The Samurai Supreme Court

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May 3, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

This week, while waiting to cross a busy intersection, I noticed the networks that surround us. Traffic light sequences, driving regulations and customs help us navigate our world. Clouds gathered in the afternoon sky, a sign of the water cycle of evaporation, condensation and precipitation, a network of energy. My phone is a node in an information network. My bike is a network of mining and manufacturing. My clothes are a network of agriculture, manufacturing and transportation. Fish swim in water. Human beings swim in networks of words, legal rules and social customs.

As societies, we are the network. Networks operate by rules. In a republic or democracy, the voters determine those governing rules or elect representatives to craft those rules. The voting process itself abides by rules. In the United States, some rules are determined by the states, some by Congressional statute, others by the Constitution. Article 1 of the Constitution gave the states the primary responsibility for administering federal elections but allowed Congress to make laws as well (Source).The Constitution required each state to redraw its congressional districts to adjust for population changes and balance geographic population shifts within the state.

In 1965, under the authority granted by the 14th and 15th Amendments, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) to counter decades of discriminatory voting practices in some states (Source). Under Jim Crow laws, the southern states had marginalized black voters for eighty years by requiring black voters to pass tests before they could vote.

Section 2 of the VRA sets the principle: “No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color” (Source). Section 4 of the VRA stipulated that any states or counties that had an election test in place on November 1, 1964, were discriminating against some voters (Source). Section 5 of the VRA subjected the election practices of those violators to a preclearance review by federal authorities. Those violators included seven southern states, Alaska and Arizona. Other states had some districts within their state subject to the same review. The whole state of North Carolina was not subject to review, but many of its counties were. Several counties in New York, Florida, S. Dakota and California were also subject to review (Source).

The law is a vast network of principles and values, history and consequences, all bound together by words. Conservatives have long sought to weaken the voting rights network by attacking key clauses in the VRA. Since his time working in the Justice Department under the Reagan Administration in the 1980s, Chief Justice Roberts has advocated a weakening of Section 2 of the Act. In Chapter 12 of her book Without Precedent, Lisa Graves describes this long history.

In Shelby County v Holder, decided in 2013, the Court ruled that Section 4 of the VRA was unconstitutional because the criteria that determined a violator did not respond to current conditions (Source). In his opinion, Chief Justice Roberts encouraged Congress to update the criteria but the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act was filibustered in the Senate. A key segment of the Act was severed.

In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) the Court limited the type of practices that could be considered discriminatory under Section 2 of the VRA (Source). Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion. Another key segment cut.

This week, in Louisiana v Callais, a 6-3 majority of the Court voted along ideological lines that any election practice in violation of Section 2 of the VRA must be intentionally racially discriminatory. Another segment of the network cut. The court effectively raised the bar for anyone claiming discrimination because proving intention is a difficult task. A redistricting map that discriminates against Democrats is not racial discrimination if a state legislature can claim that the map meant only to discriminate against Democrats.

Justice Alito, the author of the majority opinion, stated, “When Section 2 of the Act is properly interpreted, it imposes liability only when circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred. Properly understood, Section 2 thus does not intrude on States’ prerogative to draw districts based on nonracial factors, including to achieve partisan advantage” (Source). Alito’s interpretation is based on a textual analysis, or textualism.

Textualism selects and emphasizes words and combinations of words that support a justice’s preferred interpretation. Alito calls his preferred interpretation the “proper” one, as though it were endorsed by a higher power. Textualists claim that their opinion is based on the text, so that makes their opinion objective. However, those opinions are based on some of the text, and what constitutes that some is a matter of the justice’s discretion. Textualism is the art of selecting words that justify a justice’s sentiments. Judicial interpretations based on textualism use a divide and conquer strategy. By dividing the text into separate compartments, they conquer the intentions of the whole of the text.

In the District of Columbia v Heller decision, former Justice Antonin Scalia negated more than a century of precedent and opined that the Second Amendment contained an individual right to bear arms (Source). The founders hotly debated the words in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights because those words were critical to ratification. In drafting the Second Amendment, they inserted the clause about the militia. If only they could have known that Scalia would choose to disregard their efforts, they wouldn’t have bothered. Scalia discarded that half of the text of the Second Amendment having to do with the militia. It was a “prefatory clause,” Scalia wrote, whose meaning was subjunctive to what Scalia thought was the main clause, which agreed with Scalia’s sentiments. Because a textualist approach is inherently arbitrary, the lower courts had difficulty applying Scalia’s reasoning in subsequent cases and began to use a balancing approach traditionally associated with First Amendment cases.

After Scalia died, the court tried to clarify Scalia’s textualist approach in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022). Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion urging the lower courts to use history and tradition to understand restraints on government power. Did the Founding generation or the Civil War generation have a similar law? Thomas called this the text, history and tradition approach. Where Scalia had used history to understand the meaning of a section of text, Thomas used history as a guiding boundary of government power. In his dissent, former Justice Stephen Breyer noted that a justice has a wealth of history to pick and choose from to support their opinion. Both the strict textualist and text, history and tradition forms of analysis are ungrounded and arbitrary. This approach looks to the past. It’s the judicial version of walking backward.

On page 111 of his book Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism, retired Justice Stephen Breyer offered an alternative judicial analysis: text, values and consequences. The text of a statute or the Constitution represents the past. Justices should consider the consequences of their opinion, a respect for the future. What joins past and present are the enduring values embodied in a law.

Breyer often held public debates with Scalia and recalled the irresolvable issues between the two justices. Breyer read the totality of a statute or a constitutional amendment. He saw the law as a network of words, and that network had a purpose, a problem that it wanted to resolve. Scalia, on the other hand, picked out the words in a text that he thought were important. He pretended to be a historian, able to divine the original meaning of the words that 19th century legislators used. According to Breyer, page 25, Scalia thought that his approach would create a “science of statutory interpretation.” Far from it. Since the Heller opinion, there have been several cases in which the court tried to amend, extend and clarify the jurisprudence of Heller.

The specific finding in the Louisiana v Callais case was that Louisiana’s redistricting map was unconstitutional because it was based on racial gerrymandering (Source). In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), Roberts had written that partisan gerrymandering was political and beyond the reach of federal courts. In Roberts’ view, partisan gerrymandering does not undermine the Court’s precedent of  “one man, one vote,” even if that gerrymandering weakens the electoral voice of constitutionally protected black Americans.

In Shelby County and in this case, the Court has not eviscerated the VRA, but wounded key segments of the Act, Sections 2, 4, and 5. More than 80% of black voters choose a Democrat candidate. As the dissent in Louisiana v Callais noted, it will be difficult for any plaintiff to show that a redistricting map discriminated against voters based on their race or color. The respondents can claim that political divisions, not race discrimination, motivated the redistricting schema. What did the network of words in the 15th Amendment and Voting Rights Act try to accomplish? To undo the silencing of a particular minority at the ballot box. The Court has effectively undone that undoing. I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Krys Amon on Unsplash

Note: When Alito’s opinion refers to section 2(a) or 2(b), he is referring to the text of the U.S. law that encodes the Voting Rights Act as amended. See here (Source).

Several older men seated around a table playing cards

Rules and Relationships

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April 26, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

My younger brother and I used to argue a lot about the rules when we played card games. One rainy Saturday, our dad walked into the room, slapped down a book on the table where we were playing and said he was tired of listening to us argue. The book was a used copy of Hoyle’s Rules of Games (Source). Instead of arguing, we could just look up the rule. That helped a lot but we still argued over terms like discard. If I put a card down on the discard pile but my finger is still touching the card, does that mean my turn is over? Can I still change my mind, pick up the card and lay down an alternate card? There was nothing about that in the rule book. Without knowing it, we were noticing a difference between rules and regulations, one of the topics I want to explore this week.

In casual conversation, we use the two terms interchangeably and it surprised me that Congress treats the two terms as synonyms (Source). There are subtle differences between the two terms. Regulations are published implementations of law by some governmental agency. Rules are designed to augment or address gaps in regulations as they apply to specific situations (Source). If those rules affect the behavior or obligations of an outside party, then an agency like the IRS makes those rules public. Otherwise, the rules are internal to the agency. I guess the rules in Hoyle’s rule book were more like regulations. My brother and I still had to make up a rule to deal with the fine points of discarding a card.

Regulations and rules usually have some enforcement mechanism, and some punitive process. Typical language might include the maximum amount of a fine and the maximum jail sentence. In international relations (IR), there are rules published by international organizations like the United Nations but there is no clear enforcement mechanism other than violence. Two countries cannot agree on what is a threat and the degree of that threat. The leaders of countries have to deal with the internal politics of their own country and the very real threat that they will look weak or stupid. We know from recordings of President Johnson’s conversations that he thought Vietnam would be a boondoggle, but didn’t want to look like a weak and circumstantial president after the assassination of President Kennedy. To save face, he sent thousands of young men to die in the jungles of southeast Asia to support a corrupt and unpopular government (Source).

Will Donald Trump, the candidate who promised no more foreign wars, follow in those footsteps? President Johnson, like Trump, had a gargantuan but fragile ego. Unlike Johnson, President Trump has achieved a cult-like status among his followers and that makes him even more dangerous. He thought the February 28th attack on Iran would be an intimidating strike that ushered in regime change as it did in Venezuela. He was wrong. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, Trump is never wrong, at least not in his own mind. The rest of the world has to suffer as he tries to make reality agree with his distorted vision of himself.

In many court cases, President Trump has shown that he considers himself above regulations or rules. In the 2024 Trump v United States decision,the Supreme Court bestowed on Trump the immunity that he has claimed throughout his life, whether President or not (Source). He fights rules made by others, then gets angry when others fight his rules because he expects his power to be recognized and respected as absolute.

He has attacked Supreme Court justices that he appointed because they voted against his tariffs (Source). The conservatives on the Court have given him many victories on the so-called “shadow docket.” These were decisions for his administration that have not worked their way through the lower courts. There is little formal briefing and no oral argument. On several occasions, Trump has thanked Chief Justice Roberts for his partisan support. Thinking that the court had his back, Trump felt betrayed because of one legal rebuke. Relationships is the second topic I want to explore this week.

America was founded on the premise that we would be a nation of laws – that rules, not relationships, would be the dominant governing principle of the new country. The Constitution forbade the granting of titles which cemented political relationships in many European countries. Yes, it was an aspiration more than a reality. As a center of power, Washington runs on relationships and each President has a style of leadership that emphasizes rules or relationships. A President cannot act effectively if he forsakes either of those approaches.

Lincoln’s greatest strength was his ability to use both rules and relationships to manage a nation that was tearing itself apart. When he broke the rules, he fitted the action to the emergency. Lincoln first suspended habeus corpus at the start of the Civil War, when rebels were in control of the region surrounding Washington. The suspension was limited to that general region (Source). Unlike Lincoln, Trump used the pretext of emergency to impose tariffs. When he attacked Iran, he did so under the pretense that Iran was a week away from a nuclear weapon. Lincoln went to Congress to get authorization for habeus corpus as the Constitution calls for, but Democrats loyal to the rebel states blocked action on several bills for 18 months. Finally, in 1863, the Habeus Corpus Suspension Act passed. Trump has not gone to Congress to authorize his war against Iran.

To achieve his political ends, Lincoln tolerated ambitious politicians like William Seward, his Secretary of State. Seward was a good strategist who kept Britain and France from recognizing the Confederacy as a legitimate sovereign. Lincoln valued outcomes above all. Trump values relationships more than rules, but values loyalty in a relationship, loyalty above competence and experience. To negotiate with Iran, Trump appointed his son-in-law and his golfing buddy, neither of whom have any diplomatic experience. Unlike Lincoln, Trump does not have a clear vision of his political ends.

Preserving the Union was Lincoln’s primary goal. A secondary objective was a moral goal, the end of slavery, but Lincoln was a practical man, willing to strike a bargain if the southern states would abandon their dream of expansion into western territories. What are Trump’s goals? Historical importance, personal wealth and the political power to avoid any recrimination for his decisions and behavior while in office or out of office.

Each of uses some combination of rules and relationships to manage our lives. We develop an instinctual preference for one or the other. What is your preference? On that note, I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

The Stranger Danger

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April 19, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

America is built on prejudice and the passionate denial that we are a country built on prejudice. (Source). I wrote that back in 2018. To some degree, the citizens of many nations regard immigrants with some degree of caution, bordering on suspicion. Immigrants present the possibility, the threat, of weakening a country’s cultural, social and political institutions. Each year, most developed countries admit fewer than 1% of their population as permanent residents. From 2013 – 2019, that flow of immigrants was 0.4% in the U.S., far below the 0.8% average of the OECD countries (Source – OECD). The permissive immigration policies of the Biden Administration approximately doubled the immigrant flow and helped Donald Trump win a second term as President (note below). What seemed like an abnormal surge to many Americans was the OECD average of about 0.8% of the U.S. population.

What makes America so unique is both the prejudice and the passionate denial of any prejudice. We convince ourselves that we are a welcoming country and it is true that we have the largest number of foreign-born. But as a percent of our population, we are only average. At 14%, we are tied with the U.K., and 1% higher than France. We are several percent lower than Germany, Spain, Norway, and Belgium (Source – chart). Americans who are antagonistic to immigration insist they welcome immigrants as long as they follow the rules. The target of their animosity is illegal immigration, not legal immigration. However, legal immigration in America presents a high hurdle.

There are several categories of visas with a path to a green card. There are visas which are subject to a numerical cap and those that are not. First, let’s consider the degrees of relation by blood. First degree are children and parents. Second degree are brothers, sisters, grandchildren and grandparents (Source). First degree blood relatives and the spouse of a U.S. citizen are not subject to any numerical cap and have a relatively short waiting time, about twelve to eighteen months.

Second degree family members, like a brother or sister, fall into the family-sponsored preference category “F” and, like employment visas, are subject to a numerical cap. The January 2026 edition of the Visa Bulletin listed only 226,000 “F” slots available for 2026, the same number as in 2025 (Source). The bulletin lists four countries, China, India, Mexico and the Philippines, as over-subscribed, meaning that there are far more applicants than spots available. There is a 7% cap for each country, meaning that only 7% of employment and “F” visas can go to one country like China. The number of applicants far outweighs the number of visas available. What this means is that the line of immigrants waiting for legal admittance to the U.S. continues to grow longer. Family members from over-subscribed countries can wait ten to twenty-five years to have their visa application approved. For “F” applicants from other countries, the wait can be three to seven years.

Once admitted to the U.S., immigrants face other obstacles, one of which is skin color. Centuries of discrimination blocked those with black skin from many housing and job choices to give those with white skin a better chance at success. The prejudice against those with brown skin is more recent and has been amplified since Candidate Trump used the issue of immigration, legal or illegal, in the 2016 campaign to smear those with brown skin or Hispanic surnames. They were “rapists” and “criminals” and “bad hombres” (Source). He made fun of a disabled New York Times reporter by mimicking spastic movements (Source video). By design or luck, Trump tapped into the motherlode of American prejudice to win the White House in 2016.

In 1856, President Millard Fillmore broke with the Whig/Republican Party and ran for re-election as head of the Know-Nothing Party, also known as the American Party (Source). The party viewed the recent surge of immigrants from Ireland and Germany, particularly Catholics, as a threat to Protestant Americans. The party wanted to exclude those not born in the U.S. from voting or being elected to public office, and two decades of residency in the U.S. before being eligible for citizenship (Source). These sentiments and political strategies are similar to those of Trump, his advisor Stephen Miller and media host Steve Bannon. Fillmore’s campaign was unsuccessful, but he won more than 20% of the vote. Douglas Fremont, the Republican candidate, won a third of the vote and together both men captured more than 50% of the vote (Source). Fillmore’s appeal to anti-immigrant sentiments helped throw the race to Democratic candidate James Buchanan and helped strengthen the political power of the southern slave states. Lincoln was wise to avoid anti-immigrant language to help win the favor of immigrant groups. When Lincoln won the presidency in 1860, those states felt emboldened to declare secession from the union, which precipitated the Civil War. Politicians have learned that prejudice can be a powerful political tool of persuasion.

It’s not just skin color, religion and nationality that drives prejudice in America. In 1870, the ratification of the 15th Amendment gave black males the right to vote. Women suffragettes lobbied hard to be included in the Amendment and win their right to vote. It was just too crazy, they were told. Women were too guided by their emotions, and too irrational, particularly during their menses, to be trusted with the vote. They would likely vote as their husband dictated, giving married men two votes. Was that fair? Today, we wince at these sentiments.

In 1920, exactly fifty years later, the ratification of the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. The suffragette movement had allied with the Prohibition movement to press each of their causes in a joint effort. The Volstead Act, the implementation of the 18th Amendment prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquor, was passed a few months before the ratification of the 19th Amendment. They were a package. Had women been granted the right to vote in 1870, the Prohibition movement would have lacked a critical partner to win passage of the Amendment. Without Prohibition, the rise of organized crime might not have occurred.

In America, Jews encountered less discrimination than in Europe but housing, job and social discrimination against those of the Jewish faith were prevalent in the first half of the 20th Century. In the 19th Century, those of the Mormon faith were driven out of Ohio, then Missouri, and Illinois by Protestant sects who regarded Mormons as non-Christians. Mormons escaped across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains to settle in a valley in Utah. After World War 2, there was a proposal to settle many European Jewish refugees in Utah, but Mormons nixed the idea. Even those who suffer persecution for their religious beliefs are not immune to bias.

Whenever there is a war, or any act of aggression with another country, Americans single out those nationalities or races for discrimination. In the 19th Century, those of Mexican descent were vilified after the Mexican-American War. Many Germans were denied jobs and housing following the start of WW1. Historical prejudices were resurrected. German soldiers, known as Hessians, had fought with the British against American colonists in the War for Independence. Americans began to see that there was something wrong with the German character. Political cartoons pictured Germans as Huns, a mongrel and violent race of uncivilized people always lusting for battle.

Following Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. citizens of Japanese descent were forced to sell their homes and businesses at cheap prices, then were moved to internment camps away from the west coast. The 9-11 catastrophe was an attack by multiple suicide squads. Most were from Saudi Arabia, but we did not single out Saudi nationals in the U.S. Unlike the targets of previous war discrimination, Saudis have no unique language. Instead we singled out all Muslims, and all Arab speakers as potential threats.

In 1921, as Vice-President under President Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge wrote an article in Good Housekeeping magazine in which he argued that “America must be kept American.” He wrote “Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend” and supported the restriction of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe in the 1924 Immigration Act (Source). Unlike Trump’s vulgar and profane comments a century later, Coolidge employed a more formal language to describe the sentiments of the eugenics movement. As with the Irish and German Catholics in the 19th century, Coolidge also appealed to anti-Catholic feelings toward Italians (Source). Like the Irish, many Italians were Catholic and not to be trusted. To this day, no Italian has been elected President. JFK was the first successful Catholic candidate for the Presidency. During his campaign he had to overcome objections that he would turn to the Pope for advice on national policy. Joe Biden was the second Catholic president and Trump has made it his mission to undo everything Joe Biden did during his four years in the White House.

Most Hispanics are Catholic. Biden was Catholic. Is Trump’s anti-Hispanic and anti-Biden rhetoric simply an evocation of anti-Catholic animosity? Maybe so, maybe not. Trump’s thoughts bounce around in his head like a steel pinball in a pinball machine. I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Michaela Filipcikova on Unsplash

Note: Permanent residents are those receiving green cards. The surge during the Biden years also included a lot of asylum seekers and those granted temporary protected status. These immigrants doubled the usual immigrant flow.

Wrestlers in a boxing ring

A Deadly Game

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April 12, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

Imagine you and your buddy stop off at a grocery store. You wait in the driver’s seat while your buddy goes in to get a few drinks. A few minutes later, he comes running out of the store, hands stuffed in his poncho, but no drinks. As he settles into the passenger seat, you ask where are the drinks. Just go. Get out here, he urges. Both of you have had some minor scuffles with the law so you don’t ask. You go. Later, you are both arrested on suspicion of armed robbery. What neither of you know is that the security camera wasn’t working and the cops have no hard evidence.

You are taken into separate interrogation rooms. The detective and a district attorney enter the room. The detective offers you a deal. Confess to the crime and testify against your buddy and the police will let you off Scot free but your buddy will get ten years in prison. The detective cautions you that they are offering the same deal to your buddy, so you need to make a decision quickly. What if we both confess, you ask. The detective looks at the district attorney. Five years, the district attorney says. Your public defender asks, What if both of them act on their Constitutional right and remain silent? The district attorney reminds you of your record and assures you that they will get you on something that will probably keep you locked up for a year.

What do you do? Your strategy is to minimize your time in jail so the best tactic is to confess, hoping that you are the first to do so. A safe strategy would be to remain silent, take the year in jail, but that only works if your buddy cooperates and also remains silent. Otherwise, you get ten years in prison. So the default tactic is to confess, unless you trust your buddy. The game illustrates how people acting in their own best interest can achieve a worse outcome than cooperating with each other. In the 1950s, Albert Tucker first developed this scenario known as the prisoner’s dilemma as a concrete way to visualize a mathematical payoff matrix (Source). The RAND corporation later used it to illustrate the dilemmas of nuclear annihilation during the cold war between the United States and the USSR.

Under the anarchic system of international relations, there is no cop, no district attorney. Nations honor multi-lateral agreements out of necessity and advantage. Might makes right. While their leaders may give voice to moral principles, those principles are subordinate to the prime directive: survive. Survival was the primary motivation for the thirteen American colonies to join together under a new Constitution in 1787. In Federalist No. 11, Alexander Hamilton warned of the threats from the European nations who considered “the rest of mankind as created for her benefit,” referring to Europe as a unified threat. On the western and northern borders were the French, English and allied Indian nations. To the south were the Spanish and French. “Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!” (Source).

In his 2024 election campaign, Donald Trump evoked those Hamiltonian sentiments. Let America stay out of far-flung foreign wars to chase the dream of American empire at the expense of our republic. In a recent interview with former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, Professor Glenn Diesen noted that America First was a promise to consolidate our national interests, to preserve our republic over the dreams of empire (Source). To join with Israel in an unprovoked attack on Iran prompts the question, what happened to that idea? In short, religious zeal and paranoia.

The Trump administration has been infected with a Crusader passion that makes America look like the gigantic octopus in Jules Verne’s Twenty-thousand Leagues under the Sea” (Source – trivia). In a March 31st New York Times op-ed, Thomas Friedman noted that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth holds “extreme Christian nationalist beliefs” and that “In other words, it’s now our religious warriors against Iran’s” (Source).  Friedman could have included Israel in that coalition of religious warriors.

Because of Israel’s Proportional Representation election system, there are at least a dozen parties in the country. In such a system, common in some form in many European countries, people vote for a party, not a person. Each party that passes a minimum threshold percentage of the vote receives a proportional number of seats in the country’s parliamentary body, the Knesset (Source). Each of the two main parties, Likud and Labor, often forms alliances with minority groups to secure a 61 seat majority out of 120 seats. In cases where the majority advantage is slim, the loyalty of these minority groups is crucial and they are able to drive bargains that are out of proportion to their number in the general population. This means that a party with less than 10% of the vote might have non-negotiable demands that one of the major parties has to meet. When these demands are not met, those crucial votes are lost and Israel’s government collapses. New elections are called.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, Likud, often partners with religious extremist groups to secure a majority in Parliament. The primary group is called Shas and represents the Mizrahi/Sephardi ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews (Source). Like Muslims who believe that Sharia law should be followed instead of secular law, many ultra-Orthodox believe that Jewish religious law should be the law of Israel. Many support the illegal settlements in the West Bank as the return of the ancient kingdom of Judea in Biblical times. They insist on being excluded from mandatory military service, but support military action to achieve a goal. Some believe in the notion of a Greater Israel, a land that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, a land governed by Jews for the benefit of the Jewish inhabitants.

If the United States had a proportional system, the Evangelical Christians would probably form at least one minority party and have seats in Congress. In the United States our winner-take-all system favors just two formal parties which incorporate minority coalitions within each party. Like Likud, the Republican Party partners with evangelicals, promising to promote their causes in exchange for their vote (Note below). There is no Evangelical Christian Party but they do influence who serves in government. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, states strong Christian nationalist views and has two tattoos that evoke the imagery of the Crusades (Source). He believes in religious war as an existential battle between Christianity and Islam. President Donald Trump may have promised “no more foreign wars,” but chose Hegseth, a Medieval Crusader, to steer the country’s war machine.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatens the supply of oil, fertilizer and helium used in electronics manufacture. As critical components of the global economy, shortages in those materials may trigger a global recession or worse. Trump wants an exit from this dilemma, but the other prisoner in the dilemma is not Iran. It’s Israel. In this version of the game, Israel and the United States are not in separate rooms but fighters on a tag team in the same boxing ring (Note below). One fighter wants to declare a tie and fight another day, while the other is determined to fight on but can’t survive alone.

And on that cheery analogy, I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Claudia Raya on Unsplash

Note: The Democratic Party also partners with social justice groups like the ACLU and the NAACP. If the United States had a proportional representation system, these groups that focus on fairness, equality, and protection of human rights might form a Social Justice Party. If the Democratic majority in the House were slim, votes from the Social Justice Party would be critical to maintaining the majority. In our system, the influence is informal but it allows small groups to have a lot of policy leverage.

Note: The political scientist John Mearsheimer sometimes refers to the United States and Israel as a tag team.

America first, Americans last

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April 5, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

I keep a thought bin of ideas for articles, then weave some of them together into a single essay. Sometimes finding that thread is difficult. This week, I am going to write on an assortment of these ideas.

The Nonchalant President

In early March, President Trump was nonchalant about rising gas prices. In an interview with the Reuters international news agency, he said “if they rise, they rise” (Source). A lot of Americans who voted for America First didn’t bargain for Americans Last. To elites like Trump, born with a golden spoon, the concerns of everyday Americans are trivial. The only thing Trump wants is their vote. Then comes the betrayal.

Energy as a Weapon

Green energy is locally produced, which can make many countries less dependent on the major producers of oil. I think that is a major reason why President Trump dislikes green energy. The U.S. is the leading producer of oil (Source) and that gives our country a geopolitical edge. The Middle Eastern countries account for a third of global oil production, which gives them a great deal of geopolitical importance despite the fact that their combined population is only 380 million, slightly more than the U.S. alone. International relations is a chess game of power played by individual nation states. The more powerful states, particularly a regional hegemon like the U.S., want to maintain or increase their economic edge over other countries to preserve their dominance.

There are several examples of dominant powers who sabotaged production in other countries to preserve their economic dominance. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain imposed punishing tariffs on India’s textile industry so that India could not compete against Britain’s textile industry. Britain’s Navigation Acts mandated that British colonies could only trade using British ships. Britain actively suppressed manufacturing in its colonies, using them only as a source of raw goods which were finished by Britain’s own manufacturing industries. In 2010, China imposed restrictions on the export of rare earths, giving them effective control of key components of industrial production around the world (Source).

Strategic Power

Some of the president’s many miscalculations in the Iran War arise from a lack of appreciation for strategic power. Volume, not cunning or planning, appeals to him, so he engages in “bomb, baby, bomb” and “drill, baby, drill.” More, more, more is not always better. China controls production of most of the world’s rare earths, a key component in many electronics systems, including those of our military systems. When Trump threatened high tariffs on China last year, they threatened to choke off the supply of rare earths and he capitulated. Did he learn his lesson? No. Iran controls 20% of oil production that is shipped through the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow strip of water where Iran can destroy any oil tanker that does not play by Iran’s rules. Did Trump consider that? No. Strategic control of resources can be as powerful as a fleet of bombers.

Declining Leadership

President Trump has the attention span of a tweet and so his staff has to keep his daily security briefings short. His daily updates on the war consist of two-minute compilations of targets bombed (Source). This would not be unexpected in an adolescent. We should expect more from a grown man who is the leader of the most powerful country on the planet. Why have the American people put Biden and Trump, two doddering seniors, in such a position of power?

Sacrifice

More American soldiers have died in the Iran war than Israeli soldiers. It is the young who give up their lives in war, sacrificing many more years of life than the older men who commit them to that fight. The question of reinstituting the draft has come up. The 62-year old comic Rob Schneider thinks we should have a military draft (Source). He was 12 when the draft was ended and is not eligible for the draft at his advanced age so it is easy for him to be rah-rah about the draft. It would take an act of Congress to reinstitute the draft but Trump has shown a persistent ability to bypass the subservient Republican majority in Congress. In 2018, the CDC reported that the military considered 71% of eligible youth physically unfit for military service (Source). They have had trouble filling the ranks of a volunteer military service.

A Policy of War

As I wrote last week, we are “celebrating” 25 years of continual war. John Mearsheimer is a political scientist known for developing the theory of Offensive Realism. This theory focuses on states which are great powers, a state which is dominant in its region of the world. The U.S., China and Russia are examples of great powers. India, Japan the European Union are sometimes included. The theory claims that these great powers must maximize their power relative to other countries to ensure their survival.

The international system is anarchic, meaning that there is no central authority. In such an environment, a great power cannot know the intentions of other countries, so the safest course of action is to become as powerful as possible while preventing rival countries from gaining greater power. This leads states to compete aggressively, expand influence, and exploit opportunities to weaken other countries. This view sees international cooperation as a temporary aligning of opportunities because gains by one state are often at the expense of other states. Conflict is a structural feature of international relations. To demonstrate his point, Mearsheimer reminds us that the U.S. has been at war of some type since the end of World War 2. These include the Cold war with the U.S.S.R, or hot wars like Vietnam, Iraq, the Balkans, and Iran. He referred to the U.S. as a “crusader state” (Source – video).

The Ethics of War

On February 28th, the first day of the war against Iran, U.S. planes bombed a girl’s school, killing about 170 students. The incident happened because military leaders had used out of date maps and failed to double check before setting the targets. Trump was unconcerned about the deaths, absolving the U.S. for any responsibility. At first, he suggested that the Iranians might have been at fault. What I noticed was that signature shrug of his shoulders, indicating his casual dismissal of the deaths. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Access Hollywood tape recorded Trump saying he was entitled to grope women because he was a star (Source). Does his casual dismissal arise from that sense of entitlement? Trump dislikes rules and institutions. For him, there is only power. He has the same cold-blooded look of nihilism in his eye as the character Malcolm McDowell played in the 1971 movie Clockwork Orange.

Taking Back Power

Congress passes the laws but doesn’t deal with the consequences of their implementation. Perhaps if they did do more administration, they would write better laws or more readily modify those laws which they have written. In the 19th century, Congress took a more active role in administering the programs they enacted. The National Archives contain the records of Congressional committees that decided the pensions of soldiers, an administrative task now done by the Veterans Benefits Administration, a department of Veterans Affairs and part of the Executive branch (Source).

Searching for Truth

In grade school, we are presented with questions where there are many wrong answers but only one right answer. When was the Declaration of Independence? How much is 3 times 4? We get the answer.

In high school, we are presented with questions for which there are several “right” answers. In English class, students might be asked “Why did the character in this story make this decision?” In History class, they might be asked, “What was the primary cause of this war?” In Social Studies class, students might be asked, “Should an individual sacrifice for the greater good?” In a Science class, they might be asked, “How to best design this experiment to test this hypothesis?” We explore the answers.

In college, we study the methods of answering questions. These include the frameworks of investigation, various models and schools of interpretation, the types of evidence and which are more reliable. Lastly, we are asked to formulate our own question and design a method of answering that question, often having to explain why we chose that method. We create the questions.

In the comments to a well written essay on social media, I have noticed that the comments often neglect the reasoning we learned in high school. The writers of these comments seem to be stuck in grade school, believing that there is only one answer to complex social and political problems. Coincidentally, they have that one answer and are willing to share it in their comment! Yes, we are so grateful for your generosity and wisdom. And with that, I hope to see you next week.

Finally

P.S. check out this anime video of a solution to the immigration issue and have a chuckle.

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Photo by Nils Söderman on Unsplash

America at War

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March 29, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

This year we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This year we mark, not celebrate, the 25th year of America At War. In those 25 years, we have sextupled the nation’s public debt from $6 trillion to $38 trillion to pay for our forever wars. Trump got elected a second time on the promise of keeping America out of foreign wars. He forgot to check with his puppet masters, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel lobby in America, before making that promise. That promise of putting America’s interests first swayed many marginal voters to cast a vote for Trump in 2024. Many must feel like gullible Charlie Brown, who never succeeded in kicking the football because Lucy kept yanking the ball away (Source).

Carl von Clausewitz (1780 – 1831) was a Prussian officer and military theorist who stated that “War is merely the continuation of policy with other means” (Source). The two primary negotiators for the U.S. are the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his close friend Steve Witkoff. Neither of them have any experience in international relations. Both men are pro-Israel and are likely to favor Israel’s economic and strategic interests in any negotiations with Iran. In 2024, Kushner advocated a policy of moving the Palestinians to the Negev desert and developing the Gaza strip as waterfront property (Source).  In 2025, Witkoff stated that he was working collectively with Netanyahu for the reconstruction of Gaza (Source). Netanyahu has said that Israel will take control of all of Gaza (Source). Clearly, both Kushner and Witner are negotiating for the best interests of Israel, not the U.S. Neither Kushner or Witner see little daylight between the interests of the U.S. and Israel.

Both the Israel lobby in America and the Christian Zionists believe in the restoration of the ancient kingdom of Israel as part of God’s plan. Some Evangelicals believe that this restoration will precede the Second Coming of Christ. This system of beliefs has been called Dispensationalism and includes the belief that the Bible should be taken literally and historically, that salvation only comes through Christ and that God has a plan for mankind that includes the restoration of the land of Israel (Source). Billionaire Miriam Adelson is a strong supporter of Israel’s interests, owns the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, and is aligned with Christian Zionists. She contributed over a $100 million to President Trump’s 2024 campaign and has been lauded by Israel’s Knesset (Source). In their 2010 Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court ruled that money is speech and constitutionally protected under the First Amendment. The elite can shape our domestic and foreign policy as they wish.

This year we also celebrate the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Smith is the most cited author in economics literature, according to Avner Offer and Gabriel Söderberg, authors of The nobel factor: The prize in economics, social democracy, and the market turn. Writing in an age of hard currencies like gold and silver, Smith observed that countries fund their wars by printing paper money instead of raising taxes. He suggested that having to raise taxes to pay for war would result in fewer wars. Unfortunately, it is the elite, the “princes,” as Smith called them, who push nations into war and the elite don’t want to pay higher taxes. Instead of paying taxes that would enhance the common welfare, they spend their money on political contributions to benefit the political elite and shape policy to their liking.

The U.S. has issued more and more debt to pay for the never ending wars. The global elite have bought that debt, trusting that the U.S. can always borrow more to pay its existing debt and the interest on that debt. Since the financial crisis in 2009, the ratio of federal tax receipts to its outstanding public debt has remained low, at 10% (Source). As economist Herb Stein said, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop” (Source). Trump’s erratic behavior, his past personal bankruptcies and his distaste for rules may cause investors to grow cautious and lighten their exposure to U.S. debt. It is no longer a risk-free instrument because Trump could, at any time, announce on his Truth Social platform that he is temporarily suspending interest payments on U.S. debt. Who will stop him? Not a paralyzed and fearful Republican majority in Congress. Not his servile cabinet members.

Despite Trump’s loyalty to his son-in-law and his friend, he wants an off-ramp from this conflict, an exit that allows him to save face. Netanyahu oversold him on the likelihood of a “shock and awe” strike that would result in a quick war. Instead, this is turning into a war of attrition that advantages Iran. After Friday’s losses on the stock market, the SP500 is now in correction territory, 10% from it’s all time highs a few months ago. Trump pays attention to the market. Will we see some positive steps to a resolution in the next week? I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

Conflict and Deceit

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March 22, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

In our popular imagination, the Garden of Eden was a paradise but Genesis 2:15 says that God put Adam there to “dress it and to keep it.” Adam was the gardener, not some guy lounging around in paradise. A single act of disobedience, eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, earned Adam and his companion Eve a one-way ticket out of the Garden and into a world of hard work and conflict. Eve was punished even more harshly because she was to  endure “sorrow” in childbirth and be subject to her husband. In Chapter 4 of Genesis, Cain, one of the children of Adam and Eve, gets jealous of his brother Abel and kills him. This week I want to explore conflict and the ways that various cultures have tried to explain the origins of conflict.

Ancient philosophers and religious traditions were especially focused on origins. An origin lent authority and authenticity. The Greek philosopher Aristotle based his philosophical study on first causes. He was convinced that knowing a first cause would enable him to understand why things are the way they are. This focus on origin would lead Greek philosophers like Zeno (circa 390 B.C.E. to 320 B.C.E.) to a number of paradoxes that made it difficult or impossible to understand movement (Source). The one I am familiar with is the race between Achilles and a tortoise who is given a head start. If distances were infinitely divisible, Zeno argued that Achilles could not catch up to the tortoise. Many of these paradoxes were resolved by the invention of calculus almost two millennium later.

Greek mythology also contains an origin story for conflict that results from a single act, the opening of Pandora’s box. In the Bible account, Eve committed that first act. She was the dupe of the serpent who also sold used cars. In the Greek account, Pandora was the first woman created by the gods as a punishment for mankind (Source). Nope, I’m not making this stuff up. Pandora’s affliction was curiosity and yes, she passed down that disease to Galileo, Newton and Einstein. Poor lads. Anyway, Pandora opened up the box, or urn, and out came all the evils that afflict the world.

In the western tradition, women are the scapegoats for male philosophers and religious leaders who cannot admit that men are not inherently docile creatures. Freudian analysis continued that tradition, explaining that schizophrenogenic mothering  caused the violent havoc of schizophrenia. In his book Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky notes that this was still the dominant explanation for schizophrenia until the 1970s.

Helen of Troy was the primary cause of the Trojan War (1194 B.C.E. – 1184 B.C.E.) between the Greeks and Trojans, the ancestors of modern day Turks. Surely, it must have been a woman who caused Israel and the U.S. to cut off negotiations with Iran and attack the country three weeks ago. The Trump administration has given more than a dozen different explanations for why they started the war (Source). Trump has always blamed women for his troubles, so he might as well continue the tradition.

In Norse myth, it is a half-giant, half-god called Loki who ushers in conflict both here in the world and in the universe. In ancient Persia, now Iran, the prophet Zoroaster led a religious movement that emphasized belief in one God, Ahura Mazda. He taught that conflict was the result of an epic battle between good and evil, between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman (Source). The Bible contained no reference to a battle between good and evil until Judaic and Christian religious leaders reinterpreted a passage in the Book of Isaiah to tell the story of a rebellion of angels. In the 5th century A.D., the patriarch Augustine wove several Biblical passages into a story of a cosmic battle between good and evil, between God and Satan (Source below).

Revelation 12:09 refers to Satan as a deceiver, similar to the Nordic myth of Loki. Deceit is the second axis I want to explore this week. According to the Biblical account, mankind’s downfall was the result of the serpent’s deceit. Pandora’s opening of the box came about through self-deceit, that she could ignore warnings from her brother about what might be inside the box. Yet we are social creatures who rely on others to satisfy our wants and needs. To accomplish that, deceit is a useful tool.

Elena Hoicka, a professor at Bristol University led a study which found that some infants at ten months engage in deceptive practices like pretending not to hear or exaggerating. By the time we reach the age of three we are frequent deceivers (Source). Growing up Catholic and having to regularly confess my sins, I could confess to lying to my parents even if I could not remember lying to my parents. No, I didn’t hit my brother. I certainly did not steal my sister’s candy. Of course my homework was done so I could go out to play basketball. I didn’t hear that dinner was ready or I would have stopped playing baseball. No, I didn’t drink the last of the milk and forget to write it down on the grocery list.

Politicians elevate deception to an art. In the 2016 Republican debates, candidates with years of  experience in public life were astounded at the baldfaced lies that Trump told. Trump had made hundreds and thousands of deals and was worth many billions and blah, blah, blah. He was a frequent liar but an inartful liar. He lied about things that were easily checked. In politics, lying is an art, damn it! The Apprentice was a game show. Some voters thought it was Trump’s real resume. Lincoln didn’t get it. Politicians only need to fool some of the people a lot of the time.

Our most frequent act of deception is self-deception. On little evidence, President Bush and his staff convinced themselves that Iraq did have weapons of destruction. They then smothered any evidence contradicting that belief in presenting their case to the American public and the world. Such a commitment of force and resources requires more evidence than mere suggestions of a threat.

At the end of the 12-day war with Iran in June 2025,  President Trump announced that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been obliterated (Source). In a June 25th press release, the White House maintained that the word “obliterate” was the proper term (Source). Deception or self-deception  or both? Yet, eight months later, Iran was supposedly two to four weeks away from deploying a nuclear weapon (Source video). Is there some other interpretation of the word obliterate?

Israeli and U.S. intelligence have two separate criteria for what constitutes a nuclear weapon. Israel’s Mossad classifies any crude nuclear device that Iran might produce as a nuclear weapon. U.S. intelligence has a stricter definition. It must be a deliverable nuclear device (Source). President Trump will not state that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is deciding U.S. military strategy in the Middle East because that makes him look weak. Netanyahu is a skillful politician who  wanted U.S. involvement to maintain military dominance in the Middle East. Trump is both inexperienced and very much influenced by the billionaire donors of the Israeli lobby like Miriam Adelson, who donated more than a $100 million to his 2024 campaign (Source).

We engage in deceit as a tool to resolve or avoid conflict. I wanted to play basketball while it was still daylight, so I lied about the homework. I could always sneak upstairs and do my homework after it got dark. No harm, no foul. Even as the stakes are raised, we use those same justifications as adults. Why not? That kind of thinking has worked for us in the past and we are practiced masters of self-deception.

Pandora’s brother had warned Pandora that the box, a gift from Zeus, was dangerous because Zeus was not to be trusted. She was different, of course. Zeus wouldn’t do that to her. When Helen fell in love with Paris and followed him to Troy, she didn’t think her husband, King Menelaus, would actually start a war to get her back.

President Trump has fired any advisors who didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. The war on Iran would be over in a few days, just like the downfall of Venezuela’s Maduro. Sometimes, our deceit invites an escalation of conflict. How to deceive the American public leading up to a midterm election? If only politicians put as much care into governing as they do in covering up their deceit. I hope to see you next week and I am not lying about that.

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Photo by Chris Sabor on Unsplash

Coogan, M. D. (Ed.). (2018). The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (5th ed.). Oxford University Press. (See commentary on Isaiah 14:4–21.) The reference to the King of Babylon as the “light-bearer” was reinterpreted to mean Satan. The serpent in the Garden of Eden became Satan after a reference in Revelation 12.

The War President

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March 15, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

This week I watched the blinking numbers on the fuel pump as I filled up with gas. $1 per gallon more than it was on February 26. Last year we had to get used to paying higher prices because of the Trump import tax. Now there is the Trump gas tax. I look over at the diesel pump. Almost $5 a gallon, up from $3.80 a few weeks ago. A semi holds about 150 gallons, far more than my Subaru. That gas tax will factor into price increases for groceries each week. The higher price for oil has been a boon for Russia, whose oil revenues had been declining in 2025. Russia produces 10% of the world’s daily consumption and exports 80% of that (Source). For those of us filling up at that gas station, it was like we were putting money in Putin’s pocket, ammo for him to kill more Ukrainians.

I hung up the gas nozzle and got in the car. On the radio, a reporter asked, “Senator, can you comment on the rising price of gas and the effect it has on the budgets of everyday working Americans?” The senator answered with a mantra “short term pain for long term gain.” Some clever marketing geek in Republican Spin Central thought up the slogan, then broadcast it to every conservative media outlet. Republican politicians downloaded the phrase into their brains so that they had a quick answer to an uncomfortable question. Democrats have a similar mechanism but are not as disciplined in their messaging.

In the 2015 and 2016 Republican debates, Trump was the outsider candidate. His every response broadcast skepticism and anger at the political system. Obama had made a bad deal when he negotiated the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA (Source). Trump had made deals all over the world and he would get a better deal. The Iraq war was a huge mistake. He attacked candidate Jeb Bush for supporting his brother’s bonehead decision to go to war and the lies he told in the lead up to the war (Source). Trump, the greatest Presidential liar of all time, calling out a former President for lying. We need a younger Trump to debate the old Trump and call him out for this stupid war.

In the book of Genesis, Chapter 22, God tells Abraham to take his son, Isaac, up to a mountaintop and sacrifice him to show his fealty. Abraham did so. Did he think “short term pain,” the death of his son, for “long term gain,” the fealty of a powerful God? Why would the thought of such a sacrifice even come into Abraham’s head? In Chapter 17, God had told Abraham that He would make a covenant with Isaac. Did Abraham remind God of that earlier promise? Hey, God we had a deal. At that point, Abraham was at least a hundred years old and Isaac could have easily refused to submit. Best not to analyze these stories because they are stories, like the many stories that Trump and his team have told about the reasons for getting into this war.

Rubio said that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the driver’s seat on this one (Source). How to make sense of this escapade? There was little consideration given to the consequences. Trump seems to be the leader of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Reminiscent of other laughable failures like Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage (Source). There’s a rumor that Netanyahu has evidence of Trump’s escapades with Jeffrey Epstein and is holding that as a threat over Trump’s head. Oh, now it all makes sense.

Several thousand years ago, people believed that what happened in the material world was the result of spiritual forces and gods. If this war were the result of a feud between the Greek gods Athena and Ares, then it would all make sense, of course. Pete Hackysack, the Defense Secretary, or as he likes to be called, The Secretary of War, certainly personifies Ares, the Greek god of war in all its fury and chaos (Source). But wait, Athena was the goddess of wisdom and strategic war (Source). This is not a strategic war by any stretch of the imagination, so how could Athena be involved? “Tonight we speak with an expert who is doubtful that wise Athena has a hand in this ill planned war. Our second guest this evening will be a Jewish scholar who claims that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is guided by the hand of Athena towards the final apocalypse and Israel’s victory.” The news media loves to cover the controversy. Political analysis would be much more entertaining if we adopted a spiritualist interpretation of current events.

Meanwhile, several thousand people have died in this war so far. They are the Isaacs, the sacrificial lambs not to some chieftain God of the Old Testament, but offerings to appease the vanity and folly of our leaders. I hope to see you next week when the price of gas goes up yet again.

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The Legend of Donald Trump

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March 8, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

In a familiar Hollywood plot, a loner comes to a sleepy western town. He harbors some dark secrets from the Civil War and prefers to be left alone (Source). He wants someone to tend to his horse plus a good meal and a room for the night. While eating in the saloon he is interrupted by a bully who challenges him. Or maybe the bully gets physical with one of the saloon girls. The bully makes some aggressive action to the loner and the loner either knocks him out or wounds him with a gunshot. The townsfolk are scared because the bully’s gang will come back and do terrible things.

“Where’s the sheriff?” the loner asks. The gang killed the old sheriff, one of the terrified town folk tell him. So the loner becomes the new sheriff. It’s a job he is reluctant to accept, but no one else can take care of the problem. Eventually, the loner is forced to defend himself and kill the gang’s boss and the rest of the gang because the loner is fast with a gun. President Trump fancies himself as the new sheriff in town. The town, in this case, is the world. For his efforts, Trump expects to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Billions of us around the world are extras in Trump’s fantasy western, the Legend of Trump.

Shortly after taking office for the second time as the sheriff, Trump had to get rid of many of the gang members, i.e. federal employees, who worked in Washington. Many of these people were engaged in helping others, a criminal activity that Sheriff Trump vowed to stamp out. Employees who helped Americans during natural emergencies (FEMA) were part of the gang. People providing services for veterans (Veterans Affairs) or helping provide medical aid to those in poor countries (USAID) were part of the gang and were cut (Source). For that task, Sheriff Trump turned to Chainsaw Muskrat who promised to carve off the fat like a Wisconsin woodcutter carves a tree trunk into a statue of an American eagle. Turns out the Muskrat was about as artistic as a beaver chewing a tree trunk. Then the Muskrat left Washington, taking his chainsaw with him.

Next the new sheriff rid the town of brown skinned varmints who took jobs away from God- fearing townsfolk. They were worse than horse thieves. They were stealing social benefits. The sheriff had ‘em rounded up and put in cattle pens in Texas. Next he sent his posse to the town of Venezuela to capture the gang leader Machete Maduro and throw him in a Brooklyn jail where other notorious criminals had waited for the firm hand of justice.

For decades no one had been able to bring peace to the Middle East. The violence and hatred was worse than the range wars between cattlemen and sheepherders in the 19th century. This time the sheriff gathered up a big posse with lots of dynamite that they could hurl down from the sky. Ka-boom. They took out the gang leader Ayatollah and some of his henchmen. The townsfolk in Iran danced with joy. “You’re welcome,” the sheriff told them as he rode off with his posse, the sunset casting an orange glow on the sheriff’s face.

This is the Legend of Donald Trump who brought law and order to the wild frontier. I hope to see you next week for another thrilling episode.

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Image by ChatGPT

An Urgent Situation

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March 1, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

This Friday marked the 93rd anniversary of the burning of the Reichstag building in Berlin, the home of Germany’s Weimar Parliament. A month earlier, Adolph Hitler had been elected Chancellor, the Chief Executive in Germany’s Parliamentary system. In the aftermath of the fire, police found a communist sympathizer who was accused of starting the fire. The following day, Hitler urged President von Hindenburg to issue an emergency decree granting Hitler extraordinary powers to prevent a communist takeover of the German government. The decree suspended Constitutional liberties like freedom of speech and assembly, guarantees of private communications and protections from arrest. Within weeks, political opponents were arrested, press freedoms were crushed, and the constitutional order hollowed out (Source). The “emergency” ended twelve years later after the utter destruction of Germany and the deaths of as many as 8.8 million German soldiers and civilians (Source). This week I want to explore the many meanings of emergency.

A hospital emergency room treats conditions with many degrees of urgency. The Latin word emergere refers to anything that comes up suddenly. When they are busy, emergency room doctors perform triage, an assessment of the urgency of a condition or illness. Many years ago, I slipped on the ice and dislocated my shoulder. Urgent? The nurse glanced at my eyes, then held up two fingers. How many? Two, I said. What day is today? Friday, I answered. No concussion. Have a seat. I waited in pain for over three hours in an emergency room in the Bronx, while doctors treated knife stabbings, gun shot wounds, heart attacks, and other conditions deemed more urgent than a dislocated shoulder. I was surprised to learn that neither the degree of my pain nor the short time it would take to fix the problem was a consideration to the doctors and nurses that night. Learning lesson: do not get hurt.

In 1787, a Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia to resolve a financial crisis. The country could not pay its bills, or make payments on the war debt it had sustained through the eight year war for independence from Britain. Foreign investment had slowed to a trickle. Because each state issued its own currency, foreign investors were subject to currency risk and volatile exchange rates. The federal government had no power to directly tax businesses or people and states often neglected to meet their share of payment for war debts, weakening the credit of the colonies. Congress had no power to regulate commerce so the states fought among themselves for control of interstate waterways. In 1786, several months before the convention, four thousand people rose up to protest Massachusetts’ tax laws. This uprising, known as Shay’s Rebellion, demonstrated the need for a new compact among the states (Source). The acronym SNAFU was invented during World War 2, but the term aptly describes post-independence America. Despite these crisis conditions, the Constitution does not contain any reference to emergency, crisis or exigency (Source).

Hitler’s seizure of power in Weimar Germany raises issues of constitutional design. How does a country respond to a genuine crisis without empowering political leaders with the power to destroy constitutional order? In Federalist No. 70, Alexander Hamilton argued for a unitary executive, a President who could swiftly marshal resources in case of an attack from a foreign power. In response to insurrections like Shay’s Rebellion, Hamilton wanted a President who could restore domestic civil order (Source).

Carl Schmitt (1888 – 1985), a German conservative judge, argued in his 1922 book Political Theology that emergencies reveal the political structure underlying the ordinary norms in a country. He wrote that, in actuality, the sovereign is the person that decides when the rules can be broken (Source). Robert Bork (1927 – 2012) was a strong proponent of what is called the unitary executive, a President who has supreme power in the executive branch. According to Bork, Congress has no constitutional power to limit the President’s executive powers (Source).

The conservative justices on the Supreme Court have decided several recent cases that support this expanded power, rejecting the idea that Congress can impose limits on a President’s ability to hire and fire officers in the executive branch. This year the court will decide whether to overturn the court’s 1936 precedent set in Humphrey’s Executor and allow President Trump to fire the head of the Federal Trade Commission (Source). What is the limit of that executive power? Can a President fire the head of the Federal Reserve and install someone who supports the President’s political agenda? Can a President declare an emergency and invoke extraordinary powers? What is the limit of executive authority?

In France’s Constitution, Article 16 allows the President of France to assume exceptional powers when the normal functioning of government is interrupted. Should the U.S. amend its Constitution to give some clarity to what an emergency is? If there were such an amendment,  could the President suspend habeus corpus and other liberties when the Federal Government has a shutdown because of a budget fight in Congress? He could claim that the government is not functioning normally and take control. The U.S. relies on a political tension between the three branches of government rather than an explicit constitutional clarification of what constitutes an emergency.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, arguing that the rebellion by the southern states made such a violation of individual liberty a necessity. Shortly after his inauguration in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a national emergency and temporarily closed banks. Did Roosevelt have such a statutory power? Three days later, a Democratic Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act, effectively ratifying Roosevelt’s emergency decree. In 1952, in the midst of the Korean War, President Truman responded to a steelworker’s strike by declaring an emergency in which he nationalized the steel industry. Within two months, the Supreme Court ruled that he had exceeded his authority (Source).

In 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act to check a President’s discretion to declare open-ended emergencies. According to the Act, the President must specify which statutory power they invoked during an emergency. Secondly, either house of Congress could unilaterally vote to end the emergency. Seven years later, in INS v. Chadha, the Supreme Court invalidated that unilateral power as unconstitutional (Source). After that decision, Congress had to pass a joint resolution subject to Presidential veto and a two-thirds majority to override that veto. With little effective oversight from Congress, any president could declare an emergency. Checks and balances be damned.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush declared a national emergency and claimed certain statutory powers under the National Emergencies Act. In April 2025, President Trump declared an emergency, not in response to a terrorist attack, but to persistent trade imbalances. What was the emergency? The need for Trump to exercise a discretionary power over other countries as he had done with contestants on the reality show The Apprentice. This month, the Supreme Court decided that Trump had exceeded his authority.

Emergency powers rarely disappear on their own. Once activated, they tend to be normalized. The extraordinary becomes routine. Surveillance powers expand. Administrative discretion widens. Political rhetoric justifies urgency. Democratic societies must be on guard against the temptations of power and the possibility of abuse. They must question whether the policy response is proportional to the danger and how long the response should last.

Constitutional safeguards cannot rely solely on the good faith of leaders. There must be effective institutional boundaries to check the desire for power. An executive can act with decisiveness in a true emergency but decisiveness has to be balanced with restraint or a country descends into autocracy. We want to tame rather than eliminate emergency power. I hope to see you next week.

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