The United States is built on the rule of law. Our system only works if everyone plays by the same rules. When a president decides the rules don’t apply to him and he is immune from accountability, what should patriotic Americans do? Or maybe we should ask, what CAN we do?
The Supreme Court has largely given President Trump and his minions the freedom to do what they want. And even when the Court rules against him, Trump ignores their rulings and does what he wants. What do we do when the executive branch becomes lawless and is no longer accountable to Congress, the courts, and the American people? As MAGA supporters are quickly learning, Trump doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself.
Congress, as long as it is controlled by Republicans will not restrain Trump’s base desire for authoritarian power and money. They want the same.
I weep as I ponder how in the hell we have come to this. Is this the end of this great country of ours? Trump alone is not to blame. He’s the full grown baby that was birthed forty years during the Reagan administration. So cute in 1980, but now this baby has morphed into a full-grown monster who will not rest until his perceived enemies are under the heels of his Nazi jack boots and fascism rules the land.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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China (and Japan) can bankrupt the U.S. Government in short order by dumping the U.S. treasury bonds they own. These bonds help fund deficit government spending.
I’m convinced Donald Trump is a modern-day mad king. (Mad King” typically refers to a ruler, like King George III of England or King Aerys II Targaryen from A Song of Ice and Fire, who is known for periods of mental instability or erratic and often cruel behavior.)
Trump wants to show the world how mighty he is by having a massive military parade in Washington, D.C. on his birthday. Historically, it is authoritarian world leaders who hold military parades — Russia and North Korea come to mind.
Most Republican legislators aren’t interested in cutting the federal budget deficit. Trump raised the deficit during his first term, and he’s on course to raise it to record levels this term.
I am double-minded when it comes to the federal budget deficit. A balanced budget seems like a good idea, but in practice, it leads to pain and suffering for middle-class, working-class, and poor people. Millions of families live from paycheck to paycheck. Budget cuts necessary to balance the budget will bankrupt scores of Americans (and impossible if Congress is unwilling to make massive cuts to defense and security funding).
Ohio’s Republican legislators and Governor Mike DeWine have made it clear that they are anti-public education. Billions of dollars meant for public school budgets were cut from the latest two year budget, with some of this money going to pay for students to attend primarily religious schools.
Get ready for a marked uptick in farm bankruptcies. Trump’s tariffs, especially on China, will cause horrific harm to American families. In 2018, Trump’s tariffs harmed American farms. The President saved his ass by giving farmers billions in welfare payments. Most farmers vote Republican. I wonder if they are tired of all the “winning.”
Trump signed an executive order designed to bring back “beautiful” coal mining. The President couldn’t care less about the environment. He has rolled back countless environmental laws. His goal is to return the United States to the good old days of the 1950s (or the late 1920s) of rampant air, water, and land pollution.)
Trump sees himself as the greatest president ever. The President thinks his face should be carved on Mount Rushmore. History will show that he is one of the worst presidents, right down there with Herbert Hoover.
Chris Hayes said of Trump today, “You set the house on fire, watched it burn, and then lost your nerve and put it out. You now have a partially burned house. Great job.” Yep.
Bonus — It is clear the Trump and his administration don’t give a shit about working class/poor people. From cutting food stamps and Section 8 funding to the Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP), the message is clear: if you aren’t rich, you don’t matter.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.
We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.
— Vice President J.D. Vance, as reported by the Huffington Post
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.
Well, it’s the priority of the Democrats, the letter salad of LGBTQ groups, you can’t let one of them down. And the Democrats know that transgender boys and women’s sports is wrong, but they can’t abandon them because the rest of their group would probably say, if you’re not going to stand with us, we’re out of here for you, Democrats.
We have entire men’s teams across this country now that are turning trans. Women’s teams, they’re turning trans.
And that’s going to be a, uh, a situation where it’s going to pick up speed because these woke globalists are pushing these kids to say, if you can’t compete in men’s sports, let’s just transition and say, you’re a woman and, and, uh, participate in women’s sports.
–Senator Tommy Tuberville, as reported by Crooks & Liars
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Over the past ten years, I have read countless Evangelical blogs and websites that say Donald Trump is a Christian. For the life of me, I don’t understand how Evangelicals think Trump is a follower of Jesus. What evidence of faith are they privy to that the rest of us are not? Trump doesn’t go to church, read the Bible, or live by the precepts, teachings, and commands of the Word of God. In fact, his life is a repudiation of the teachings of Christ. Name one thing he has said or done consistent with the Bible’s teachings. The past two months have been one long “fuck you” to the Good Book’s words about immigrants, poverty, and ministering to the least of these.
If Trump is a Christian, the word loses all sense of meaning. He is a pathological liar, a bigot, a racist, and a misogynist. I have yet to see anything in Trump’s life that remotely suggests he is a Christian. It’s not that a president needs to be a Christian. They don’t. Most Americans value competency over faith. Trump uses religion as a tool to keep Evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and Mormons on his side. He doesn’t give a shit about Evangelicals themselves. The moment Evangelicals are no longer beneficial to his agenda, Trump will jettison them quicker than the sex he had with Stormy Daniels.
I wish Evangelicals would admit that the only reason they support Trump is that he supports their theocratic agenda. Instead of standing on moral and ethical principles, they have sold their souls for a bowl of pottage. If Jesus came back to earth today, I have no doubt he would rebuke Trump and the Evangelicals who support him. Of course, he’s not coming back, so it is left to those of us who have a clear-eyed view of the president to rebuke him and his Evangelical defenders.
Four decades ago, Evangelicals went nuts over a blow job, an intern, and a blue dress. Today, they have abandoned the teachings of Christ for the sake of political and cultural power. Such a Christianity is not only worthless, it’s harmful.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
By Eloise Goldsmith, Common Dreams, Used with Permission
Columbia University received a wave of criticism on Friday after it agreed to a number of demands from the Trump administration as part of negotiations over $400 million in federal grants and contracts that the Trump administration had pulled due to the school’s alleged “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”
The school agreed to a ban on masks and to appoint a senior vice provost with broad power to oversee both the department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studied and the school’s Center for Palestine Studies, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news. Also, Columbia has hired over 30 “special officers” who will have the ability to remove individuals from campus and arrest them, per the memo from the school announcing the update.
On Friday evening, writer Ross Barkan wrote on X, “I confess I don’t get Columbia folding. Don’t they have an endowment worth many billions? Very rich alumni? Alumni who hate Trump? They could do a massive ‘resistance’ fundraiser to make up for lost federal dollars. Very odd and very weak.” Others echoed this sentiment.
“Columbia’s capitulation to fascist government intervention is so severe when you really look at the details,” wrote Nour Joudah, an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, on X. “This is pathetic.”
Leaders at Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute expressed sadness. “The administration held up the university at gunpoint, but I can’t help but feel that Columbia has lost something it may never regain,” wrote the litigation director at the Knight Institute, Alex Abdo, on Friday.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight Institute, wrote on Bluesky that it is “a sad day for Columbia and for our democracy.”
The episode highlight’s the Trump administration’s escalating scrutiny of higher education.
In February, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order with the purported aim of rooting out antisemitism on college campuses, and has vowed to go after foreign-born students who have engaged in pro-Palestine protests, which he has deemed “anti-American activity.” The Department of Education—which the Trump administration is endeavoring to shut down—has also launched investigations into dozens of universities over alleged “race-exclusionary practices.”
But Columbia has so far been at the center of the administration’s feud with universities. In a March 7 press release, members of Trump’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced the cancellation of $400 million, and a day later immigration agents arrested a recent Columbia University graduate who played a major role in pro-Palestine demonstrations last year. The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident, has been widely decried.
On March 13, the Trump administration sent a letter to Columbia University Interim President Katrina Armstrong outlining a series of steps that Columbia must comply with in order to maintain a “continued financial relationship” between the school and the government.
Among the nine demands was a call for disciplinary proceedings for students involved in last year’s Gaza Solidarity Encampments and occupation of Hamilton Hall. The same day Columbia received the letter it issued expulsions, multi-year suspensions, and temporary degree revocations for students involved in the Hamilton occupation.
A senior administrator at Columbia told the Journal that the university had considered legal challenges to resist the demands, but decided that the federal government had too many ways to take back money from the university. Columbia has an endowment of about $15 billion, though according to the outlet it would not “take long for it to cease to operate in any recognizable form without government money.”
“Additionally the school believed there was considerable overlap between needed campus changes and Trump’s demands,” according to the Journal.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo, and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities. On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation — to go unchecked. Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa holders, green card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my firstborn child.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
In 2024 when Donald Trump as a presidential candidate proposed piping water from British Columbia, Canada to California, his statement was largely dismissed as campaign rhetoric.
Once he was elected, Canadians started paying attention but the potential water grab was seen as logistically and politically problematic and unlikely to gain traction. And the issue received scant attention in the water-rich Great Lakes regions of the U.S. and Canada.
But now, Great Lakes water and related agreements between the U.S. and Canada are clearly on President Trump’s radar according to a recent New York Times story.
The Times reported that Trump told Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in February that he wanted to abandon various border agreements including those concerning water.
“He wanted to tear up the Great Lakes agreements and conventions between the two nations that lay out how they share and manage Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario,” according to the Times.
Executive director of the Traverse City non-profit FLOW, Liz Kirkwood said the scope of agreements include the Boundary Waters Treaty, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and the Great Lakes Compact.
Kirkwood described the agreements as a “Great Lakes partnership between Canada and the U.S. and they are a global model to protect and steward 20% of the planet’s fresh surface water.”
Kirkwood said any attempt to break the agreements would be “bad for the health of our lakes and our communities and ultimately destructive of the U.S. relationship with a trusted neighbor.”
Given the magnitude of Trump’s statements, Great Lakes Now canvassed the region for reactions, seeking comments from select governors and the Premier of Ontario. Ontario borders four of the five Great Lakes and is Canada’s most populous province with 14 million people.
In addition to FLOW, Great Lakes Now sought comments from Illinois-based Alliance for the Great Lakes and Wisconsin-based Milwaukee Riverkeeper. Both were instrumental in promoting passage of the Great Lakes Compact that prevents large-scale diversions from the Great Lakes.
Alliance CEO Joel Brammeier said: “U.S. treaties and agreements with Canada, and similar agreements among the states and provinces, are the bedrock on which sustainable protection and restoration of our Great Lakes is built.”
“There is no space for the U.S. to step back from its shared obligation,”Brammeier said.
From Milwaukee, Riverkeeper Cheryl Nenn said: “we should not play politics with the Great Lakes.”
Nenn also noted that only 1% of the Great Lakes are replenished by rainfall and snowmelt.
“They are a one-time gift from the glaciers, and we need to protect them from abuse and over-consumption and that should supersede all politics,” Nenn said.
Great Lakes Now also sought comments from water policy experts who have held official governance positions.
Chicago’s Cameron Davis was a longtime Great Lakes advocate before moving to the U.S. EPA under President Obama where he advised the administrator on Great Lakes issues.
“Midwesterners see protecting the Great Lakes and its water as an act of patriotism,” Davis said. “And they’re smart enough to know Canada is our friend in that effort.”
Davis noted that support for the lakes has been bi-partisan and he expected that the Great Lakes states “will defend their relationship with Canada.”
The bi-partisan federal support over the last 20 years includes an executive order signed by President George W. Bush that declared the Great Lakes a “national treasure.” Bush’s order laid the groundwork for development of the Great Lakes restoration program.
President Obama jumped-started restoration by putting $475 million in his first budget and funding continues today. It was also Bush who signed the legislation that codified the Great Lakes Compact into federal law.
Canada’s Maude Barlow is a veteran author and water advocate who served as the senior adviser on water to the United Nations General Assembly.
Barlow pointed to the lack of detail in Trump’s comments but said if he is referring to abandoning the Great Lakes Compact, “that is worrying.”
“He could then just cancel the Compact on the American side and start diverting Great Lakes water around the country to service the manufacturing and technology resurgence he is planning. In this case there would be little Canada could do,” she said.
The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec have agreements that mirror the U.S. Compact but exist separately.
Barlow said Canadians value and protect their water heritage and will fight to defend it.
“And we know many Americans would take our side in such a struggle,” Barlow said.
Michigan’s Dave Dempsey served as a senior adviser on the staff of the International Joint Commission (IJC), the U.S.-Canada agency that advises the countries on transboundary issues.
“The IJC has a culture of joint fact-finding,” Dempsey said. “And the respectful resolution of boundary waters disagreements has served the two countries well. Abrogating the treaties would be a colossal mistake.”
An IJC spokesperson declined to comment on Trump’s water statements saying the agency “does not comment on political matters or issues of domestic policy. This is important in order to ensure our effectiveness as an impartial advisor to governments.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, both Democrats, did not respond to a request to comment on President Trump’s water statements.
Daniel Tierney, spokesperson for Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine declined to comment saying “I am not aware of a formal or final policy on which to comment.”
However, it’s important to note that Great Lakes governors have responsibility for the lakes via the Compact.
At a meeting of Great Lakes governors and premiers in Milwaukee, in 2019, Gov. Whitmer told Great Lakes Now that the lakes are “at the core of who Michigan is” and said, “absolutely, Michigan has to lead on Great Lakes issues.”
A spokesperson for Ontario Premier Doug Ford declined to comment saying:
“The issue is purely speculative at this point.”
Ford, a Progressive Conservative, has been aggressive in responding to Trump’s tariff threats.
The White House did not respond to a request to comment on Trump’s desire to put water agreements between the U.S. and Canada in play.
Please check out Circle of Blue for more articles on the Great Lakes.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.
A lot of people forget that Gaza was once a place inhabited by both Jews and Palestinians until 2005 when Ariel Sharon decided to give it all away.
And the result we saw October the 7th. President Trump did something bold. He looked into the future and said kind of a what if. We don’t know exactly what might happen in Gaza, but here’s what could have happened in Gaza.
Gaza could have been Singapore. Instead, Hamas turned it into Haiti.
And I’m very optimistic that with his leadership, his bold and innovative thinking, he doesn’t think like the other politicians and diplomats have thought. I heard somebody say he’s thinking outside the box. That’s ridiculous. He’s not thinking outside the box. He throws the box away and says, let’s start with a blank slate and see where this could go. That’s leadership.
I will use this term, Maria. I think we will see something of biblical proportion happen with his leadership in the Middle East.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.
The Democrats, basically, they don’t like our country anymore. They just want to tear it down … Every Democrat that we work with up here, they’re gonna take this guy’s side and they’re gonna try to drive this narrative that he’s doing the right thing.
“You know, we have two levels of education. We have K-12 and we have higher ed. We’ve gotta treat both of them different, but when it comes to protesters, we gotta make sure we treat all of ‘em the same: Send ’em to jail.
Free speech is great, but hateful, hate, free speech is not what we need in these universities, and they don’t need to be doing things that they’re preaching from Hamas, about antisemitism.
— Senator Tommy Tuberville
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
