With clear eyes, hard facts, critical thinking, new political strategy, empathy, and a soupçon of Schadenfreude
Category: Situational Awareness
Posts about the situation we are in–the good facts, the bad facts, and the terrible facts. Facts that, if taken on board, will let us “know ourselves, know the other side” and go on to win those hundred battles.
Some legal scholars say—and they’re right—that for ages to come Friday’s Supreme Court decision in Learning Resources v. Trump will be hailed as a landmark ruling on the limits of presidential power. Students of constitutional law will read it alongside Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, a 1952 case establishing that a President cannot seize private property without congressional authorization.
Fun fact: Both yesterday’s decision and the 1952 decision were 6 to 3 rulings.
Both Simple and Complex
The legal, economic, and political issues impacted by yesterday’s decision are, at one and the same time, both simple and complex. Like so many aspects of law and political economy, a full understanding requires thinking in different ways at the same time.
In this post, I am going to deal with the simple part of the matter: the Court’s holding—i.e., what the six members of the majority agreed on.
The Court’s Opinion
Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion for the majority, consisting of himself and Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Barrett. The Chief Justice’s opinion is 21 pages long, but only Roberts, Barrett, and Gorsuch agreed with all 21 pages. All six agreed with the Court’s bottom line decision set forth at page 21, and all six agree with what the Chief Justice wrote at pages 1 through 7 and at pages 14-20. However, only Justices Roberts, Barrett, and Gorsuch agreed with pages 7-14 and with the part that begins on page 20.
In addition to this 21-page opinion of the Chief Justice, there are five other concurring or dissenting opinions. The whole enchilada amounts to 170 pages.
But, of course, what really counts are the 13 pages of prose on which the 6-justice majority could come together.
A Case of Statutory Interpretation
This was not a contract case or a tort case or even a constitutional law case. It was instead a case of statutory interpretation—albeit a statute that required interpretation with the words of the Constitution in mind.
That statute in question was the IEEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, passed in 1977 to replace the old Trading with the Enemy Act, which was thought to have granted excessive power to the government.
The Two Main Issues
Going in, there were two main issues.
First, had Trump correctly determined the existence of some economic emergency justifying the invocation of the IEEPA? (And relatedly, even if he might have screwed up the emergency determination, was that determination nevertheless, as he claimed, unreviewable by the courts?)
Second, assuming for the sake of the discussion that the emergency finding was OK, did the IEEPA give the President the unrestrained power to impose any old tariff, at any old amount, for as long as he wanted, even though tariffs were no mentioned in the words of the statute and even though the Constitution says that Congress has exclusive power to impose tariffs?
The Non-Answer to the First Question
As to the first of these two questions, the Court punted. Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs.” That sentence, by the way, appeared in the part of the 21-page opinion that the three liberals did not endorse.
Clearly, there was no majority in favor of ruling on the existence of the purported emergency, let alone a majority for rebuking Trump on that point.
The Second Question—and the Key Ruling on that Question
The key ruling concerned the second question—whether, if a valid emergency exists, the kitbag of Presidential remedies does or does not include tariffs.
Bottom line: six members of the Court ruled that the answer is no, the power to impose tariffs may not properly be inferred from language that does not mention tariffs, given the Constitution’s reservation of the tariff power to Congress, not the President.
The “Major Questions Doctrine”: A Major Theological Red Herring Without Major Significance for Ordinary Civilians
As I said before, the six-member majority agreed on some 13 pages of Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion, and those 13 pages state the holding of the Court. The rest of the 170-page package is largely devoted to intense theological naval contemplation regarding the “major questions doctrine.”
The “major questions doctrine,” dating from about the year 2000, is a novel principle of statutory interpretation, beloved of business-oriented right wingers, intended to do battle against the administrative state.
The gist is that questions of major political or economic significance may not be delegated to an administrative agency except with clear and explicit congressional authorization. If you’re interested, Wikipedia has a good article.
As we have seen, in the Friday tariff case, the six right-leaning justices split down the middle. The pro-Trump-tariffs faction had to explain how their position could be reconciled with their beloved major questions doctrine, and that, in turn, required pages and pages of tortured prose. Meanwhile, the anti-Trump-tariffs faction of right wingers wanted to get the three liberals to admit that the major questions doctrine was really a good thing after all.
No such luck. The three liberals were having none of it. Ordinary statutory interpretation—without any special newly invented right wing canon of statutory exegesis—was fully sufficient to conclude that Trump was acting unlawfully.
And THAT, as we have seen, was, at the end of the day, exactly the 6 to 3 holding of the Supreme Court.
The extra 150 pages were, in my opinion, largely a waste of ink and paper.
The Bottom Line
Six members of the Supreme Court have crossed the Rubicon, ruling clearly and unambiguously that our toddler-in-chief has to give up his favorite box of matches.
I watched this lengthy, but very insightful, dialogue between two focus group experts. The time was well spent. Consider taking the trouble to watch yourself, if you want to understand the current state of opinion among the masses of our fellow Americans.
Honesty is the Best Policy, and Other Thoughts About Communicating with MAGA
First of all, if you want to employ advocacy in the real world—not just in environments where you feel comfortable, but also in situations where advocacy might actually achieve something—then you need to identify your target and to be clear about what you want he, she, or them to do.
Now, it would be nice if everyone on Team Red would recognize the error of their ways, and come join Team Blue. But that is not going to happen. A more realistic objective would be to help them realize that things are going badly for Team Red—and there’s no real point in their voting in the next election or two. If lots of Team Red stay home, then we win—which, by the way, is exactly what has been happening in recent special elections.
Second, while honesty is essential, candor is likely to be counterproductive. To illustrate: the next time you’re dining with a MAGA acquaintance, you probably don’t want to say something candid such as, “I know that I am your moral and intellectual superior, but I’ll deign to talk with you if you will listen politely.”
A better course would be to argue along the lines, “Well, if you believe X, let’s talk about the implications of that belief.”
Third, if your objective is to get your MAGA acquaintance just to stay home on election day, then a good way of accomplishing that objective may to join he, she, or them in reasoning rationally and honestly from the false premises that he, she, or they entertain. To wit: your MAGA dinner companion may have voted for Trump three times because he or she believes that, while Trump is an asshole, he is an asshole who is working for the MAGA community and against the people whom the MAGA community hates.
Your objective is not to convince your MAGA acquaintance that he or she ought not to hate people—or that she or he ought not to hate the particular kinds of people that he or she hates.
No, your objective is to convince him or her that Trump is an asshole all right, but he is the kind of asshole who actually despises the people who voted for him three times—and that Orange Mussolini has absolutely no intention of prioritizing the core economic interests of his core supporters, namely, white people without a college education.
In other words, MAGA folks, yes, he’s an asshole, but he is most emphatically NOT YOUR asshole.
“The Epstein Class”
The biggest and most important thing I learned as a professional advocate for several decades is that it is so much easier—so much easier—to sell an argument if that argument is based on actual facts, as distinguished from delusional bullshit.
Notice how Jon Ossoff uses actual facts to construct his argument, and then to tie it all together with a pink ribbon using the concept of “the Epstein class.”
Two days ago, a federal judge in Fulton County ordered that Team Trump “shall file, no later than the close of business on Tuesday, February 10, 2026, the search warrant affidavit [about the alleged voter fraud in 2020] subject to the redaction of the names of non-governmental witnesses.”
Bully, Bully, for Judge Boulee
United States District Judge J.P. Boulee signed the order. A former partner at Jones Day, where he worked in that firm’s Corporate Criminal Investigations practice group, Judge Boulee was elevated to the federal bench by Donald Trump.
Louisiana state House of Representatives District 60 is a rural area south of Baton Rouge. In 2024, 56 percent of its voters cast their franchise for Trump, while 43 percent voted for the Democratic ticket.
In yesterday’s special election, the Democratic candidate won 62 percent to 38 percent.
In other words, there was a 37 percent shift in favor of the Democrats between November, 2024, and February, 2026.
It seems etymologically, metaphysically, geologically and ethically impossible that President Trump could reach a new low. But he has.
Every Friday, when I’m planning my column, I find fresh evidence that the president is unfit for his office. He taunts his foes in crude, creepy ways and tries to tattoo his name on everything.
Late Thursday night, a vile clip appeared on Truth Social, depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle cartoon, to the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” It was at the end of a video filled with baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The man who pushed the despicable “birther” conspiracy is still at it, using a racist meme from a far-right Pepe-the-frog-loving acolyte.
Like many of Trump’s actions, it was both shocking and predictable.
As The Times reported, Trump has a “history of making degrading remarks about people of color, women and immigrants,” and the Obamas in particular, with “the White House, Labor Department and Homeland Security Department all having promoted posts that echo white supremacist messaging” in his current term.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, offered a pathetic defense for our pathological president: “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the king of the jungle and Democrats as characters from ‘The Lion King.’ Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
Well, Karoline, I think Americans do care that your boss is a racist and off his rocker.
“His presidency is enclosed in a bubble wrap of darkness and hatred and resentment,” Rahm Emanuel, who served as Obama’s chief of staff, told me.
Once the White House realized the outrage was real, the post was deleted. Officials blamed a staffer, though you know Trump was in on it. On Wednesday, he said he does “retruth”conspiracy theories himself.
He went so far that even a few Republicans in Congress, looking down the barrel of the midterms, objected.
On X, Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate, called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
Senator Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican who has been increasingly put off by some of Trump’s offensive actions, said on X, “This content was rightfully removed, should have never been posted to begin with, and is not who we are as a nation.”
Trump had a Dostoyevsky-esque moment on Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, when he confessed that his ego would not let him lose the 2020 race.
“You know, they rigged the second election,” he said. “I had to win it, had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would have had a bad ego for the rest of my life. Now I really have a big ego, though.”
He was admitting that our ginned-up election integrity crisis was simply an exercise in bending the truth to his bottomless vanity. “His ego could not handle the fact that he lost, so he had to pretend there was a voting crisis,” David Axelrod told me. “The world is still paying for that.”
(Trump also confessed to the religious gathering that he gets annoyed when Speaker Mike Johnson asks to pray before meals. Trump dryly noted: “I say, ‘Excuse me? We’re having lunch in the Oval.’”)
After obscenely slapping his name on everything from the Kennedy Center to a gold card for rich aspiring immigrants to warships, and planning a gargantuan triumphal arch and an outsize White House ballroom as reflections of his bloated ego, Trump is now trying to strong-arm Congress into naming more things after him by holding congressionally approved funds hostage.
The administration tried extortion tactics on Chuck Schumer, threatening not to unfreeze billions for a new railroad tunnel under the Hudson River unless he helped rename Penn Station in New York and Washington Dulles International Airport after Trump.
Trump’s dragging his own name and America’s name in the muck. The word “Trump” is an epithet in many circles. But in a bizarre manifestation of insecurity, the president still wants to stamp his moniker everywhere, just as he did when he was a New York businessman prone to bankruptcy.
Trump had another quintessential Trump moment on Tuesday when he lambasted CNN’s Kaitlan Collins for not smiling as she asked him, in light of the latest release of Jeffrey Epstein filth, what he would say to the pedophile’s survivors “who feel like they haven’t gotten justice.”
He told her that it was time to move on — the latest deflection from the fact that he has never come clean about his association with the odious Epstein.
Like a shuddersome image of worms slithering from underneath a rock, a bunch of powerful and formerly respected people in America and beyond have been exposed by the Epstein files.
Many of the ultra-elite who insisted they did not know the truth about Epstein’s depravity have been unmasked as liars. Instead, as The Wall Street Journal wrote, prominent people from Noam Chomsky to Stanley Pottinger to Peter Mandelson to Michael Wolff “actively consoled him, cast him as a victim and in some cases offered advice on how to rehabilitate his image.”
And the shoes keep dropping. CNN reported on Friday that Navy Secretary John Phelan was listed as a passenger on Epstein’s private plane in 2006.
As The Times’s David Fahrenthold told CNN, the louche role of some tech billionaires in the Epstein scandal is particularly chilling because our lives in the coming years will be defined by these billionaires.
Once we saw the lords of the cloud as heroic — young geniuses who would improve our lives. Now, as Fahrenthold said, the personal failings, insecurities and midlife crises of these men are dictating the way they run their companies. We were, he said, “a little bit misplaced in sort of putting our hopes in these folks.”
The material in these two posts should be read and considered in context: the White evangelical church is leaking like a sieve. The crew that reveled in Trump’s vileness the other day at the National Prayer Breakfast represent a declining population. There are still a lot of them, but not as many as there were a decade ago, when Trump deescalated down the golden escalator.
Southern Baptist Convention membership peaked in 2006, at 16.3 million members. By the time Russell Moore was booted out, in mid-2021, membership had declined to 13.7 million. Subsequent to Moore’s defenestration, the SBC has lost another million members.
These data are consistent with data on overall participation in White evangelical Protestant Churches. In 2006, they were 23 percent of the U.S. adult population; now, it’s 13 percent, or about one quarter of the White population in the United States.
Why are So Many Evangelicals Abandoning Ship?
A variety of reasons, but clearly some of it is because folks who actually reads the words printed in red in the New Testament and who want to follow Jesus are disgusted by what they have seen in their church.
Who is the Progressive’s Biggest Ally in Combating National Prayer Breakfast-Style Christianism?
Jesus of Nazareth.
How Will White Evangelicals Reconcile the Tension Between Their Culture War Victories Under Trump and Their Economic Losses Due to Tariffs, Inflation, Loss of Job Opportunities, Etc.?
I don’t know, of course, but it’s going to be a non-trivial threat to Trump’s remaining 70%+ approval among the White evangelical crowd.
With Trump’s Deteriorating Mental and Physical Health, Will Significant Numbers of White Evangelicals Decide They Still Want an Authoritarian Messiah, Just Not Trump as Their Authoritarian Messiah?
The National Prayer Breakfast was founded in 1953, when President Dwight Eisenhower accepted an invitation to join members of Congress to break bread together. Every president since has participated, regardless of party or religious persuasion. It offers an opportunity, according to its organizers, for political leaders to gather and pray collectively for our nation “in the spirit of love and reconciliation as Jesus of Nazareth taught 2,000 years ago.”
Donald Trump never got that memo—or, if he did, he’s found ways to ignore it.
In a rambling, 75-minute speech at the Prayer Breakfast yesterday, we saw the quintessential Trump. His comments were grievance-filled, narcissistic, conspiratorial, factually false, divisive, and insulting. He referred to his critics as “lunatics.” He engaged in projection, comparing them to “dictators” and “the gestapo.” He labeled Republican Representative Thomas Massie a “moron” because he won’t cast legislative votes the way Trump wants. Joe Biden is “Crooked Joe,” while Jacob Frey is “the horrible fake mayor” of Minneapolis. Trump praised El Salvador’s authoritarian President Nayib Bukele—Bukele has referred to himself as “the world’s coolest dictator”—for his “very strong prisons.” (The prison that Trump celebrates, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, known as CECOT, is notorious for its cruel and inhumane conditions.) Trump emphasized that Bukele—who also spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast—is “one of my favorite people.”
Trump took credit for churches “coming back stronger than ever” and for religion being “hotter than ever.” He claimed he has “done more for religion than any other president”—apparently, before the age of Trump, Christians couldn’t say “Merry Christmas” in public—and argued that his predecessors in the White House “bailed out” on religion. “I don’t know how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat. I really don’t,” he said, adding, “They cheat.”
The spirit of love and reconciliation that Jesus of Nazareth taught 2,000 years ago was not particularly evident in the words of the president. Of course, it never has been. No matter. The audience of some 3,500—the great majority of whom undoubtedly claim to be followers of Jesus—responded to Trump’s remarks with a standing ovation.
It is testimony to the marketing genius of Donald Trump that he never sold himself to Christians as one of them—pious, devoted, merciful, forgiving, irenic, biblically literate, a faithful husband and father, a man of high moral standards. Instead, he sold himself as their protector. He didn’t hide his cruelty or his belief that the ends justify the means; doing so would have been impossible for him because they are central features of his personality. So he did the opposite: He presented himself to Christians as a fierce, even ruthless, warrior on their behalf. It worked. He built a huge, loyal, fanatical following.
At the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump recounted comments made about him by Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas and a stalwart Trump ally for a decade.
According to Trump, the case Jeffress made on his behalf in 2016 went like this: “He may not have ever read the Bible, but he will be a much stronger messenger for us.” It was Jeffress who said at the time, “I want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find to protect this nation.”
Jerry Falwell Jr., then the president of Liberty University, put it this way in a 2018 tweet: “Conservatives & Christians need to stop electing ‘nice guys’. They might make great Christian leaders but the US needs street fighters like @realDonaldTrump at every level of government b/c the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps & many Repub leaders are a bunch of wimps!”
Tony Perkins, an ordained Southern Baptist minister and the president of the Family Research Council, a prominent evangelical activist group, admitted in 2018 that he and other evangelicals gave Trump a “mulligan” on his multiple affairs and hush-money payments to a porn star for a simple reason: Evangelicals “were tired of being kicked around by Barack Obama and his leftists. And I think they are finally glad that there’s somebody on the playground that is willing to punch the bully.” When asked what happened to turning the other cheek, Perkins replied, “You know, you only have two cheeks. Look, Christianity is not all about being a welcome mat which people can just stomp their feet on.”
They thrill to watch Trump savage his critics, and their devotion grows with every dehumanizing word, with every merciless act.
It is odd to see the very same evangelicals who claim the Bible is inerrant and who criticize fellow Christians about matters such as ordaining women—on the grounds that they are being unfaithful to what Paul wrote in one of his Epistles, an interpretation that many biblical scholars dispute—dismiss Jesus’s most famous sermon. For these Christians, the teachings of the son of God take a back seat to the pronouncements of the king of Mar-a-Lago.
Much of today’s evangelical world sees Trump’s viciousness not as a vice but as a virtue, so long as it is employed against those they perceive as their enemies, against those whom they resent and for whom they have a seething hatred. Unless you’ve spent time in the evangelical world, fully appreciating the level of antipathy that exists toward Democrats and progressives is difficult. The only thing that exceeds it is the loathing reserved for the Christians and conservatives who broke with Trump because their commitment to their faith, and to cherished moral truths, required them to speak out against him.
What I am describing isn’t true of all Christians, thankfully. Some have found the cumulative effect of Trump’s assault on Christian ethics too much. The Catholic Church and its American pope, Leo XIV, are speaking out prudentially but forcefully against the actions of the Trump administration. Mainline denominations, including the United Methodists, are stepping up. My friend Mark Labberton, a former president of Fuller Theological Seminary and a Presbyterian (PCUSA) pastor, traveled to Minneapolis to express solidarity with the people of that city after an ICE agent killed Renee Good. He joined many others in peaceful protests in subzero temperatures. Other pastors and theologians I respect, several of whom were formative in my journey of faith, signed a statement titled “Christ Alone: A Call to Faithful Resistance.” It nowhere mentions the president or his party, but it does take a prophetic stance “in a time of fear and capitulation in both the Church and in our civic life.”
“In this moment we specifically call on the Church and peoples across the political spectrum to recognize the clear and present danger of rising authoritarian rule to all of us, especially the most vulnerable,” the statement says. “We commit ourselves to resisting cruel or oppressive means of control and to standing in solidarity with the oppressed, the marginalized, and the silenced.”
Even among evangelicals, support for Trump is hardly universal, and many pastors I know are quite disturbed by the damage he and his administration are doing. Yet they know full well that many within their congregations voted for Trump and still align themselves with the Republican Party. These ministers are therefore hesitant to speak out not only from the pulpit but in any capacity. They want to keep their head down.
That’s understandable. The best pastors I know are instinctively wary about speaking out politically; that’s not why they got into ministry in the first place. They don’t feel that it’s their job to offer political commentary, nor do many of them feel especially equipped to do so. They also realize that many people go to church seeking a safe haven from politics. They believe, too, and with some justification, that to take a stand, even with great care, might well split a congregation.
Evangelical denominations and pastors, though, even those who are not deeply immersed in politics, are generally willing to speak out on culture-war issues that have political and sometimes legislative implications. I’ve seen this happen many times over the years.
So the reluctance to take a prophetic stance in the realm of politics and culture is less a principled unwillingness than a selective one. Ministers, like most of the rest of us, are likely to wade into controversial waters only when it’s safe—in their case, when there is overwhelming agreement within a congregation on a set of issues. They speak out when the response from those in the pews is a resounding “Amen!” rather than even a handful of voices saying, “Oh no you don’t!”
I don’t pretend these are easy matters for pastors to face. A minister of a conservative congregation might tell himself that the downside to speaking out against the sins of the authoritarian right, even judiciously and without partisan rancor, is too costly. They may fear that their ministry will be damaged, that offended parishioners will tune them out, and that they will gain nothing concrete.
But aren’t prophets esteemed precisely for their willingness to tell difficult truths to the people of God? For being steadfast in the face of fierce criticism; for denouncing social injustice and idolatry, including political idolatry, when it’s unfashionable to do so; for issuing warnings when others fall silent; and for calling people to repentance during times of moral blindness?
Non-maga evangelical pastors are going to face a set of difficult questions during the next three years: Under what conditions, if any, are you willing to speak out when a president and his administration repeatedly violate Christian ethics? Will you stay silent even when acts of cruelty, lawlessness, and injustice aren’t the exception but the norm? How much more indecency do you need to see before you act?
My colleague Jonathan Rauch, an eminently fair-minded, reasonable, and wise writer, recently explained why, after heretofore avoiding the term, he has come around to the belief that Donald Trump’s governing style qualifies as fascist.
Even if you disagree with Rauch’s conclusion, it’s still worth wrestling with his catalog of the president’s misdeeds, broken into 18 categories. And the case Rauch makes—that although America is not a fascist country, it has a fascist president—will almost certainly become stronger over time.
At some point, then, it may become nearly impossible for pastors who are not fully on board with MAGA to look away, to stall for more time, to let others do the heavy lifting, or to tell themselves that things aren’t so bad, that silence is golden. A healthy church culture, like a healthy family culture, brings things into the open. It doesn’t avoid or close off conversations.
Labberton, the Presbyterian pastor, once told me that the more highly contentious an issue is, the more likely he is to want to discuss it with his congregation in a way that is honest, open, and biblically informed. Of course, there will be a diversity of opinions. That’s not something to run from; it’s something to learn from.
“Our reality is sufficiently complex that we need to invite one another along for the journey,” Labberton said. We need to invite one another into respectful conversations. “Together we need to instigate a long journey into God’s mercy and justice.” Pastors, and the congregations they lead, have to hope that we can summon the courage to go where God’s mercy and justice lead us.
“Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas,” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote. But when a group of white Alabama clergymen declared him an outside agitator whose efforts were “unwise and untimely,” he decided to respond. The result was “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” one of the most important documents in U.S. history.
This letter, like all of King’s greatest works, cannot be understood apart from his Christian faith. Faith shaped his views on ethics and human dignity. It also gave him the courage to create tension in the cause of justice. “I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle,” he wrote.
The white pastors in Birmingham had a case to make. They didn’t want what they called “days of new hope” in Birmingham to be undone by “extreme measures” that would cause divisions. King, one of America’s great prophets, saw things differently. He wept over the laxity of the Church and reminded it of its high calling—not to be the master or the servant of the state, but rather its conscience.
I imagine that all of the white pastors I know think that if they had been a minister at that time—especially if they were a minister of churches that were made up of white segregationists—they would have found a way to speak up rather than be silent, would have stood with King instead of those who urged caution in the name of unity.
The question now comes again in our time: What does it mean for the Church to be the conscience of the state?
Facing MAGA 