It was a beautiful, sunny day in the historic colonial city of Ambato, Ecuador. A beautiful, “flowery” city immortalized by the iconic poem “Ambato Tierra de Flores” (Ambato Land of Flowers) written in 1948 by Gustavo Egüez Vaca. Also, a city that played a critical role in Ecuador’s War of Independence against Spain in the early 19th century.

Located high in the central Andean valley, on the banks of the tranquil Ambato River, the city of Ambato (at the time with a population of 32,000) was the ideal place for my sister (eleven years then) and I (nine years old) to enjoy the last days of our summer vacation.

Accompanied by our nanny, we had gone to the Ambato River to wade in the shallow, gently flowing waters. Our nanny kept a close eye on us from the rocky bank.

Suddenly, we heard shouting and saw some rocks sliding down the steep banks. Perhaps because I was in the river, I do not remember feeling any shaking but did notice the river water becoming quite turbulent. Then we heard people shouting terremoto (earthquake) and saw our nanny flailing her arms, motioning us to get out of the river.

Once we climbed the banks of the river, we saw the sheer destruction and grasped what had happened.

On August 5, 1949, exactly 77 years ago, at 2:08 PM Ecuador time, an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter Scale (XI on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale) struck Ambato and the surrounding province of Tungurahua.

It was one of the strongest and most devastating earthquakes to hit earthquake-prone Ecuador (located on the “Pacific Rim of Fire”, a region of high seismic activity) in centuries and the second deadly earthquake to hit Ambato. A 1698 earthquake of 7.2-7.9 magnitude virtually destroyed the former Ambato settlement, “Old Ambato,” only to be rebuilt again in its present location.

In terms of casualties, destruction and immense human misery wreaked throughout the region, the 1949 earthquake was certainly one of the worst:

• More than 5,000 people were killed. In one of the most heavily hit towns, Pelileo — where no homes were left standing — only 300 of 3,500 survived.

• Roughly 20,000 were injured, 100,000 were left homeless, and approximately 225,000 people were displaced.

• Entire towns and villages were flattened in a 7,500-square mile area, some sinking into huge craters.

• About a third of Ambato was destroyed including its beautiful colonial center and the historic Matriz Church. A large percentage of the homes still standing had to be demolished.

• Massive landslides from the Andes mountains buried entire villages, blocked rivers and destroyed roads or rendered them impassable.

A few days after the earthquake, a Life Magazine issue described the tragedy as follows:

Perhaps one of the saddest aspects of the tragedy was that many people — forewarned by a moderate foreshock minutes before the main shock – rushed into churches seeking refuge or to pray. One of these churches, Ambato’s Iglesia Matriz, collapsed when the main earthquake hit, killing 70 children and a priest.

On that day in August 1949, our parents picked us up from the river very soon after the earthquake hit.

As we drove through the few streets that were passable, the extent of the disaster quickly became apparent.

We drove to our house that was still standing, but not safe to stay in. Our family spent the next few days in temporary shelter but soon moved to more permanent quarters…others were not as fortunate.

With significant help from other nations, including from the U.S., from international aid organizations and from the Ecuadorean government, Ambato was largely rebuilt relatively fast. It would take surrounding devastated towns much longer to rebuild. One of these towns, Pelileo, was totally rebuilt at a new site, a little more than a mile from its previous location.

A Festival of Fruit and Flowers (Fiesta de la Fruta y de las Flores) was held in Ambato on June 29, 1950, to help morale and the revival of Ambato.

It went a long way to economically, psychologically and culturally help the recovery of Ambato and to celebrate the resilience and tenacity of its people. It is now an annual celebration.

Edgar Landivar writes at Neomano, “Despite everything, the city of Ambato and its people demonstrated remarkable resilience and capacity for recovery, and their story serves as a reminder of the strength of the human spirit in times of adversity.”

Iglesia Matriz de Ambato, was replaced by an iconic, white cathedral, Iglesia La Catedral. in 1954.

Remember the 1948 poem, “Ambato Tierra de Flores”?

In 1949, after the earthquake, it was given its iconic upbeat rhythm and melody of a “pasacalle” by the renowned Ecuadorean composer Carlos Rubira Infante.

To this day it is the unofficial anthem for the beautiful, resilient city of Ambato.

The post On this Day, Seventy-Seven Years Ago, Tragedy Struck the ‘Land of Flowers’ appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

American democracy is enduring a chaotic period with the president’s actions unpredictable and the two political parties contending with extremist members. The Democratic Party is energized by its progressive wing and Democratic Socialists, though numerically they are a minority. The Republicans are controlled by Trump and his MAGA acolytes along with other right-wing adherents. Republican politicians cannot stand up to Trump or defeat is almost automatic in GOP primaries. In recent Democratic primaries, progressives and Democratic Socialists were most successful.
However, in a Gallup poll released in January, 45 percent of respondents identified as independents with 27% Democrats or and 27% Republicans. I, and a large plurality of Americans who consider ourselves independents or centrists have no party as our political home. In elections, we either vote for the lesser of evil in the two parties or do not vote. It is time for this to change and provide us with a viable option.
It is true that in the past, third parties have been unsuccessful with presidential candidates in national elections, from Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Robert La Follette, Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats, George Wallace, another staunch segregationist, and Ross Perot, a Texas industrialist in 1992 and 1996. He was a fiscal conservative, populist and economic nationalist who promised to balance the budget. Clinton won the race, Perot obtaining almost 19 percent of the vote.
There have also been others like Ralph Nader and various independent candidates, none of them gaining traction with voters. Thus, with no past successes in challenges to the two dominant parties, why do I think this is an opportune time to establish a centrist third party.
In 2010, a group of disillusioned Republicans, Democrats and independents came together to form No Labels with the idea of creating a berth for voters who were dissatisfied with both legacy parties. This organization has been promoting a centrist vision with bipartisanship and common-sense ideas. They are also concerned about the looming debt crisis.
Though No Labels has been in existence for 16 years, they haven’t yet been able to get much backing for a third party. Both Republicans and Democrats have been strongly opposed. There is no question that a centrist third party is necessary, and if No Labels cannot bring it to fruition, perhaps it could combine with other groups or grow its membership to generate more interest and financing. Or another organization could be formed to accomplish the job. In 2025, a chapter of No Labels in Arizona changed its name to the Independent Party and tried to get on the ballot They were sued by the Democrats and Republicans to be kept off the ballot because the use of Independent in their name would confuse unaffiliated voters. A Phoenix judge in March 2026 agreed, saying that the renaming could be considered a “political bait and switch.” 41,000 voters had been registered under the No Labels Party name in Arizona.
There are a number of reasons a centrist party is needed now. The first is that at no time in American history has there been such a predominance of independent and centrist voters who have no political party. The second is that both legacy parties are bleeding voters because of their high degree of partisanship. Many of their members are not as extreme as the parties’ ideologues. Third, it is difficult to get legislation passed because of the existing partisanship and the man currently in the White House. If a centrist party could form shifting coalitions with the other parties, government could function more effectively, and more legislation would be enacted. Virtually every other democracy has more than two parties and forms coalitions to govern. Because of the Internet and social media, it would also be easier to start a political party now than at any time in the past.
A new centrist party could be organized on state levels and doesn’t have to run a presidential candidate at the outset, unless there is a charismatic figure who is a true centrist. To initiate a centrist party would require political professionals who recognize the need and want to be involved to reinvigorate our democracy. Funding could come from the grass roots and wealthy individuals who realize the importance of a centrist party and are not looking for a quid pro quo or special favors for their contributions.
Republicans and Democrats have been captured by extreme elements within their parties making America difficult to govern, with partisanship, inefficiency and corruption rampant in government and politics. A new, centrist third party could put the nation back on the right track and make democracy function properly again. There will be pushback and obstruction from the current parties and the man in the White House, but it can be done. In fact, it must be done if American democracy is going to thrive in the future.

The post American Needs A Centrist Third Party appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

However, in a Gallup poll released in January, 45 percent of respondents identified as independents with 27% Democrats or and 27% Republicans. I, and a large plurality of Americans who consider ourselves independents or centrists have no party as our political home. In elections, we either vote for the lesser of evil in the two parties or do not vote. It is time for this to change and provide us with a viable option.

It is true that in the past, third parties have been unsuccessful with presidential candidates in national elections, from Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Robert La Follette, Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats, George Wallace, another staunch segregationist, and Ross Perot, a Texas industrialist in 1992 and 1996. He was a fiscal conservative, populist and economic nationalist who promised to balance the budget. Clinton won the race, Perot obtaining almost 19 percent of the vote.

There have also been others like Ralph Nader and various independent candidates, none of them gaining traction with voters. Thus, with no past successes in challenges to the two dominant parties, why do I think this is an opportune time to establish a centrist third party.
In 2010, a group of disillusioned Republicans, Democrats and independents came together to form No Labels with the idea of creating a berth for voters who were dissatisfied with both legacy parties. This organization has been promoting a centrist vision with bipartisanship and common-sense ideas. They are also concerned about the looming debt crisis.

Though No Labels has been in existence for 16 years, they haven’t yet been able to get much backing for a third party. Both Republicans and Democrats have been strongly opposed. There is no question that a centrist third party is necessary, and if No Labels cannot bring it to fruition, perhaps it could combine with other groups or grow its membership to generate more interest and financing. Or another organization could be formed to accomplish the job.

In 2025, a chapter of No Labels in Arizona changed its name to the Independent Party and tried to get on the ballot They were sued by the Democrats and Republicans to be kept off the ballot because the use of Independent in their name would confuse unaffiliated voters. A Phoenix judge in March 2026 agreed, saying that the renaming could be considered a “political bait and switch.” 41,000 voters had been registered under the No Labels Party name in Arizona.

There are a number of reasons a centrist party is needed now. The first is that at no time in American history has there been such a predominance of independent and centrist voters who have no political party. The second is that both legacy parties are bleeding voters because of their high degree of partisanship. Many of their members are not as extreme as the parties’ ideologues. Third, it is difficult to get legislation passed because of the existing partisanship and the man currently in the White House. If a centrist party could form shifting coalitions with the other parties, government could function more effectively, and more legislation would be enacted. Virtually every other democracy has more than two parties and forms coalitions to govern. Because of the Internet and social media, it would also be easier to start a political party now than at any time in the past.

A new centrist party could be organized on state levels and doesn’t have to run a presidential candidate at the outset, unless there is a charismatic figure who is a true centrist. To initiate a centrist party would require political professionals who recognize the need and want to be involved to reinvigorate our democracy. Funding could come from the grass roots and wealthy individuals who realize the importance of a centrist party and are not looking for a quid pro quo or special favors for their contributions.

Republicans and Democrats have been captured by extreme elements within their parties making America difficult to govern, with partisanship, inefficiency and corruption rampant in government and politics. A new, centrist third party could put the nation back on the right track and make democracy function properly again. There will be pushback and obstruction from the current parties and the man in the White House, but it can be done. In fact, it must be done if American democracy is going to thrive in the future.

The post America Needs A Centrist Third Party appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election were brazenly antidemocratic. Yet Trump and his supporters nonetheless justified their actions under the dubious pretense of preserving American democracy – as a matter of getting the vote right, of reversing voter fraud.

There’s a good reason they took this approach. Authoritarianism has long been rejected across the political spectrum. Democrats and Republicans routinely lob insults like “dictator” or “fascist” to describe politicians of the other party who are in power.

But in recent months, a strand of conservative thought whose adherents are forthright in their disdain for democracy has started to creep into GOP politics. It’s called “neoreaction,” and its leading figure, a software engineer and blogger named Curtis Yarvin, has ties to at least two GOP U.S. Senate candidates, along with Peter Thiel, a major GOP donor.

In my years researching the far right, I see this as one of the more significant developments in right-wing politics. Someone who calls himself a monarchist isn’t being relegated to the fringes of the internet. He’s being interviewed by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and has U.S. Senate candidates repeating his talking points.

A political philosophy is born

In 2007, Yarvin launched his blog, “Unqualified Reservations.” Writing under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, he produced a prodigious corpus of political philosophy.

In his writings, Yarvin cites his political influences. They include the 19th-century political philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who disdained democracy and thought it could too easily veer into mob rule; American 20th-century political theorist James Burnham, who became convinced that elites would come to control the country’s politics while couching their interests in democratic rhetoric; and economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who, in his 2001 book “Democracy: The God That Failed,” wrote of how all organizations – irrespective of size – are best managed by a single executive.

Yarvin is perhaps best known for his concept of “the cathedral” – his term for the U.S. ruling regime. Yarvis argues that virtually all opinion-makers, most notably those in academia and journalism, are essentially “reading the same book.” In an essay for Tablet Magazine, Yarvin wrote that what’s often characterized as the “marketplace of ideas” is actually a “monoculture” that props up an oligarchy.

The cathedral is self-reinforcing: Individual journalists and professors are rewarded when they follow the ruling ethos. Those who do otherwise risk being punished or at the very least face diminished career prospects.

Another important neoreactionary figure is Nick Land, whose main contribution to the philosophy is the concept of accelerationism. In essence, accelerationism is based on Vladimir Lenin’s notion that “worse is better.” The Russian revolutionary maintained that the more chaotic conditions became, the greater the likelihood that his Bolshevik party could accomplish its goals.

Analogously, right-wing accelerationists believe that they can hasten the demise of liberal democratic governments by stoking political tension.

Smashing the cathedral

Both Yarvin and Land believe that gradual, incremental reforms to democracy will not save Western society; instead, a “hard reset” or “reboot” is necessary. To that end, Yarvin has coined the acronym “RAGE” – Retire All Government Employees – as a crucial step toward that goal. The acronym is reminiscent of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s vow to deconstruct the administrative state.

Yarvin advocates for an entirely new system of government – what he calls “neocameralism.” He advocates for a centrally managed economy led by a monarch – perhaps modeled after a corporate CEO – who wouldn’t need to adhere to plodding liberal-democratic procedures. Yarvin has written approvingly of the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping for his pragmatic and market-oriented authoritarianism.

While not explicitly fascist, Yarvin’s worldview does, at times, appear to have a fascistic bent. As the historian Roger Griffin once argued, the essence of fascism was a nationwide process of death and rebirth. Yarvin’s rhetoric of “reboots” and “hard resets” evokes the imagery of national renewal.

Moreover, though he maintains that he is not a white nationalist, he has echoed racist views like the belief that white people, on average, have higher IQs than Black people.

Follow the money

Though neoreaction has long eschewed involvement in electoral politics, it seems to be be gradually penetrating mainstream right-wing spaces.

Yarvin is said to have helped popularize the “red pill” meme in alt-right subcultures. Pulled from the 1999 film “The Matrix,” to take the red pill is to no longer live under the spell of delusion. In the context of politics, it means breaking free from the spell of liberal orthodoxy.

In September 2021, Yarvin made an appearance on “Tucker Carlson Today,” during which he explained the concept of the cathedral. When Yarvin called himself a monarchist, Carlson didn’t bat an eye.

Then, in May 2022, Vanity Fair reported on the relationship among Yarvin, GOP megadonor and venture capitalist Peter Thiel and U.S. Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Blake Masters.

Thiel, who is often described as a libertarian, holds views that can appear to be contradictory or mysterious. Reporter Max Chafkin, who wrote a biography of Thiel, told Politico in September 2021 that the investor has an authoritarian streak – “a longing” for a “more powerful chief executive.”

Thiel, like Yarvin, has expressed frustration with American democracy. As far back as 2004, Thiel lamented that “America’s constitutional machinery” prevents “any single ambitious person from reconstructing the old Republic.” In 2013, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur invested in Yarvin’s firm, the Tlon Corp., best known for developing a decentralized personal server platform. And according to Yarvin, he and Thiel watched the returns of the 2016 U.S. presidential election together.

During the 2022 election cycle, Thiel has donated more than $10 million to super PACs supporting Vance and Masters, who also serves as the president of the Thiel Foundation.

Vance, who won his primary in June, is perhaps best known for his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” Though Vance once denounced Trump, he has since embraced the former president and now calls for a “De-Ba’athification program” for the civil service – a reference to the purging of Saddam Hussein’s loyalists after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. He cites Yarvin as a friend and mentor.

Yarvin, meanwhile, has given $5,800, the maximum amount allowed for individual contributions, to Blake Masters’ Senate campaign. Masters, for his part, has echoed one of Yarvin’s maxims – “RAGE,” or “Retire All Government Employees” – on the stump.

To be fair, neither Masters nor Vance has called for the dismantling of U.S. democracy. Yet they espouse a brand of apocalyptic rhetoric that depicts a governing system on its last legs. “Psychopaths,” Masters earnestly explains in one web ad, “are running the country.”

The current order, Vance proclaimed in a podcast interview, will meet its “inevitable collapse.”

“There’s this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who has written about some of these things,” Vance added.

Democracy in crisis

Why might neoreactionary ideas be gaining currency among right-wing candidates and donors?

Trump’s electoral success illustrated the acute dissatisfaction the American far right has had with the establishment wing of the Republican Party.

But more broadly, public trust in government has eroded to the point where only 2 in 10 Americans say they trust the federal government to do the right thing. A Gallup Poll published on July 5, 2022, found that only 7% of Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress – the legislative body’s lowest recorded rating in 43 years of polling. A Monmouth University poll released that same day reported that 88% of Americans believe the U.S. is on the wrong track. And in a July 2022 New York Times/Siena College poll, 58% of those polled said the government needs major reforms or a “complete overhaul.”

With confidence in government at historic lows, a window opens for other ideologies to seed the political imagination. Neoreaction is but one of them.

George Michael, Professor of Criminal Justice, Westfield State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Amy S. Badura-Brack, Creighton University

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” a new adaptation of Homer’s epic tale of Odysseus’ perilous journey home after the Trojan War, is already being described as a case study in post-traumatic stress disorder.

But even more so, actor Matt Damon’s tortured and broken portrayal of Odysseus offers a look into what psychologists call moral injury.

According to The Moral Injury Project at Syracuse University, moral injury is “the damage done to one’s conscience or moral compass when a person perpetrates, witnesses or fails to prevent acts that transgress one’s own moral beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct.” Three clusters of experiences mark moral injury: spiritual or existential collapse; guilt and shame; and alienation from other people.

Homer’s works have long been heralded for highlighting the physical and psychological wounds of war. Yet director Christopher Nolan, far more than Homer, goes on to plumb Odysseus’ existential collapse, shame and guilt.

An invisible wound

I’m a PTSD researcher and clinician who has worked at four Veterans Affairs hospitals, and I’ve long taught my students that Homer’s epics contain some of the oldest written examples of PTSD symptoms, even though the formal diagnosis of PTSD did not exist until 1980.

Moral injury is not simply another name for PTSD, although the two often travel together.

PTSD is a fear-based disorder characterized by reexperiencing past trauma, avoidance of anything that triggers memories of that trauma, negative changes in mood and thought, and being constantly on guard.

Not everyone with PTSD experiences moral injury, and not all types of moral injury induce PTSD. But the two can overlap, particularly when someone violates their deeply held moral beliefs in a way that’s connected to a profound sense of guilt or shame.

In his books “Achilles in Vietnam” and “Odysseus in America,” psychiatrist Jonathan Shay explored moral injury in the context of the Vietnam War.

Shay focused on the American military institutions and leaders who undermined the trust and ideals of their soldiers through unclear goals and unjust orders. His exploration of moral injury is important. But it emphasizes the psychological consequences for soldiers when they’re betrayed in high-stakes situations. A more expansive view of moral injury, advanced by psychologist Brett Litz, shows it can also result from an individual’s own actions – what’s known as perpetration-based moral injury.

Released in 1989, the critically acclaimed movie “Born on the Fourth of July,” which is based on Ron Kovic’s 1976 autobiography, centers on this type of moral injury.

Kovic, played by Tom Cruise, is haunted by acts he committed while fighting in Vietnam. In a friendly fire incident, he accidentally kills a fellow Marine during a chaotic firefight. Later, he witnesses and participates in an attack in which his unit kills Vietnamese civilians, including women and children.

Moral injury in ‘The Odyssey’

Kovic’s actions and ensuing trauma reflect the same kind of moral injury seen in Damon’s Odysseus.

After 10 long years of fighting the Trojan War, Odysseus devises a plan to end the conflict: He and his troops infiltrate Troy by hiding inside a massive wooden horse. They build it as an apparent peace offering, climb inside and wait until their enemies pull “the gift” inside the city walls. Then they attack.

The military maneuver is brilliant and effective. But it also requires Odysseus to break Zeus’ law of xenia: the sacred obligation of hospitality between host and guest. He crosses another moral boundary by using deception. During the ensuing massacre, he violates the principle – even between enemies – of treating others how you would want to be treated.

Odysseus’ self-imposed exile – evocative of the social alienation that’s so prevalent among sufferers of moral injury – keeps him away from home for 10 long years after the war ends. Yet even time and space fail to heal him, and Odysseus remains haunted by guilt and shame: “We left them a gift, an offer of peace, that they took into their home,” Damon’s Odysseus says. “We violated all that’s sacred between people.”

The warriors I have known

Nolan’s characterization of Odysseus reminds me of the veterans I have treated.

In addition to moral injury, Damon’s Odysseus almost certainly has PTSD. He has recurrent nightmares; he tries to suppress his shame by consuming memory-erasing lotus flowers; and he feels overwhelming guilt and rage. Yet he appears most distraught by the thought that a part of himself has died and is irrevocably broken. While disguised as a beggar, he utters to his wife, Penelope, “What if the Odysseus you knew lost his way?”

It’s a version of what many of the veterans I’ve treated have told me: “If you really knew me, you wouldn’t love me.”

Many of them go on to admit that they feel they are unworthy of love. Actually, it’s more than just a feeling. It’s a moral conclusion that they reach after replaying and relitigating their actions at war.

Many of my clients describe their most significant trauma as something they did or failed to do, such as shooting a civilian or hiding instead of fighting during an attack.

Trauma taking place via personal acts of commission or omission usually does not come to mind when you think of PTSD. But you can, in fact, be a war hero – as Odysseus was – and you can also become haunted by your own actions, which linger long after the war ends.

Toward healing

Effective strategies for mitigating the fear reactions that PTSD can elicit, including treatments I’ve developed, exist.

But moral injury is a different beast from PTSD, and it can be especially challenging to help someone suffering from moral injury who believes they are unlovable.

A number of therapies centered on resolving moral injury have emerged in recent years. One of those, developed by psychologist Shira Maguen, is called the “impact of killing,” and it centers on the moral and emotional aftermath of killing someone during war.

It’s seen as an especially promising tool for improving veterans’ quality of life. She finds that among veterans who had already completed traditional trauma therapy, her intervention can further bolster veterans’ willingness to take part in community events and confide in loved ones.

Some people assume “The Odyssey” has survived over the years because it is a classic story of war, resilience and homecoming. But plenty of war stories were lost to history during the illiterate centuries after the collapse of the Bronze Age. “The Odyssey” endures, I think, because it centers on a tortured hero whom the audience admires but cannot fully absolve. His cunning is entwined with his crime.

Odysseus isn’t easily redeemed, excused or pitied. As fresh waves of troops continue to be exposed to the horrors of war, Odysseus’ trauma also continues to hit home.

Amy S. Badura-Brack, Professor of Psychological Science, Creighton University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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John Jones knows about voter suppression. Currently the president of Dickinson College, Jones – nominated in 2002 by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate – served for almost two decades as a federal court judge.

In that role, Jones presided over a case, filed just prior to the November 2020 presidential election, in which a conservative legal foundation sued Pennsylvania’s top election official, alleging that she had allowed 21,000 dead people to remain on the voter rolls. The group asked Jones to stop those people from voting.

Jones denied the request. “In an election where every vote matters, we will not disenfranchise potentially eligible voters based solely upon the allegations of a private foundation,” he wrote in his memorandum on the case.

In this interview with The Conversation politics and legal affairs editor Naomi Schalit, Jones discusses President Donald Trump’s March 31, 2026, executive order to wrest control of mail-in voting from states and give it to the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security; how the constitutional design of U.S. voting bars such federal control; and how Trump’s order would disenfranchise voters and has been the subject of lawsuits by voting rights groups and 23 states.

Trump’s executive order has in large part been blocked by a lower court, and on July 27, 2026, his administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow his order to be implemented.

Article 1, Section 4, of the Constitution says, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” When you first saw the executive order by the president, what did you think?

My first thought was, this executive order is dead on arrival. It assumes two problems that really don’t exist.

States are empowered under Article 1, Section 4, of the Constitution to conduct elections and set the time, place and manner of those elections.

The president’s March order asserts that states don’t maintain active and appropriate voter rolls. That’s just not true. State after state takes that very, very seriously, and it’s a principle of federalism that states are given the responsibility for conducting elections. This includes maintaining accurate voter rolls, which, despite the noise to the contrary, states have historically done very well.

The second inaccuracy that undergirds this executive order is that there is rampant fraud in mail-in voting. There is absolutely no evidence to show that that is true.

So you have those twin rationales that are, in my view, demonstrably untrue. And as someone who believes that we need to defer to the laws and the Constitution, not to mention find accurate facts, this is deeply troubling. It’s just beyond the president’s authority to do this.

There are other problems. They are less critical but equally fatal.

President Trump said on signing the executive order that “the cheating on mail-in voting is legendary.” So the order gives the U.S. Postal Service the job of determining who may cast mail ballots, in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security. Is that one of the problems you see?

That is not what the post office is equipped to do. I could joke here that they have a hard enough time at the U.S. Postal Service getting the mail delivered. Now they’re supposed to develop a program in concert with Homeland Security so that they could work to disqualify voters because they’re not on the list that Homeland Security provides to them that supposedly contains U.S. citizens. Homeland Security is simply not equipped to do this either. This is out of their skill set as well.

What’s the upshot?

Setting aside all the legal and constitutional hurdles that have been raised by lower courts, if this were to survive judicial scrutiny at the U.S. Supreme Court, it clearly would disenfranchise voters. We have a country that has an increasing group of citizens who really like to vote by mail – including, by the way, the president of the United States.

And now the administration is in effect saying, “We want to make it really, really difficult for you to vote by mail,” because of these contrived and, quite frankly, false premises that have to do with voter rolls and fraud in elections. There were legal challenges over this order in federal courts in D.C. and Massachusetts. After the latest ruling against the policy, the Supreme Court now has the case.

Why does anybody have to sue if this is simply not in the president’s power to make happen?

Because if they don’t sue to enjoin this, since these agencies – the Postal Service and Homeland Security – are under the executive branch, they’ll just go ahead and implement this cumbersome and impossible initiative.

Secretaries of state have pushed back against this. In a separate move by the administration, the Department of Justice has asked states to turn over their voter rolls, and many have refused to do so, standing on the principle that it’s beyond the executive to demand those. Various federal courts have backed the states so far. One of the problems with the request is a lack of confidence that the information can be kept safe by the federal government. And states work very, very hard to do that.

When I was on the federal bench and denied the injunction in the lawsuit filed by a conservative legal foundation that sought to take 20,000 plus voters off the rolls, I did so because there was no good proof that they were, in fact, deceased, which is what the suit asserted. Subsequent to the election, at the now infamous Four Seasons landscaping press conference, Rudy Giuliani was waving my decision in the air and decrying the fact that dead people voted in Pennsylvania. That was simply not true.

These types of hyperbolic claims, made up out of whole cloth, stoke fears. This recent executive order is a solution that is looking for a problem that doesn’t exist.

Why did the framers of the Constitution set up a process where states run elections and not the federal government?

Well, first of all the federal government didn’t have the apparatus to conduct elections. And states had been running elections; they knew how to do it. There was a great deal of trust in the states’ ability to run elections. And there was the core debate of federalism, as to what powers states could retain, and they didn’t want to abdicate many of those powers. There was also a debate about the potential for fraud, that if there was a single entity controlling all the elections – that is, if you centralize elections under one politically motivated executive – it’s a really fraught situation which can be abused.

The Constitution is clear, and unless amended, Article 1, Section 4, is – to use the trite phrase – what it is. The power rests with the states, absent congressional action. There is no mention of the president. None. This executive order is thus, in my view, patently unconstitutional, and I harbor little doubt that it will be found to be so.

So you think that the Supreme Court will, as the lower courts did, rule against Trump?

As a practical matter, we’re down to just over three months before the midterms. I very much doubt a majority of the high court will want to wade into this controversy, given the virtual impossibility of implementing the order even if they granted the requested relief. With the caveat that you never know what the Supreme Court will do, I predict that they will not come to the president’s rescue in this matter.

This is an updated version of an interview originally published on April 22, 2026.

John E. Jones III, President, Dickinson College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Ukrainian defensive war is being conducted on a huge scale: longer than WW1 and more bloody than most of our American wars combined. We don’t notice or keep score.

But they do. To keep score and award “points” (an effective system, btw), proof of kills, Ukrainian forces must “document” hits so we have the snuff reels of doomed, middle aged Russian soldiers – “Orks” – in their last moments, terrified. It is distasteful but if it furthers Ukrainian freedom it is hard to oppose as a plan. War is distasteful.

It chills even my cynical heart. Probably half starved, terrified, we see their faces as the drones swoop in for their aerial coup de gras. The many dead are average white proles like me and (as per the data) their ages skew older on both sides. This is not a kiddy war.

Demographic collapse means younger breeding people are more precious. Demographic collapse is a primary reason for the war itself as evidenced by the stealing of Ukrainian children for “adoption”, a probable reason for the war because nobody fights for “land” anymore, this isn’t 1900. They fight for people and prestiege now.

And you can’t send your breeding population into a meat grinder so you send the older dudes who have already bred and you make their kids fatherless. You make their wives widows at a time in their lives, middle age, where it is unlikely they’ll couple up again even if there were enough men to go around which there isn’t.

Further, in Russia the burden, the meat grinder’s feast, is filled by minorities like the wretchard broke proles of the provinces: Buryatia, Dagestan, and Bashkortostan.

Yakutia in Siberia, Krasnodar: poor and indigenous peoples. Some sprung out of jail and if they survive the battlefield and return to civillian life often remind the locals why they were in jail in in the first place as they start murdering and raping. Returned servicemen manics and criminals is a Thing in Russia.

These are people that don’t matter versus Moscow-St. Petersburg elites. Even Putin, at a staged TV confab with widows said of the dead: “They’d just be dead of alcoholism or something else…” in Russian (untranslated by RT). Disposable lives is a hallmark of every era in Russian history from the Tsars to the USSR to gangster state Rossiya.

Russian leaders are wildly generous with the little peoples’ blood in a way that wouldn’t work in a democracy where lies are called out, lives are precious and politicians held accountable. That bright line between accountability and non accountability is the essence of democracy and the differential between being born Russian or American.

You might be a lovely Russian guy, a family man, my age 53, caught up in this imperial madness and in your last moments on earth you hear the low, terrifying buzz of a drone above you, very interested in you, closing in and you think: “OH DAMN THIS IS IT!”

You think about your lovely wife, your beautiful kids and your dog. And that’s it, that’s your life story, bleeding out in some stupid remote field for a fight you don’t care about but you needed the money. You spun the wheel and you lost and we watched your last moments: your terrified grimace, flailing arms and futile panic.

The Ukrainian War and “Palestine” and Iran are identical and represent a division as stark as the old Cold War. Historian Nial Ferguson called this alliance “The axis of ill will”: Russia, the Evil Empire, China, its soon to be total master, Hamas and the Mullahs who talk to Allah and actually – no kidding – believe Allah talks to them.

All these international hooligans are aligned, they’re friends. They share intelligence, munitions and drones even if their alliances aren’t “deep” or inter-cultural but rather formed for one reason: opposition to us. We are fighting one horrible monster on three fronts.

On the other side are the democracies: USA, Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and little Somaliland (not Somalia), a plucky, sane bastion of the free West in the Horn of Africa. They get it.

And yet campus Nazis, socialists and “students” (those who learn. Really?) weep and protest everytime some Gazan whimpers and Islamist Al Jazeera amplifies their nonsense, channeled as it is to thousands of “charity” accounts out of Nigeria and Bangalore.

Gazans: A people whose entire society is devoted to Jew-beheading and, when ALL THE JEWS ARE DEAD… will come for YOU. “First the Saturday people – Jews- then the Sunday people: Christians.” Hindus, Shintos and the like don’t matter because their beheading plan is obvious. “Kill the infidels wherever you find them” – religion of peace.

These three fights are existential, civilizational and identical in meaning. Which side do you take? If you’ve bought your keffiyeh for the MARCH FOR INTIFADA!! this weekend consider these countries, their systems and the way they treat people like you: woman, leftist, student, gay, queer, loudmouth.

If you can’t visit in real life do some reading about life for the average Russian, Iranian or (a self governing statelet until Oct. 7) Gazan and how flourishing their lives are under the system their overlords are getting them killed for. You with them? Because dear young, stupid, pretty, braless protesters: you should know for whom you stand and shout.

ID 217761135 | Ukraine Iran ©
Wirestock |

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In the good old days of vaudeville, they used a long shepherds hook to get bad acts that couldn’t take a hint off the stage.

On July 19th, after Spain defeated Argentina during the 2026 World Cup final, FIFA President Gianni Infantino could have used a hook.

Donald Trump lingered on stage trying to be in the photo taken of the triumphant team. It took several tries for Infantino to usher Trump off the podium so the team could celebrate.

It’s a vivid metaphor: Sometimes the hardest part isn’t getting someone on stage. It’s getting them to leave it.

Trump has repeatedly suggested he deserves more time in office, joked or mused about serving beyond the constitutional limit, and has made comments sparking speculation he’s seeking to remain in power. His allies have pursued aggressive redistricting, backed stricter voting rules in some states, challenged election procedures, and continued to cast doubt on election integrity. Those actions raise concerns among critics Trump and his allies are trying to tilt the political playing field.

But despite the heated rhetoric, the American system contains constitutional barriers to any president cancelling an election or simply refusing to leave office.

Federal elections are administered primarily by the states, not the White house, under laws enacted by Congress and subject to reviews by independent courts. Thousands of state and local election officials — not the president — oversee voting and vote counting. The decentralized structure, combined with constitutional term limits and multiple checks, makes it extremely difficult for any president to unilaterally suspend an election or remain in office beyond the limits established by law.

The founding fathers weren’t writing a constitution for saints. They assumed ambitious, power-seeking leaders would eventually arise. That is why they built checks and balances, separation of powers, federalism, regular elections, congressional oversight, judicial review, and ultimately the peaceful transfer of power.

In Federalist No. 51, James Madison argued government must be designed because “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” The Constitution was built on skepticism about concentrated power.

Long before Madison, another tradition wrestled with exactly the same problem.

The Torah (Hebrew Bible):

– Deuteronomy 17:14–20 — Probably the strongest passage. It limits the king’s power. He must not accumulate excessive horses (military power), wives (political alliances), or wealth. He is commanded to write his own copy of the law and read it daily “so that his heart may not be lifted above his brothers.” The king is explicitly portrayed as subject to the law, not above it.

– 1 Samuel 8:10–18 — Israel demands a king. Samuel warns that kings will take sons for war, daughters for service, seize the best land, tax the people, and concentrate power in themselves. It’s one of history’s earliest warnings about executive overreach.

– Proverbs 16:18 — “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

– Micah 3:1–3, 9–11 — A blistering condemnation of corrupt leaders who abuse power for personal gain.

In the 880s, Rabbi Saadya Ga’on wrote:

“It is appropriate that I establish the matter that many overlook regarding the perils of haughtiness and power. Among them is that when people elevate themselves and become arrogant, they go beyond their proper place and trample over the near and the far. They see themselves as unique in their generation, disparage everyone else’s opinion, and mock and reject their words…They will even contradict experts in their own field…

“They will go so far as to question the Creator’s wisdom and knowledge, opposing much of it, considering it incorrect in their eyes…Their hearts will lead them to enter into all types of dangerous pursuits, out of confidence that their genius will save them. And this will be their undoing.”

The founders warned us. Ancient Jewish wisdom warned us. Neither claimed a republic would always choose wisely. They simply understood that unchecked pride is one of democracy’s oldest enemies.

Whether Americans believe those warnings apply today is a decision each voter must make.

Copyright 2026 Joe Gandelman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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Here’s a question for you: If the Fraternal Order of Police were to plan a banquet, would it ever decide to invite, as its keynote speaker, someone who by definition defies law enforcement? In other words, a convicted felon.

No way. And yet the collaborationist leaders of the White House Correspondents Association decided to invite, as its keynote speaker last Friday night, someone who loathes independent journalism, a pathological liar who rapes factual reality. And who’s a convicted felon.

The annual WHCA dinner has long been an insular Beltway bloat-a-thon where bejeweled and tuxedoed newspeople suck up to the newsmakers, but the ‘206 version (restaged after the April event was truncated by gunfire) was truly unique because never before had the dining journalists felt compelled to sit there in quietude and weather a full hour of free-form demagoguery – much of it aimed at them, mocking their core mission.

Nobody walked out. It was the silence of the lambs.

But the winner of the normalization sweepstakes was Jacqui Heinrich, the new WHCA president, who smilingly embraced the fascist guest of honor. No surprise there, because Jacqui works for Fox News, the propaganda outlet that shelled out $787 million in a court settlement after it was outed for amplifying Trump’s relentless lies about the 2020 election.

One outside group, the Society of Professional Journalists, had warned in advance that “it is hypocritical to celebrate the First Amendment in front of the man who relentlessly attacks it.” And indeed he has – sending subpoenas to reporters whose stories he hates, challenging the license renewals of ABC-owned stations because ABC didn’t broadcast his recent prime-time address, banning the Associated Press from the Oval Office, suing the BBC and Wall Street Journal, mocking female reporters’ looks, and much more.

The WHCA’s leaders did more than just celebrate the First Amendment in front of the man. They gave him the podium.

I’m old enough to remember when a president – any president, even Nixon – comported himself with at least a modicum of dignity. But on Friday night, I was magically transported back to my seventh grade cafeteria, where bullies spewed insults between bites of sloppy joes. I duly learned during the dinner that Bruce Springsteen “looks like hell,” that Sen. Adam Schiff is “Watermelon Head because he has the largest head I’ve ever seen with the smallest pencil neck,” that Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert are “terrible people without talent,” that Texas Democrat James Talarico “looks like Alfred E. Newman,” that prosecutor Jack Smith is “a deranged lunatic,” that Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker is “a fat pig,” and that CNN’s Kaitlan Collins looks like a transperson.

I was also informed – this I did not know! – that the word Democrat has been replaced by Dumocrat. Our MAGA professor of linguistics explained it this way: “The word Dumocrat is something that’s come into fashion. I changed the E with a U, and most people don’t know that ‘dumb’ has a B, so we don’t have to worry about that. It’s very quiet. I thought it was quite good, but I haven’t gotten much credit for that.”

You may have heard more eloquent articulation from an unhoused fellow on your street corner. I know I have.

He was on firmer ground while telling lies. I won’t waste your time fact-checking the doozies – that his 2020 election loss was “rigged,” that his war in Iran is “going extremely well,” yadda yadda – because you’ve heard it all before. But one in particular stopped me cold:

“I have a lot of respect for your profession.”

If that were true, he wouldn’t be attacking journalists as “stupid” and “corrupt” and “horrible,” he wouldn’t have filed a lawsuit that posted the home address of a Wall Street Journal reporter (who had to flee with her family for safety), he wouldn’t have issued subpoenas (via his personal law firm formerly known as the Justice Department) targeting New York Times reporters’ family members. And he wouldn’t be intimating that journalists who seek the truth are America’s enemies:

“It’s time to expose the crooked-media deceptions…These are really, really dishonest people, and they’re bad people. And I really think they don’t like our country. I really believe that…These are sick people. You know the thing I don’t understand? You would think they’d want to make our country great again, and I honestly believe they don’t.”

But you won’t find those lines in the WHCA transcript. He riffed those sentiments during a Phoenix speech to his cultists…nine years ago. He is now as he has always been, except worse.

How shameful it was Beltway journalists platformed the enemy of everything they stand for, and reduced their celebratory dinner to a recycled MAGA meetup. Their core principles are trumped by their lust for proximity to power. The odds they’ll learn a lesson from this debacle are roughly one in a million, but if there was one shaft of light in the darkness, one wee moment of joy the other night, it was a remark he uttered near the end of the ordeal:

“You people have no idea how lucky you are. When I’m gone, you’re all gonna be broke.”

“When I’m gone…”

And my heart skipped a beat.

Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com

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It is not widely known that several countries officially use the U.S. dollar as their national currency.

One of those countries is Ecuador.

Experiencing rampant inflation/devaluation and a massive economic and fiscal crisis, Ecuador officially adopted the U.S. dollar as its legal tender in January 2000.

When the “dollarization” was announced, the official fixed conversion rate was 25,000 sucres per US dollar (USD). An exchange rate that had steadily climbed — sometimes not-so-steadily –- from 2 sucres per USD in 1898, to 13 sucres per USD when I was a young boy living in Ecuador in the late 40s, to nearly 12,000 sucres per USD on the eve of dollarization.

Generally, dollarization has significantly benefitted Ecuador’s fiscal situation and its economy.

Some of the key benefits have been the end of hyperinflation; lower interest rates; a modest growth in GDP per capita;; greater monetary, economic, and financial stability; a significant increase in the minimum wage, especially “a remarkable and sustained reduction in poverty.”

On the 25th anniversary of Ecuador’s dollarization, in an interview with the Ecuadorian newspaper El Espreso, currency expert Steve Hanke tells the newspaper, “Overall, Ecuador’s dollarization has worked very well. It is the longest-lived currency regime in Ecuador’s history. It has produced the longest period of economic stability in Ecuador’s history. “

A year later, Gabriela Calderon de Burgos writes at El Universo:

Since adopting the dollar on January 9, 2000, the country has enjoyed the longest period of monetary stability in its republican history. Ecuador’s dollarization is a success story little known outside the country and little appreciated within it: economic stability coexisting with high political volatility.

There have been some drawbacks. Among them:

The loss of “seigniorage.” Essentially the loss of the profit Ecuador or its central bank would make from printing money or minting coins — from “creating money.”

Related to this is a certain loss of (financial) sovereignty, “effectively relinquishing control of its monetary policy to the U.S. Federal Reserve,” as Sonia A. Carpio Vinueza writes in “Impact of Dollarization in Ecuador’s Economic Performance.”

There is also the “cost of cash”: Buying and importing physical U.S. bank notes and minting its own centavo coin. More on coins later.

Perhaps the greatest drawback, in this author’s opinion, is what could be described as an unforeseen, certainly unintended — yet very serious – consequence: The dramatic increase in drug cartels, drug trafficking, and associated crime and violence in a country that traditionally was one of the safest and most peaceful in the Southern Hemisphere.

Ecuador does not produce cocaine. However, located between two of the world’s top cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, dollarization has been a factor in turning Ecuador into “an international hub in the global drug trade.”

Existing ports and facilities for the export of petroleum, bananas, shrimp, etc. are now also used as “export platforms” by transnational drug cartels.

Without exchange barriers, dollarization has facilitated the flow of funds between drug producers, exporters and consumers and improved the liquidity of funds making it extremely easy to launder illicit assets.

However, the United States is vigorously helping Ecuador in its fight against drug cartels through joint military operations, intelligence sharing, and advisory support.

Now, finally, to the Sacagawea Dollar

While El Banco Central de Ecuador (the Central Bank of Ecuador) physically imported billions of U.S. Federal Reserve dollar bank notes directly from the U.S. during the dollarization process, it was a different story with coins.

Because it would have been prohibitively expensive to fly tons of U.S. coins from the United States, Ecuador decided to mint its own coins, except for the dollar coin.

The Ecuadorean coins are minted in the same denominations as U.S. coins and are called centavos (de dólar) de Ecuador. However, they only have value inside Ecuador. U.S. coins circulate freely and abundantly alongside the centavo coins.

Ecuador stuck with the U.S. dollar coin: the Presidential dollar coins and the Sacagawea dollar coin.

Approximately 150 million of these coins -– most of them Sacagawea dollars — were shipped to Ecuador between 2002 and 2017. The Sacagawea dollar began to be minted in the U.S. in 2000, became extremely popular in Ecuador, and continues to be used in cash transactions.

The Sacagawea dollar – minted until 2008 – is a golden color coin featuring Sacagawea carrying her infant son on the front, and a soaring eagle on the back.

Sacagawea* was a member of the Native American Lemhi Shoshone tribe. As a guide and interpreter, she played an important role in the 18th century Lewis and Clark expedition. Her image resembles that of an Ecuadorean Indian woman, perhaps one reason for the coin’s popularity in Ecuador.

An excellent March 2017 Miami Herald article by Jim Wyss, “Where did all the Sacagawea dollar coins go? In Ecuador…” explains the popularity of the Sacagawea dollar in Ecuador.

==

* To learn more about Sacagawea, please click here.

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency has issued new grant guidelines that threaten to withhold counterterrorism funds from states that do not comply with President Donald Trump’s election security directives.

The agency told states they must “reconcile the number of voters who voted in federal elections with the number of ballots cast. They must use the federal SAVE database to verify the citizenship of everyone in the state’s voter registration database.” States also have to verify the citizenship status of poll workers or anyone operating election systems.

The SAVE database helps government agencies “determine citizenship and immigration status of individuals within their jurisdiction for the purpose of granting benefits, licenses, as well as for other lawful purposes.” For states that comply, the database allows the federal government to review the citizenship of everyone registered to vote. It also enables the government to determine which state residents are allowed to vote, a power the U.S. Constitution reserves for the states.

The funds FEMA threatened to withhold for noncompliance would otherwise be used by state and local governments to pay for cybersecurity, emergency planning, training and equipment.

As someone who has studied the interplay of law and politics, I recognize the important role federal grants play in state funding and the legal standards that govern the establishment of conditions like those announced by FEMA.

Federal funding for local governments

In the federal system, states and localities rely on the federal government for a wide range of grants and other funding. In any one year, they amount to more than US$1 trillion and provide between one-quarter and one-third of state and local revenues.

Louisiana, Arkansas, Arizona and Montana are most dependent on revenues from the federal government. They get about 30% of the money they need to run their governments from Washington, D.C.

California, Connecticut and New York are less dependent on federal funding. Nonetheless, they each get more than 20% of their revenue from the federal government.

That is why threats to withhold federal funding have real bite. However, such threats from previous administrations have been targeted and rare.

In 2014, law scholar Eloise Pasachoff identified arguments scholars use to explain federal agencies’ reluctance to cut off funds. Agencies worry that withholding funds will “undermine the agency’s ultimate goals.” In addition, she notes that “political dynamics among state governments, Congress, the White House, and the agencies themselves make funding cut-offs difficult to achieve.”

But that long-standing reluctance seems to have changed after Trump returned to the Oval Office. Since then, the cancellation of funds, or threats to do so, for disfavored places or programs have become commonplace.

A week into the president’s second term, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo that temporarily froze federal assistance and grants to all states, including funding that supports nursing homes and hospitals. Some of that funding has been restored after courts intervened.

A January 2026 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities called these threats to withhold funds “extraordinary and politically motivated.” The report said they are designed “to punish residents of states President Trump considers political enemies or who disagree with the President, particularly on immigration enforcement.”

The center argued that “the Administration’s actions poison the long-standing, productive, and necessary partnership with states, local governments, and nonprofits to provide critical services that people in every state depend on.”

What the law allows

In 1988, law scholar Jeffrey S. Koppelmaa pointed out that federal funding cutoffs undermine the autonomy of states even as they help Congress ensure that those funds are spent for “the general welfare.”

The previous year, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed that tension in South Dakota v. Dole. The case involved congressional legislation that “ordered the Secretary of Transportation to withhold five percent of federal highway funds from states that did not adopt a 21-year-old minimum drinking age.” In South Dakota, state law permitted persons 19 years of age to purchase alcohol.

The court found that the imposed condition was reasonable because it was related to highway safety. However, it noted that the authority to impose conditions was not unlimited.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist explained that “the exercise of the spending power must be in pursuit of ‘the general welfare.’” He wrote that “if Congress desires to condition the States’ receipt of federal funds, it ‘must do so unambiguously … enabling the States to exercise their choice knowingly, cognizant of the consequences of their participation.’”

Rehnquist wrote that the government cannot impose conditions on federal grants if they “‘might be so coercive as to pass the point at which ‘pressure turns into compulsion.’”

In 2012, the court used the Dole test to strike down a provision of the Affordable Care Act that required states to expand their Medicaid programs and threatened to revoke the entire federal Medicaid funding if any state did not comply. It labeled such a condition “coercive” because of the impact such cuts would have on the entire budget of such a state.

Chief Justice John Roberts put it this way: “The threatened loss of over 10 percent of a State’s overall budget … is economic dragooning that leaves the States with no real option but to acquiesce in the Medicaid expansion.”

The Dole decision is still the law. But even so, some commentators argue that when executive branch agencies rather than Congress impose conditions on federal funds, courts should give these cases special scrutiny.

The FEMA threat

In August 2025 a federal district court stopped the Trump administration from “withholding or freezing federal funding from, or putting conditions on, municipalities and counties it labels as so-called ‘sanctuary jurisdictions,’” or places that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

The court stopped the administration’s efforts to punish those jurisdictions “by using unrelated federal funding as leverage to enforce unlawful immigration policy.”

In June 2026 a federal judge in New Jersey followed similar logic in a case involving the Trump administration’s effort to stop funding for a $16 billion rail tunnel under the Hudson River. The complaint in that case had described those attempts as illegal and argued that “the Federal Government suddenly suspend(ed) the Project … because President Trump is engaged in political retribution.”

The federal judge seemed to agree, citing Trump interviews where he pointed out, “It’s billions and billions of dollars that (Sen. Chuck) Schumer has worked 20 years to get. It’s terminated. Tell him it terminated.’”

She ordered the funds restored.

That brings us back to FEMA’s recent threat. Congressional Democrats quickly denounced it as “potentially unlawful.”

They wrote: “As we approach the 25th anniversary of September 11th, it is deeply alarming that DHS and FEMA, under Donald Trump, continue to manipulate the very funding born out of a national tragedy.” They accused the agencies of “playing political games.”

Whether courts will agree remains to be seen.

Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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UPDATE:

A great video on shibboleths here.

Original Post:

While living in Belgium in the early nineties we often visited the charming, picturesque town of Sluis, the Netherlands, situated right on the Belgian border.

We would enjoy its historic sites, buzzling markets, lively shopping and, especially, its culinary treasures.

But I would also (secretly and sometimes not-so-secretly) have fun with my English American wife’s (mis)pronunciation of the name Sluis.

According to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the Dutch word “sluis” (which means a lock in a canal used for raising or lowering boats to a higher or lower part of the canal) is pronounced as /slœy?s/.

Crystal clear now?

Talkpal AI describes it as follows:

Phonetically, the “ui” sound in Dutch …begins with a rounded front vowel like the French “œ” in “œuf,” gliding towards a close front rounded vowel akin to the German “ü” in “für.” The sound is a diphthong, meaning it transitions smoothly between two vowel qualities within the same syllable.

Others just give up entirely and suggest “slouse” or even “sloose.” The former most closely resembling my wife’s pronunciation.

In this author’s opinion, no phonetic representation can accurately capture the correct pronunciation of Sluis (and of so many other Dutch words.) To truly appreciate (hear) the correct pronunciation of this word please listen to the Wiktionary audio file for sluis here.

Since Dutch (Nederlands) and English are West Germanic languages, since Dutch grammar is not as difficult as, say, German grammar, and since English and Dutch share some similarities in vocabulary, it should be relatively easy for English-speakers to learn Dutch.

And generally it is — except for the pronunciation of “a few” words.

A pronunciation that is notoriously difficult because Dutch abounds with guttural, “throaty” ‘g’ and ‘ch’ sounds, such as in geld (money) and in prachtig (beautiful), respectively. Also, because of frequent complex consonant clusters, such as in angstschreeuw (scream of fear). This one boasting eight consonants in a row), in addition to the “elongated vowel glide” ‘eeu’ that one finds in words such as eeuw (century).

For those looking to truly exercise their throat, tongue and lip muscles, there are plenty of long compound words that exhibit several of the above characteristics. Words such as Eeuwigheidszondag (Eternity Sunday), nieuwsgierig (curious) and, how about uitgeversmaatschappij (publishing house) or arbeidsongeschiktheidsuitkering (disability benefit).

One letter combination that is especially difficult to pronounce for non-native speakers is ‘sch.’ It requires sliding smoothly from a sharp ‘s’ hiss directly into the guttural ‘ch’ throat sound. The latter sound, ‘ch,’ has been described by linguistics as “a voiceless uvular fricative.”

Although German is also a “guttural,” “harsh” language, Germans struggle with this pronunciation because, in German, the initial ‘sch’ is pronounced as the English-like ‘sh’ sound, such as in Schnitzel and in Schatz (treasure).

One such word is Scheveningen, the name of a popular Dutch seaside resort, just West of The Hague (formally known as ‘s-Gravenhage).

The story goes that during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, the Dutch would use the word Scheveningen as a shibboleth, a password, to identify German spies, imposters, and infiltrators in their midst.

Watch the YouTube video “Soldaat van Oranje” (“Soldier of Orange”**) where – at minute 1:28 – two Dutch young men who want to join the Resistance are challenged with the password Scheveningen to make sure they are not “moffen.” Moffen is a derogatory term for Germans, used especially during World War II and in its aftermath, stemming from an intense national resentment over the brutal Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

** Oranje (Orange) is the the Dutch national color honoring the ruling Dutch royal family, the House of Oranje-Nassau.

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President Donald Trump warned Tuesday that Iran “hasn’t seen anything yet” as he defended U.S. military operations against Tehran, saying the country would need decades to recover from what he described as damage from American strikes.

Speaking to reporters during the meeting, Trump said Iran had been “degraded” and that the United States had significantly damaged the country’s military capabilities.

“It would take 20 to 25 years” for Iran to rebuild, Trump said, adding that even if the United States were to withdraw immediately (a move he said would not happen) Iran would still face decades of recovery.

Trump reiterated that Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon” and criticized the 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated during former President Barack Obama’s administration, arguing that the deal contributed to the current crisis. Trump also referred to Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama” while discussing the agreement and argued that the former president’s nuclear deal helped create the conditions that led to the current conflict.

“If I didn’t terminate that deal, Israel wouldn’t exist,” Trump said, adding that in his view, several other countries would also have faced existential threats.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth joined Trump during the appearance and compared Iran’s nuclear ambitions to North Korea’s development of weapons capabilities. Hegseth said Iran had been given “every opportunity to negotiate” and argued that Trump was the only president willing to directly confront Tehran.

“Every night we degrade them further and further,” Hegseth said.

Trump also said that U.S. forces had prevented attacks from reaching their targets, saying “no one got through the blockade” and comparing it to “a steel wall.” He said the United States had “the best equipment in the world” and that American forces had “stopped almost everything.”

Throughout the appearance, Trump criticized media coverage of his administration’s foreign policy and argued that certain accomplishments had not received sufficient attention.

Trump cited casualties in Iran, saying, “They are killing over 52,000 people, no one talks about it.” He did not provide additional details or a source for the figure during the press conference.

Trump also referenced previous U.S. military actions, saying that the United States had gone to war with Venezuela and that the conflict “lasted one day.” He said the administration had achieved successes that he believed were overlooked by the media.

Later in the press conference, Trump was asked about attacks targeting a federal building in New York City that involved ICE. Trump said his administration had removed thousands of people with criminal records and repeated a statistic that “2 percent of the people cause 91 percent of the crime.” He did not provide evidence for the figure during the exchange.

Trump returned repeatedly to the message that the United States’ campaign against Iran was ongoing, saying the country had “been given every opportunity” and warning that Iran had not yet experienced the full extent of U.S. action.

ID 450212372 | Iran Us Flag © Karenr | Dreamstime.com

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UPDATE:

On Monday, after threatening to slap tariffs on Canada because of the country’s (mis)handling of the wildfires, Trump imposed an additional 50 percent tariff on certain Canadian goods (ranging from “wine to hockey sticks to cement,”) in response to alleged “discriminatory” trade measures by Canada. Apparently, the new tariffs are unrelated to the fires, albeit “Trump has been given options on the wildfire tariffs.” (The Hill)

Original Post:

Whenever a major natural disaster strikes the Unites States, our neighbor to the North responds generously, swiftly and effectively — no questions asked, no conditions set, no disagreements recalled, no recriminations voiced, no threats made.

Whether responding to major wildfires, hurricanes or floods, Canada has immediately and consistently deployed emergency responders, medical teams and military personnel across the border, in addition to specialized aircraft, vessels and equipment.

Just some recent examples:

• During the devastating 2000 wildfire season when nearly seven million acres of land and forests burned from Texas to Montana, more than 1,300 Canadian personnel were dispatched to the U.S. to help fight fires.

• Again, during the 2020 California wildfires, hundreds of Canadian firefighters deployed to California to assist in fighting them.

• Most recently, in January 2025, Canadian firefighters once again worked shoulder to shoulder with their American counterparts to fight and suppress the devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles and San Diego areas. Air tankers from Quebec and crews from Alberta and British Columbia assisted in the fight.

More significant, more consequential, is how Canada, almost instinctively, came to help the United States after the 9/11 terror attacks.

In addition to numerous humanitarian, diplomatic, security and short-term military actions, our neighbor became one of our staunchest allies and supporters during the 12-year war in Afghanistan — a war that became Canada’s longest war and where more than 40,000 Canadian Armed Forces members served, 158 of them never to return home.

Today, as hundreds of wildfires are raging across Canada –- nearly 200 of them blazing across the province of Ontario alone -– heavy smoke from the fires is drifting across the north-eastern U.S. affecting air quality, causing discomfort and posing potential health hazards.

As it always has, the United States is helping our neighbor in this time of crisis. However, such help is not being rendered without an unhealthy dose of recrimination, assigning blame and plain pettiness.

In a Truth Social post on Friday, , President Trump accused Canada of “willful Negligence” because, allegedly, they are not properly maintaining their forests.

Readers will remember how Trump, while surveying the devastating 2018 Palisades, California, wildfires, citing a conversation with his Finnish counterpart, suggested that the U.S. could prevent catastrophic forest fires by “raking and cleaning” the forest floors.

While judicious forest management – not just “raking forest floors” – and land use are important, a large number of scientific studies have shown that climate change is driving an increase in the frequency and severity of the type of weather likely to lead to fires; that there is “an ‘unequivocal and pervasive’ role for global heating in boosting the conditions for fire.”

It is well-known how dismissive the Trump administration is over man-made climate change, a reality Trump referred to as a “con job” in a 2025 speech to the United Nations.

Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada did not immediately address the accusations on Friday, but he suggested that the United States should do more to combat climate change.

Adding (potential) injury to insult, Trump continued on Truth Social that such willful negligence is “becoming a yearly occurrence, costing the United States Billions of Dollars, which cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying.”

It is not clear that he has the legal authority to impose such a “TARIFF.”

It is common knowledge that Trump has a combative (retributory) relationship with our neighbor to the north, colored by his political, ideological and personal grievances and ambitions, including his oft-repeated, deranged wish to make Canada our 51st state. The Huffington Post describes it as his “personal obsession with alienating Canada, a fellow member of NATO and one of the country’s most steadfast allies for decades before Trump’s second term.”

We should not be surprised at Trump’s reaction to Canada in that nation’s time of need. We have all-too-often seen how his political grievances and differences, partisanship, and personal grudges have negatively affected disaster policies and relief efforts towards our own blue states.

The Washington State and California wildfires, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, among other examples. should ring a bell.

Equally ignominious has been the rush by MAGA Republicans to pile on with baseless accusations, harangues, and unbecoming threats.

Although shocked and offended, Canada’s government officials have largely stayed above the fray with perhaps the strongest response coming from Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford. He called Trump’s tariff threats “absolutely unacceptable,” and asked American lawmakers to “send support” rather than complain, poignantly referring to these politicians as having “a very short, short memory.”

Others have been more direct.

Replying to Senator Bernie Moreno’s (R-Ohio) pledge to introduce a bill to sanction Canadian officials found “responsible” for the fires, Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence Canada, a leading Canadian environmental advocacy organization, said:

The false rhetoric about the cause of wildfires is not constructive. It helps to further underscore the sense Canadians have that the U.S. has lost its way…When California was burning last year, we didn’t try to pass laws falsely blaming the U.S. for fires. We sent water bombers, airplanes that drop water on fires, and teams that helped to put out the fires.

The cloud of acrid smoke is now beginning to clear over the U.S., but a darker, more toxic cloud continues to shroud the relations of two peoples with so much in common, of two nations traditionally joined at the hip.

The post Canada’s Wildfires: Fighting Fire with Pettiness (Update) appeared first on The Moderate Voice.