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Opinion
Stop Waiting on the 25th Amendment to Save Us From Trump
Trump is not in office despite being out of his fucking mind—he occupies the seat of supreme power precisely because he is off the charts berserk and the only people who matter in the Crumbling States of America are making bank on it.
Jun 08, 2026
In a famous fable a group of mice discuss the catastrophic death toll from the local cat. One mouse has an epiphany—“We simply have to put a collar with a bell on the cat, and we’ll be warned every time she draws near.” The mice erupt in celebration. But suddenly one doleful rodent interrupts the celebrants with a shy question: "Who’s going to bell the cat?"
As an avid reader of lefty alternative media essays, I would venture that “bell the cat” polemics have become a prominent strategy employed by far too many writers. We bell cats in our daydreams, and then write about it with a triumphant brushing of the hands. How many pieces have we all read that call for removing President Donald Trump via the 25th Amendment?
I, personally, am easily convinced that Donald J Trump is... uh... unfit. His twitchy little evil finger on the so-called nuclear button defines a new plateau of dystopian absurdity that no past writer of dark fiction could have ever imagined. Do we need to clarify just how close to the stroke of doomsday this vapid monster brings us daily? His genocidal intent; his criminal impulses; his senseless drivel; his delusional narcissism; his racism; his sexism; and his urge to brag, attack, and threaten ought to make him a prime candidate for a golden sunset behind bars.
Most of the calls for the 25th Amendment rather coalesce around the aesthetics of Trump’s alleged mental decline—his malapropisms; his stumbling gait; his ridiculous boasting about “acing” a dementia screening exam; his late-night posting binges of misspelled, all-caps incoherent rage; his nodding off to sleep in meetings; and the sheer sight of his grotesque, sneering, confused, melting jowls seem to be enough of an argument.
In the Numbed States of America we have gravely limited capacity to respond to extinction threats. Some atavistic fantasy of reprieve keeps people mutely indoors.
Some calls for the 25th Amendment solution merely focus on Trump’s dwindling physical health—his mysterious hospital visits; his bruises; his enormously swollen ankles; his tiny eye slits peering in a senile, comatose manner from the drooping folds of a face that precariously hovers somewhere between a living visage and a death mask.
It seems odd, however, to argue that Trump ought to be seen as a broken shell of a man, eaten from the inside by diseases associated with aging. Do we really want him removed from office because of illness, or because he has spearheaded an assault against the environment, a new age of unregulated capitalist plunder, a total commitment to eviscerate human rights, and the intent to wage war as a matter of reflexive masculinist expression? Where have US bombs fallen, and where will they imminently rain down on hapless civilians?
Are Mogadishu and Copenhagen on the list? Havana? Have we blown Cuba up yet, or is that just a coming attraction scheduled for August or November? Donald J Trump’s trembling, tiny phallic finger nuzzling the button of eternal extinction seems like a surefire image to summon massive levels of public panic, to send hysterical crowds into the streets as if the Chicxulub Meteor had been scheduled for an encore. But in the Numbed States of America we have gravely limited capacity to respond to extinction threats. Some atavistic fantasy of reprieve keeps people mutely indoors. We have guardrails, constitutional guarantees—like the oft mentioned 25th Amendment. Why go crazy in an existential panic, when the Constitution has our back?
The 25th Amendment is not some hoary remnant of our overly esteemed Founding Fathers. No such Revolutionary War icons stared wisely into the crystal ball of future contingencies, and asked the question, “What do we do when a batshit lunatic captures the presidency?” No, the Founding Fathers had not imagined a president as being anything other than a generic advocate for the interests of the wealthy—a role that carried an implicit assumption of sanity in their constitutional eyes. The 25th Amendment was passed by congress in 1965, and ratified in 1967, perhaps inspired by the unraveling, warmongering man of the moment, Lyndon Baines Johnson. But more likely, the amendment shuffled itself into the Constitution as a matter of legislative busywork, a footnote barely acknowledged at the time. The 25th gives some clarity as to when the vice president steps into a presidential role, usually for a day or two when a presidential colonoscopy creates a window of momentary confusion. Congress voted on the amendment only two years after JFK’s assassination—fearful politicians had, one imagines, a lurking sense of unpredictable events.
The 25th Amendment, however, also creates a new protocol for the permanent removal of an unfit president—the vice-president along with the members of the Cabinet must vote to toss the leader out of office with a simple majority. From there, the decision to remove an unfit president passes to both houses of Congress where a two-thirds majority of each chamber must vote to remove the spiraling executive. In other words (at least in Trump’s case), a collection of morally deformed misfits must pool their distaste for the unravelling psychopath who appointed them. And then a collection of party sycophants must rise up against the leader who fills their trembling hearts with utter terror.
Maybe you believe that Trump should be removed because he is: 1) corrupt, 2) demented, 3) insane, 4) stupid, and 5) evil. Obviously, while all of these allegations rest on mountains of evidence; none of it resonates with a single cabinet member. The 25th Amendment is not a public plebiscite. You and I might easily agree that tearing up the White House to build a ballroom-bomb-shelter for a nuclear fetishizing war criminal might be an awful idea. But so what? The 25th Amendment is a private matter, a means of protection for the ruling class. If a president goes cuckoo for coco-puffs, the oligarchs can set things right. One might aptly assume that none of Trump’s shenanigans trouble the billionaire class.
So you and I do not get a vote according to 25th Amendment protocol. Here is an abbreviated list of those authorized to vote: 1) RFK Jr., 2) Linda McMahon, 3) Howard Lutnick, 4) Doug Burgum, 5) Chris Wright, 6) Pete Hegseth, 7) Marco Rubio... and so forth. If you believe that any of these names might vote to remove Trump, I suggest that you hurry (if you still have medical insurance) to take The Montreal Cognitive Assessment.
Trump is not in office despite being out of his fucking mind—he occupies the seat of supreme power precisely because he is off the charts berserk. The only people who matter in the Crumbling States of America make bank on Trump’s presidency. The oil executives, nuclear weapons manufacturers, planet destroying Big Tech moguls, insurance profiteers, and chemical poisoners are carving up the Earth like famished vultures alighting on a putrid carcass. If these predators don’t care about Trump’s decaying brain, it really doesn’t matter what you and I believe.
There is a means of removal—a real one, not a self-indulgent fantasy. It is called The 3.5% Rule, a theory that argues that regime change requires massive resistance involving 3.5% of the population taking to the streets until a resolution has been reached. It involves daily mobilization, not a two hour street festival every two months. In the US that means at least 11 million angry, undeterred resistors willing to endure a measure of personal inconvenience. It involves blocking traffic, getting arrested, boycotts, strikes, and international connections. We should be calling for foreign nationals to boycott and divest from US corporations. Or we can day dream about the 25th Amendment until Trump dies and hands over the throne to JD Vance.
As a general theme, we US citizens have far too much faith in alleged democratic process, and far too little passion for collective agency.
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Trump Is Trying to Shoot His Way Out of US Decline—It Won't Work
The president wants a 50% increase over last year’s Pentagon budget, to $1.5 trillion; a wiser policy would be to rethink how the US is to co-exist with other nations in what is emerging as a multipolar world.
Jun 08, 2026
The US empire is in decline. Compare it today to where it was only 30 years ago, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a “hyperpower,” then, almost inconceivably dominant with no challengers on Earth.
Since then, China has surpassed the US economically. Russia is rated No.1 militarily. The US has to borrow close to $2+ trillion per year (the annual federal budget deficit) just to keep the lights on. Its government based on checks and balances is under assault by a sleazy felon who wants to be king. It is wracked by social divisions that presage civil war.
President Donald Trump’s proposed solution to these problems is to shoot our way out. He wants a 50% increase over last year’s Pentagon budget, to $1.5 trillion. It is stupid in the measure to which it is excessive. It is suicidal to the extent it will degrade our security and our chances of improving national prosperity.
A wiser policy would be to rethink how the US is to co-exist with other nations in what is emerging as a multipolar world. That’s a big rethink. There’s another rethink coming as well: how we run the economy and what it is that actually accounts for national well-being.
The era when the US could dominate, intimidate, and expropriate the rest of the world is over. If it continues to push military power as its primary path forward it will continue to produce catastrophe.
Neither of these “rethinkings”—neither security nor the economy—will be easy. Both will go against existing failed doctrines and the powerful interests that back them. But, without doing this, we face the certainty of continuing national decline.
The highest-level rationale for rejecting a 50% increase in the Pentagon’s budget is that the military simply doesn’t win wars. Sure, it can knock off defenseless, pipsqueak principalities like Grenada, or Serbia, or Libya. But whenever it goes up against a committed adversary, especially one that fights back, it loses.
It lost in Vietnam to a nation of rice farmers that hadn’t even entered the industrial age. It killed more than 3 million Vietnamese, 4 million Southeast Asians when you count Laos and Cambodia. Yet, it lost.
It lost in Iraq, despite Iraq having been bombed for the prior decade, since the first Gulf War in 1991. Even in losing, the US killed more than a million Iraqis and spawned ISIS, one of the most virulent terrorist organizations ever let loose on the world.
It lost in Afghanistan, despite 20 years of trying to win. Afghanistan was a fourth-world country, with the Taliban literally living in caves. The Taliban had only hand-held firearms. No air force. No artillery. No satellite intelligence. The US still managed to lose.
Ukraine isn’t over, yet, but it is lost. Russia has crushed every one of the fabled “wonder weapons” the US has thrown at it. Remember when Trump was going to end the Ukraine war “on Day One”? We’re now past Day 500. It hasn’t ended because Trump is too weak to take the Loss on his watch. But it is lost.
Iran is the most recent—and damaging—case of catastrophic US military failure. It has a military budget one-one hundredth that of the US. Yet, Iran has “humiliated” the US, at least in the words of German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. Neocon heavyweight Robert Kagan recently wrote, “It’s hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored.”
None of these outcomes are equivocal. None are ambiguous. Is that the kind of outfit we want to give a 50% raise to when it can never come close to accomplishing its essential mission? And when it never learns from its repeated failures?
This is one of the major rethinks that will have to be conducted before any thought can be given to giving even one extra dollar to the Pentagon. We need to hear from the leadership what, exactly, is going to change. And we don’t mean fiddling at the margins. We mean at the core of the institution. For example…
US weapons systems are not made to be able to win in battle. They are made to deliver maximum profits to the weapons makers. Consider…
The Patriot missile system is easily baited with low-cost drones into giving away its location and radar signature. “Here I am! Here I am!” It is then a sitting duck for cruise missiles, hypersonic missiles, even swarms of the same low-cost drones.
The HIMARS rocket launcher uses common GPS as part of its guidance system. This is easily jammed resulting in missiles sometimes landing kilometers away from their intended targets. Its greatest value might be that every battery reliably drains $20 million from US taxpayers.
The M-1 Abrams tank wears a gigantic “shoot me” sign as soon as it’s spotted by one of the Russian drones that saturate the skies over Ukraine. The phrase “Fish in a barrel” comes to mind.
The bigger problem—bigger than weapons that don’t work—is that the US economy is not set up to support sustained, high intensity warfare. It gave up that capability decades ago, when it decided to de-industrialize so its companies could make more money building their stuff in China.
This is one of the reasons the US, via its proxy, Ukraine, has not been able to defeat Russia: it simply cannot supply the amount of ammunition Ukraine would need to prevail. Russia is firing 5-10 times the amount of artillery Ukraine is, and there’s literally nothing the US can do about it.
It would take decades to rebuild the weapons-focused industrial capacity the US possessed in the 1960s. Given the failure of the larger military enterprise in the US, there is no certainty that, once delivered, it would not be ill-conceived, misdirected, or already obsolete. In fact, given the Pentagon’s track record, the likelihood is that it would be all three.
The deepest problem for the US in grappling with increased Pentagon funding is rooted in its world view.
That was formed in the aftermath of World War II and reinforced following the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991. After both events, the US stood astride the world like a colossus, unchallenged in its ability to destroy any other country. Heady stuff but the world doesn’t sit still.
Countries do not acquiesce in their own destruction. They organize themselves to fight back; they collaborate with other countries for collective self-defense; and they employ asymmetric strategies to defeat predators, as Vietnam and Afghanistan did, and as Iran has just done. The US military hasn’t gotten the memo.
The unprovoked Iran debacle has boosted the fortunes of Russia and China, the US’ principal rivals. It has elevated Iran to being the hegemon in the Persian Gulf. That rise is abetted by a quartet of Islamic powers that are tired of US and Israeli bullying: Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. They are forming an “Islamic NATO” to keep the US and Israel out of the Gulf. This is super important.
Since World War II, the Middle East has been one of the most important regions in the world because of its vast oil wealth. A 1945 US State Department memo stated that “Arab oil resources constitute a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”
It is the Trump Pentagon, the Pete Hegseth Pentagon, that has destroyed the US’ control of that “greatest material prize in world history.” Actually, it’s even worse than that. By forcing 50% higher oil prices on the rest of the world, the US is draining wealth from every country on Earth. Many of those countries were already economically tenuous. There’s not a one that doesn’t despise the US for the extortion.
Is that an organization to which we want to grant an additional half a trillion dollars a year? Every year? So it can wreak more destruction on US fortunes? Before it rethinks itself and how it can contribute responsibly to US well-being in the world? It’s not even fatuous. It’s insane.
So, if a $1.5 trillion budget for the military is not the solution to the US woes, what is?
The US could more plausibly revive its fortunes in the world by investing the would-be increase in Pentagon spending into the civilian economy, instead.
It should invest in the nation’s people—education—so as to improve the economy’s productivity. It should invest in the nation’s infrastructure to increase the economy’s efficiency. It should invest in scientific research and development to boost innovation. And, it should re-invest in alternative energy to build resilience.
Productivity. Efficiency. Innovation. Resilience. Those are what built the US in the 20th century. They are the real foundations of national well-being. None of them are mysteries as far as how they lead to a better economy and a stronger state. None are conceptually hard to carry out.
Donald Trump is doing exactly the opposite.
He is gutting education, rescinding major infrastructure projects, savaging scientific research, and in all ways possible dismantling alternative energy. Those avenues all go against the essence of Trumpism, which is looting, shifting national resources and wealth to the already wealthy—Trump’s base.
Looting is what Trump’s proposed increase in the Pentagon budget is really all about. It is the Mother of All Trump Grifts. It is 277 times larger than his laughable $1.8 billion Slush Fund. It wants to hide the grift under the quasi-sacrosanct cover of military spending.
But it doesn’t begin to even acknowledge, to say nothing of fix, the deep failings in the military. It actively damages the economy by diverting scarce resources to parasitic looting that inflicts more harm than it heals.
Trump’s proposal improves the fortunes of the already very wealthy, as all things from Trump do. It lards them with $500 billion of unaccountable giveaways every year. It is a payoff to his rich backers and to the military Trump thinks he’s going to need to finish his overthrow of the government when the time comes, in 2028.
The era when the US could dominate, intimidate, and expropriate the rest of the world is over. If it continues to push military power as its primary path forward it will continue to produce catastrophes like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iran, all of which have degraded US power, influence, and standing in the world.
Alternatively, it can invest in the economy, in the American people, to create higher growth, income, equality, resilience, and prosperity. Instead of trying to shoot our way out of our self-inflicted decline, we can try to think our way out, earn our way out, work our way out. It’s not certain. Nothing ever is. But it has so much more dignity and likelihood of success about it.
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There Is No Military Solution to the Middle East's Political Issues
As difficult as it may be to imagine it now, what will be required is to work toward a regional security framework built on non-aggression, non-interference, and respect for the sovereignty of all states, and an end to the Israeli occupation and denial of Palestinian rights.
Jun 08, 2026
Back when the Obama administration was negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran, I asked National Security Council officials, “Why are you expending all of your economic leverage, and political and diplomatic resources on stopping Iran from developing a bomb they don’t have (and even if they did, could never use), while these same resources could be mobilized to pressure Iran to end its meddlesome behaviors that are destabilizing countries across the region?”
Despite this reservation, when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was announced, I supported it for three reasons. First, “the nuclear deal” was a negotiated settlement, which is always better than conflict. And despite White House spokespeople saying otherwise, Catherine Ashton, a top British diplomat involved in the negotiations, offered assurances that the deal was only a first step and that Iran’s behaviors would be next on the agenda. My hope was that sane minds would prevail and the initiated process might lead to a regional security compact and framework for peace.
The second reason was the way Republicans were working overtime to sabotage the agreement. It was unconscionable that they invited a foreign leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to address a joint session of Congress to urge members of Congress to vote against their own president. That was unacceptable interference in US politics.
The third (and maybe most unexpected) reason was the reaction to the JCPOA inside Iran. In a poll we conducted months after the deal was announced, we found a significant change in Iranian public opinion. Our earlier polls had demonstrated Iranians largely in favor of the regime’s spending money on allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. With the hint of peace, Iranians turned their priorities inward, with declining support for the regime’s foreign involvements. Instead of resources going abroad, Iranians wanted them to be used at home to create employment and opportunity. They also elevated their demands for greater personal freedom and political rights.
A decade after the JCPOA, the Middle East and the Gulf region are in a more precarious place than ever.
When, after Donald Trump’s election, he cancelled the Iran deal and began threatening the regime, we repeated the poll. The results had reverted. When citizens feel their country is being threatened, they tend to be less critical or to “rally around the flag.”
In the ensuing years, amid continuing signs of hostility from all sides—US, Israel, and Iran—the situation has shown no promise of improvement. Despite promising a better agreement, Trump did nothing more than deepen the animosity. The Biden administration was handed the thankless task of bringing a dead deal back to life—a task to which they never appeared to be fully committed. For its part, Iran continued to behave as a bad regional actor, all the while making threats and building its military capabilities.
Left on their own, the Arab Gulf states sought to create stability out of the possibility of chaos with which they were forced to contend. Unlike Iran, which had decided to use its wealth to export its influence and its anti-Western ideology, the Arab Gulf states had taken a different path, focusing on development, tourism, and trade. Their continued prosperity required a stable regional environment. And so, amid the tensions between the US and Israel and Iran, these Arab states made diplomatic and economic overtures to Iran, hoping for a more secure environment in the Gulf. They even hoped that the lure of joint prosperity and security might move the Iranians to join them in pursuing a more stable and prosperous future and convince the Israelis to resolve the longstanding wound of Palestinian dispossession and occupation, fostering conditions for regional peace. There was to be no such luck!
Israel wanted the economic benefits of regional peace but was unwilling to play its part. It intensified its occupation and the repression and strangulation of Palestinians. Then came October 7, and the region exploded. In short order, as Israel was pursuing a genocidal war in Gaza, Iran’s ally in Lebanon became engaged in a fateful and costly exchange with Israel in the north, a miscalculation with devastating consequences. The Israelis launched a deadly bombing campaign killing thousands of Lebanese, including Hezbollah’s leader. Months later, Israel and the US attacked Iran and killed Iran’s spiritual leader. Iran returned fire setting off a broader confrontation.
Negotiations produced what were called “cease fires” during which Palestinian and Lebanese death tolls continued to mount. When, egged on by Israel and Republican neocons, President Trump decided to “finish the job” by defeating the Iranian regime, the conflict took on a new character. Iran intensified its attacks on neighboring Arab Gulf states that housed US bases and closed the Straits of Hormuz, cutting off 20% of the world’s oil and gas supplies and negatively impacting the Gulf region’s economies.
Reading some of the Israeli, Arab, and US press is enough to make one pull out one’s hair. Some Israeli commentators from the far-right (and their American neocon acolytes) remain convinced that all that’s needed is another massive bombing campaign, coupled with yet a few more “targeted assassinations”—as if those tactics, which Israel has used repeatedly, will be any more successful than they’ve been in the past.
Meanwhile, hard-line Arab opinion writers celebrate the “brilliance” of Iranian tactics. It’s hard to see how incurring the enmity of their neighbors and putting their own and the region’s economic futures at risk can be construed as anything but reckless.
The US media is even more confounding, with its apparent addiction to breathlessly and uncritically following the barrage of confusing and contradictory posts coming from the president.
And so, a decade after the JCPOA, the Middle East and the Gulf region are in a more precarious place than ever. Although the situation is far more complicated than a decade ago, and the enmity on all sides so much deeper, the way forward is recognition that piecemeal approaches to the region, playing whack-a-mole, have only made the region less secure.
As difficult as it may be to imagine it now, what will be required is to work toward a regional security framework built on non-aggression, non-interference, and respect for the sovereignty of all states, and an end to the Israeli occupation and denial of Palestinian rights. This entails the recognition that there are no military solutions to the region’s political issues. In fact, each round of violence only exacerbates existing problems. It’s a tall order requiring leadership that is smart, courageous, and visionary. That may not exist today, but it’s necessary—and it’s the goal toward which we must direct our efforts.
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Please Note, Trump's Vicious Attack on Migrant Workers Has Not Created a Golden Age of Job Creation for Americans
It was Trumpian silly to think that mass deportation of immigrants was going to lead to a huge wave of jobs for native born workers.
Jun 08, 2026
It probably is not a surprise to most people outside the Trump administration, but it looks like their mass deportation has not done much to help the native-born workforce. The unemployment rate for native-born workers in May was 4.2%. That’s up from 4.1% last May, and 3.8% in May of 2024, when Joe Biden was in the White House, and immigrants were taking all the jobs.
This outcome shouldn’t be a big surprise to people who have given the issue much thought. Most of the jobs that immigrants do are not ones that native-born workers are lining up for. Few people born in this country want to work on farms picking lettuce or tomatoes or in meat-processing plants. It’s the same story with low-paying jobs such as home health care aides or custodians.
It was Trumpian silly to think that mass deportation of immigrants was going to lead to a huge wave of jobs for native born workers. In fact, as much research has shown, immigrant workers tend to act as complements to native-born workers, not substitutes.
This is perhaps most clearly seen in the construction industry, where close to 30% of the workforce are immigrants. The availability of lower-cost immigrant labor allows many projects to go forward that would not otherwise. In this way, it is a net job gainer for native-born workers. This is likely true in many other areas as well.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean that immigrants never lower the wages of native-born workers. There are likely cases where workers on H1-B visas have reduced the wages of workers in some occupations, even if the effect of the program in general may still be positive. I am also confident that if we eased the immigration barriers to foreign-trained doctors, the pay of our doctors would not still be twice as high as in other wealthy countries, thereby lowering healthcare costs.
Also, negative impacts may not be reversible. There is now solid evidence that opening trade to China cost the US millions of manufacturing jobs. That doesn’t mean that putting up tariffs will bring the jobs back. Half a century ago, the meat-packing industry had many good-paying union jobs that were later taken by low-paid immigrants. Chasing away immigrants now will not bring those good-paying jobs back.
Anyhow, the results to date are clear. Trump’s mass deportation has not led to any sort of windfall for native-born workers. As the Trumpers say, “Trump was wrong about everything.”
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