The Afghanis who chose to help us on our mission to free Afghanistan from the taint of the Taliban did so knowing that America would protect them if the mission failed. They wanted an end to decades of war, pain, and suffering to their country, things that they did not ask for, and certainly were not deserving. Russians, Afghan warlords, Taliban all taking turns at breaking Afghanistan. We went in for vengeance, and to restore freedom, only to have Trump hand Afghanistan over to the Taliban on a gold lamé platter.
Yet Noem’s decision to end the asylum of those Afghanis who put their lives on the line to assist our mission to bring back freedom will only sign their death warrants. Good job, Kristi. She’s gone from puppy killer to murderer.
Has Blackmail Become Trump's Political Weapon of Choice?
Can Trump continue to follow in the footsteps of Don Corleone by making his victims an offer they can't refuse?
To blackmail someone, as defined by The New Oxford American Dictionary, is simply to "force someone to do something by using threats...."
Right out of the gate, Donald Trump made no secret about using his powers to shake down foreign countries, law firms, educational institutions and domestic corporations to get what he wants. Of course, Trump is no stranger to blackmail, given his success in bending his own party members to his will upon the threat that he would support opposing candidates in their Republican primaries.
Flush with power after his election and with his belief that "I run the country and the world", Trump unilaterally imposed the most oppressive tariffs upon a broad swarth of countries worldwide to cower them into submission and to "kiss his ass" if they wanted relief.
While he has been humbled into backing off on many of his outlandishly onerous threats, he discovered early on how easy it was to deploy blackmail to subjugate his domestic victims.
Proceeding methodically, he first deployed blackmail against some of the top powerhouse law firms in the U.S. By threatening to ban them from government buildings and prevent their access to protected documents, Trump cowered Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps and other large law firms into bending their knees to his demands. In exchange for backing off on his threats, Trump exacted from them commitments to provide thousands of hours of pro bono representation to support MAGA causes and promises not to represent any clients whose interests were adverse to Trump's policies and practices.
Paul Weiss executives said that had they refused to comply with Trump's demands, it would have driven the law firm, as they knew it, out of business.
Having neutralized these law firms and setting them up as examples to deter other firms from representing potential adversaries to his policies, he then proceeded to go on a rampage to arbitrarily threaten victims with the withholding of all federal funding .These included many of the country's grade schools, colleges and universities whom Trump claimed were either anti-American, anti-semitic or were clandestinely promoting diversity or other "woke" practices in violation of Trump's new Project 2025 policies.
When Trump's threat of withholding billions of dollars of federal funding in support of research etc failed to subjugate Harvard University, Trump, in a fit of rage that a university would have the audacity to stand up to him, he then threatened to deport all of its international students, which is about 25% of its student population, presumably claiming that they present a clear and present danger to the United States of America,
These are patently trumped up charges, and a federal district court judged has stayed Trump's threats.
Most recently, Trump has given Apple notice that unless it cancels its recent switch from China to India for its production of iPhones and brings their total production into the United States, he would unilaterally impose a 25% tariff on all iPhones Apple imports into the U.S. Apple has made it known that financially and logistically, they cannot bring production into the U.S.,. which would cost them billions of dollars. Financial experts are predicting that such a move would raise the price of an iPhone to over $3,500. When Apple responded with the burden that consumers would suffer by Apple passing on the costs on to them, Trump responded that he expected Apple to "eat" the added costs.
While Trump initially singled them out among cell phone distributors in the U.S. who import their products from abroad, last night, Trump hastily widened his net to include others, apparently upon the last minute advice from his lawyers. And why did they give him this legal advice? Simple. They told him that he needed to widen the net so it didn't look like he was singling out an individual company, which of course he was, instead of a class of products or companies which otherwise would have made his actions appear to be capricious and personally motivated, which, of course, they were.
Is Trump's use of blackmail legal?
It depends upon the context. At one extreme, a President would be well within his authority to threaten the arrest of anyone who commits a crime. At the other extreme, a President cannot threaten to arrest someone who votes Democratic.
Trump appears to have latched on to labeling his blackmail threats as "Executive Orders" to portray them as official acts within the scope of his Presidential authority. His emphasis on declaring them as "Executive Orders" appears to have arisen from the Supreme Court's ultra-expansive decision conferring broad immunity upon a President in the commission of apparent crimes committed within the scope of his Presidential authority. Therefore, it would appear that Trump has attempted to cloak every apparent shakedown and blackmail attempt as an "Executive Order" in order to convert the nefariousness of his acts into an apparent legitimate promulgation.
While the issue of Trump's criminal liability has been strictly narrowed by his compatriots on the U.S. Supreme Court almost to the vanishing point, the legality of his acts is a totally different question.
That is, while a court may conclude that Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution for his actions, it may simultaneously conclude that his actions were patently illegal because they violated the Constitution, such as the equal protection and due process clauses, the letter of a Congressionally enacted law or the import of these laws as interpreted by the courts.
In addition, the courts need to be mindful of the ramifications of their own rulings .
For example, if the Supreme Court finds that Donald Trump acted properly in shaking down Tim Cook into spending billions of dollars to build an iPhone plant in the U.S. and eating the losses, will such a decision be cited as a precedent for Governors and Mayors to make similar threats within their own jurisdictions? For example, could a finding for Trump justify the Governor of New York or Mayor of New York City in threatening the withholding of state or city aid or funding to a New York corporation unless it relocates its manufacturing plant from Kentucky to New York and not pass on the expenses to the consumer?
How would the courts decide the legality of an Executive Order issued by Donald Trump which would require all publishers of atlases, tour guides, and history books to recall and amend their products to replace references to the "Gulf of Mexico" with the name of the "Gulf of America"?
How would the courts decide if Trump threatens to withhold state funding to any state which refuses to follow the lead of the Republican controlled legislature in Oklahoma in enacting legislation promoting The Big Lie by requiring the teaching that the 2020 Presidential election was rampant with discrepancies and strongly suggesting that Trump was cheated out of winning?
Worst of all nightmares, will the Trump cheerleaders on our Supreme Court steer the Court into rendering a decision adopting Richard Nixon's comment that "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."
Those maga vets are the suckers and losers trump was talking about, how they just walked away from the Constitution on the word of a senile draft dodger who hates America just boggles the mind.
Fine piece correctly written to articulate the origins of honoring this day to those who fought in the Civil War. For those who think “it has never been this bad,” read the history. It has been this bad and then some. Peace and glory to all honored veterans.
This was really a fine collection of essays, from different times and originating with individuals with different perspectives, and it seems uniquely situated to address the serious issues of the day. Ultimately, they describe the honor that we should give to those who gave “the last full measure of devotion“ as well as the duty of those of us who live, to do our best to support and further the ideals upon which our blessed country was based.
As the essays illustrate, those who gave their lives or their arms or legs and those who lived through the horrors of conflict and of war, and indeed, those who live now with the benefit of their sacrifices, or individuals with individual history and idea, ideas and hopes and fears. But those differences, their individualities, the different perspectives, are the very lifeblood of the United States of America. We, the people, in order to build a more perfect union, coalesce as one, using our varied prospectives and talents to create a better democracy for the freedom- loving people of the world.
On this day and every day in America, let’s remember what these authors are so beautifully expressed: that together we are stronger, that a house divided cannot stand. E pluribus unum.
In honor of those who died in 1/38 Infantry Battalion, 4/2 Stryker Brigade. Sergeant First Class Pablo Castro and I served together in the S2 (Intelligence) during our deployment to Iraq from April 2007 to June 2008. We belonged to one of the five "Surge" brigades famously deployed with the new focus of counter-insurgency operations, and trying to get Iraq back under control. Castro was the NCOIC of the shop, primarily responsible for managing the 30 or so local interpreters for the battalion. I was a first lieutenant at the time, and the assistant S2, and did whatever analysis the senior captain asked me to do, which was usually determining mostly likely and mostly dangerous enemy courses of action, writing daily intelligence reports, collecting debriefs from leaders coming back from patrol, or leading UAV reconnaissance surveillance when we had the asset pushed to our battalion. Castro was one of the scariest SOB’s I ever knew (but was kind hearted and let it slip now and then) and I’m so glad we were on the same team. Combat deployments are usually 95% boring/stress, 5% terror/stress, and there were moments when you really got to know people. Castro was a master jumper, and during our 15 month deployment, he often talked about how he couldn’t wait to get back home so he could get back to jumping. I would tell him the reason I joined the Army was so I could keep both my boots firmly on the ground (I’m still afraid of heights to this day). He looked at me like I was an idiot whenever I said this. He was an infantryman and had a ranger tab, and was a warriors warrior. I’ll never forget our conversations together, and watching him dance with joy to Latin music, or bitch and moan because another interpreter was giving him headaches. I’m thankful that he respected my contributions, and there were so many times when he would cheer me up with a funny story, or words of encouragement. But mostly, he loved to talk about jumping. After 15 months, we came back home to Fort Lewis, and we were all given 2 weeks of leave to reconnect with our families. Pablo, of course, scheduled a jump a week after we returned. And that’s when it happened. 15 months of serving in intense combat in Baghdad and Baquba during the Surge, and we made it out. Then, while on his first jump back home, his parachute 🪂 got tangled with a first time jumper only a few hundred feet from the ground, and he died from his impact wounds. On this Memorial Day, I’m thinking of you, brother. And to all those from 1/38 Infantry Battalion, 4/2 Stryker Brigade who lost their lives, Rock of the Marne.
My thought today is that they all died in vain. Many of them because the wars they fought were at best morally ambiguous and at worst simply wrong. But that does not diminish their service or sacrifice because the cumulative effort contributed to our national survival.
But now that cumulative effort seems to have been for nothing as the nation is imolated on the altar of lawlessness and corruption. Almost every veteran within my personal sphere is is supporting and even celebrating the destruction of the constitutional order.
They see it all as a pageant like Savanarola's bonfire of the vanities: where delusional liberal values like justice, inclusion, equality and pluralism are dragged out into the square to be denounced and destroyed.
I am not happy about how we left Afghanistan, and I do not blame Biden. I wish more would recall that it was Donald J. Trump who negotiated our withdrawal with the Taliban. Joe Biden only completed the task because Trump made an agreement to have the withdrawal completed AFTER his term ended. We’ll never know if Trump planned to uphold his end of the contract. Now he’s revoking the protected status of our Afghani brothers in arms and their families—typical Trump behavior. We need to win our country back from the tyranny.
Trump would ramble about trophy wives and the electric shock or the shark attack conundrum. Having never served something larger than his own needs and hate, he is clueless.
That, or brag of his personal bravery in the face of the STD war that was the dating scene in New York City. But had he been afflicted, you can bet that today, now that he is again Commander in Chief of the Armed Services, he would be awarding himself the Purple Heart and the Medal of Honor.
I sincerely hope that someone at The Bulwark will be doing a side by side comparison of Reagan's address to what is said at Arlington today.
Also, thanks for continuing to publish Ted Johnson's 2022 piece. When it was first published, I posted that I hoped it would be rerun every year. I light of current events compared to 2022, it feels more and more like something we all need to be reminded of not just every year, but every day.
The Afghanis who chose to help us on our mission to free Afghanistan from the taint of the Taliban did so knowing that America would protect them if the mission failed. They wanted an end to decades of war, pain, and suffering to their country, things that they did not ask for, and certainly were not deserving. Russians, Afghan warlords, Taliban all taking turns at breaking Afghanistan. We went in for vengeance, and to restore freedom, only to have Trump hand Afghanistan over to the Taliban on a gold lamé platter.
Yet Noem’s decision to end the asylum of those Afghanis who put their lives on the line to assist our mission to bring back freedom will only sign their death warrants. Good job, Kristi. She’s gone from puppy killer to murderer.
Has Blackmail Become Trump's Political Weapon of Choice?
Can Trump continue to follow in the footsteps of Don Corleone by making his victims an offer they can't refuse?
To blackmail someone, as defined by The New Oxford American Dictionary, is simply to "force someone to do something by using threats...."
Right out of the gate, Donald Trump made no secret about using his powers to shake down foreign countries, law firms, educational institutions and domestic corporations to get what he wants. Of course, Trump is no stranger to blackmail, given his success in bending his own party members to his will upon the threat that he would support opposing candidates in their Republican primaries.
Flush with power after his election and with his belief that "I run the country and the world", Trump unilaterally imposed the most oppressive tariffs upon a broad swarth of countries worldwide to cower them into submission and to "kiss his ass" if they wanted relief.
While he has been humbled into backing off on many of his outlandishly onerous threats, he discovered early on how easy it was to deploy blackmail to subjugate his domestic victims.
Proceeding methodically, he first deployed blackmail against some of the top powerhouse law firms in the U.S. By threatening to ban them from government buildings and prevent their access to protected documents, Trump cowered Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps and other large law firms into bending their knees to his demands. In exchange for backing off on his threats, Trump exacted from them commitments to provide thousands of hours of pro bono representation to support MAGA causes and promises not to represent any clients whose interests were adverse to Trump's policies and practices.
Paul Weiss executives said that had they refused to comply with Trump's demands, it would have driven the law firm, as they knew it, out of business.
Having neutralized these law firms and setting them up as examples to deter other firms from representing potential adversaries to his policies, he then proceeded to go on a rampage to arbitrarily threaten victims with the withholding of all federal funding .These included many of the country's grade schools, colleges and universities whom Trump claimed were either anti-American, anti-semitic or were clandestinely promoting diversity or other "woke" practices in violation of Trump's new Project 2025 policies.
When Trump's threat of withholding billions of dollars of federal funding in support of research etc failed to subjugate Harvard University, Trump, in a fit of rage that a university would have the audacity to stand up to him, he then threatened to deport all of its international students, which is about 25% of its student population, presumably claiming that they present a clear and present danger to the United States of America,
These are patently trumped up charges, and a federal district court judged has stayed Trump's threats.
Most recently, Trump has given Apple notice that unless it cancels its recent switch from China to India for its production of iPhones and brings their total production into the United States, he would unilaterally impose a 25% tariff on all iPhones Apple imports into the U.S. Apple has made it known that financially and logistically, they cannot bring production into the U.S.,. which would cost them billions of dollars. Financial experts are predicting that such a move would raise the price of an iPhone to over $3,500. When Apple responded with the burden that consumers would suffer by Apple passing on the costs on to them, Trump responded that he expected Apple to "eat" the added costs.
While Trump initially singled them out among cell phone distributors in the U.S. who import their products from abroad, last night, Trump hastily widened his net to include others, apparently upon the last minute advice from his lawyers. And why did they give him this legal advice? Simple. They told him that he needed to widen the net so it didn't look like he was singling out an individual company, which of course he was, instead of a class of products or companies which otherwise would have made his actions appear to be capricious and personally motivated, which, of course, they were.
Is Trump's use of blackmail legal?
It depends upon the context. At one extreme, a President would be well within his authority to threaten the arrest of anyone who commits a crime. At the other extreme, a President cannot threaten to arrest someone who votes Democratic.
Trump appears to have latched on to labeling his blackmail threats as "Executive Orders" to portray them as official acts within the scope of his Presidential authority. His emphasis on declaring them as "Executive Orders" appears to have arisen from the Supreme Court's ultra-expansive decision conferring broad immunity upon a President in the commission of apparent crimes committed within the scope of his Presidential authority. Therefore, it would appear that Trump has attempted to cloak every apparent shakedown and blackmail attempt as an "Executive Order" in order to convert the nefariousness of his acts into an apparent legitimate promulgation.
While the issue of Trump's criminal liability has been strictly narrowed by his compatriots on the U.S. Supreme Court almost to the vanishing point, the legality of his acts is a totally different question.
That is, while a court may conclude that Trump has immunity from criminal prosecution for his actions, it may simultaneously conclude that his actions were patently illegal because they violated the Constitution, such as the equal protection and due process clauses, the letter of a Congressionally enacted law or the import of these laws as interpreted by the courts.
In addition, the courts need to be mindful of the ramifications of their own rulings .
For example, if the Supreme Court finds that Donald Trump acted properly in shaking down Tim Cook into spending billions of dollars to build an iPhone plant in the U.S. and eating the losses, will such a decision be cited as a precedent for Governors and Mayors to make similar threats within their own jurisdictions? For example, could a finding for Trump justify the Governor of New York or Mayor of New York City in threatening the withholding of state or city aid or funding to a New York corporation unless it relocates its manufacturing plant from Kentucky to New York and not pass on the expenses to the consumer?
How would the courts decide the legality of an Executive Order issued by Donald Trump which would require all publishers of atlases, tour guides, and history books to recall and amend their products to replace references to the "Gulf of Mexico" with the name of the "Gulf of America"?
How would the courts decide if Trump threatens to withhold state funding to any state which refuses to follow the lead of the Republican controlled legislature in Oklahoma in enacting legislation promoting The Big Lie by requiring the teaching that the 2020 Presidential election was rampant with discrepancies and strongly suggesting that Trump was cheated out of winning?
Worst of all nightmares, will the Trump cheerleaders on our Supreme Court steer the Court into rendering a decision adopting Richard Nixon's comment that "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."
Those maga vets are the suckers and losers trump was talking about, how they just walked away from the Constitution on the word of a senile draft dodger who hates America just boggles the mind.
Fine piece correctly written to articulate the origins of honoring this day to those who fought in the Civil War. For those who think “it has never been this bad,” read the history. It has been this bad and then some. Peace and glory to all honored veterans.
This was really a fine collection of essays, from different times and originating with individuals with different perspectives, and it seems uniquely situated to address the serious issues of the day. Ultimately, they describe the honor that we should give to those who gave “the last full measure of devotion“ as well as the duty of those of us who live, to do our best to support and further the ideals upon which our blessed country was based.
As the essays illustrate, those who gave their lives or their arms or legs and those who lived through the horrors of conflict and of war, and indeed, those who live now with the benefit of their sacrifices, or individuals with individual history and idea, ideas and hopes and fears. But those differences, their individualities, the different perspectives, are the very lifeblood of the United States of America. We, the people, in order to build a more perfect union, coalesce as one, using our varied prospectives and talents to create a better democracy for the freedom- loving people of the world.
On this day and every day in America, let’s remember what these authors are so beautifully expressed: that together we are stronger, that a house divided cannot stand. E pluribus unum.
In honor of those who died in 1/38 Infantry Battalion, 4/2 Stryker Brigade. Sergeant First Class Pablo Castro and I served together in the S2 (Intelligence) during our deployment to Iraq from April 2007 to June 2008. We belonged to one of the five "Surge" brigades famously deployed with the new focus of counter-insurgency operations, and trying to get Iraq back under control. Castro was the NCOIC of the shop, primarily responsible for managing the 30 or so local interpreters for the battalion. I was a first lieutenant at the time, and the assistant S2, and did whatever analysis the senior captain asked me to do, which was usually determining mostly likely and mostly dangerous enemy courses of action, writing daily intelligence reports, collecting debriefs from leaders coming back from patrol, or leading UAV reconnaissance surveillance when we had the asset pushed to our battalion. Castro was one of the scariest SOB’s I ever knew (but was kind hearted and let it slip now and then) and I’m so glad we were on the same team. Combat deployments are usually 95% boring/stress, 5% terror/stress, and there were moments when you really got to know people. Castro was a master jumper, and during our 15 month deployment, he often talked about how he couldn’t wait to get back home so he could get back to jumping. I would tell him the reason I joined the Army was so I could keep both my boots firmly on the ground (I’m still afraid of heights to this day). He looked at me like I was an idiot whenever I said this. He was an infantryman and had a ranger tab, and was a warriors warrior. I’ll never forget our conversations together, and watching him dance with joy to Latin music, or bitch and moan because another interpreter was giving him headaches. I’m thankful that he respected my contributions, and there were so many times when he would cheer me up with a funny story, or words of encouragement. But mostly, he loved to talk about jumping. After 15 months, we came back home to Fort Lewis, and we were all given 2 weeks of leave to reconnect with our families. Pablo, of course, scheduled a jump a week after we returned. And that’s when it happened. 15 months of serving in intense combat in Baghdad and Baquba during the Surge, and we made it out. Then, while on his first jump back home, his parachute 🪂 got tangled with a first time jumper only a few hundred feet from the ground, and he died from his impact wounds. On this Memorial Day, I’m thinking of you, brother. And to all those from 1/38 Infantry Battalion, 4/2 Stryker Brigade who lost their lives, Rock of the Marne.
My thought today is that they all died in vain. Many of them because the wars they fought were at best morally ambiguous and at worst simply wrong. But that does not diminish their service or sacrifice because the cumulative effort contributed to our national survival.
But now that cumulative effort seems to have been for nothing as the nation is imolated on the altar of lawlessness and corruption. Almost every veteran within my personal sphere is is supporting and even celebrating the destruction of the constitutional order.
They see it all as a pageant like Savanarola's bonfire of the vanities: where delusional liberal values like justice, inclusion, equality and pluralism are dragged out into the square to be denounced and destroyed.
I am not happy about how we left Afghanistan, and I do not blame Biden. I wish more would recall that it was Donald J. Trump who negotiated our withdrawal with the Taliban. Joe Biden only completed the task because Trump made an agreement to have the withdrawal completed AFTER his term ended. We’ll never know if Trump planned to uphold his end of the contract. Now he’s revoking the protected status of our Afghani brothers in arms and their families—typical Trump behavior. We need to win our country back from the tyranny.
These AFGHANISTAN supporters need to be protected
Tears fall as they always do when I read 'Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire'. I find value every Memorial Day with these essays. Thank you
Trump would ramble about trophy wives and the electric shock or the shark attack conundrum. Having never served something larger than his own needs and hate, he is clueless.
That, or brag of his personal bravery in the face of the STD war that was the dating scene in New York City. But had he been afflicted, you can bet that today, now that he is again Commander in Chief of the Armed Services, he would be awarding himself the Purple Heart and the Medal of Honor.
I sincerely hope that someone at The Bulwark will be doing a side by side comparison of Reagan's address to what is said at Arlington today.
Also, thanks for continuing to publish Ted Johnson's 2022 piece. When it was first published, I posted that I hoped it would be rerun every year. I light of current events compared to 2022, it feels more and more like something we all need to be reminded of not just every year, but every day.
CONGRATULATIONS! On a single email, you have exposed and hopefully destroyed everything that Agent Orange and his MAGGOTs stand for.