Monday evening, the White House announced a halt to all payments of federal grants, loans, and other assistance to most programs nationwide. All funding was ordered to shut down at 5:00 pm Tuesday.

After the blizzard of Executive Orders in his first week on the job, this latest Trump action proved a hair-on-fire event for many Americans from coast to coast.

On Tuesday, the White House was forced to make clear that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Pell grants were among a few disbursements allowed to continue. Everything else must stop.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt briefed the press corps yesterday and maintained the directive complied with the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, and went further to say the White House Counsel said it was legal. Leavitt said Trump ordered the “pause” in order to make sure that all of the allocated funds were in compliance with “the President’s priorities.”

As we all know, there are three branches of government: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. The three are supposed to function as checks and balances on each other. At least, that was the way the Founders, especially James Madison, drew the play up on the board. Madison and the other Founders gave the power of the purse to Congress.

However, Donald Trump has managed to make both Houses of Congress his personal lap dogs, and now there is no check, there is no balance, and there probably won’t be until and unless Democrats take control of the House in the 2026 Midterms.

To come to some rational conclusion about whether Donald Trump is violating the law with his impoundment of funds, it might help to know what the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 actually says.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon did what Donald Trump is trying to do now, only in a much more targeted manner. After Nixon resigned in disgrace, Congress decided it needed to put guardrails up to prevent that sort of thing from happening again. To do that, it passed, and Gerald Ford signed, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. The Act allowed the President to transmit a “special message” to both Houses of Congress asking that Congress permanently rescind or temporarily defer funds previously allocated through congressional action and presidential approval. Specifically, the Act says:

§683. Rescission of budget authority

(a) Transmittal of special message:

Whenever the President determines that all or part of any budget authority will not be required to carry out the full objectives or scope of programs for which it is provided or that such budget authority should be rescinded for fiscal policy or other reasons (including the termination of authorized projects or activities for which budget authority has been provided), or whenever all or part of budget authority provided for only one fiscal year is to be reserved from obligation for such fiscal year, the President shall transmit to both Houses of Congress a special message specifying—

1) the amount of budget authority which he proposes to be rescinded or which is to be so reserved;

(2) any account, department, or establishment of the Government to which such budget authority is available for obligation, and the specific project or governmental functions involved;

(3) the reasons why the budget authority should be rescinded or is to be so reserved;

(4) to the maximum extent practicable, the estimated fiscal, economic, and budgetary effect of the proposed rescission or of the reservation; and

(5) all facts, circumstances, and considerations relating to or bearing upon the proposed rescission or the reservation and the decision to effect the proposed rescission or the reservation, and to the maximum extent practicable, the estimated effect of the proposed rescission or the reservation upon the objects, purposes, and programs for which the budget authority is provided.

(b) Requirement to make available for obligation:

Any amount of budget authority proposed to be rescinded or that is to be reserved as set forth in such special message shall be made available for obligation unless, within the prescribed 45-day period, the Congress has completed action on a rescission bill rescinding all or part of the amount proposed to be rescinded or that is to be reserved. Funds made available for obligation under this procedure may not be proposed for rescission again.

The 45-day period in (b), above, is the time Congress has to agree or disagree with the President’s request for a “rescission.”

Further, the next section, §684, says that instead of requesting to rescind budgetary authority, the President may also propose instead “to defer any budget authority provided for a specific purpose or project…” In that case, his proposal must meet the same requirements as his rescission request.

The current “pause” in funds dispersal was not transmitted through a “special message” from the President to Congress. It was announced in a memo to the heads of Executive Departments and Agencies from  Matthew Vaeth, Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget, an office without any authority to do anything like this.

Five Blue states immediately sued the Administration to stop the impoundment, and late Tuesday, US District Judge Loren AliKhan, temporarily blocked the administration from enforcing the new directive. The Judge’s decision is good until next Monday when the two sides will make their cases in Judge AliKhan’s courtroom.

Trump could have used the Impoundment Act to get what he wanted quite legally. If he had simply requested that the House rescind or defer allocated funds he would have been following the law instead of kicking it aside. But that is not who or what Donald Trump is. He does not like to ask anyone for anything; he likes to just take it. In that regard, he is now testing everything and everyone to see just how far he can go before someone or something stops him. The allegedly co-equal branch of government, Congress, has yet to summon the spine to do anything like that.

Through the first nine days of Donald Trump’s second presidency, the Republican party has done the roll-over-and-play-dead act better than my four-footed companion, Lancelot the Wonder Dog, ever could.

“Everything one has a right to do is best not to be done.” — Benjamin Franklin

1763

In 1763, at the end of the Seven Years War (known in America as the French and Indian War), Great Britain had more than doubled her land in North America, had secured the whole of the Atlantic coast, and had triumphed in India and the Caribbean. However, in creating an “empire on which the sun never sets,” she had depleted her Treasury to £4 million and nearly doubled her national debt from £74 million to £133 million. Military spending as a percentage of GDP averaged 74.6%. Moreover, the Treaty of Paris that ended the war ceded Spain all land west of the Mississippi and restored to France her previously held Caribbean islands.

The British government estimated that defending her newly-won possessions would require 10,000 troops permanently stationed in America. The question became how to pay for that.

The first thought of the British government in 1763, under Prime Minister Lord Bute, was to increase taxes on British citizens to raise the necessary funds. This produced riots, especially in the West Country, and a single speech made in Parliament by the brilliant William Pitt ended those taxes on the spot and brought down the Bute government. In his speech, Pitt said:

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England cannot enter — all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!

When  Bute was forced to resign, he was replaced by George Grenville.

Narrow minded and arrogant, but efficient and capable, as most prime ministers of the era, like Bute, were not (with the notable exception of Pitt, who had guided the country to victory in the war, but who had now retired to his country estates), Grenville decided it was only fair that the American colonists contribute to their own defense. Consequently, he introduced a series of taxes in Parliament — the Sugar Act (1764), the Currency Act (1764), and the Stamp Act (1765).

Three important points need to be made about these taxes. First, Britain imposed them on the Colonies without the Colonies having any say in the matter.  Although America had several high-ranking friends in Great Britain, it did not have a single representative in the British Parliament. This led to the famous phrase, “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”

Second, the amount of money needed to enforce these taxes far outweighed any profit ever derived from them. This was evident to the most capable British public policy experts, such as Horace Walpole and Edmund Burke, who said as much in Parliament repeatedly. It didn’t matter. Grenville went ahead with his taxes.

Parliament ramrodding the taxes down the throats of the American colonists led Benjamin Franklin to make a note in his diary, writing, “Everything one has a right to do is not best to be done.” In other words, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.

Third, Grenville’s taxes and the British government’s refusal to appreciate and understand their American colonist citizens, who considered themselves loyal subjects of the Crown, led to Lexington, Concord, the Declaration of Independence, and the American Revolution over the next twelve years. During those twelve years, the British never once sent a single member of the Crown’s government to America to speak with colonist leaders. British authorities did not think it necessary to the colonists, whom they considered “rabble.” Here was governmental arrogance on a massive scale.

This brings me to Donald Trump, his Executive Orders, pronouncements, and the direction in which he appears to be steering America. While he is no King George III or George Grenville, with his myopic vision of public policy, his actions could prove just as consequential as theirs.

2025

Executive Orders are directives from a president to federal agencies on how the government should manage a particular issue. Presidents are granted authority under Article II of the Constitution to issue these orders, which don’t require the input of Congress, but carry the force of law.

While many executive orders are effective immediately, they often take time and resources to implement. Congress can undercut executive orders by passing legislation that guts them— for instance by removing funding needed to carry them out — or by making them difficult to implement. Courts can declare the orders unconstitutional.

In 2017, early in the first Trump administration, things were dysfunctional and chaotic. He and those he had gathered around him were new to the job and didn’t know what they were doing — and it showed. For example, in his first five days in office Trump issued only four executive orders.

This time around, Trump and his acolytes had four years to plan, and in his first five days in office, the planning was evident. He issued 59 Executive Orders, as well as eight pronouncements not requiring Executive Orders. Some of the Executive Orders are, to use a technical term, nothingburgers. But others have struck many in the nation with abject terror.

Last week, in those first few days in office, it became apparent the blueprints being followed had been laid out in Project 2025, the document Trump disavowed repeatedly during the campaign. An analysis by TIME found that nearly two-thirds of the executive actions Trump issued in the first week of his new administration mirror or partially mirror proposals from that 923-page document, ranging from sweeping deregulation measures to brutal and heartless immigration reform to the return of Schedule F, and more.

It is ironic, that, as a convicted felon and sexual abuser, Donald Trump has the power to pardon any person charged or convicted in federal court — like the more than 1,500 January 6th insurrectionists convicted and serving time, or awaiting trial. This was the largest undertaking in Justice Department history, and last week, rather than study this group on a case-by-case basis, as he promised during his campaign, Trump, who has a famously short attention span,  just said, “Fuck it. Release ’em all,” one White House adviser told Axios. With a wave of his hand, he granted clemency to all those charged in the January 6th, 2021, assault on the Capitol, including those convicted of seditious conspiracy or assaulting police officers resulting in serious bodily damage. Trump has repeatedly called these people “hostages.” This action stunned even his supporters and cannot be undone.

Next, he ordered security protection removed from Dr. Anthony Fauci, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo despite our intelligence services asserting Iran had plotted to murder them. Why? Because they criticized him.

As President, he has the power to do all this, and more.

All of which brings us back to the Great Britain of 1763 and Benjamin Franklin.

The British gave away an entire continent with their cavalier, shortsighted, and arrogant refusal to understand and deal with their American subjects. With even a modicum of humility and outreach, the American Revolution might never have happened. But, of course, it did — and the world was changed, turned upside down.

In addition to admonishing, “Everything one has a right to do is best not to be done,” Franklin also reminded Americans the Founders had created, not a monarchy, but a Republic, and that keeping it would be a challenge.

These are certainly challenging times, and, throughout his public life, Donald Trump has never demonstrated humility and has rarely reached out to those who have dared to disagree with him. His recipe for success has been to hit first and hit hard. When he can, he does.

The ultimate questions are these: Is Donald Trump, with his cruel, callous, and narcissistic depravity, assaulting the very concept of our hard-won Republic? How will he and his chaotic shock and awe second presidency be viewed with the zoom lens of history? Is he making the same mistakes 18th-century Britain made?

Perhaps the best question is this: As he pursues his assault on democracy, will Donald Trump and his MAGA movement implode on itself as the better angels of the nation once again rise to rescue it from its worst demons?

For what it’s worth, I’m with the Angels.

Background

In Greek mythology, King Minos commissioned the architect Daedalus to design a labyrinth, or maze, in the Palace of Knossos on the island of Crete to imprison the Minotaur, a half man, half bull monster. Minos then fed his enemies to the Minotaur to get rid of them. The hero Theseus killed the Minotaur, and, having been given a spool of thread by Princess Ariadne to unravel on the way in, was able to find his way out.

This is a brief essay on the IRS, where there is no spool of thread, but most certainly a labyrinth.

The hot potato that is the IRS

In 2022, Democrats controlled the House of Representative and passed Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The Act included $80 billion to help the I.R.S. hire thousands more employees and update its antiquated technology, which dates from the mid-to-late 1990s. There are IRS tech systems that are not just old enough to vote, they are old enough to run for Congress.

For some reason, this increased funding did not sit well with Republicans. So, when they took control of the House after the 2022 midterm elections, their first piece of legislative business was cutting that $80 billion.

The House did that, but their bill went nowhere in the Senate, controlled by Democrats. But Republicans would get a second chance.

Cutting IRS funding became a central demand of the 2023 debt ceiling negotiation that resulted in clawing back $21 billion from the IRS’s $80 billion. In addition, the debt ceiling negotiation also cost Speaker Kevin McCarthy his job for the sin of negotiating with Democrats.

A big piece of what the IRS wanted to do with the new funding was to improve customer service, making it easier to reach the agency by phone or in person. For instance, the IRS used some of the increased funding to open new Taxpayer Assistance Centers and re-open Centers that had been previously closed due to funding shortages.

Given that our nation and its government run on money and have since the days of Alexander Hamilton, it is bewildering why Republicans are so dedicated to doing away with the one government entity charged with collecting the funds needed to make everything run.

Now enters Elon Musk and the Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE, which, up until now, I thought was the head of the Venetian oligarchy, elected for life by the city-state’s aristocracy. Doges ruled Venice from the 8th century through the Renaissance. Musk wants to be our own personal Doge.

Will Musk and DOGE mount a new assault on IRS funding? In that regard, the first thing the Nazi-saluting owner of X did was ask his social media subscribers. His question on X: “The IRS just said it wants $20B more money. Do you think its budget should be: Increased, Same, Decreased, Deleted?”

Well, what a surprise when 60.6% of more than 212,000 “voters” opted for “Deleted” and nearly 30% said the funding should be decreased. I must say that “deleting” the IRS is one way to make Musk’s assertion he would cut government funding by $2 trillion come true — just don’t collect any taxes.

As we have seen, Republicans not only want to prevent increased funding, they want to cut the funding already there. With that in mind, let me tell you a little story about customer service as it is now.

Welcome to the Labyrinth

The IRS needs money, a lot of it, to improve its customer service. In 2022, the the Agency processed about 165 million tax returns. If only one-half of one percent of taxpayers needed to speak with an agent about their returns, that is 825 thousand calls, or 3,173 calls per every workday. At that rate, given the IRS current staffing, wait times can last hours.

In mid-2024, I needed to speak with the IRS about the taxes my wife and I had filed in April. The issue doesn’t matter. What matters is the whackadoodle adventure of trying to reach someone, a real, live someone, at the IRS.

One can go to any number of websites, including the IRS’s, to discover the correct phone number to call. It’s 800-829-1040. Call it, and the fun begins. The Agency has created an automated phone tree system that rivals the Daedalus Labyrinth. Spend an hour — or more — trying to negotiate the twists and turns, and you’ll end up wanting to drop that high-priced smart phone down the deepest of wells.

Over a couple of months, I tried repeatedly to reach someone. My highly-talented and smart CPA couldn’t even do it. But I was following Calvin Coolidge’s dictum about persistence, so on it went. In the end, I probably would have settled for the Deputy Assistant Janitor.

It was then I discovered my own Princess Ariadne, a kind-hearted and generous CPA named Amy Northard. Northard is CEO of Accountants for Creatives, a CPA firm located in New York City. Recognizing that people like me were wandering around in the IRS phone maze of a wasteland, she decided to do some research, find some answers, and offer help — for free.

Ms. Northard discovered there were 10 steps to negotiating the IRS automated phone system, none of them intuitive, most counterintuitive. In other words, if you followed the phone prompts the automated system provides, you would be bounced around like a bee bee in a boxcar, until a computerized voice eventually said, “Thank you for calling the IRS. Goodbye.” At least it didn’t end with, “Have a nice day.”

I assiduously followed Northard’s advice, and in less than five minutes reached a helpful and apologetic Agent. IRS Agents don’t like what customers have to go through one little bit, but there is nothing they can do about it except be highly helpful when someone eventually reaches them.

Now, my issue is resolved, and it’s time to pay it forward. Here are Amy Northard’s ten steps for reach an IRS Agent.

How do you speak to a live person at the IRS?

1. The IRS telephone number is 1-800-829-1040.
2. The first question the automated system will ask you is to choose your language.
3. Once you’ve set your language, do NOT choose Option 1 (regarding refund info). Choose option 2 for “Personal Income Tax” instead.
4. Next, press 1 for “form, tax history, or payment”.
5. Next, press 3 “for all other questions.”
6. Next, press 2 “for all other questions.”
7. When the system asks you to enter your SSN or EIN to access your account information, do NOT enter anything.
8. After it asks twice, you will be prompted with another menu.
9. Press 2 for personal or individual tax questions.
10. Finally, press 3 for all other inquiries. The system should then transfer you to an agent.

Got all that? You can thank me later.

Monday, a little after Noon, Donald John Trump took the oath of office and became President of the United States for the second time. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts administered the oath. Trump becomes the third president to take the oath without placing his hand on a bible. The other two were Calvin Coolidge and Thomas Jefferson, which suggests that Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, had a secular, rather than Christian, nation in mind.

But there was Melania Trump, looking for all the world like a mortician about to pray over the dearly departed, holding not one, but two bibles, one given to Trump by his grandmother when he was a boy; the other, the Abraham Lincoln Bible. He ignored both.

Of course, if the second-time-around First Lady had been holding the God Bless the USA Bible that Trump is hawking for $59.99, she might have succeeded in getting her husband to do what most others in his situation have done.

I will not say much about Trump’s dark and scary Second Inaugural Address — 2,885 words — except to suggest it was a long redux of his First Inaugural Address, the one about American Carnage. This time around, listening to his SciFi-ish monotone describing an American Wasteland, you could be forgiven for thinking you were listening to George Orwell’s Big Brother deliver lie after lie to the citizen-slaves of Oceana. One of the highlights of the speech was when Trump, the MAGA Messiah, declared he’d been “saved by God to make America great again.”

Although Trump’s lies were legion, they were nothing compared to the two, rambling, off-the-cuff, stream-of-consciousness, devoid-of-reality, rally talks he gave later in the day to his avid fans, first downstairs in the Capital’s Emancipation Hall and later in the Capital One Arena.

All that talk would have tired anyone, but Trump’s day wasn’t finished. In his first post on Truth Social following his inauguration, written in the middle of the night, he got to work firing people, just as Project 2025 said he would.

When George Washington was exiting the presidency in 1797, he delivered his Farewell Address to the nation. He didn’t deliver it as a speech; rather, newspapers printed it, and, in some cases, it was read to the public by officials. In it, Washington warned of “foreign entanglements.”

When Dwight Eisenhower left office in 1961, he warned of the growth of the “military industrial complex.” I watched his address with my father on our small, black and white television.

Wednesday evening, five days before leaving office, President Joe Biden delivered his Farewell Address. In it, he also issued a warning. His was a warning of “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people.” He said:

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power… Social media is giving up on fact checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.”

As if to prove his point about social media, at the very moment he was delivering those lines, Steven Cheung, Donald Trump’s new Director of Communications, and Karoline Leavitt, his incoming Press Secretary, were sharing posts on X that Biden’s address was pre-recorded (it was not), because his staff did not trust his ability to deliver a live presentation. Neither Cheung nor Leavitt could resist the temptation to get in one more cruel, knife-twisting lie. When these folks were children, they probably cut the legs off frogs to ogle and laugh at what happened when the little crippled critters tried to jump. You might want to remember this, because these are the people who will be briefing the White House press corps every day for the next four years.

Regardless of the puerile instincts of the Trump team, President Biden’s warning about the rise of the ultrawealthy should be heeded.

Federal Reserve data show the wealthiest 0.1% of the country hold more than five times the wealth of the bottom 50% combined.

Here is a chart from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors depicting Americans’ wealth growth since 1989. As you look at it, keep in mind that the very tiny, hard to see, yellow bottom group represents the total wealth owned by the bottom 50% of American households. The darker green section immediately above the yellow is the wealth owned by the 50th to the 90th percentiles. The light blue, light green, and dark green at the top represent everyone in the top 10%.

To make things even clearer, I have taken data from the first quarter of three years, 1990, 2000, and 2024. I have split the data into two categories, household income and household wealth, because income is what is earned in one year, but wealth is the accumulated money and assets amassed over time. For income distribution I have compared the top 1% to the bottom 60%; for the wealth calculation, I compare the top 1% to the bottom 50%. Here is what those data show:

As you can see, since 1990, the top 1% now has 50% more of the nation’s wealth than it had in 1990 and 37% more of its income. Conversely, the income and wealth of the comparison groups has been declining for nearly 35 years.

Drilling down even deeper, and mindful that Inauguration Day in 2025 also falls on the Martin Luther King national holiday, I examined wealth owned by Black people in America since 1990.

According to the 1990 census, approximately 12.1% of the US population was Black. According to Federal Reserve data, they owned a ridiculously disproportionate 4% of the nation’s wealth at the time. By 2024, the Black population had increased to 13.7%, but their share of the nation’s wealth had declined even more, to 3.3%. There are wealthy Black Americans, but their numbers are few. What would Martin Luther King be saying about this? More to the point, what would he be doing about it?

If nothing is done about this long-term trend in wealth distribution, it will continue, and, make no mistake about this — it will get worse. Right now, with Donald Trump’s embrace of (should we say conquest of?), America’s oligarchs, you would likely not lose money betting on the trend to continue for at least four years. At some point, however, Americans will have to decide if this is the picture of wealth distribution in the nation they want. If that happens, will the situation have grown so dire it will be beyond reversing?

Last Sunday, on CBS’s Sunday Morning, Leslie Stahl interviewed Jamie Diamond, CEO of JP Morgan, probably the most successful and influential bank in the nation. Stahl asked Diamond his thoughts on the current chasm existing between the top 1% and the rest. He replied he did not have a problem with the wealth growth of the 1%, but he regretted the bottom 30% did not similarly benefit. Swell.

I have only one question for the remarkably capable Mr. Diamond, one I wish Ms. Stahl had asked: What are you going to do about it?

Yesterday, the nation got a glimpse down the Washington, DC, rabbit hole, when the Senate Armed Services Committee held its confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense.

What we saw was performative Kabuki theatre at its finest. Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) and his staff orchestrated the hearing to leave no doubt that Hegseth is their guy. In his opening statement, Wicker called today’s Pentagon “sclerotic” and said Hegseth “will inject a new warrior ethos into the Pentagon, a spirit that can cascade from the top down.”

The theme of the day might well have been that “warrior ethos.” Hegseth used the term in his opening statement and at least six other times when answering Committee Members’ questions. I stopped counting after six.

In fact, watching this greased skid performance, one could be forgiven for thinking Hegseth was actually auditioning for King of Sparta. At the top of his five pillars necessary to “bring the warrior culture back to the DoD” were “lethality” and “war-fighting.” The three-letter word, war, was the chorus to every verse sung at yesterday’s Hearing.

According to Hegseth, to restore a lost “war-fighting” mentality requires rebuilding the military, re-establishing deterrence, and restoring that frequently mentioned warrior ethos (and, quite frankly, after hearing that vague term throughout the Hearing, and, remembering my time as an infantry Officer, who served in Vietnam for a couple of years, I still don’t know what he meant — makes me think of someone salivating for a fight).

It is customary for nominees to meet with Committee Members prior to their Confirmation Hearings. This time was different. Although he met with every Republican committee member, the only Democrat he would grace with his presence was the Ranking Member, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI).

Reed is an interesting man. A graduate of the Military Academy at West Point, Captain in the 82nd Airborne Division, Platoon Leader, and Company Commander, he later taught for several years at West Point, before resigning and running for Congress. Maybe we should ask him what he thinks of all this “warrior ethos” stuff.

Another leitmotif sung over and over again at yesterday’s Hearing concerned Hegseth’s personal life, specifically allegations of alcohol and sexual abuse. The nominee’s universal response to these questions was that they were all part of a “smear campaign” from “anonymous sources.” This, despite the Democrats saying they actually have the names of accusers, but could not provide them, because the accusers feared retribution. They know what happened to Anita Hill and Cristine Blasey Ford.

Hegseth was also peppered with questions about his public comments that women should not be allowed in combat and that they have made the armed forces “less effective” and are an “unhelpful distraction.” Claiming that combat readiness can be negatively impacted if standards are lowered to accommodate women, he gave the example of a fully-filled, 100-pound, combat ruck (rucksack) weighing 100 pounds whether a woman or a man is carrying it.

When I was deep into Army training, I saw many other trainees, all of them male, wash out because they couldn’t manage the physical requirements. I’m sure the same thing now occurs with women going through the rigorous training the Army requires. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be there trying, though. Some will succeed; some will not. Just like the men.

Democrats on the Committee were understandably upset they never got to meet privately with Hegseth, as their Republican colleagues had. During her questioning, Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), a former military officer and a victim of rape, as well as someone whose vote was in question, told about the “very direct discussion” she had with Hegseth in their private meeting. Immediately after the Hearing, she issued a press release announcing he has her vote, which likely was never in doubt, anyway.

On the other hand, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was nearly apoplectic in her questioning, complaining about his refusal to meet with her privately so she “could ask the same questions” Senator Ernst had had  the opportunity to ask. I could have told Senator Gillibrand it wouldn’t have mattered, but she probably knows that all too well.

Although we didn’t learn much at Pete Hegseth’s Hearing, there are two things about which I am certain: first, unless something unforeseen and huge happens between now and the full Senate voting on his confirmation, he will be the next Secretary of Defense; second, during the next four years, something will happen, something big — it always does —  that will test the extent to which a Secretary Hegseth is up to the job.

How does that make you feel?

By now, it has become clear to anyone paying the least attention that the apocalyptic fires ravaging southern California have caused nearly incomprehensible human and property damage. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Governor Gavin Newsome told NBC’s Jacob Soboroff, “Just in terms of cost, these fires will be the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history.”

The insured losses from last week’s fires may exceed $20 billion, and total economic losses could reach $50 billion, according to estimates published by JPMorgan on Thursday.

Those losses would far exceed the $12.5 billion in insured damages from the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85, displaced more than 50,000 people, and destroyed around 18,000 structures. Until now, that was the costliest blaze in the country’s history, according to data from Aon.

Caused by a poorly maintained Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) transmission line, the Camp Fire caused the massive PG&E company to declare bankruptcy.

Thus far, no one knows the exact cause of the current inferno, but humidity of 8%, hurricane force winds of up to 100 miles per hour sweeping down LA’s canyons, and a single spark could easily account for the horrific devastation.

Sunday’s 18 minute interview with NBC’s Soboroff showed a leader at the top of his game. Newsom’s humanity was on full display as he sought to reassure Californians, especially Angelinos, as well as the rest of the nation, that the state’s resources and response are equal to the immensity of the task.

Watch the full interview, and you’ll see what I mean.

During the interview, Newsom described his conversation with President Biden. Newsom asked Biden for the federal government to cover 90% of the state’s costs; Biden replied he’d authorize 100% for six months. Soboroff asked about conversations with President-elect Trump. Newsom said he’d publicly asked Trump to come to California to view the damage. As I write this on Monday, Trump has yet to respond.

This is a disaster where all who can, should help. If you choose to contribute, you can donate through the Red Cross website or by scanning this QR code.

Thank you.

It’s been an interesting week in America, chock full of news guaranteed to titillate even those who don’t routinely pay attention.

During this week, we saw America say a graceful goodbye to its 100-year-old, 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter. That was the nicest thing about the week.

During this week, we also saw the 45th, and soon to be 47th, president officially designated a convicted felon, the first president ever to swan dive into that particularly deep, stink-filled hole. Naturally, with his usual bluster, he draped the whole thing with a Trump-monogrammed, victory, whitewashed toga, saying on Truth Social (what an oxymoronic name):

The Radical Democrats have lost another pathetic, unAmerican Witch Hunt. After spending tens of millions of dollars, wasting over 6 years of obsessive work that should have been spent on protecting New Yorkers from violent, rampant crime that is destroying the City and State, coordinating with the Biden/Harris Department of Injustice in lawless Weaponization, and bringing completely baseless, illegal, and fake charges against your 45th and 47th President, ME, I was given an UNCONDITIONAL DISCHARGE. That result alone proves that, as all Legal Scholars and Experts have said, THERE IS NO CASE, THERE WAS NEVER A CASE, and this whole Scam fully deserves to be DISMISSED. The real Jury, the American People, have spoken, by Re-Electing me with an overwhelming MANDATE in one of the most consequential Elections in History. As the American People have seen, this “case” had no crime, no damages, no proof, no facts, no Law, only a highly conflicted Judge, a star witness who is a disbarred, disgraced, serial perjurer, and criminal Election Interference.

OK. I cut it off there, but there was more, and I’ll spare you that.

For the record, Judge Juan Merchan, in sentencing Trump to nothing, said that Trump’s only reprieve from punishment was his looming presidency: “Donald Trump, the ordinary citizen, Donald Trump the criminal defendant, would not be entitled to such considerable protections.” Merchan probably issued his ruling while holding his nose.

Merchan said the law required him to issue an “unconditional discharge.” This is not an exoneration or a dismissal. Merchan was firm that Trump’s jury conviction on 34 counts of falsifying records stands. He is, and will remain, a convicted felon.

During this week, we have also seen horrific fires engulf Los Angeles and beyond. The fires have killed at least ten people thus far, as well as destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. And into this horrendoma parachuted convicted felon Donald Trump to blame the whole thing on Democrats and Governor Gavin Newsom (whom Trump labels “Newscum” — how clever he is, isn’t he? He makes a schoolyard bully look like Mother Theresa).

Trump claims Newsom diverted water necessary to fight the fires to save an endangered fish, a smelt. That’s sort of accusing Newsom of murder. Totally untrue, of course. There’s plenty of water to fight the fires, but because of electrical power outages (caused by the fires), there is not enough pressure in some water hydrants, and some of those couldn’t pump at all. It seems to me that everyone is doing the very best they can to fight this historic conflagration, and they deserve support and thanks. Doesn’t matter to what’s-in-it-for-me Donald.

Also during this week, we saw the official and peaceful transfer of power in a joint session of Congress, although it might only have been peaceful because the Democrats lost and the MAGA Republicans won — the same folks who lost four years ago, and we know what happened then.

Finally, during this week, we were treated to a vaudevillesque, Donald Trump press conference from his tromp l’oeil, faux-luxurious Mar-a-Lago, the place where he packed away in bathrooms and ballrooms all the high security files he stole from the White House when he left in 2021.

For a man who doesn’t drink, Donald Trump is acting more and more like a guy on a barstool talking gibberish to anyone who’ll listen. His press conference was a good example. Delivered in what can only be described as a bastardized form of stream of consciousness that would have made William Faulkner cringe, he circled around broad policy points without ever landing on one, which is pretty much his usual modus operandi. Along the way, he continued his more or less constant attack on America and what it has become over the last four years, in his befuddled opinion. We all know that at some point in late January or early February he will declare the ship of state turned around, sailing in the right direction with wonderful results, and all because of him. He is as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow.

And, just to show what a tough guy he is, at the mid-point of his presser, he flew off into his own twilight zone, waxing ineloquent about using America’s armed forces to conquer Greenland, the Panama Canal, and maybe even all of Canada. What’s next? The planet Venus?

But I don’t want to end this event-filled week on a downer. Oh, no. I have an announcement to make. I have been offered a job! A very, very, VERY BIG ONE!

A wonderful Team Trump lady named Mary, who may or may not exist, wrote me to say that the big boss himself WANTS MY HELP! Get ready, now — I have been asked to become an Official Trump Cabinet-Level Advisor. And, yes, you read that right.

Don’t believe me? Think I’m just bragging? Au contraire. Here’s my invitation to the big dance:

The “he’s very smart” Elon Musk will probably be sitting next to, or at least, near me at a highly polished table conducive to the gravity of the advice we’ll be giving.

At this point, I’m just waiting for my briefing folder and plane ticket to DC. I wonder where I’ll be sitting for the inauguration?

What a week! My life is now complete.

Today, at Washington’s magnificent National Cathedral, America stopped for just a moment to witness the State Funeral for Jimmy Carter, the 37th President of the United States.

His was a presidency badly misunderstood during his time in the Oval Office, but over the years, historians have re-examined his accomplishments and awarded them high marks.

Don’t believe me? While president, Carter created the Departments of Energy and Education. Conservatives seethe at each, and each is now in jeopardy, but both have furthered the nation’s interests by combating the effects of climate change and educational inequality. He was the first president to attempt any of that.

Carter was also the first president to not only acknowledge, but also do something about climate change. In addition to creating the Department of Energy, Carter created the first national energy policy that included conservation, price controls, and new technology.

He installed solar panels on the roof of the White House, which Ronald Reagan promptly removed. The solar panels may have been a bit of a gimmick, but Carter was serious about America’s energy trajectory.

Although he did not get credit for it, he successfully negotiated the release of the Iranian hostages, a release that happened minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Reagan, who did nothing to deserve it, was the political beneficiary of this achievement, as he was for Carter’s successful efforts to lower the high inflation rates of the mid-1970s.

The Carter Administration negotiated the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the Panama Canal Treaty, which, with Donald Trump’s ascendancy, is also in jeopardy.

Carter also personally and successfully negotiated the Camp David Accords between Anwar Sadat, of Egypt, and Menachem Begin, of Israel. To this day, that is the only real peace treaty ever achieved in the middle east. And for it, Sadat was assassinated, but the treaty he signed lived on. At today’s funeral, Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s Chief of Domestic Policy, described how for thirteen straight days Carter personally drafted treaty proposal after treaty proposal for Sadat and Begin to ponder.

Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. When Carter was awarded the prize in 2002, Gunnar Berge, the Nobel Committee Chairman, said he should have won it with Sadat and Begin. Perhaps he should have won two, one for the Camp David Accords and one for his post-presidency.

Today’s eulogies were both moving and enlightening. Carter’s grandson, Jason, describing  the Carter Center’s successful effort to eradicate from Africa the parasitic guinea-worm disease, said, “Before he took it on, guinea-worm disease killed three and a half million people a year. Last year, the number was 14. He didn’t do that with medicine; he did it with better water management in tiny 600-person villages.”

Growing up deep in the Jim Crow south, Jimmy Carter was elected Governor of Georgia in 1972, succeeding the axe-handle-wielding racist Lester Maddox. He immediately set civil rights as a cornerstone of his administration, blazing a trail that has now led Georgians to elect Raphael Warnock the state’s first African American U.S. senator, as well as the first African American Democrat elected in the entire South.

Ninety-two-year-old Reverend Andrew Young delivered today’s penultimate eulogy. Carter appointed Young to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Young was the first African American to hold the position. It was Andrew Young who described one, small moment in Jimmy Carter’s life that struck a chord with me. Carter was a Naval Academy graduate, and, when he first got to Annapolis he learned that the Academy had also enrolled its first black midshipman. Carter asked if he could be that midshipman’s roommate. “As a minority himself, Plains, Georgia, being only 20-25% white,” Young said, “he thought he might be able to make things easier for his classmate.”

That small moment of moral generosity seems emblematic of Jimmy Carter’s entire time on earth.

Requiescat in pace.

In revolutionary France, public executions were entertainment events. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens created Madame Defarge and memorably described her blissfully knitting beside the guillotine as its blade drops on another aristocrat’s neck.

In the centuries spanning pre-civil rights in America, crowds would gather  to watch, or even  participate in, racist murders, many of them communal lynchings.

Some people have always had an atavistic need to torment other human beings, and some people have always had a ghoulish desire to watch them do it.

On 22 December, this was on full and monstrous display in New York City, specifically on a stationary F Train in Brooklyn’s Coney Island station. A homeless woman, 57-year-old Debrina Kawam, was sitting on the train, apparently sleeping, when Sebastian Zapeta-Calil  walked over to her, took a lighter from his pocket, and  set her on fire. Her clothes instantly ignited, and, screaming, she began to burn.

Zapeta-Calil watched her burn for a while and then, unsatisfied, took off his jacket to fan the flames.

An undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, Zapeta-Calil was deported in 2018 and later reentered the US illegally, according to federal immigration authorities. This is his first arrest in the U.S. He has told the authorities he has no memory of the attack, as he was intoxicated at the time. That seems to defy credibility.

In high school, Ms. Kawam had been a cheerleader with what her classmates called a “million-dollar smile.” She had hopes of becoming an airline flight attendant. That never worked out, and, after a number of setbacks, she wound up homeless on a New York F Train in late 2024 waiting for her rendevous with a horrid destiny.

Zapeta-Calil and Ms. Kawam were apparently total strangers. When he boarded the train in Queens, she was already on it, and they rode the same train for the long journey to its terminus in Coney Island, an official told reporters. Homeless people often ride the trains as far as they go in New York City to keep warm in the winter.

You might think from reading this that the burning lady and the arsonist man were the only people there. You’d be wrong. There were a number of people on the platform — as well as two police officers — none of whom moved one inch closer to help. CCTV video shows one of the police officers glancing at the burning woman but making no move to help her; his partner  strides in the other direction, speaking into a walkie-talkie without slowing down in the face of the F Train immolation.

Eventually, police officers appeared with a fire extinguisher to douse the flames, but by then Ms. Kawam was long dead.

In addition to failing to aid the victim, Police didn’t even detain Zapeta-Calil, who stood right there in front of them. He wasn’t arrested until hours later in another subway station. For some reason beyond me, a Police Department spokesman later commended the officers on the platform for doing their job “perfectly.”

And how do we know all this? Because the patrons waiting for their trains, rather than trying to help, decided instead to become Steven Spielbergs and film the event on their phones.

Ms. Kawam died in unimaginable agony. She was burned to such an unrecognizable state it took nine days to identify her by analyzing fingerprints, dental information, and DNA evidence.

And lest you decide to quickly move on from this tragedy, I thought it might be helpful if you could put a face to the unfortunate lady. Here is her high school photo from 40 years ago showing so much hope and promise. The girl next door. America’s sweetheart.

The story of Debrina Kawam calls to memory one of the most notorious crimes in New York City’s history. It happened in 1964, and it is the story of 28-year-old Kitty Genovese, a bar worker, who was on her way home from work at 2:00 AM, on 13 March, when she was approached by a man named Winston Moseley, who was waving a knife at her. She ran, screaming, but he caught her in her apartment’s entryway, where he raped her three times and then stabbed her to death. After her murder, the nation learned that 38 people, most of them neighbors, saw or heard what was happening, yet did nothing to help. No one called the police. At Moseley’s trial, prosecutors called five of the neighbors to testify. All said they saw or heard the attack, but none seemed to think what they were actually seeing or hearing was really something terrible that was actually happening. Besides, it wasn’t their business.

What have we become that we can let a person burn to death in front of us, or suffer rape and stabbing death without lifting the proverbial finger to help?

Psychologists attribute this to the Bystander Effect. In the late 1960s, John M. Darley and Bibb Latané (1968) initiated an extensive research program on the “bystander effect.” In their seminal article¹, they found that any person who was the sole bystander helped, but only 62% of the participants intervened when they were part of a larger group of five bystanders.

The more witnesses, the less likely any one person will intervene, as the Kawam and Genovese cases demonstrate.

In Ms. Kawam’s case, police and New York train riders have offered their own ideas for why no one tried to help. They told reporters it’s a matter of the subway system being a dangerous place where you must never make eye contact and at all times keep your head down. But all the gruesome videos of this obscenity that were posted on social media — most of which have now been deleted — suggest there could not have been many downed heads.

Perhaps we have simply become a society of Madame Defarges. If cell phones had existed in 1964, I have no doubt there would have been quite a few videos of the final minutes in the life of Kitty Genovese.

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¹ Darley J. M., Latané B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 377–383.