit evil clown