American justice

                                         BBC

Greenland

Republicans against Trump - Trump tells The Atlantic, “we do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense.”

Polls

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Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling Venezuela? Approve: 39% Disapprove: 46% Not sure: 16% —— Net approve: • Men: (+6) • Women: (-28) • GOP: (+63) • DEM: (-64) • IND: (-22) • White: (-1) • Hispanic: (-7) • Black: (-17) • Other: (-18) • Ages 18-29: (-19) • Ages 30-44: (-22) • Ages 45-64: (+5) • Ages 65+: (+7)

Venezuela

Robert Hubbell -   1. The attack on Venezuela violated the Constitution; Congress has the power to declare war, not the president. Trump violated the War Powers Act by failing to obtain Congress’s consent before attacking a sovereign nation. Trump also failed to advise members of the congressional oversight committees.

2. The capture of Maduro violated US law. US criminal jurisdiction does not extend into foreign nations. Even so, the US did not obtain an arrest warrant issued by a judge or magistrate based on probable cause (so far as I know as of 1/3).

3. The capture of Maduro violated international law. The process for arresting and transferring an accused between countries requires extradition under a treaty between the nations involved.

4. The attack on Venezuela violated international law. Under the United Nation’s charter, the US cannot attack a sovereign nation except in self defense against armed aggression.

5. The real purpose of the attack was to seize control of Venezuela’s petroleum industry.

6. The law of unintended consequences. The attack may destabilize Venezuela or other countries in the region.

7. The lawless attack sends a message to Russia and China that they can engage in similar lawless activity. It also sends a message to our allies that the US cannot be trusted and is an aggressor nation.

Finally, the lesson that we should take from the above is that we must continue to resist Trump’s lawlessness at every turn. If we give Trump a “pass” on violating one part of the Constitution, he will take that as a signal that he is free to violate other parts of the Constitution. We must double down on our efforts to resist Trump, and we must add his illegal war against Venezuela to our list of causes.

Newsweek -   Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that President Trump always has options around what comes next in Venezuela, after the U.S. carried out airstrikes and captured the country's president, Nicolás Maduro.

Asked to clarify that there is no plan for U.S. occupation of Venezuela, Rubio said "the president always retains optionality on anything and on all of these matters."

"He certainly has the ability and the right under the Constitution of the United States to act against imminent and urgent threats against the country," Rubio said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan."

Reading is declining

If you read a book in 2025—just one book—you belong to an endangered species. Like honeybees and red wolves, the population of American readers, Lector americanus, has been declining for decades. The most recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, from 2022, found that fewer than half of Americans had read a single book in the previous 12 months; only 38 percent had read a novel or short story. A recent study from the University of Florida and University College London found that the number of Americans who engage in daily reading for pleasure fell 3 percent each year from 2003 to 2023.  

This decline is only getting steeper. Over the past decade, American students’ reading abilities have plummeted, and their reading habits have followed suit. In 2023, just 14 percent of 13-year-olds read for fun almost every day, down from 27 percent a decade earlier. A growing share of high-school and even college students struggle to read a book cover to cover.

Scores

Health

MS Now - Starting Jan. 1, prices for 10 prescription drugs are lower for Medicare patients under a law signed by President Joe Biden. But while the lower costs represent a sea change in federal policy on drug prices, they are just a drop in the bucket when it comes to addressing high out-of-pocket prescription costs for all Americans, writes Emma Freer, senior health policy analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project. The federal government could do more to prevent brand-name drug patent abuse, from breaking up monopolies to banning prior authorization for prescription drugs. Read more.

States made marijuana use legal. Now they should get it off the road.

Washington Post -   This holiday season, police departments across the country will repeat their laudable annual efforts to deter drunken driving. Yet more than a decade after states began legalizing recreational marijuana, or cannabis, effective policies to counter driving while high on it don’t exist. There are several reasons why the danger from cannabis-impaired drivers has so far gone largely unaddressed, and why the threat is increasing.

The first challenge is that when police stop a driver suspected of driving under the influence, they have no equivalent of a roadside breathalyzer test for detecting cannabis intoxication. There is no widely agreed upon, valid standard for rapidly and accurately measuring the amount of THC — cannabis’s psychoactive agent — in a person’s body. Even taking a suspected THC-intoxicated driver to the police station for a blood or urine test would be pointless: THC is lipophilic, meaning it hangs around in fat cells long after it has been consumed. That can skew testing, producing a positive result in a blood or urine test even though the person who consumed the cannabis is no longer high.

The second challenge: Getting high has become incredibly cheap in some states. For example, the median retail price for a gram of cannabis flower in Oregon is now $3.33 — about a 70 percent drop since 2016. It used to be the case that a gram would make about three joints, but these days it’s common to see one-gram pre-rolled joints in dispensaries. Some stores in Michigan have advertised ounces for $25, which, including taxes, works out to about $1 per gram.

Third, policymakers and advocates in many states did not follow up marijuana legalization with adequate regulations for the industry they created, the higher potency products it produced or the aggressiveness or accuracy with which those products were marketed. How states would detect and deter cannabis-impaired driving is one of many policy problems that did not receive sufficient thought.

US attack on Venezuela raises fears of future Greenland takeover

The Guardian -  The US bombardment of Venezuela and the capture of its president, Nicolás Maduro, have renewed fears of an American takeover of Greenland, as members of Donald Trump’s Maga movement gleefully set their sights on the Danish territory after the attack in South America.

Just hours after the US military operation in Venezuela, the rightwing podcaster Katie Miller – the wife of Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s powerful deputy chief of staff for policy – posted on X a map of Greenland draped in the stars and stripes with the caption: “SOON.”

The threat to annex the mineral-rich territory, which is part of the Nato alliance, drew immediate outrage from Danes.

Copenhagen’s ambassador to the US, Jesper Møller Sørensen, reposted Miller’s provocation with a “friendly reminder” of the longstanding defence ties between the two countries.

“We are close allies and should continue to work together as such. US security is also Greenland’s and Denmark’s security,” he said. “The Kingdom of Denmark and the United States work together to ensure security in the Arctic.”

He said Denmark had increased defence spending in 2025, committing $13.7bn (£10.2bn) “that can be used in the Arctic and North Atlantic. Because we take our joint security seriously.”

He added: “And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark.”

Trump recently named Jeff Landry, the governor of Louisiana, as a special envoy to Greenland. Landry, a former state attorney general, thanked Trump for his appointment in December, saying it was “an honour to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the US”.

On Saturday, Landry welcomed Trump’s toppling of Maduro by force.

“Having served as a sheriff’s deputy and AG, I have seen the devastating effects of illegal drugs on American families. With over 100k opioid-related deaths annually, I am grateful to see a President finally take real action in the war on drugs,” he posted on X.

How Trump circumventing Congress is different from previous presidents

The Guardian  -  Nothing speaks more eloquently of the disempowering of the US Congress under Donald Trump’s second presidency than the brazenly audacious arrest of Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia.

Far from recognizing it, Trump did not even acknowledge Congress’s right to know – keeping senior members in the dark until the operation to seize the strongman was under way.

Only after the operation to detain Maduro had begun did the administration bother to tell members of the congressional “gang of eight”: the top Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives, plus the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees of the two chambers.

That marks a conspicuous break with convention, even as previously observed by Trump himself. When Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds force was killed in a targeted strike during Trump’s first presidency in January 2020, the gang was punctiliously consulted, people involved in that operation have said.

In one fell swoop, the capture appeared to render the 1973 War Powers Resolution obsolete, if not an outright work of fiction.

The 1973 act – passed in the wake of the Vietnam war amid widespread anxieties about an incipient “imperial presidency” – requires a president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying troops into hostilities and withdraw them after 60 days, unless Congress authorizes the action or declares war.

NPR's CEO takes a strong stand

NY Times -  Katherine Maher knew that running NPR was going to be difficult. But since taking over as chief executive last year, she has confronted one crisis after another.  Right-wing activists dredged up her old posts on social media and tried to get her fired. Congress stripped more than $500 million in annual funding from public media.

She has become a target not just of NPR’s traditional opponents on the political right but of some within the tightknit world of public broadcasting, who wanted her to take a more pragmatic tack. At one point, the chief executive of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, one of NPR’s biggest supporters, told Ms. Maher she should quit...

Ms. Maher, 42, stood by her strategy.

“The government targeted public funding to punish specific editorial decisions it disagreed with,” she said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “That’s not a funding dispute dressed up as a constitutional case; that’s textbook First Amendment retaliation.”

Constitutional Showdown Forces Federal Retreat

Newsworthy News -   President Trump announced the removal of National Guard troops from Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago on January 1, 2026, following a Supreme Court ruling that severely constrained his authority to deploy state military forces domestically. The high court determined that presidential power to deploy troops within U.S. borders is limited to truly “exceptional” circumstances, rejecting the Justice Department’s argument that such decisions are beyond judicial review. This constitutional confrontation began in June 2025 when Trump mobilized nearly 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles over Governor Newsom’s vehement objections.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals formally returned control of the California National Guard to Governor Newsom on December 31, 2025, after Justice Department lawyers withdrew their appeal to maintain federal control. California Attorney General Rob Bonta celebrated the legal triumph, stating his office “worked nights and weekends to defend the Constitution and bring about an end of the President’s unlawful overreach of executive power.” The deployment had cost California taxpayers approximately $120 million over seven months, with troops primarily protecting federal buildings rather than conducting street patrols.

Despite Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s claim that Los Angeles would have “burned down” without federal intervention, LAPD records showed violent crime and property crime fell only 8% during the deployment period. This modest reduction raises serious questions about whether the massive federal expenditure and constitutional crisis were justified by actual public safety needs. Trump’s announcement on Truth Social declared that “Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago were GONE if it weren’t for the Federal Government stepping in,” though the crime data suggests these cities were functioning normally throughout the deployment.

Governor Newsom’s successful legal challenge represents a significant victory for state sovereignty and constitutional governance against federal overreach. The Supreme Court’s ruling establishes crucial precedent limiting future presidents from commandeering state military forces without proper legal justification or state consent. Multiple judges, including conservative appointees, expressed skepticism about the administration’s claims that deployment decisions were unreviewable by courts, demonstrating broad judicial concern about unchecked executive power.

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Venezuela

Massive NY protest against Trump's war on Vanezuela

Rachel Maddow on Venezuela: “There are very few Americans right now who have any idea why the United States did this. If this was about drug trafficking then why did President Trump just pardon the former President of Honduras who was convicted of sending hundreds of tons of drugs into the US?”

NY Times -   The Constitution requires Congress to approve any act of war. Yes, presidents often push the boundaries of this law. But even Mr. Bush sought and received congressional endorsement for his Iraq invasion, and presidents since Mr. Bush have justified their use of drone attacks against terrorist groups and their supporters with a 2001 law that authorized action after the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Trump has not even a fig leaf of legal authority for his attacks on Venezuela.

                                        The Kobeissi Letter

Bernie Sanders on Venezuela

America is now a dictatorship

Sam Smith - With the unconstitutional powers used by Donald Trump against  Venezuela and the assumption that one man has the right to execute these powers, it is fair to say that America's days as a democracy are over and we are now under a dictatorship. Further, the free press  - illustrated by the weakness of its challenge to this historic disaster - is doing to little to rescue us. 

The comments of a president treating the takeover of Venezuela as  acorrect function of his office was one of the most bitterly sad TV shows I have ever seen. While his paste proposed takeover of Greenland could be dismissed as hype, the same can't be said of Venezuela. After all, he did it. 

Our president feels its is proper to take over another country that he doesn't like.  That is not something allowed by a constitutional democracy but rather a sure sign that dicatorship is now par for the course.

Donald Trump

Trump gets helped upon a plane 

Meanwhile. . .

Trump becomes the first US president to bomb 7 countries in one year

The Jan 6 case

ABC News -   A former FBI agent accused of egging on rioters to attack police during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol is now serving in the Justice Department as part of the so-called "Weaponization Working Group," sources familiar with the appointment confirmed to ABC News.

Jared Wise was on trial when he was pardoned as part of President Donald Trump's sweeping series of pardons and commutations for nearly all of the more than 1,500 individuals charged in connection with the Capitol attack.

According to sources, Wise is now serving in the department as an investigator and counselor to Ed Martin, the former interim D.C. U.S. Attorney, whose permanent nomination to the post was rejected by Republican senators concerned over his past vocal advocacy for Jan. 6 rioters and other controversial actions he took in Trump's first four months in office.

Wise was charged in May 2023 and later indicted, with prosecutors pointing to videos showing him yelling "Kill 'em!" repeatedly as rioters attacked police outside of the Capitol building. He also allegedly entered the building for roughly nine minutes and then continued shouting at police.

“You guys are disgusting," Wise allegedly said in body camera footage recorded by law enforcement. "I’m former law enforcement. You’re disgusting. You are the Nazi. You are the Gestapo. You can’t see it. . . . Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!”

Tesla sales dropped again inn 2025

Axios - Tesla vehicle sales declined for a second consecutive year in 2025, hitting a low since 2022. The figures put CEO Elon Musk's company behind Chinese competitor BYD as the world's leading electric vehicle maker.

Tesla said it delivered 1.64 million in 2025, down 9% from the previous year..

• Sales suffered in 2025 over backlash to Musk's political ties to President Trump. They were also hurt by the expiration of a $7,500 tax credit that was phased out by the Trump administration at the end of September.

What One of the Boats Trump Struck Was Carrying

New Republic - Detritus from one of the Caribbean boat strikes has washed up on the Colombian peninsula, and it’s not what the White House claimed.

The boats apparently wrecked in a November 6 strike arrived on Colombia’s Indigenous-governed Guajira Peninsula two days later with two mangled bodies and torched jerrycans. But at least one of the vessels also carried evidence of the drugs it was smuggling onboard, reported The New York Times: emptied packets of marijuana.

The Trump administration has justified its unfettered air strike campaign on the basis that small watercraft in the Caribbean were funnelling fentanyl into the U.S. To further legitimize the militaristic response—which so far has killed at least 107 people since early September—the president purported that the boats were run by “narcoterrorists” from Venezuela, and designated fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction.”

But marijuana, a drug synonymous with the “peace and love” movement of the 1960s, is about as far from a tool of war as you can get. The substance is already legal in the vast majority of the U.S.: 40 states permit its use for medicinal purposes, while 24 states allow residents to get high for any reason whatsoever.

Earlier this month, Trump himself signed an executive order to expedite the process of reclassifying weed from a Schedule I drug—which are considered to have high abuse rates with little to no medical application—to a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act.

Overall, there seems to be little evidence that the boats have been headed toward the United States. In a classified meeting with U.S. lawmakers two weeks ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and State Secretary Marco Rubio revealed that the Trump administration was aware the boats were bound for Europe rather than America. They also disclosed that the administration had no intelligence indicating that fentanyl was coming out of Venezuela, but rather that some of the boats were believed to be carrying cocaine.

The year in climate

Trump increases illegal war against Venezuela

 Time -  President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States had captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro after carrying out a "large-scale" strike against the country.

The extraordinary attack follows months of pressure from the Trump Administration on Maduro to cede power in the South American country over long-standing accusations of involvement in drug trafficking and election rigging.

It represents the largest U.S. military operation in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama, and is the second major military campaign launched by the president since returning to office a year ago.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said Maduro and his wife had been "captured and flown out of the Country," adding that the operation "was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement."

Axios - American interventionism is back, in Trumpian technicolor, Axios' Dave Lawler reports.

• In just under a year, Trump has conducted massive strikes on Iran's nuclear program, bombed six additional countries, most recently Nigeria, appointed himself chair of a governing board for Gaza, and sent a massive flotilla to Venezuela to blow up drug boats and, it's now clear, to depose a sitting world leader.
• He's done most of that without seeking approval from Congress or trying to build any kind of international legitimacy.

MS NOW -   “The legal basis for the strike inside Venezuela is very murky, including because covert action is used when the U.S. government intends to keep its hand hidden, not boast about it publicly,” said Matthew Waxman, a Columbia Law professor specializing in constitutional war powers.

Axios -   President Trump is already being blasted by congressional Democrats for ordering strikes on military targets in Caracas, as part of an overnight operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro.

 The lawmakers say the president blatantly overstepped his authority by not seeking congressional authorization for the operation beforehand.

The strikes were reportedly carried out against Venezuelan anti-air and other military targets in order to protect U.S. personnel carrying out Maduro's capture.

Republicans have praised and defended the move, with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) saying Trump "likely" acted under his authority in Article II of the U.S. Constitution to defend American troops overseas.

Life expecdtancy

The Green Dragon Tavern

@greendragonhq

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Democrat states have life expectancies that are on par with Canada, Germany, and Poland. While Republican states have life expectancies on par with Honduras, North Korea, Bangladesh, and Nicaragua. Canada - 81.6 Hawaii – 80.7 years Germany - 80.5 years Albania - 79.6 Washington – 79.2 years Minnesota – 79.1 years Massachusetts – 79.0 years Connecticut – 78.9 years New Jersey – 78.8 years New York – 78.7 years California – 78.6 years Poland - 78.51 years Colorado – 78.5 years New Hampshire – 78.4 years States with the lowest life expectancy, and some countries to compare: Mississippi – 71.9 years West Virginia – 72.8 years Honduras - 73 years Louisiana – 73.1 years Alabama – 73.2 years North Korea - 73.6 years Tennessee – 73.8 years Arkansas – 73.8 years Kentucky – 74.0 years Oklahoma – 74.1 years New Mexico – 74.5 years Bangladesh - 74.6 years South Carolina – 74.8 years Nicaragua - 74.9 years