TRUMP THE NIXONIAN

'Madman act': Trump using this lethal foreign policy theory in dealing with domestic affairs

Ailia Zehra

April 10, 2025
ALTERNET

An article written by political commentator Ed Kilgore that appeared in Intelligencer magazine on Thursday argues that the Trump administration has been using the "madman theory" to run the affairs of the government.

"The blend of chaos, malice, and terror associated with pursuit of the madman theory in foreign policy has been abundantly present in the unprecedented assault on the federal government by Elon Musk’s DOGE and Russell Vought’s Office of Management and Budget," Kilgore, who is a longtime policy analyst at the Democratic Leadership Council, wrote in the article.



The term "madman theory" was reportedly coined by former President Richard Nixon. Nixon's aide H.R. Haldeman said his boss wanted the North Vietnamese to think he was willing to go to any lengths, including the potential use of nuclear weapons, to end the Vietnam War.

ALSO READ: 'Is this market manipulation?' Rumors swirling over potential Trump admin insider trading

The madman theory suggests that a leader who acts as though they could take extreme actions is more likely to convince other international players to make compromises they might not otherwise consider.



















Kilgore wrote in his Thursday article that President Donald Trump and Musk "strongly believe the deep state is a nest of evil civilization-devouring elitists who must be crushed remorselessly."

"In his own companies, Musk has invariably exemplified the move-fast-and-break-things ethic of Silicon Valley, wherein running up video-game numbers of jobs lost and lives ruined is inherently virtuous," he added.

In 2015, Trump told an interviewer, quoting another businessman, “There’s a certain unpredictability about Trump that’s great.” In his first major speech of the 2015 campaign, he criticized United States foreign policy during the Obama administration. “We must as a nation be more unpredictable," Trump said at the time.
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According to Kilgore, "the possibility that the most powerful military in the history of the world may be in the hands of a homicidal maniac gave said maniac enormous leverage in situations involving international conflict."

"And the ever-constant threat of incredibly lethal violence fit in perfectly with Trump’s own personality and his Jacksonian approach to national defense, in which Uncle Sam would mostly mind his own business but was prepared to wreak holy hell on anyone who looked funny at him," he added.


But Kilgore says that in his second term, Trump is using this theory not only in foreign policy but also in dealing with domestic issues.

"In Trump 2.0, it is increasingly apparent that the same psychology of erratic and often terrifying brinkmanship has been extended into nearly every policy arena, domestic as well as international, which isn’t surprising insofar as Trump’s universe of perceived 'enemies' now tilts heavily toward people living in this country," he wrote.

Donald Trump’s new policies are 'stupid' — according to stupidity researchers

REUTERS/Nathan Howard
U.S. President Donald Trump reads a paper during an event with the racing champions from NASCAR Cup Series, NTT IndyCar Series, and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 9, 2025.

The Conversation
April 09, 2025


Before he stepped down as Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau called Donald Trump’s tariff policies “very dumb.” This might be an accurate description of many Trump administration policies — but the more objectively correct word is “stupid.”


In fact, Québec’s largest newspaper, Le Journal de Montréal, published a front-page photo of Trump in early February with the word “stupid” in 350-point type. Some may call this an opinion, but the science of stupidity tells us that it’s more of a definition.

Recent research has produced a succinct label for the poorly calculated actions of decision-makers: stupidity.

This is not simple name-calling, but a phenomenon that comprises loss and features a set of actions that are either outright recognizably dysfunctional, or appear so at odds with any sensible course of action that it seems a hidden agenda could be involved.

Stupidity that causes everyone to lose

According to the seminal and transactional view of human stupidity by Carlo Cipolla, the late Italian economic historian, interactions fall into four categories:Intelligent interactions that are beneficial to all – a positive-sum game like Scottish philosopher Adam Smith’s notion of wealth through specialization and trade;Helpless interactions that result in a loss in a zero-sum game;
Bandit interactions that result in a gain in zero-sum game;
Stupid interactions that cause all parties to suffer a loss.

Free trade is based on an intelligent positive-sum interaction. Trump’s transactional zero-sum view is that for every winner there is a loser.

He apparently doesn’t understand that tariffs are only successful if other countries don’t retaliate. But other countries do retaliate, and as the world is now witnessing, the resulting trade war can decimate the global economy.

Trump’s protectionist measures aimed at boosting the U.S. economy can therefore be considered “stupid” interactions that risk deepening and lengthening an economic depression.

Stupidity as recognizable actions

Modern-day researchers have also identified three recognizable sets of actions embodying stupidity:

Confident ignorance that involves people taking risks without having the necessary skills to deal with them. It’s not just being ignorant of one’s ignorance — explained by the Dunning-Kruger effect — but being self-assured despite contrary evidence.

Trump may know what he does not know, so he delegated many tasks to Tesla founder Elon Musk and trade tariff architect Pete Navarro, both of whom seem to possess no such awareness.

Absent-minded failure means people knew the right thing to do but were not paying sufficient attention to avoid doing something stupid. Organizations create agendas, but if issues don’t reach a point where they seriously impact the organization’s objectives, they are ignored.

An example is the recent U.S. strikes against Yemeni Houthis. U.S. officials ignored critical security components by sharing information about their plans over unsecure connections and with a member of the media.

Lack of control means that autocratic decision-makers compromise their organizations by failing to accept objections from those charged with implementing the leader’s preconceived plans.

Such autocratic decision-makers may select biased information to support their proposals. Those working under these leaders either buy into efforts to selectively use information, limit alternatives and execute these preconceived plans or they leave the organization (either voluntarily or not).

In the U.S., witness the firing of Justice Department pardon attorney Elizabeth Oyer. She failed to support restoring gun rights to actor Mel Gibson, who had been convicted of domestic violence in 2011. Gibson’s pardon was reportedly based on his personal relationship with the president.

Types of stupidity

Organizational researchers have used the term functional stupidity to describe those who refuse to use their intellectual capacities when making decisions and then avoid justification for their actions. This allows group members to quickly execute routine functions without much thought.

Dysfunctional stupidity is a lack of organizationally supported reflection, reasoning and justification. Organizations fail to use intellectual resources to process knowledge or question norms or claims of knowledge when confronted with new or non-routine decisions. By blocking communications, muffling criticism and squelching doubts, organizations ensure adherence to superiors’ edicts.

One Trump administration example is the unquestioning permission given to allow the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Musk, to access to a wide array of government data.

It can take the combined efforts of organizational officials on multiple levels to maintain stupidity.

Individually, stupidity is reinforced by ignoring crucial information because of a need for a rapid response.

Consequently, quick decisions and shortcuts made by individuals result in negative outcomes. An example would be the Trump administration’s apparent need to appear to find cost savings quickly to allow for tax cuts, overriding a more logical approach to find ways to achieve those savings without gutting legally mandated services.

Organizationally, stupidity is reinforced because organizations limit acceptable alternative behaviours when they cannot process all available information. Data is restricted, controls are tightened and organization officials fall back to using previously well-learned responses in their comfort zones. Inexperienced decision-makers fall back on uninformed assumptions, or no assumptions at all.

Witness Trump’s “reciprocal” trade tariffs that battered financial markets worldwide, finally causing him to hit the pause button. No tariffs were calculated using current tariff rates, while others were based on American trade deficits with other countries. Other tariffs seem to be based on no rationale at all.

Stupidity as a hidden agenda?

Some actions that appear stupid may simply hide a hidden agenda. When the Trump administration erroneously detains and deports anyone under the Alien Enemies Act, is it an accident or a way to instil fear in everyone that authorities can detain, mistreat and deport them without due process at any point?

Many of the actions being taken by the Trump administration appear stupid. Tariffs, for example, represent a loss — a transactionally negative sum game.

Trump’s decisions exhibit confident ignorance, absent-minded failure and lack of control. They also show dysfunctional stupidity as Trump officials seemingly refuse to use their full intellectual resources. Stupidity is also being reinforced through unfounded assumptions. Is this all hiding a secret agenda?

“You can’t fix stupid,” so the saying goes. But having capable administrators in place while other branches of government exercise their constitutionally mandated oversight role might dampen some of the Trump administration’s stupidity.

Jerry Paul Sheppard, Associate Professor of Business Administration, Simon Fraser University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Trump Revived the Law Used to Intern Japanese Americans, and SCOTUS Let Him

This week the Supreme Court left the door open for Trump to continue invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport people.

By Camilo Pérez-Bustillo ,

Truthout

April 9, 2025

An ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations unit initiates a raid to apprehend immigrants without any legal status and who may be deportable in Riverside, California, on August 12, 2015.Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The Supreme Court made two key initial procedural rulings on Monday in cases related to the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to grease the wheels of mass detention and mass deportation primarily through outsourcing to El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison, which is known worldwide for its flagrant human rights abuses.

In its procedural ruling on Trump v. J.G.G., the court upheld the Trump administration’s rhetorical reliance on the Alien Enemies Act to justify the transfers but required it to comport with the barest minimums of constitutional “due process” through individualized habeas corpus proceedings in largely hostile courts closer to the location of the detention centers where those targeted by the act are likely being held. The Supreme Court’s majority opinion was simultaneously outrageous and perfunctory, and procedural challenges are likely to continue.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned what will come to be recognized as a historic 17-page dissent, expressing the arguments and sounding the warnings that should have served as a basis for the court’s ruling. Speaking as the court’s only Puerto Rican and first Latina member, Sotomayor offered a lament for how the Supreme Court has squandered its voice at this crucial historical moment. There is poetry latent in her scathing critique of the court’s limitations. At one moment in her dissent, she argued:

The Government takes the position that, even when it makes a mistake, it cannot retrieve individuals from the Salvadoran prisons to which it has sent them.The implication of the Government’s position is that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. History is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this Nation’s system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise.

The J.G.G. decision revives both the notorious Korematsu case, which upheld the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act (AEA), upon which their internment was based. The Supreme Court’s initial procedural ruling this week legitimized the AEA through the back door, without addressing any of the pressing substantive issues raised by its current weaponization by the Trump administration, as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in her own dissent in concurrence with Sotomayor.

Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland man who is a legal U.S. resident, is a Salvadoran immigrant with no criminal record and no gang membership, who was “accidentally” deported to the CECOT prison in El Salvador. In the past, he fled from systematic persecution in El Salvador by the kinds of gang members he is now surrounded by in detention. The Trump administration has conceded that his “deportation” to El Salvador was the product of an “administrative error.” Yet at the same time it has continued to insist that it has neither the power nor the inclination to return him to the U.S., despite this grievous, potentially life-threatening mistake.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday breathed artificial life into one of the court’s most notorious decisions in the 1944 Korematsu case, which upheld the legality of the mass detention of over 120,000 people of Japanese origin in the U.S in response to Pearl Harbor. In so doing, the court has exercised what can only be described as a new kind of zombie jurisprudence, while leaving key threshold questions utterly and deliberately unexamined. This is evidently the Supreme Court’s way of ducking, for now, a more fundamental clash with the Trump administration’s increasingly evident intent to undermine judicial control and even review of its most dangerous policies.

Key unresolved questions include whether the Alien Enemies Act is itself constitutional or not, whether it should be for the first time activated in peacetime — not against the citizens of a country with which the U.S is at war, but against a criminal gang and its alleged members, whom the administration has deemed “terrorists” and is depriving of due process rights in the name of “national security.” Sound familiar? El Salvador’s megaprison is, for these purposes, in effect the new Guantánamo (or another equivalent “black site”), while the U.S base on illegally occupied Cuban territory continues to gear up for increased occupancy.

The Supreme Court’s majority also failed to place limits on invocations of expansive executive power along these lines, which might for example include additional executive orders that seek to expand the targets of the Alien Enemies Act — or equivalent provisions — beyond their current focus (alleged Venezuelan members of the Tren de Aragua gang) to other groups whom the president wishes to repress. Many more executive orders may be signed with even lesser transparency, and ever larger potential reach.

This implicit slippery slope effect is already evident in what has unfolded with those hundreds of young men — primarily Venezuelan, but also of Salvadoran origin — on the three “deportation” flights on March 15 that laid the groundwork for both of Monday’s Supreme Court cases. No evidence has been made public that confirms that any of these young men are or were ever members of the Tren de Aragua gang or its Salvadoran equivalents, and most do not have criminal records anywhere.

Most of those currently detained in hellish conditions in El Salvador have committed no recognizable offense, except that they were primarily young Venezuelan men who could be targeted in the dark of night — “taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons” in Sotomayor’s words — because Donald Trump and Marco Rubio said so.

As Justice Sotomayor has eloquently argued, there is in fact no material force in place that prevents the Trump administration from extending the logic of its current sweeps against alleged Venezuelan or Salvadoran gang members — or holders of green cards or student visas like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk whose speech offends the Trump administration’s sensibilities — to others, including U.S. citizens. This is especially true under an administration that is actively seeking to redefine and restrict birthright citizenship and voting rights, and that has been acting in bad faith in cases like these, seeking to both undermine and elude judicial review of its arbitrary actions.

“The Government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law,” Sotomayor wrote in her disssent. “That a majority of this Court now rewards the Government for its behavior with discretionary equitable relief is indefensible. We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this.”

And yet cases like this also remind us that Sotomayor’s faith may be misplaced. Many have forgotten cases like those of Paul Robeson or W.E.B DuBois during the McCarthy era — or later Muhammad Ali — whose passports were confiscated and whose right to travel outside the U.S. was nullified for supposed “disloyalties” equivalent to those weaponized today by Rubio, at Trump’s behest.

Poets tend to be better at cultivating such memories. Bertolt Brecht once asked himself, amid his own forced exile from Nazi Germany, “In the dark times / will there also be singing? / Yes, there will also be singing. / About the dark times.”

A writer whose work carries on this spirit of resistance today is the poet Martín Espada (honored with the National Book Award for Poetry in 2021), whose extraordinary new book A Jailbreak of Sparrows is rooted in the revolutionary rhythms of the liberation struggles of Puerto Rico. Espada’s poetry is also imbued with his background as a lawyer, and like Sotomayor, is grounded in his upbringing in New York’s Puerto Rican community, as part of the same generation. Sotomayor has written eloquently about how these origins decisively shaped her experiences and approach as a student, lawyer, and ultimately federal judge and Supreme Court Justice.

Espada reminds us in concrete lyrical detail how Trump’s dehumanization of migrants through the rhetoric of “invasion” laid the groundwork for the El Paso Massacre in August 2018 and for police killings like that of Mario González in Alameda, California, in April 2021. He also reminds us of the human costs of the McCarthyist persecution of dissidents both in Puerto Rico and on the mainland through the cases of renowned poets such as Juan Antonio Corretjer and William Carlos Williams.

Espada tells us too, in the book’s stunning title poem, about how U.S. Thunderbolt fighter planes sought to bomb into submission the Puerto Rican mountain town of Utuado — his father’s and grandmother’s birthplace — in the wake of the October 30, 1950, pro-independence uprising led by the island’s nacionalistas:


In towns with names that fly, Jayuya, Arecibo, Naranjito, Utuado, they lined up

against the walls, fingers woven behind their heads, bayonets sniffing their ribs,

taken by trucks to jails with names that stop the tongue: La Princesa in a land

where the princess waves from a float, Oso Blanco in a land without white bears.

The poet who knew the room of stone returned with a face of stone. The poet new

to the room of stone scribbled on stone whatever the voices bellowed in his ear.

But it all began with the words that were forbidden-

“La Ley de la Mordaza, the Law of the Muzzle years ago,confiscating the ink of presses that stamped the page with the words colonialism

and independence, empire and political prisoner, clapping handcuffs on anyone

who sang verses that flew like a jailbreak of sparrows. The flag of Puerto Rico,

fanning a grave in the heat or asleep in a closet between the sheets, would

now become the prosecutor’s proof, good for ten years in a room of stone”

Together the combined eloquence and depth of Sotomayor’s emerging jurisprudence of resistance and Espada’s life-long praxis of the poetry of liberation provide us with a basis for the kind of critical reflection and engagement we need, from below, in response to the onslaught that seeks to erode and nullify our rights, and the channels through which we express them. Today, on campuses and in communities throughout the country, it is words like those evoked by Espada and their equivalents — or those that resonate with Sotomayor’s warnings — that could lead to our targeting, as if we were “alien enemies.” Espada and Sotomayor, together, write for us.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Camilo Pérez-Bustillo is former executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the National Lawyers Guild; member of the leadership team at Witness at the Border; a fellow at the Institute for the Geography of Peace in Juárez, Mexico/El Paso, Texas, and at the University of Bergen, Norway’s, Global Research Programme on Inequality; co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild’s Task Force on the Americas; professor of law and ethnic studies at St. Mary’s College of California; visiting chair professor of human rights at National Taiwan University’s College of Law; and co-founder of the International Tribunal of Conscience of Peoples in Movement.

This chart explains why Trump flip-flopped on tariffs

The Conversation
April 10, 2025


The Trump administration has announced a 90-day pause on its plan to impose so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly all US imports. But the pause does not extend to China, where import duties will rise to around 125%.


The move signals a partial retreat from what had been shaping up as a broad and aggressive trade war. For most countries, the US will now apply a 10% baseline tariff for the next three months. But the White House made clear that its tariffs on Chinese imports will remain in place.

So why did President Trump back away from the broader tariff push? The answer is simple: the economic cost to the US was too high.
Our economic model shows the fallout, even after the ‘pause’

Using a global economic model, we have been estimating the macroeconomic consequences of the Trump administration’s tariff plans as they have developed.

The following table shows two versions of the economic effects of the tariff plan:“pre-pause” – as the plan stood immediately before Wednesday’s 90-day pause, under a scenario in which all countries retaliate except Australia, Japan and South Korea (which said they would not retaliate)

“post-pause” after reciprocal tariffs were withdrawn.



As is clear, the US would have faced steep and immediate losses in employment, investment, growth, and most importantly, real consumption, the best measure of household living standards.

Heavy costs of the tariff war

Under the pre-pause scenario, the US would have seen real consumption fall by 2.4% in 2025 alone. Real gross domestic product (GDP) would have declined by 2.6%, while employment falls by 2.7% and real investment (after inflation) plunges 6.6%.

These are not trivial adjustments. They represent significant contractions that would be felt in everyday life, from job losses to price increases to reduced household purchasing power. Since the current US unemployment rate is 4.2%, these results suggest that for every three currently unemployed Americans, two more would join their ranks.

Our modelling shows the damage would not just be short-term. Across the 2025–2040 projection period, US real consumption losses would have averaged 1.2%, with persistent investment weakness and a long-term decline in real GDP.

It is likely that internal economic advice reflected this kind of outlook. The decision to pause most of the tariff increases may well be an acknowledgement that the policy was economically unsustainable and would result in a permanent reduction in US global economic power. Financial markets were also rattled.
The scaled-back plan: still aggressive on China

The new arrangement announced on April 9 scales the higher tariff regime back to a flat 10% for about 70 countries, but keeps the full weight of tariffs on Chinese goods at around 125%. Rates on Canadian and Mexican imports remain at 25%.

In response, China has announced an 84% tariff on US goods.

The table’s “post-pause” column summarises the results of the scaled-back plan if the pause becomes permanent. For consistency, we assume all countries except Australia, Japan and Korea retaliate with tariffs equal to those imposed by the US.

As is clear from the “post-pause” results, lower US tariffs, together with lower retaliatory tariffs, equal less damage for the US economy.

Tariffs applied uniformly are less distortionary, and significant retaliation from just one major partner (China) is easier to absorb than a broad global response.

However, the costs will still be high. The US is projected to experience a 1.9% drop in real consumption in 2025, driven by lower employment and reduced efficiency in production. Real investment is projected to fall by 4.8%, and employment by 2.1%.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that the costs are still so high. In 2022, China, Canada and Mexico accounted for almost 45% of all US goods imports, and many countries were already facing 10% reciprocal tariffs in the “pre-pause” scenario. Trump’s tariff pause has not changed duty rates for these countries.

US President Donald Trump discusses the 90-day pause.
A temporary reprieve

Tariffs appear to be central to the administration’s economic program. So Trump’s decision to pause his broader tariff agenda may not signal a shift in philosophy: just a tactical retreat.

The updated strategy, high tariffs on China and lower ones elsewhere, might reflect an attempt to refocus on where the administration sees its main strategic concern, while avoiding unnecessary blowback from allies and neutral partners.

Whether this narrower approach proves durable remains to be seen. The sharpest economic pain has been deferred. Whether it returns depends on how the next 90 days play out.




James Giesecke, Professor, Centre of Policy Studies and the Impact Project, Victoria University and Robert Waschik, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

DESANTISLAND

More cuckoos than a Swiss clock factory: FL Republican pushes ludicrous ‘chemtrails’ bill

Photo by Andrew Palmer on Unsplash


Craig Pittman, 

Florida Phoenix

April 10, 2025

TALLAHASSSEE — If you’re one of the 900 new people who move to Florida every day, you may not know this crucial secret of Florida government. I’m a Florida native, so let me clue you in. Lean in close and I’ll whisper it in your ear. Are you ready?

The Florida Legislature contains more cuckoos than a Swiss clock factory.

Now that you’re aware of this fact, how are you holding up? How’s your blood pressure? Can you handle the truth?

You want some evidence? Just last year, a legislator claimed his new anti-bear bill was necessary because there were bears on crack invading people’s houses. This was, of course, a complete fantasy. Yet his colleagues didn’t question his sanity or call the paramedics. They just passed the bill. It’s the law now!

This year there’s one that’s even kookier. I am referring to the so-called “chemtrails” bill.

In case you’re unfamiliar with that debunked conspiracy theory, the folks who believe in “chemtrails” are convinced the government (or maybe it’s the Illuminati) is dispatching planes to fly over us unsuspecting Americans and spray chemicals on us.

Why? The chemtrails can change the weather, say the diehards. Or maybe they can control people’s minds. Or maybe they’re just going to poison everybody they don’t like. Who knows? After all, it’s a secret, like the 1947 UFO crash landing in New Mexico.

Anyway, there’s a bill in the Legislature to track and attack chemtrails. Instead of being laughed out of the Capitol building, as it deserves, the bill was just passed by the full Senate, because that’s what our state’s elected leaders are like right now. I wish I could tell you the “Looney Tunes” theme song played while they voted.

“The measure (SB 56), sponsored by Miami Republican Ileana Garcia, would prohibit the injection, release, or dispersion of any means of a chemical, chemical compound, substance, or apparatus into the atmosphere for the purpose of affecting the climate,” my colleague Mitch Perry reported in the Phoenix last week. “Any person or corporation who conducts such geoengineering or weather modification activity would be subject to a third-degree felony charge, with fines up to $100,000.”

The bill would require the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to set up a hotline so anyone concerned about streaks in the sky can call and report them. I’m sure the DEP will jump right on those reports, just the way the agency has jumped on reports of rampant water pollution that fuels toxic algae blooms, kills seagrass, and leaves manatees to starve.

I tried calling Sen. Garcia to ask her some questions about her bill. While I waited to talk to her, I was struck by a subversive thought:

What if the chemtrails bill becomes law and we folks who still live in the real world use it to flip the script? What if we employ its provisions to go after the people who really ARE changing the weather — with their greenhouse gas emissions?
A healthy skepticism

The most shocking thing about this chemtrails bill is not that it was filed — filed, I should add, by a senator who won her seat by just 32 votes, thanks to an illegal ghost candidate scheme backed by Florida Power & Light.

Nor is the most shocking thing that it passed one house of our Legislature by a vote of 28-9 and now is headed for the other.

No, what’s shocking is that it was endorsed by Senate President Ben Albritton and Gov. Ron DeSantis, two allegedly well-educated people. At this rate, they’ll next endorse a taxpayer-funded expedition to explore how we ended up living inside a Hollow Earth.

Actually, DeSantis’ endorsement isn’t that much of a surprise. He’s happy to appease the Tinfoil Hat Brigade if it gets him a mention on Fox News or its imitators.

Remember, DeSantis is the guy who appointed as his surgeon general the world’s biggest vaccine skeptic and now lets him run around the state trying to convince everyone to stop preventing children’s tooth decay. I sometimes wonder if he and RFK Jr. share a brain worm.

But Albritton’s comments threw me. He’s a longtime citrus man who’s familiar with the need for accurate weather forecasts. Yet he actually called this lunacy “a great piece of legislation” that would address “real concerns from our constituents.”

If some of those constituents also think their elected politicians are all lizard people, presumably he’d be fine with legislation requiring a reptilian DNA test before administering the oath of office.

“I have heard the conspiracy theories out there,” Albritton said about Garcia’s bill, “but the fact is we should not be shutting down legitimate concerns. Healthy skepticism is important. There’s a lot we don’t know in this field of science and people are rightfully concerned.”

Because I grew up in Florida, I have a healthy skepticism toward anything Florida politicians say. Albritton’s statement suggests that I’m right to be skeptical because there’s a lot that’s wrong with his comments.

We actually know quite a lot about the weather modification attempts. We know they don’t work and have mostly been discontinued.

Florida law currently requires anyone who wants to modify the weather to get a permit first. A Senate bill analysis of SB 56 points out, “There have been no applications for weather modification licenses in the past 10 years.”

Four years ago, eight Western states tried cloud seeding to produce rains to end a lengthy drought. However, Scientific American reported, “there is little evidence to show that the process is increasing precipitation.”

Yet “weather modification” is what our Legislature chooses to tackle instead of lowering property insurance rates, boosting educational test scores, or any one of a dozen more important issues. Maybe they’re under some bizarre mind control method that requires them to be ineffective at good governing.
Legitimate concerns

Albritton’s statement about people being “rightfully concerned” about chemtrails sounds like he’s endorsing the bogus claims that spread last year that the government steered two hurricanes to clobber specific communities ahead of the election.

Those rumors were, of course, lies spread by the unscrupulous to fool the gullible. They became so pervasive that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had to put out a press release denying it.

“NOAA does not modify the weather, nor does it fund, participate in or oversee cloud seeding or any other weather modification activities,” it said.

Given how Elon Musk is rapidly dismantling the agency now, I doubt they can control the thermostat in their office buildings, much less the weather.

I wish Albritton were as supportive of the “legitimate concerns” many of us Floridians feel about climate change.

We’re on the front lines of it, with our rising sea levels, more intense hurricanes, higher storm surges, and increased temperatures even at night. It’s hurting everything from our seafood industry to our sea turtle nesting. Heck, it’s even hurting Albritton’s own industry, agriculture.

Hard-headed property insurance companies recognize the dangers and disruptions of climate change. Why can’t our state officials?

“If lawmakers want to protect Floridians by addressing substances affecting the temperature, weather, and climate, they should hold power companies and the oil and gas industry accountable,” said longtime Florida climate activist Susan Glickman of the CLEO Institute, a non-profit dedicated to climate education and advocacy. “The pollution they release is warming the climate in increasingly extreme and deadly ways.”

But last year the Legislature voted to delete most references to climate change from state law under the well-known scientific theory of “If We Don’t Talk About It, Surely It Will Go Away.” Given how we were all beaten up by intense hurricanes and big storm surges last year, I don’t think it went away.

Fortunately, I see a way to take this “chemtrails” bill and turn it into a “let’s fight climate change” bill. Let me explain.
Contrail confusion

I have a confession to make: Every time I read someone’s rants about chemtrails, I always crack up. That’s because I always picture Cary Grant fleeing the evil crop-duster in the movie “North by Northwest,” which is the silliest and most inefficient murder method ever attempted.

Was the pilot supposed to crash into Cary and kill himself too? Cut Cary’s head off with the propeller, which would make the plane stop flying? Or maybe force him to cough up a lung because of all the pesticide he was inhaling? None of these options seem practical.

Similarly, the whole chemtrails theory falls apart on practical questions. How often and how much do you need to spray those chemicals in the sky to affect everyone? There are 23 million people in Florida alone. That’s a lot of folks to spritz with your mind-control concoction.

Seems to me you’d need WAAAAAY more chemical spraying than what we’re seeing if you plan to coat every single one of us with the goop. You’d need to dump it out in quantities like the helicopter pilots dropping the contents of an entire pond on a wildfire.

Nope, what we’re seeing up in the sky are simple contrails — droplets of water vapor clinging to particles of soot that were emitted by an airplane’s engine.

So imagine my surprise when Rafe Pomerance of Rethink Energy Florida told me, “Water vapor is a greenhouse gas.”

“Say what now?” I replied, displaying my usual incisive intellect.

“You warm up the earth, and one of the effects is an increase of water vapor in the atmosphere,” he explained. Then the vapor traps heat in our atmosphere just like carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases do. The heat that created the vapor gets amplified by the vapor.

When I expressed that old healthy skepticism, he referred me to a scientist named Adam Boies of Stanford University. He’s an expert on contrails. He confirmed that chemtrails are bogus and also confirmed what Pomerance told me.

Some of the contrails disappear in minutes after the plane that created them leaves the area, Boies said. But some, say about 20%, linger longer. Those are the dangerous ones that can trap heat in the atmosphere.

Airplane engine manufacturers are worried about this so they are working on engine designs that will stop producing contrails, he said.

“The airlines are so concerned about this that they’re willing to try new fuels or rerouting flight patterns to try to avoid them,” Boies told me.

Thus, for once, the Legislature might do the right thing for the wrong reason — asking people to report something that actually is a cause of climate change. That’s why I think we should embrace this silly chemtrails bill and join DeSantis and Albritton in pushing it forward.

Then, once the bill passes, I say we all start contacting that DEP hotline to report, say, Florida Power & Light and its fellow utilities for burning fossil fuels to produce electricity. They’re building a lot of solar farms now, but they ought to replace their older plants too.

The same goes for all the municipal incinerators across the state, too, and the Big Sugar companies burning their fields and sending billows of thick smoke into the communities south of Lake Okeechobee. I say we report every one of these folks messing up our state.

“Hello, DEP,” we can say, “there’s a chemical plant in Pensacola that’s altering the weather with its nitrous oxide emissions. The clouds of pollutants are going up in the atmosphere and trapping heat here! You should do something about that, pronto.”

Or how about, “Hello, is this the DEP? I want to report someone for altering the weather. It’s the Florida DOT. They’re building a lot of roads for heavily polluting cars and trucks and doing nothing for mass transit. No electric vehicle charging stations, either. Can you get after them for that?”

By the way, I never did reach the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Garcia. It’s too bad. I was ready to congratulate her for doing more to combat climate change than either DeSantis or his predecessor, Rick Scott. Of course, to hear me speak, she’d first have to unwrap all that tinfoil from around her head.


Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CONTRAILS

Republicans provide plenty of affirmation action for mediocre white men

Rep. Nick Hoheisel, R-Wichita, appears during a March 24, 2025, session of the House (Grace Hills/Kansas Reflector)

Clay Wirestone, 

Kansas Reflector

April 10, 2025

Being a Republican in Kansas means never having to say you’re sorry.

Not really. Sure, you might have to mumble a half-hearted apology or lose an election here or there. But don’t worry! You won’t face any sanctions with teeth or be out of office for long. Kansas Republicans embrace affirmative action for middle-aged, mediocre white men who believe the right things.

Take Rep. Nick Nick Hoheisel, R-Wichita. Back in February, he found himself in a bit of a jam after confronting with Rep. Ford Carr, D-Wichita, on the House floor. Hoheisel, who is white, confronted Carr, who is Black, over Carr’s rhetoric. According to witnesses, the Republican used profanity. Carr later filed a formal complaint.

In our original coverage of events, Hoheisel appeared to deny that anything untoward had occurred.

“I’m not going to dignify any of those false and outlandish allegations with a response,” Hoheisel wrote editor Sherman Smith in a text message.

Yet Hoheisel eventually apologized to the House, while still claiming the allegation were “significantly overstated.”

A special committee made up of three Republicans and three Democrats looked into the complaint and deadlocked. Republican leaders lowered the boom on Carr, however, and subjected him to a multi-day ordeal before that same committee. His main sin appears to have been calling the GOP racist. The panel will potentially send a letter to the full House admonishing Carr.

Hoheisel escaped any discipline whatsoever.

That’s just for Democrats or saps.

Conservatives don’t pay a price for cursing at their opponents, losing high-profile races or an array of other bad behavior. Not in Kansas, they don’t.

State Sen. Virgil Peck once joked about shooting immigrants from helicopters. Then a representative, he issued a brief apology and kept serving. Eventually, he lost a primary for state Senate. But he worked his way into the chamber eventually, spreading nonsense about chivalrous manhood along the way.

Just this session, he criticized journalists’ “inaccurate” stories to justify raising the rent of press offices at the Statehouse.

Rep. Pat Proctor has left a trail of bellicosity and startling rhetoric about Kansas elections. Yet he’s now running to administer those same elections as secretary of state. A previous contender for that office, Mike Brown, failed in his 2022 bid to unseat elections chief Scott Schwab. Yet Brown simply pivoted to run for state GOP chairman the very next year — and won.

Senate President Ty Masterson went through bankruptcy and somehow found a six-figure job at Wichita State University to complement his legislative work. Nice work if you can get it, right? He’s likely to launch a gubernatorial bid soon.

The one and only Kris Kobach lost consecutive statewide elections to Gov. Laura Kelly in 2018 and Sen. Roger Marshall in 2020. He finally managed to claw his way back to relevancy through a successful bid for attorney general. Who knows where he might land next, but he clearly wasn’t daunted by Kansas voters’ repeated rejections. They don’t know what a good deal they have in voting for another subpar white man.

As I said, white male Republicans of a conservative bent can rest assured in their continued relevance, no matter controversies or losses.

The one person who appears to have paid a price for his shortcomings is House Majority Leader Gene Suellentrop, who was jailed on a drunk driving charge and ousted from his post in 2021. He stayed around the Statehouse through early 2023, though. Statehouse leaders didn’t want to look like they were too tough on the poor fellow, I suppose.

This year, we’ve heard repeatedly from those in Washington, D.C., that efforts to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion have gone too far.

We’ve heard repeated suggestions that prominent and accomplished Black people, women and LGBTQ+ community members don’t have what it takes. Marshall even suggested that DEI policies contributed to the crash of a passenger plane from Wichita.

Yet those in Topeka have shown us throughout recent years that the real threat doesn’t come from Black people, women or LGBTQ+ folks.

It comes from doughy white men who won’t take a hint to leave the rest of us alone.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.

Trump administration appealing order to restore AP access

Agence France-Presse
April 9, 2025

President Donald Trump and a map showing the 'Gulf of America' in the Oval Office. (AFP)

The Trump administration said Wednesday that it is appealing a court ruling ordering the White House to restore the Associated Press's access to official presidential events.

The US Attorney's Office said it was filing the appeal with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on behalf of the three senior White House officials named in the AP complaint.

AP journalists and photographers have been barred from the Oval Office and from traveling on Air Force One since mid-February because of the news agency's decision to continue referring to the "Gulf of Mexico" -- and not the "Gulf of America" as decreed by President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, District Judge Trevor McFadden said the "viewpoint-based denial of the AP's access" was a violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and of the press.

"If the Government opens its doors to some journalists -- be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere -- it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints," McFadden said.


McFadden ordered the White House to "immediately rescind the denial of the AP's access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other limited spaces... when such spaces are made open to other members of the White House press pool."

The judge put off implementation of his order for five days to give the White House time to reply or to file an appeal.

AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton welcomed the court order on Tuesday restoring access.

"Today's ruling affirms the fundamental right of the press and public to speak freely without government retaliation," Easton said in a statement. "This is a freedom guaranteed for all Americans in the US Constitution."

In its style guide, the AP notes that the Gulf of Mexico has "carried that name for more than 400 years" and the agency "will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen."

"As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences," the AP said.


The 180-year-old organization has long been a pillar of US journalism and provides news to print, TV and radio outlets across the United States and around the world.

Trump asserting powers 'even the most tyrannical monarchs' didn't have: analysis

Brad Reed
April 10, 2025 

RAW STORY

A trio of legal experts is warning that the Trump Department of Justice is asserting that the president has unprecedented powers that were not even possessed by English monarchs.

Writing at Just Security, Yale Law School professors Harold Hongju Koh and Fred Halbhuber, along with Yale Law J.D. candidate Inbar Pe'er, point to recent assertions made by Trump DOJ lawyers in court that the United States Constitution does not prohibit President Donald Trump from issuing bills of attainder, which are orders that impose "a punishment on a specific person or group of people without first going through a trial."

During a recent hearing on Trump's executive orders targeting law firms that have in the past represented his political enemies, Judge Beryl Howell asked the Trump DOJ if such orders could be considered bills of attainder, which the United States Constitution explicitly prohibits.


Rather than merely denying that the orders were bills of attainder, the government replied that "as a pure constitutional matter... the bill of attainder restriction is only on Article I and not on Article II [of the Constitution], and so it doesn’t apply to the president."

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The three Yale Law experts then break down just how unprecedented this assertion of powers is, not just in American history but in the history of British monarchies.


"Even under the most tyrannical monarchs, the king never asserted unilateral authority to issue bills of attainder—a power the president now asserts for himself," they contend.

They then walk through the history of bills of attainder, which in England were issued by the Parliament rather than directly from kings as a way to counterbalance what the scholars describe as "counterweights to royal favoritism run amok."

In fact, even a king as notorious as Henry VIII respected that issuing such bills was not a power that he alone could wield.


"For each of the approximately 130 attainders issued during his reign, Henry VIII observed the requirement for parliamentary approval," they explain. "If Parliament’s assent was not forthcoming, Henry VIII acknowledged that he was powerless to act. So, when Henry VIII famously sought to attain a list of alleged traitors, and the House of Lords refused to proceed until Sir Thomas More was removed from the bill, it was Henry VIII that relented."

Turning back toward the present, they write that Trump's assertion of such powers is clearly well outside the bounds of constitutional law.

"The Trump administration’s claim that the president alone can issue what would be forbidden bills of attainder if enacted by legislation represents a dangerous misreading of the Constitution’s history," they warn. "The very Framers who suffered under bills of attainder never intended to grant their new president a unilateral power to punish perceived enemies that even three centuries of English kings did not possess."

Why Trump’s executive order targeting state climate laws is probably illegal

Lois Parshley, 

Grist
April 9, 2025 


U.S. President Donald Trump looks on, as he signs executive orders and proclamations in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 9, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

President Donald Trump continued dismantling U.S. climate policy this week when he directed the Justice Department to challenge state laws aimed at addressing the crisis — a campaign legal scholars called unconstitutional and climate activists said is sure to fail.

The president, who has called climate change a “hoax,” issued an executive order restricting state laws that he claimed have burdened fossil fuel companies and “threatened American energy dominance.” His directive signed Tuesday night, is the latest in a series of moves that have included undermining federal climate and environmental justice programs, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, and promising to expand oil and gas leases.

It specifically mentions California, Vermont, and New York, three states that have been particularly assertive in pursuing climate action. The order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify and report state laws that focus on climate change or promote environmental social governance, and to halt any that “the attorney general determines to be illegal.”

That directive almost certainly includes the climate superfund laws that New York and Vermont recently passed. The statutes require fossil fuel companies to pay damages for their emissions, a move the executive order deems “extortion.” The president’s order also gives Bondi 60 days to prepare a report outlining state programs like carbon taxes and fees, along with those mentioning terms like “environmental justice” and “greenhouse gas emissions.”

“These state laws and policies are fundamentally irreconcilable with my administration’s objective to unleash American energy,” the executive order reads. “They should not stand.”

Legal scholars, environmental advocates, and at least one governor have said Trump’s effort to roll back state legislation is unconstitutional, and court challenges are sure to follow. “The federal government cannot unilaterally strip states’ independent constitutional authority,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement on behalf of the United States Climate Alliance, a coalition of 24 states working toward emissions reductions.

Although critics of the move said Trump is on shaky legal ground, forcing state and local governments to litigate can have a chilling effect on climate action. Beyond signaling the administration’s allegiance to the fossil fuel interests that helped bankroll his campaign, Trump’s order is “seeking to intimidate,” said Kathy Mulvey, the accountability campaign director for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“It seems pretty hypocritical for the party that claims to be about the rights of states to be taking on or seeking to prevent states from taking action,” she said.

The American Petroleum Institute praised the order, saying it would “address this state overreach” and “help restore the rule of law.”

Trump’s order comes several weeks after fossil fuel executives gathered at the White House to warn the president about increasing pressure from state lawsuits, including moves to claim polluters are guilty of homicide. Trump told the executives he would take action, according to E&E News.

“This executive order parrots some of the arguments that we’ve seen from companies like Exxon Mobil, as they’ve sought to have climate cases removed from federal court, and then dismissed in the state courts,” Mulvey says.

The president announced the move while standing in front of coal miners gathered for a White House ceremony during which he signed a separate executive order supporting what he called the “beautiful, clean coal” industry. That order removed air pollution limits and other regulations adopted by the Biden administration. “The ceremony as a whole was mainly about theatrics and bullying,” says Kit Kennedy, managing director of power, climate, and energy at Natural Resources Defense Council.

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Matt Simon

Experts say economics makes a resurgence of coal unlikely. For the last two decades, the industry has steeply declined as utilities have embraced gas and renewables like wind and solar, all of which are far cheaper. In California, which banned utilities from buying power from coal-fired plants in other states in 2007 and established a cap and trade program where power plants have to buy credits to pay for their pollution, emissions have fallen while the economy has grown. Such programs may be targeted by the president’s recent executive orders.

“It should be clear by now that the only thing the Trump administration’s actions accomplish is chaos and uncertainty,” Liane Randolph, who chairs the California Air Resources Board, said in a statement.

It remains unclear how the executive order will be implemented. “The executive branch doesn’t actually have authority to throw out state laws,” Mulvey said. States have a well-established primacy over environmental policies within their borders. The executive order would turn that on its head. “It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the DOJ challenging the states on these policies would be successful,” Kennedy said.

That’s not to say the Trump administration can’t take steps to fulfill the objectives outlined in the order. Even if the executive order doesn’t overturn state laws directly, climate advocates worry the Trump administration will threaten to withhold federal funding for other programs, like highways, if they don’t comply.

“The executive order itself has no legal impact, but the actions that government agencies will take in pursuit would, and many of those will be vigorously challenged in court,” said Michael Gerrard, faculty director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

It was immediately clear that at least some states aren’t going to back down. “This is the world the Trump administration wants your kids to live in,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “California’s efforts to cut harmful pollution won’t be derailed by a glorified press release masquerading as an executive order.”

Republican states benefited the most from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, a strategy some advocated could make the bipartisan legislation harder for future administrations to rescind. Ironically, Kennedy says, they aren’t necessarily labeled as climate policies, potentially sparing funding for things like battery manufacturing facilities in the South from the executive order. “They’re simply going about the business of creating the clean energy economy,” Kennedy said.

That progress makes the executive order’s “lawless assault” galling, said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). “Not only does this latest Big Oil fever dream violate state sovereignty,” he wrote to Grist, “it tries to void decades of state-enacted policies that lower energy costs for families, protect clean air and water, reduce the carbon pollution responsible for climate change, and protect Americans from the price shocks of dependence on fossil fuels.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/why-trumps-executive-order-targeting-state-climate-laws-is-probably-illegal/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

DESANTISLAND

'Beloved' Florida teacher loses job for calling trans student by preferred name: reports

Brad Reed
April 10, 2025
RAW STORY


Transgender Flag (Shutterstock)

A teacher in Florida is being dismissed for referring to a transgender student by their preferred name, according to reporting.

The Washington Post reports that Brevard County teacher Melissa Calhoun has been dismissed for allegedly violating a state law that prohibits teachers from referring to students by anything but the name given by their parents without getting their parents' permission.

"One of the student’s parents complained to the school district, which investigated the matter," writes that Post. "The teacher admitted to knowingly using an alternative name without permission."

Calhoun was informed by the school that her contract would not be renewed, although she will be allowed to continue teaching for the rest of the school year.

What's more, the state of Florida will be reviewing Calhoun's teaching certificate, which opens the possibility that her career teaching in the state could be over.

Amy Roub, a parent in Brevard County and volunteer with Florida’s chapter of Defense of Democracy, has been vowing to fight Calhoun's termination and she tells the Post that many parents have grown fed up with decisions being made by local school board officials.

Roub also said that two of her own children had taken classes with Calhoun and described her as "a beloved teacher, a teacher that changed her students’ lives."