Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson need not be depicted for this, you wretched shrews.

The failure of our elites to hold Trump accountable for January 6th is as disgraceful as what happened on that awful day. Since 2010, 35 democratic leaders around the world have been criminally convicted. Only Trump went unpunished and unconstrained. Now he threatens democracy at home and abroad.

Will is absolutely correct. Just take Miller and some key MAGA media people at their own word:

If war is a continuation of politics by other means, sometimes the politics are dumb… 🙃

Trump's conducting illegal kill campaigns and military raids and 7 of the 47 Senators in opposition just voted to confirm a Trump nominee to the Pentagon. We can dream of what it will take to change the party eagerly cheering the killing, but a good first step would be opposition from the opposition

Miller is like a freshman who reads some Machiavelli or Morgenthau or yes, that other realist, and has the most simplest interpretation that ignores the actual concepts and logics like the security dilemma that actually explain some of international relations.

It’s genuinely wild that the United States spent decades building an elaborate rules-based international order which de facto cemented its permanent status as the dominant global hegemon, sustained by ideology rather than might, and now is just blowing it all up for literally no reason

Its a sign that things are going well that Americanist Political Scientists are really getting the comparative demonocracy/autocracy literature down pat.

Great statement. Now I hope Kelly doesn't vote to confirm ANY more Trump appointees.

It is so mind boggling. It’s as if they don’t even realize political mobilization even exists, never mind can be harnessed.

I extremely hate the policies and personality of Donald Trump to an insane degree but I’d be offended if China sent in team to kill a bunch of our civilians and military personnel and kidnap our leader and his wife and then declare that they now “ran” the United States, this isn’t hard

..."this is incompetent, inexperienced people. I think of Hegseth at the hinge point: it’s the president, the secretary of defense and the combatant commanders." Good interview. Thank you @jaculis.bsky.social for the link

The foreign policy of a personalist dictatorship. There are no constraints.

Something I haven’t captured well above is how many member states have said the future of Venezuela should be decided by the Venezuelan people. That sounds trite but is an argument about where sovereignty ultimately rests.

Was it @jrobson.bsky.social who wrote here some months ago about 4 scenarios for Canada under Trump's tariffs and threats? Her 'vassalage' scenario is getting more plausible by the day. PM Carney's milquetoast response to the Venezuela action show Canada's perception of its economic weakness.

Anjali is an essential follow for UN analysis!

For those Canadians cheering on Trump's military action in Venezuela, it might be worth recalling that you live in a country that Trump wishes to bend to his will through "economic force" and in a region that Trump says the US must "dominate."

Some good news today: @sepinwall.bsky.social says the Pitt s2 still rocks. Phew.

One of the sad strengths of the Trump Doctrine is the degree to which these guys just don't give a shit about anything. So much analysis seems stuck assuming there must be a point. Oil or regime change or likewise difficult durable goals. I think we grabbed them by the president just to say we did.

One of the most lopsided results you'll ever see in a poll, from our weekend Washington Post poll www.washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

Supporters of the Venezuelan action keep pointing out that there are no boots on the ground but the truth is are around 20,000 "boots at sea" which easily costs tens of millions of dollars a day to support.

This is designed to have a chilling effect on all retired service members. The message is that if you speak out, you risk your retirement pay.

My immediate take on Substack on the American regime change operation in Venezuela. It discusses among other things how such a FIRC is a predictable result of US FP towards Venezuela since the start of the 21st Century , to the likely wider long term damage /1 open.substack.com/pub/dovhlevi...

Another great and unfortunately necessary thread by @profsaunders.bsky.social explaining what we know about the dynamics that would be at work in this Venezuelan mess.

A huge amount of research shows that leaders balancing external and internal threats/interests usually prioritize the latter, esp. with their own armies. E.g. see @proftalmadge.bsky.social's great book The Dictator's Army @cornellupress.bsky.social 6/ www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

🧵Day 3 and we have a new meaning for "running Venezuela," courtesy of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the nation's top diplomat, who is in charge of Venezuela as well as the National Archives. We're going to insist they do what's in the US national interest. Time for some principal-agent theory. 1/

By the way, we talked about NATO a lot at our Year Ahead conference along with other Canadian defence issues and our seven years of work: saideman.blogspot.com/2026/01/seve...

The other thing about the Danish statement is: one way to read it is that they are saying they will seek a NATO response, but another way is to say that all this Greenland stuff is unnecessary since it is already under NATO protection. Of course, there is absolutely no reason for Trump's fixation.

To explain further the stakes of Greenland--NATO's existence--I wrote a quick post saideman.blogspot.com/2026/01/gree... To be clear, people have been questioning NATO's continued existence since the end of the cold war. But this is a huge threat to the alliance.

A reminder that as long as the US is in NATO, Article 5 cannot/will not be "invoked." It takes consensus and any member, especially its biggest and most powerful, can block consensus. But, yeah, the Danes are very, very concerned and rightly so.

I wish Canada had as much support from the Europeans as Denmark/Greenland does, but i get it. A) Greenland is a far more likely target B) Europeans are Europeans....

I saw someone semi-prominent on Twitter say this a few days ago and had to pause to reflect on how fucking lost humanity is.

Tomorrow is the 5th anniversary of the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. I’m proud of the work we did on the House January 6th Committee. January 6th should’ve been the end of a political movement based on a cult of personality, conspiracism, extremism & lies. Instead, it is now in power.

TLDR: Immigration is keeping America healthy. 🤷🏿‍♀️

No. No. No. Punitive processes make narrowly targeted programs *less* efficient and *more* costly. Because more scrutiny requires more bureaucracy. Punitive processes also make it *less* likely that people will get aid for which they qualify. Because of the roadblocks and stigma scrutiny creates.

So we apparently killed a bunch of civilians in Venezuela. Don't forget Hegseth closed all the offices that worked on things like reducing civilian casualties. I hope the jury remembers when it's time for his war crimes trial.

yep. i can identify any number of structural issues but at the end of the day the basic problem is the republican party. this has been apparent for at least 20 years. it is also an incredibly unpopular observation to make among “serious” people.

The framers were not infallible. Here is there biggest mistake 👇. There were no formal political parties as we understand them today, only a loose collection of interests.

And none of them are talking about the opposition that won the Venezuelan election in 2024

Reading the new Mark Twain biography with its litany of diseases that were so devastating back then and that RFK Jr thinks it’s so cool to bring back into our lives.

The only real thing that's happening is that the vanity of a rapidly aging, elderly pedophile has become the most important thing in the nation and, thus, the entire world

My one bit of rain on this parade: 17 games is one more game than 16.

As a point of contrast, if even SCOTUS, comprised of highly trained, experienced, and vetted legal experts, rarely reach total consensus on the legality of cases brought before them... do you really want the average military officer exercising a legal veto over the nation's elected leaders?

worse than info vacuum, as every military base has Fox playing 24/7

I am not a big New Years resolution guy, but I resolve to hit the unsubscribe button as much as I can as quickly as I can.

It's wild that the PM of a NATO member feels compelled to put out a statement like this vis-à-vis the US government.

The invasion of Venezuela is one thing, but Trump’s proposed plan to invade Cuba could seriously damage the credibility of the FIFA Peace Prize.

Yes, this is exactly the time to demand Democrats "do something." They can denounce Trump's actions as unconstitutional. They can state that he must be impeached and removed. They can make clear that all involved will be held accountable. These are the core duties of a role they all signed up for.

Agree. Too many believe that illegal orders are as clear cut as you describe or My Lai-like. When they come down to interpretation of POTUS’s Article II authorities, I don’t expect a platoon leader in 3/75 to weigh in. A lot has failed to get us to this point.

In the past week, the Trump-Vance admin: –Bombed Nigeria –Bombed Venezuela, abducted its leader –Bombed more ships in the middle of the ocean –Threatened military action in Iran, Colombia, and Cuba –Accepted the “Israel Prize” & hosted Netanyahu in Mar-a-Lago (despite his soldiers killing Americans)