As to the Supreme Court, they will hold out until someone mentions that if they declare there is an insurrection in Minnesota that there will be a large “gratuity” coming their way. They are so corrupt, they want the far right in power for years to come and if someone throws enough money at them, well that’s just gravy.
4 Likes
“The government can’t manufacture something, call it an insurrection.”
Of course they can. They have manufactured everything else, what is an insurrection to them?
11 Likes
Christopher Hitchens identified the type before MAGA became the label and ICE the irregular army: “Those who want to turn our democratic republic into an empire. Who are they? …What is antigovernment about these extruded forces of the state? They will, when the time comes… be the Freikorps.” – C. Hitchens, Nation Panel, 1995
7 Likes
Maybe they’ll get their own ballroom.
1 Like
He’ll need an insurrection. Easy, peasy: Ever hear of agents provocateur? That’s their job, don’t ya know.
4 Likes
Comments is also toying with me. Hit continue discussion and it sits for a minute before sending me back to main page to start all over.
Been going on for a couple days.
2 Likes
Almost guarantee, and I’d put money down on this bet, the incriminating evidence we all know exists in the Epstein files is publicly released, as is lawfully required, will trigger him to either invoke the Insurrection Act or militarily invade Greenland or both. Guaranteed! Good luck to us all.
2 Likes
Senator Wyden has some interesting info tonight on millions of $ transferred to an Epstein bank account.
4 Likes
Det Hvide Hus: Vi taler med Danmark om at overtage Grønland.
(The White House: We are talking with Denmark about taking over Greenland.)
I’d like to find Karoline Leavitt’s original sentence, because it has driven home the fundamental end of American Exceptionalism in European eyes. Danes have always gone their own way, but they admired America. Who is this Ronald Lauder, and how have such unethical monsters come to dominate the American political system?
Dalton Trumbo’s “Roman Holiday” (1953), written while he was black-listed, breaks down the American innate ethical compass. Europe is cheap, especially with Italian lira monopoly money, working as a reporter in Rome is a hoot, but step down, for real reporters, and royalty is a joke. Nevertheless, when reporter Gregory Peck and art photographer/budding paparazzi Eddie Albert accidentally have to deal with a drugged innocent princess Audrey Hepburn, and eventually realize they have struck yellow-press gold, they do what few others could do, the right thing. Wyler even has the camera looking up at the two rascals in the end. I know it is just a movie from long ago, but what a contrast to the total lack of ethical compass in our media or politics. Trump is the antithesis of an ethical American: In his 30s he would not and did not behave like Peck. He would have taken advantage of the young unconscious princess, ransomed her, sold the story to the NYPost and sued everybody for libel. En forfærdelig situation.
4 Likes
just make stuff up. Any excuse to invoke martial law. He’s leaving a pretty good record of executive action by phony pretext.
One of the big surprises in ICE deployments is that Noem and Miller don’t seem to understand the complexities of big cities. Gradually ICE has shifted focus to smaller cities like Minneapolis and Lewiston (63rd largest city in the US). Surely somebody in Homeland Security must have heard of Zipf’s Law.
4 Likes
This is a great article to read all the way through. Pretty concise. Discussion of historical context.
Excerpts:
The danger begins … with a small, subtle shift in how authority explains itself, how it frames dissent, and how willing the public becomes to accept force as a reasonable substitute for patience.
That shift is underway now … because the language of “law and order” is being … redefined in ways that should unsettle any citizen who still believes that self-government depends on restraint.
What we are witnessing now is not simply heated rhetoric or partisan excess but a deliberate effort to change how power justifies itself before using force.
Historically, presidents treated the Insurrection Act as a last resort and an admission of failure, invoking it only when state authority had collapsed beyond repair.
Eisenhower invoked it in 1957 only after Arkansas openly defied federal court orders and mobilized forces to resist desegregation. Lyndon Johnson relied on it after Martin Luther King Jr.‘s assassination, when cities burned beyond local governments’ capacity to respond. George H.W. Bush invoked it during the Los Angeles riots only after California formally requested federal assistance.
In each case, the Act was framed as temporary, reluctant, and rooted in the breakdown of ordinary civilian governance.
Today, the Insurrection Act is casually discussed, publicly floated, and framed as a governing option rather than a constitutional alarm bell.
When belief in institutions erodes this deeply, history shows that governments rarely respond by restoring restraint or rebuilding trust; instead, they reach for control, not because it sustains legitimacy but because it produces immediate compliance.
A Republic does not survive by suppressing unrest but by addressing the conditions that produce it.
When our leaders reach for extraordinary authority before exhausting ordinary accountability, they reveal not confidence in democracy but doubt…
5 Likes
I wonder, if the government is the one doing the insurrection will that count for Donald Trump?
I am guessing the answer is yes.
Law
There’s that word again. “Law” is normally what the courts use to maintain the existing economic and social order. Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld racial segregation under Jim Crow, for example, only drew attention because the existing order became explicit and visible to all. Normally, there is a “system” which is mysterious to most with the sneaky suspicion that the “elites” or super-rich somehow can visualize and game it. Indeed, Trump got big support from people who believed that they were being screwed by the “system” but needed some billionaire to explain it to them. In today’s America, money is political speech (Citizens United v. FEC), and yet again our unequal economic system is exposed. The majority of Americans now have a negative net worth, and only 10% of persons born after 2000 can expect to die wealthier than their parents. The problem facing John Roberts is what economic system he is actually preserving. America’s 800 or so billionaires on average got wealthier by about $10 billion last year, even as collectively the country piled on another $3 trillion in debt. What is apparent is that such conditions are not sustainable. First, there’s Feguson’s law (yes, more law) that says that “any great power that spends more on debt servicing than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power, and as corollary the Ferguson limit, i.e. the point at which interest payments exceed defense spending, as the tipping point after which the centripetal forces of the aggregate debt burden tend to pull apart the geopolitical grip of a great power.” According to Ferguson himself, the US passed Ferguson’s limit already in 2024 and now is well beyond the event horizon. Second, there is McCaffrey’s principle for wealth accumulation in the US – Buy. Borrow. Die.. Not only should one strive to preserve wealth, but also accumulate wealth over generations (e.g. by such gimmicks as a South Dakota perpetual trust, sometimes called a Dynasty trust).
So, yes, insurrection only makes sense if the result is different law, That would require a different Supreme Court, as well as an end to legislative capture and confrontation of the debt problem. As Ferguson notes, the likelihood of such things is “very rare”.
4 Likes
Your point is certainly worth making, and lord knows we need a different SCOTUS, but IMO can’t find support in ‘Ferguson’s Law’ which represents a simplistic history, dubious economics, and may quite possibly be complete bunk; e.g., Ferguson's Folly: Niall Ferguson on debt - by Abelard
3 Likes
“The government can’t manufacture something, call it an insurrection, then invoke the Insurrection Act to cure a disease they caused,” said Harold Hongju Koh, professor of international law at Yale Law School.
You haven’t been watching lately, have you, Professor? The diseased mind of Stephen Miller (who is wholly responsible for this nonsense) thinks he can rid the country of all “illegal immigrants.” He is yet another man whose obituary I long to read. Shit4Brains is in the late stages of dementia; he’ll sign anything they put in front of him.
2 Likes
Niall Ferguson should be presumed to be full of shit.
3 Likes
From the story: /“No state has ever challenged in court an invocation of the Insurrection Act,” Nunn said. “And the reason for that is that the Insurrection Act has never been abused in this way.”/
In other words – Whaddya do when the President surprises you by taking multiple steps to destroy what we used to think of as the union? …Next up, for Don – Even though Blue states pay taxes to the federal government (a whopping share of it, in fact), Donny isn’t going to send them any of the federal payments back because they have evil sanctuary cities in them?
DJT not only hates a huge chunk of the U.S. population, he desperately hates the whole idea of the United States as well. … So he’s doing anything he can to rip it apart…And since the Red states, almost all elected Republicans and the Supreme Court Majority still are inclined to think that Party Over Country is the way to go, it’s not at all clear what will – or even can – be done to stop him.
An idiot has gotten this country over a barrel, on its 250th anniversary of declaring itself a country where this kind of thing wasn’t going to happen. Welcome to 2026.
3 Likes
I wonder what’s going on TPM-wise. Difficult getting to the comment section; Morning Memo arriving hours later than was the case not long ago. Just wondering….
Probably should be assumed wrt any Hoover Fellow but, yeah, Niall knows how to turn a phrase and hit the zeitgeist sweet spot but ultimately he is not an honest broker; more ideologue than scholar.
2 Likes
That’s some championship wishful thinking. But hey, it’s that kind of thinking that led directly to Dachau