Run Venezuela? The Trump Regime Can’t Even Run the United States

Yet another distraction from our economic woes. Or is it about Epstein?

Richard Eskow in Common Dreams

Read it in the news:

“Economic Confidence Drops to 17-Month Low”
—Gallup, December 4, 2025

“Satisfaction with U.S. healthcare costs is the lowest Gallup has recorded … since 2001.”
—Gallup, December 15, 2025

“ACA credits expire, leading to sharp rise in health insurance premiums.”
—WANF TV Atlanta, January 1, 2026

“We’re going to run (Venezuela) until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”
—Donald Trump, January 3, 2026

The commentary pretty much writes itself. As surely as night follow day, the Trump Administration was bound to do something to distract Americans from their well-founded economic fears—especially from a health cost crisis Trump’s party just made vastly worse. And all that Venezuelan oil looks mighty attractive from an oligarch’s perspective.

But “run Venezuela”? Shouldn’t they do a better job running this country first? Let’s start with healthcare. The Affordable Care Act is what programmers used to call a “kludge”; it’s a Rube Goldberg contraption whose goal is to mitigate the pain caused by America’s so-called healthcare “system.” America’s healthcare crisis can’t truly be fixed until the profit motive is removed.

Nevertheless, the ACA has provided at least some healthcare coverage to millions of people. That’s better than nothing—much better. The premium tax credits are a wealth transfer from the public to the private sector. But without them—and with no other system in place—millions of people will soon face disastrous monthly premium hikes. If they don’t pay them—and many won’t be able to afford it—they’ll face financial ruin if they become sick or injured.

We can recognize the flawed nature of the ACA and still see that these Republican cuts are inhumane and indefensible.

“We can’t afford it,” the Republicans argue. But that raises the obvious question: If not, then how can we afford to “run Venezuela”? Besides, they’ve got work to do right here.

Sure, the economy is doing pretty well—for the investor class. But even that limited success is hanging by a thread. It’s driven by an AI bubble that will almost certainly burst, wreaking economic havoc when it does. Meanwhile, millions of households are struggling with the cost of living (click on images to expand):

Visual Capitalist/Statista

More than 43 million Americans live in poverty, including one child in seven:

Source: Annie E. Casey Foundation

The housing shortage is causing widespread pain as homes become increasingly unaffordable for most workers:

The labor outlook is “cooling,” as the economists say. But even that doesn’t count the most critical element of the job market, which is the ability to find jobs that actually pay a living wage:

Young people are especially hard-hit:

“Energy affordability” is a growing crisis, too. The average American household paid $124 per month more on its utility bill in the first nine months of 2025 and rates are still rising, with no end in sight:

Oh, and the New START treaty will expire in a few weeks, leaving the world with no meaningful limits on the possibility of a new nuclear arms race:

Nuclear catastrophe? It’s not impossible. Doesn’t that warrant some attention from this country’s leaders?

You get the idea. With all these problems to solve, our leaders have decided the right thing to do is—invade Venezuela. That won’t be an easy ride. It’s a country of 28 million people and its terrain that includes jungles, deserts, and mountains.

With all these disasters at home, it’s a safe bet we’re not wanted in Venezuela for our management expertise. In fact, most Venezuelans don’t want us there at all:

Most Venezuelans think the US is only doing it “because of the oil”:

The question, translated: “Do you believe that a potential military invasion against Venezuela would aim to overthrow the president in order to seize the oil, or do you think it would be to combat drug trafficking?” The headline: “90% believe that an invasion would aim to overthrow Maduro because of the oil.”

To be fair, we are only doing it because of the oil. Mostly, anyway.

Most Americans don’t want us in Venezuela, either:

In fact, most Americans are sick of our government’s seemingly endless addiction to foreign military adventurism:

And yet, here we are.

This is a desperate resource grab by Trump and the other overseers of this dying economic system. It’s also an obvious and deliberate distraction from the many problems here in the United States. And we all know they’re doing it for their benefit, not ours.

Like the saying goes: it’s all about the grift. But at what price for the rest of us?

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Richard Eskow is a journalist who has written for a number of major publications. His weekly program, The Zero Hour, can be found on cable television, radio, Spotify, and podcast media.

Why he did it

Why Kamala should have been President

This HIV Expert Refused To Censor Data, Then Quit the CDC

Researcher stands up for honesty and integrity in medical research

Amy Maxmen 

What a difference a year makes. In this 2024
CDC photo, Dr. Weiser and his colleagues toast
progress in fighting HIV/AIDS. 

John Weiser, a doctor and researcher, has treated people with HIV since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. He joined the CDC’s HIV prevention team in 2011 to help lead its Medical Monitoring Project, the only in-depth survey of HIV across the United States. The project has shaped the country’s response to the epidemic over two decades, but the Trump administration censored last year’s findings and stopped funding it.

Weiser spoke with KFF Health News on the evening before World AIDS Day, which the U.S. government, for the first time since 1988, didn’t acknowledge this year. That was only the latest blow to efforts to combat HIV. The Trump administration has cut funds to provide lifesaving HIV care abroad, withheld money to prevent and treat HIV in the U.S., and fired HIV experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Weiser was fired from the CDC during mass layoffs in April, was rehired in June, and then resigned. He continues to treat patients at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. In November, he published an article that warns against complying with presidential orders to censor data about transgender people.

The following conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Worried about statins?

Here’s what the evidence shows

Dipa Kamdar, Kingston University

Few medicines have sparked as much debate as statins. Cardiologists often describe them as life-saving, while some patients remain wary of side effects or uneasy about taking a daily pill.

Statins sit at the intersection of medical treatment and everyday lifestyle because high cholesterol is strongly influenced by factors such as diet, physical activity, weight and smoking. Although statins are prescribed based on clinical evidence, their use often prompts questions about whether cardiovascular risk should be reduced primarily through medication, lifestyle change, or a combination of both.

Statins are a group of drugs that block an enzyme called HMG-CoA reductase. This enzyme plays a central role in the liver’s production of cholesterol. Cholesterol is a fatty substance the body needs to build cell membranes, produce hormones, make vitamin D and generate bile, which helps digest fats.

Cholesterol travels through the bloodstream attached to proteins, forming particles known as lipoproteins. The most familiar are low density lipoprotein (LDL) and high density lipoprotein (HDL).

LDL is often labelled “bad cholesterol” because high levels can lead to fatty build-ups inside arteries, while HDL helps transport excess cholesterol back to the liver. Another important blood fat is triglycerides, which, when elevated, also increase cardiovascular risk.

Cholesterol itself is not harmful. Problems arise when LDL and triglyceride levels remain too high for too long. This can lead to atherosclerosis, a condition in which fatty deposits narrow and stiffen arteries, increasing the risk of heart attacks and strokes. By lowering LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, statins reduce the likelihood of these deposits forming.

Large clinical trials have consistently shown statins to be effective. A major review found that statins significantly reduce the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

The size of the benefit depends on a person’s underlying cardiovascular risk and how much their LDL cholesterol is lowered. Reflecting this evidence, national guidelines recommend statins for primary prevention in people at higher risk who have not yet had cardiovascular disease, and secondary prevention for those with established disease.

Given this strong evidence, why do statins still generate so much hesitation?

Like all medicines, statins have side effects. Common ones include headache, digestive upset and dizziness. More serious but uncommon or rare effects include liver inflammation and muscle problems.

Trump’s second term is reshaping US science with unprecedented cuts and destabilizing policy changes

It will take a long time to repair the damage, if it's even repairable

Kenneth M. Evans, Rice University

Donald Trump has very different priorities

Before 2025, science policy rarely made headline news. Through decades of changing political winds, financial crises and global conflicts, funding for U.S. research and innovation has remained remarkably stable, reflecting the American public’s strong support for investing in basic science.

In his first year back in office, Donald Trump’s relentless attempts to overhaul the federal support system for research and development has put science policy back above the fold.

As a policy scholar, I study how American presidents treat science and technology. Trump is far from the first president to be deeply skeptical of the academic research community. But his second-term actions have set a new precedent for the level of mutual distrust and its consequences for scientists.

Unlike Trump’s first term, which lacked a coherent science policy beyond its attempted across-the-board cuts to federal research agencies, his current administration has used science policy as a vehicle for its ideological goals. Policy levers historically used to drive science in the national interest have instead been repurposed to punish universities, limit freedom of inquiry and promote private sector interests.

Given science and technology’s critical importance to the nation’s economic growth, industrial competitiveness and national security, it’s worth taking a look back at science policy in 2025, a year of unprecedented reform – and resilience.

Whatever Happened to Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ for American Workers?

Trump NEVER intended to help working people - he just lied and said he would

By Lawrence S. Wittner

Although Donald Trump’s Department of Labor announced in April 2025 that “Trump’s Golden Age puts American workers first,” that contention is contradicted by the facts.

Indeed, Trump has taken the lead in reducing workers’ incomes. One of his key actions along these lines occurred on March 14, 2025, when he issued an executive order that scrapped a Biden-era regulation raising the minimum wage for employees of private companies with federal contracts. Some 327,300 workers had benefited from Biden’s measure, which produced an average wage increase of $5,228 per year. With Trump’s reversal of policy, they became ripe for pay cuts of up to 25 percent.

America’s farmworkers, too―many of them desperately poor―are now experiencing pay cuts caused by the Trump administration’s H-2A visa program, which is bringing hundreds of thousands of foreign agricultural workers to the United States under new, lower-wage federal guidelines. The United Farm Workers estimates that this will cost U.S. farm workers $2.64 billion in wages per year. 

As in the past, Trump and his Republican Party have blocked any increase in the federal minimum wage―a paltry $7.25 per hour―despite the fact that it has not been raised since 2009 and, thanks to inflation, has lost 30 percent of its purchasing power. By 2025, this wage had fallen below the official U.S. government poverty level.

Furthermore, the Trump administration is promoting subminimum wages for millions of American workers. 

Although the Biden administration had abolished the previous subminimum wage floor for workers with disabilities by bringing them up to the federal minimum wage level, the Trump Labor Department has restored the subminimum wage. In addition, the Trump administration is proposing to strip 3.7 million home-care workers of their current federal minimum wage guarantee.

Trump’s Labor Department has also scrapped the Biden plan to expand overtime pay rights to 4.3 million workers who had previously lost eligibility for it thanks to inflation. 

And it is promoting plans to classify many workers as independent contractors, thereby depriving such workers of key labor rights, including minimum wages and overtime pay.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on December 18, 2025 that, from November 2024 to November 2025, the annual growth of the real wages (wages adjusted for inflation) of American workers had fallen to 0.8 percent.

Why is Trump going after Venezuela, Nigeria and Greenland?

January 6: Silent vigil

Good summary statement from Rep. Magaziner on Trump war on Venezuela

Offshore Wind Developers Fight ‘Unlawful’ Trump Admin Attacks in Court

“Trump’s attack on offshore wind is really an attack on our economy,” said Sen. Jack Reed."

Jessica Corbett for Common Dreams

Developers behind two of the five offshore wind projects recently targeted by the Trump administration took action in federal court this week, seeking preliminary injunctions that would enable construction to continue while the legal battles play out.

Empire Offshore Wind LLC filed a civil lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday, challenging the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) December 22 stop-work order, which the company argued is “unlawful and threatens the progress of ongoing work with significant implications for the project” off the coast of New York.

“Empire Wind is more than 60% complete and represents a significant investment in U.S. energy infrastructure, jobs, and supply chains,” the company highlighted. “The project’s construction phase alone has put nearly 4,000 people to work, both within the lease area and through the revitalization of the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal.”

The filing came just a day after a similar one in the same court on Thursday from the joint venture between Skyborn Renewables and the Danish company Ørsted, which is developing Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut. That project is approximately 87% complete and was expected to begin generating power as soon as this month.

“Sunrise Wind LLC, a separate project and wholly owned subsidiary of Ørsted that also received a lease suspension order on December 22, continues to evaluate all options to resolve the matter, including engagement with relevant agencies and stakeholders and considering legal proceedings,” the Danish firm said. That project is also off New York.

As the New York Times noted Friday: “At stake overall is about $25 billion of investment in the five wind farms. The projects were expected to create 10,000 jobs and to power more than 2.5 million homes and businesses.”

The other two projects targeted by the Trump administration over alleged national security concerns are Vineyard Wind 1 off Massachusetts and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind. The developer of the latter, Dominion Energy, launched a legal challenge in federal court in Virginia the day after the DOI’s lease suspension order, and a hearing is scheduled for this month.

Rhode Islanders may qualify for settlement cash in beef overcharge settlement

If you purchased beef products between August 1, 2014 and December 31, 2019, you may be entitled to a cash payment from Settlements 

The United States District Court for the District of Minnesota 

Court-Approved Notice.

If you are eligible, you must file a claim by June 30, 2026.

Who Is Included in the Settlement?

You are included—and may be eligible for a payment—if you are a person or entity who indirectly purchased any of the following beef products for personal consumption between August 1, 2014, and December 31, 2019: 

• Beef (fresh or frozen) made from chuck, loin, rib, or round primal cuts. More details regarding the different beef products included in the Settlements is available at www.OverchargedForBeef.com.
• Purchased in one of the following states/jurisdictions (known as "Repealer Jurisdictions" for this case): Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

"Indirectly purchased" means you did not buy the beef products directly from one of the Defendants. Instead, you bought it at a grocery store or supermarket.

Israel boots Doctors without Borders, other aid groups, from Gaza

Many in Gaza to ‘Lose Access to Critical Medical Care’ as Israel Suspends Doctors Without Borders

Jake Johnson

The Israeli government said that Doctors Without Borders, one of the largest medical organizations currently operating in Gaza, is among the 25 humanitarian groups that will be suspended at the start of the new year for their alleged failure to comply with Israel’s widely criticized new registration rules for international NGOs.

According to the Associated Press, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs “said the organizations that will be banned on January 1 did not meet new requirements for sharing staff, funding, and operations information.” The Israeli government specifically accused Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), of “failing to clarify the roles of some staff that Israel accused of cooperation with Hamas and other militant groups,” AP reported.

In addition to providing medical assistance to desperate Palestinians, MSF has been an outspoken critic of what has it described as Israel’s “campaign of total destruction” in Gaza. The group said in a report released last December that its teams’ experiences on the ground in Gaza were “consistent with the descriptions provided by an increasing number of legal experts and organizations concluding that genocide is taking place.”

EDITOR'S DISCLOSURE: Cathy and I have been long-time major donors to Doctors without Borders. They send doctors and medical professionals into war, plague, famine and disaster zones regardless of the risk to render aid to all who need it. Since the October 2023 Hamas attack and ensuing Israeli retaliation, 15 staff have been killed in the fighting.  - Will Collette 

Trump takes his "national security" policies to a truly bizarre level

Make America Weak

David R. Lurie

Trump during his press event at Mar-a-Lago (Tasos Katopodis/Getty) where he announced his plan for a "Golden Fleet" of giant, high-tech battleships at a time when drones are rendering large warships obsolete

The new White House “National Security Strategy” announced that the Trump regime will treat the democratically elected governments of most Western European nations as adversaries of the United States, and unveiled a plan to join longtime adversaries in seeking to undermine NATO and the European Union.

While such a course of action would gravely damage the US, it is of a piece with Trump’s assaults on the nation he was elected to lead.

As the first year of Trump’s would-be dictatorship concludes, it’s clear that the president considers the rules-based democratic and economic order a barrier to his goal of establishing an autocracy. Given his dictatorial ambitions, it makes perfect sense for his regime to cozy up to strongmen while treating America’s principal democratic allies as enemies.

The future of the United States, and likely of many of our allies, will depend on whether Trump’s systematic assaults on democratic nations and institutions here and abroad are successful.

Weakening allies, strengthening adversaries

Trump’s “National Security Strategy” declares that the US will focus on “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.” That amounts to a declaration that America will promote regime change in countries that remain governed by pro-democracy parties that support the existence of the EU and NATO.

In attempting to justify this bizarre remaking of US foreign policy, the “Strategy” complains that the leading democracies of Europe — which collectively represent one of the largest and most prosperous economic zones in the world — are in a state of crisis. It even declares they are at risk of “civilizational erasure,” purportedly because they — perish the thought — continue to permit immigration.

In place of our longstanding and prosperous European allies, the “Strategy” indicates Trump will attempt to build a new core of allies, comprised largely of those European nations that have elected highly nationalist (and in many cases, pro-Russian) governments, such as Hungary. It also implies Trumpers will try to use their newly reconstituted core of pro-Russian European allies as a mechanism for weakening both the EU and NATO, despite the fact that the US is the leader of the latter alliance and has long promoted the former.

In fact, the plan set forth in the “Strategy” document is already being implemented.

For example, Vice President JD Vance and then-Trump acolyte Elon Musk openly meddled in German politics earlier this year by encouraging citizens of that country to vote for the neo-fascist (and pro-Russian) AfD party.

And Trumpers not only valorize the authoritarian regime of Hungarian prime minister (and Trump stooge) Victor Orban, but have used Orban’s actions as models for their assaults on media, educational, and cultural institutions within the US.

Furthermore, Trump is now pressuring Ukraine — over the objections of European democracies — to accept “peace” terms that include surrendering territory in Donetsk that constitutes that nation’s bulwark against Russian invasion of the entire country. 

A Ukraine vulnerable to a complete invasion by Russia will, inevitably, also mean a Europe vulnerable to attack, particularly if Trump withdraws the bulk of US forces from the continent (which he’s already started doing).

Consistent with Trump’s now overt plan to effectively switch sides in Europe, his “peace” envoy Steve Witkoff declared that Russia — which nightly bombs Ukrainian in relentless terror attacks — “remains fully committed to achieving peace in Ukraine.” Meanwhile, Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, told a Turning Point USA audience over the weekend that the “deep state,” EU, and NATO are “undermin[ing] President Trump’s efforts towards peace” and scheming to “pull the US military into a direct conflict with Russia.”

If this increasingly explicit scheme to gut longstanding alliances with European democracies “succeeds,” it will not only be potentially catastrophic for Europe, but also for the US — the principal economic and political beneficiary of the post-war international order that Trump and his cronies are assaulting. Indeed, the Trump “Strategy” is entirely consistent with the goals of both Putin’s Russia and China’s authoritarian regime, both of which have long viewed the weakening of the Western alliance as a key part of their effort to displace the US as the leading power in the world.

Accordingly, Trump’s “Strategy” for weakening our allies in Europe is effectively a blueprint for weakening the United States.

The war within

Except you can't come back. Says ICE: "Self-deportation through
the CBP Home app is the best gift that an illegal alien can give
themselves and their families this holiday season. It’s a fast, free,
 and easy process: Just download the app, fill out your
information, and DHS will take care of the rest – including
arranging and paying for your travel back home."
This is real, not a joke.

Trump is the first president of any party to make it the US policy to gravely weaken the country’s standing in the world. 

Yet, as the first year of the his second term comes to a close, it has become clear that his efforts to sabotage America’s economic, political, and defense relationships with major democracies abroad are part and parcel of “policies” he’s been pursuing at home — all calculated to make our nation more susceptible to autocracy.

For instance, Trump’s scheme to culturally cleanse the US of the foreign born is succeeding, but at the great expense of the nation.

While he campaigned on a purported plan to “secure the border,” Trump and his acolytes have since made clear that their actual ambition was to gut nearly the entire post-war immigration system.

The scheme has been remarkably “successful” in that — for the first time in decades — Trump has engineered net negative emigration. The problem is that this comes at a grave cost. For decades, immigrants have been a crucial economic engine for the US, allowing our economy to grow and be far more resilient than virtually any peer country.

While Trumpers like Vance celebrate the expulsion of immigrants, contending it “frees up” homes and jobs for those who remain, the reality is that an aging US — one with fewer productive workers — will inevitably become less prosperous. The Trump regime, however, is more concerned about increasing the white and “native born” population for the sake of remaking of the nation. As Vance put it at the recent Turning Point gathering, his movement wants an America in which “you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s assault on trade has empowered America’s adversaries and competitors. He sold his unilaterally imposed tariff “policies” as a means of increasing prosperity at home, and of harming China, the US’s principal economic rival. But in fact, the direct opposite occurred.

The greatest beneficiary of Trump’s moves to hobble the participation of American companies in international markets has been China, which managed to offset many of its declines in exports to the US by increasing exports to other nations, many of them aggrieved by Trump’s actions. In addition, as Trump’s tariff scheme has begun to unravel due to growing inflation and retaliation, he’s rapidly made the US into a supplicant of China — the very nation he initially claimed he would bring to heel.

Trump and his emissaries have been reduced to begging President Xi to resume purchases of soybeans and other agricultural goods that China contracted to buy from other countries at a massive cost to American farmers. They’ve also been pleading for China to resume selling rare earth elements to the US, since limiting the availability of them, as China has been doing, could cripple many industries.

It’s now all but certain that Trump and his cronies will leave America’s role in the international markets that fueled our nation’s growth greatly impaired and diminished. But they are entirely willing to do such damage to our country, apparently because they believe a more inwardly focused (and less prosperous) America will serve their autocratic goals.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Trump is engaged in a comprehensive assault on the rule of law, once again to advance his dictatorial ends.

The rule of law is not merely an abstraction — it’s an asset that has been critical to America’s status as the center of international business and finance since the end of World War II. The expectation that contracts will be honored and that markets will be regulated in a predictable and largely corruption-free manner has given America a massive competitive advantage over autocratic nations. It has also made the US the preferred site for financial transactions and investments of most every kind, with incalculable economic benefits for the American people.

But Trump views such laws and rules as impediments to his personal power and has set out to undermine them in increasingly overt ways.

Trump’s Department of Justice has effectively stopped prosecuting whole categories of financial corruption. The president has also made a mockery of the nation’s legal system by openly selling pardons, especially to financial fraudsters with whom he appears to have a particular affinity. This activity amounts to an advertisement that the Trump regime is abandoning America’s commitment to adhere to the rule of law.

A glaring example of the administration’s replacement of ordered and regulated markets with a shadowy world of influence peddling is Trumpers’ exploitation of cryptocurrency markets, which Trump’s family and cronies have employed to accumulate what reportedly amounts to billions of dollars in wealth in just a matter of months. 

But for the president, the appearance that government actions are for sale to the highest bidders is a feature, not a bug.

Trump has transformed some of the nation’s largest publicly traded companies into mechanisms for him to extract personal and political benefits. For instance, he recently announced that he plans to meddle in the contest for the sale of Warner Brothers in favor of Paramount, a company now controlled by the Trump-supporting Ellison family, in part to ensure that CNN is transformed into a clone of Fox News.

This is not the first time Trump has interfered in markets to extract personal pecuniary and political benefits — he did the same thing in connection with the acquisition of Paramount by an entity controlled by the Ellisons.

Trump clearly relishes the prospect of replacing the infrastructure of regulatory and law enforcement agencies that have long insulated US financial markets from direct political meddling with an openly corrupt and authoritarian system in which the interests of Trump himself determine winners and losers. But when the rule of law in a country is displaced by arbitrary and unpredictable authoritarian rule, as happened in Putin’s Russia, the results are predictable: investors and companies flee to more stable environs as the economy declines.

The president and his cronies are, however, more than willing to make the US pay a high price for their aggrandizement.

High stakes

A year in to Trump 2.0, it’s clear that Trumpers do, indeed, have a strategy — one intended to weaken America at home and abroad.

A fully Trumped America will be a diminished nation, having squandered the assets of democracy, the rule of law, and a dynamic and growing economy — along with democratic allies — that have actually made America great, all so Trump can obtain the dictatorial control he craves.

In recent weeks, we have seen indications that the majority of the American people are beginning to recognize the depth of the threat Trump poses to the United States, let alone the world. But as his popularity diminishes and his political power becomes more contested, he’s likely to become more reckless and more determined to harm the nation he was elected to lead. Americans, therefore, must be prepared to defend their country with only greater vigilance and vigor.

Time to go