ICE are not police

The Tenth Amendment reserves the "police power" to the States. Federal agents, like ICE, do not have the general power to enforce order and "preserve the peace" like police are supposedly for. That is why in the U.S. we do not have a national police force.

But the Trump Administration wants to pretend we do. So they have taken a relatively new agency, ICE (created in 2003), which has a narrow mandate of enforcing immigration law and enforcing customs (i.e. tariffs), and decided they are general purpose shock troops. In theory ICE officers don't have the authority to arrest protesters (at least not protesters who are U.S. citizens or lawful aliens) much less rough them up. If their job is disrupted by protests, they can call the local cops, like anyone else.

Which is why it is utterly absurd that ICE agents will provide security for the U.S. Olympic delegation. They are not a security service. The Trump administration really is trying to groom them to be their own all-purpose security brutes despite the fact that it has nothing to do with their legal mandate.

Imagine if the ATF's legal counsel wrote a memo saying that the second amendment does not apply to seizure of privately owned firearms

If the government can just write a memo saying "this constitutional right does not apply" and that makes the government's conduct legal, then we don't really have any constitutional rights. If this is upheld than why should any administration follow any provision in the constitution?

The FIFA peace prize bribe was all for nothing

I do not see how the U.S. can host the World Cup in just a few months when it refused to process visa applications from approximately 40% of the countries in the world.

UPDATE: The suspension "will not apply to applicants seeking non-immigrant visas, or temporary tourist or business visas." So Football/Soccer fans coming for the World Cup will not be affected... assuming the Trump Administration doesn't decide to harass them too. Which it might. Our current immigration authorities are not exactly sticklers for the rules.

We can still enforce the Emoluments Clause

There are now reports that Maria Corina Machado plans to give Trump her Nobel Peace Prize as a bribe for being installed as leader of Venezuela. Putting aside the fact that we seem to be living in a joke without a good punchline, it is worth noting that the gift would violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

Yeah, I know, so did Trump's acceptance of the FIFA Participation Award Peace Prize, and so will Trump's acceptance of the Qatari plane (assuming he does follow through with his plans to take it home with him when he leaves office rather than letting the U.S. government keep it), and so did countless other gifts Trump has accepted from foreigners throughout the last year. The Trump Presidency has been an endless stream of Emolument Clause violations.

Since the Supreme Court effectively dismissed the first term Emolument cases against Trump in 2021, in the second term everyone seems to pretend that means that the Emoluments Clause doesn't exist anymore. That unspoken consensus has only resulted in even more brazen Emolument violations by Trump in this term. Remember, the first term violations were mostly about whether payments by foreign nationals to Trump's DC Hotel, which ultimately profited Trump, meant he was accepting payments from foreigners. Now he is just openly taking bribes. I'm not sure why no one is bringing Emoluments lawsuits against Trump anymore. If we had a real Court system these should be slam-dunk cases.

But I'm hoping that whatever comes after Trump would include an effort to enforce the Emoluments clause by having the U.S. Justice Department seize anything that Trump got in violation of the clause on behalf of the federal government. I really wish someone with Presidential aspirations would say out loud that, if elected, every bribe that Trump has personally received will be clawed back from Trump or his heirs by the next administration.

This is a fucking mess and the people in charge are too dumb to even notice what a fucking mess they made

Remember when W. Bush toppled the Iraqi government after months of half-assed detached from reality planning for what the post-invasion government would be like?

This is like that, but without any of the half-assed planning.

So much winning

Our illegal war in Venezuela now includes kidnapping foreign heads of state.

These things tend to have unintended consequences. I hope the Trump Administration is preparing...

Ha, who am I kidding? of course the Trump Administration hasn't given a single thought to the downstream consequences of this. Secretary Drunk Rapist is too busy strutting around and telling his demented boss about how cool the explosions looked.

Meanwhile my prediction #21 20 19. Didn't last 50 hours before being wrong. That must be a record. 

 

2026 Predictions

It's that time again! As I have almost every year since 2008, I'm going to toss a bunch of darts at the predictions dart board. What I write below is what I think, at this moment as the year changes, of what will probably happen in 2026. It doesn't necessarily mean things that I want to happen. In fact, as you will see, there's a lot of stuff I don't want to happen but think, nevertheless, that it will anyway.

As always I am trying to limit my predictions to things that will be easy to determine at the end of the year whether each prediction is right or wrong. So I am not going to predict stuff like "the U.S. will lose a lot of credibility internationally in 2026," even though I think that will probably be true, because it is about something that isn't measurable or easily determined to be either right or wrong.

Got it?

Ready or not, here they come:

1. Trump will no longer be President at the end of 2026. (I am not predicting whether he will die, or be removed because of incapacitation, but it will be one of those two. I don't think he will resign or be impeached and convicted this year)

2. The war in Ukraine will still be an active shooting war at the end of 2026.

3. The White House ballroom will not be built by the end of 2026.

4. At least 3 members of Trump's cabinet at the beginning of 2026 will no longer be in the cabinet at the end of the year.

5. While there will be a "ceasefire" in Gaza in the sense that everyone will still refer to a ceasefire as if there is one, Israel will still be doing raids and bombings in the territory by the end of the year. More specifically, Israel will kill at least 20 people in Gaza in December 2026.

6. The inflation rate will be over 5% by the end of 2026.

7. The U.S. will be in a recession at some point in 2026.

8. The Democrats will win a majority of the House in the 2026 midterm elections.

9. The Republicans will maintain their majority in the Senate (or it will be a tie Senate, which will still be a Republican majority because the Vice President will be a Republican)

10. The federal government will attempt to litigate some of the House or Senate race results.

11.    Sam Alito or Clarence Thomas will either no longer be on the Supreme Court or will announce their retirement before the end of 2026.

12. The Supreme Court will rule against the Trump Administration on the tariff case (Learning Resources v. Trump).

13. The Supreme Court will rule against the Trump Administration on the birthright citizenship cases (Trump v. Washington and Trump v. Barbara)

14. The Supreme Court will rule in the Trump Administration's favor in the vast majority (over 65% of the time) of other cases.

15. The U.S. stock market will crash in 2026.

16. There will be at least one shutdown of the federal government in 2026.

17. Trump's approval rating will be underwater (meaning his unfavorability rating will be higher than his favorability rating) for either all of 2026 or all of 2026 up until the point that he is no longer president (assuming I am right about #1), as measured by Nate Silver's polling average model.

18. At least three members of Trump's cabinet will leave their job in 2026.

[I guess I already said this in prediction #4. D'oh! Thank's GW!]

19 18. The federal inflation rate will be higher than 5% by the end of 2026.

[AND I already said this in prediction #6. I really did not pay attention when I wrote this post. Thanks Snarki!]

20 19 18. I guess I gotta do my Central Asian leader prediction. Since I flip back and forth on this one, for this year I will predict that at least one of the five former Soviet Stans (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan (officially the Kyrgyz Republic) will change their head of state in 2026.

21 20 19. Nicolas Maduro will be President of Venezuela at the end of 2026.

22 21 20. While the bombing of boats in the Southern Caribbean and off the coast of Central and South America in the Pacific Ocean will continue at the beginning of 2026, there will be at least one big fuckup or embarrassing event that happens with one of them in 2026. Embarrassing event means something like a botched strike (the victims survive and get away), a target that later turns out to be someone who should not be targetted, a strike captured on video that embarrasses the U.S./Trump Administration in some way, etc.

23 22 21. Benjamin Netanyahu will no longer be Prime Minister of Israel at the end of 2026 (yeah I have made this prediction before. But I will be right this time!)

So... do you think any of these are right? Turn in at the end of 2026 to find out!