In a democracy every citizen, regardless of his interest in politics,“holds office”; every one of us is in a position of responsibility; and, in the final analysis, the kind of government we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibilities.
–John F. Kennedy
Finally the federal government has recognized the Lumbee Indian Tribe in North Carolina. The recognition came in an amendment to the $900 billion military appropriations bill which passed with bipartisan support.
The Lumbees live in southeastern North Carolina and number about 60,000 members. They were descendants from a number of tribes, and they intermarried with slaves and white settlers.
If you are wondering why Trump would support recognition, Robeson County, where many Lumbees live, went for Trump by 28% Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina also supported recognition, and the measure did have bipartisan support.
As one member of the tribe said of the bill, “It’s an acknowledgment that we’re still here. After all these years–centuries–we’re still here.”
Information for this post was taken from Rick Rojas, Eduardo Medina, and Emily Cochrane, “After Fighting Through Generations, a Tribe is Recognized,” New York Times, (Dec. 20, 2025), p. A19.
Elise Stefanik has announced she is dropping out of the race for New York’s governor. She was a moderate Republican when she was first elected to the House from upstate New York, but when Trump won his second term, she fell into line. She should have learned that loyalty to Trump does not mean anything to him.
He appointed her to be Ambassador to the U.N., then pulled that appointment back when he realized it would reduce his margin in the House. When she decided to run for governor, she expected his endorsement as a reward for being a good little girl. She didn’t get it. Now she is not running for governor and not running for reelection.
I, for one, will not miss her even a tiny bit.
Russell Vought, he of the Heritage Foundation and now director of the OMB, announced that the Feds would be dismantling the National Center of Atmospheric Research in Colorado because it was “...one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” It is also the center of scientific research on what is happening to our planet.
Has Vought seen the data on climate? Does he not understand that now is the time for alarm, although it may be too late? Does he not know about desertification, declining snow pack, rising oceans, massive woodland fires, species eradication?
These guys are supposed be smart. Supposed to make America great again. How dumb can they be?
If we ever manage to take our country back and return to normal, and that is a big if, we must have a huge reform movement. The Supreme Court needs term limits, the E.P.A. needs to return to its original mission, the independence of the Independent Regulatory Agencies like the FCC and the Fed must be protected, place names will need to be returned. There are big tasks and little tasks, and it will take years, if....
One of the necessary changes is that the Presidential pardon power must be defined and limited. This was actually a worry when the Constitution was up for ratification. At least one commentator at the time noted that a President could be involved in crimes and then pardon the henchmen.
We have had pardons in the past that were controversial, including some by Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. What we didn’t have was the pardoning of literally thousands of law breakers, including dangerous and vicious criminals. The power to pardon has usually been used to right wrongs, but we must make sure it can’t be abused as Trump has done so often.
The question mark is there for a reason. This past Sunday the New York Times devoted a full 14 pages to a subject entitled “Overmatched.” The subtitle was “Why the U.S. Military Needs to Reinvent Itself.” The lead article noted that U.S. military dominance was fading. It is obvious that military weaponry and strategies are changing fast. In the last few days an underwater drone sent by the Ukrainians destroyed a Russian submarine. Guided drones can take out large tanks and perhaps aircraft carriers.
Many of the materials needed for modern warfare must be imported. The U.S. builds very few ships. We do not have the capacity to outbuild China, although we do when combined with our allies. Oh, wait, do we even have allies anymore?
Our R&D is suffering as universities are belittled and foreign scientists are refused visas or kicked out of he country. Women in the military are downgraded. Experienced generals are fired. National guard forces are demoralized, used for immigrant roundups. And the Secretary of Defense–excuse me, Secretary of War–is an alcoholic who thinks blowing up fishing boats and killing survivors shows how tough we are.
We are in trouble.
I am sure by now you have heard what Trump wrote about Rob Reiner.
How did this man ever get elected? How does he have any support? How can people stand to be in the same room with him? I have never known a person with less empathy, more self-regard. People say he is narcissistic. I think he is a sociopath.
Dear Sen. McCormick:
Thank you for sending me the statement you made to President Trump at his latest Pennsylvania rally. Fawning over the President not a good look for you.
Trying to ingratiate yourself to a goofball who is about to involve us in a war with Venezuela, deserts our allies, wrecks the economy, tears down a portion of the White House to build a ballroom, takes away protection for 85% of our wetlands, says global warming is a hoax, deports children, calls women reporters piggies.... I’ll stop there, but I think you catch my drift. You are trying way too hard to be the teacher’s pet, and it is pathetic.
I know you have five years left on your term, but I don’t think voters will forget. And Pennsylvania voters are not as stupid as you may think. The judicial elections in November were a reminder.
Sincerely,
Roy Christman
Indiana, where Republican legislators refused to bow to Administration threats and voted against gerrymandering their congressional district lines to elect more Republicans. There are members of the Republican Party who still uphold American values, and they deserve our thanks.
Bulgarian citizens, who turned out by the millions in Sofia to protest their government earlier this week. The Prime Minister resigned after the protest. The demonstrators surpassed the 3.5% mark, and it worked.
It’s a really busy season. Presents to buy and wrap, holiday cards to send, parties to attend, notes to write–the list goes on. Somehow during all this activity, I missed the news about Congress declaring war on Venezuela. I don’t know what the vote was, or the rational for the Declaration of War, or what the strategy will be. Will the draft be re-instated? Do we have allies in this war? Will we use atomic weapons?
I need to pay more attention.
One of the first acts of authoritarians is to seize control of the news media. It is difficult for the populace to know what is occurring if the only sources of news are controlled by the government. We’ve already seen Zuckerberg bend to Trump’s desires. The Murdock family is complicit. Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post are bent, the L.A. Times is bent, Trump has “Truth Social,” X is full of misleading racist crap. And now CNN, which has already compromised with Trump in various ways, is about to be sold to Trump’s lapdogs who will do his bidding.
I keep thinking I’ll be approached with an offer from the Trump family to change the tone of this blog. Would I do it? Depends on how much they offer.
One of the most interesting things about the Trump administration is learning all kinds of things I never knew. Here is just one small example. Today I learned that the Environmental Protection Agency has discovered that human activity does not cause climate change.
I did know that Trump was pushing oil and gas and coal. What I did not realize until today was that none of that has anything to do with climate change, which is evidently a hoax.
I also found out that the E.P.A. under Administrator Lee Zeldin is about to rule that climate change does not threaten human health. Evidently that is only the belief of what an E.P.A. spokeswoman called a “climate cult.”
Also, did you know that vaccines cause autism? And this is the greatest economy ever.
I didn’t know any of this.
A mailer arrived today from the Heritage Foundation. It included a vicious “poll” asking about criminal immigrants and hyping mass deportations. Along with that was a warning that harboring an “illegal” immigrant was a violation of federal law.
My heritage does not resemble that of the Heritage Foundation. Mine goes back to Roger Williams and William Penn and the Declaration of Independence and Henry David Thoreau and even Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett. “Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.” I think I remembered that correctly.
These Heritage Foundation people are the same people who would turn in Anne Frank. Their heritage is that of the Nazis, the Quislings, the Ku Klux Klan, the slave catchers.
Here is an antidote for you from Promised Land by Mary Antin about her first day at school. It’s an America to fight for:
Father himself conducted us to school. He would not have delegated that mission to the President of the United States. He had awaited the day with impatience equal to mine. He took long strides in his eagerness, the rest of us running and hopping to keep up.
At last the four of us stood around the teacher’s desk; and my father, in his impossible English gave us over to her charge, with some broken word of his hopes for us that his swelling heart could no longer contain.... I think Miss Nixon guessed what my father’s best English could not convey. I think she divined that by the simple act of delivering our school certificates to her he took possession of America.
Well, at least according to the Trump administration. The “Big Beautiful Bill” evidently has a list of occupations that are no longer consider “professions.” According to a list from Newsweek, non-professions include:
nursing
physician assistants
physical therapists
audiologists
architects
accountants
educators
social workers.
Why?
What ever happened to the American work ethic? Seriously, which of the following are doing their jobs in a meaningful and responsible way?
The U.S. Supreme Court
the President
The Senate Majority leader
The Speaker of the House
The Senate as a whole
The House of Representatives
the Washington Post
Fox News
The Department of Defense
The FBI
The CDC
The State Department
The Department of Homeland Security
CNN
There are some bright spots. The lower courts. The New York Times. Harvard University. The American Civil Liberties Union. The New Yorker.
Not nearly enough.
Mr. Shay was a 19-year-old medic on D-Day at the landing on Omaha Beach. He won the Silver Star for his efforts to save wounded men in the water by turning them over, grabbing them under their shoulders, and dragging them through the waves up to the beach. He served with the troops at the battle of Hurtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge. He was captured by the Germans and liberated in April 1945.
Mr. Shay was a member of the Penobscot Tribe in Maine. When he tried to vote in 1945, wearing his uniform with the Silver Star, he was turned away. Maine did not allow Indians to vote in federal elections until 1954 and state and local elections until 1967.
Until 1967.
I’d like to think that the days of discrimination against Indians are over, but last night I saw an interview with an Indian woman was in the cast of the recent streaming drama entitled “Dark Winds.” She showed the I.C.E. agents her tribal I.D. card, but the agents said that didn’t count. She was arrested. Where the fuck are you going to deport an American Indian to?
Mr. Shay moved to northwestern France not far from Omaha Beach in 2018 and lived there until his death. Wise move.
If you want to read the full obit of Mr. Shay, you can find it in today’s New York Times.
I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on the efforts by the United Nations to bring an end to colonialism. Angola and Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe were still colonies when I completed it, but it was fairly obvious that colonialism was on the way out. After the Portuguese colonies and what was then South West African and Rhodesia gained independence, the only colonies left would be remnants like Puerto Rico and some small islands.
Now Israel has approved 22 settlements in the West Bank on territory owned by Palestinians. The Palestinians did not give up this land willingly, but they had no choice. A process that I thought was basically over in 1973 when I completed the thesis has come roaring back. And it has come back because of Israel.
In the past I considered myself a supporter and friend of Israel. No more.
See Natan Odenheimer and Fatima Abdulkarim, “Expansion in West Bank Adds to Displacement,” New York Times, (5 Dec. 2025), p. A9.
37 percent of shark and ray species are also threatened with extinction. Why? Because people kill them for their fins, their meat, and their liver oil.
You know what? I don’t care if people in Ohio really do eat the cats and the dogs. We have too damn many cats and dogs in any case. If you want to get concerned, get concerned about people eating octopuses and shark fin soup. Quit eating veal with its pens to keep calves from exercising. Quit eating pigs that are slaughtered by bleeding them to death. Quit eating eggs from caged chickens that never get to walk around. Quit eating beef fed antibiotics on feedlots.
I am not a vegetarian, although I am moving in that direction. If you do eat meat, buy your meat from local butchers who raise their own animals. Know what you eat.
A 19-year-old college student, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, was headed home from Massachusetts to Texas for Thanksgiving with her parents. She was brought here from Honduras when she was seven. Her father’s employer had arranged for her flight so she could surprise him at work.
There was a court order that she could not be removed from the U.S. while her case was pending. She was arrested at the Logan Airport in Boston, detained in Texas, and “...put on a bus with shackles on her wrists, waist and ankles before being put on a flight to Honduras.”
She had been studying business at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She is now in Honduras with grandparents.
We have become evil, led by an evil man and abetted by evil underlings.
Information for this post, including the quotation, is from Amada Holpuch and Annie Correal, “A College Student Tried to Go Home to Texas for Thanksgiving. She Was Deported,” New York Times, (2 Dec. 2025), p. A17.
