A Small Man's Delusions Diminish Us All

Is America Now an Imperial Populist Oligarchy? - Paul D. Miller (The Dispatch) had to be written long before Trump told us the Department of Defense was buying into Venezuelan oil. It does not undercut the essay.

Remarkable US oil deal puzzles analysts - and angers many Venezuelans (BBC)

The Nobel Peace Prize winner and presidential hopeful, María Corina Machado, may choose not to publicly criticise President Trump, whose support she needs if she hopes to come to power. Others, though, have been more forthcoming.

"You chose to use the power of the United States not to liberate Venezuelans, but to ally yourself with our oppressors," said Venezuelan economist, Ricardo Hausmann, on social media, directing his comments at the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

"You opted to push through an asset seizure, an unconstitutional agreement with an illegitimate and oppressive government, instead of using the leadership of the United States to first restore constitutional order and democracy," he said.

The lack of an imminent election in Venezuela – or, indeed, any clear plan towards one – strikes many opponents as a betrayal.

Democrats concerned over Trump's massive Venezuelan oil deal 

Untested in court, Trump's new tariffs on Canada raise legal questions 

Pentagon Erupts Over Report on Classified Warnings Against Iran War (The New Republic).

 

How Trump Uses Dormant Laws to Amass Power  (The New Republic) both scares me and makes me pause at the efforts made by the Administration's lawyers to find obscure laws to bend to their purposes.

 The Trump administration’s enthusiasm for reviving moribund laws to accomplish its policy goals should inspire Congress to consider repealing or revising them. Trump and his allies have inflicted plenty of harm by violating federal laws during his second term. Another important problem is when he abuses and misuses existing laws. If Congress is interested in restoring its own primacy in our constitutional order, it should reconsider its own past missteps, as well.

Both of the court revivals illustrate the problem. While federal law authorizes the use of prize courts, they have not meaningfully existed since the Civil War. The Union Navy blockaded Southern ports throughout the war and seized military and civilian vessels alike. Once captured, the ships were typically brought to Union-held ports for disposal by prize courts. In 1863, the Supreme Court rejected legal challenges to the Southern blockade and upheld President Abraham Lincoln’s authority to seize and sell ships and goods acquired from it.

As Bloomberg noted when it reported on the prize courts’ revival earlier this week, the courts fell into disuse after the Spanish-American War ended in 1900 and were moribund after World War II. They reflect a nineteenth-century understanding of naval warfare where both a nation’s navy and private citizens acting as privateers could capture vessels on the high seas. The changing nature of naval warfare helped render these tactics obsolete: The average American boat owner these days would have an easier time sailing to the moon than capturing an armed enemy warship.

A Congressional Research Service report in 2024 noted that Congress abolished prize money for private citizens in 1899, and any proceeds from prize court cases now go into the Treasury’s general fund instead. The Trump administration’s plans, though still vague, appear to be centered on creating a faster, easier legal pathway to sell captured Iranian oil. This may be riskier for the administration than it looks, since it will give federal courts an opportunity to directly consider whether the ships and goods were lawfully seized. As Lincoln’s own experience showed, such cases can allow judges to consider legality of the war itself. The sixteenth president prevailed; the forty-seventh might not.

 Mark Carney: Why I Rejected Trump’s Trade Deal (The Walrus) left me thinking Carney is doing more to save us from MAGA stupidity than American voters.

We’ve been under no illusions. We recognized, from the start, that America has changed. Early last year, I observed that the decades-long process of steadily increasing integration between our economies was over. Our government understood before many that America would transform all of its commercial relationships, that it would put a series of tariffs on its closest allies, and use economic integration as a weapon. We recognize that sometimes its signature was written in pencil.  

Why do we have a President who has no respect for free speech? Trump vows to report NBC's Kristen Welker to the FCC over endorsement record report. Even more urgent, how did we let a man with such thin skin and gross self-regard into the Presidency?

Trump wrecked everything he ever touched; now he is doing to America's economy what he did to our standing in the world.

Convulsion in credit markets (Kitco News)

 

 No single solution exists for the mess we have created. There will be work, and there is no gain without pain.

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