Minnesota Is a Turning Point

How peaceful protest — and undeniable brutality — are starting to change minds

For weeks, Minnesota has been at the center of something the Trump administration hoped to avoid: sustained, peaceful protest colliding with images and facts that are hard to explain away.

Federal immigration enforcement has long been controversial. What’s different now is who is being affected, how visible the violence has become, and how little the official explanations are holding up.

The result is something rare in American politics: the needle is beginning to move.

When “law enforcement” explanations stop working

The killing of Renee Good, shot by a federal immigration agent during an enforcement operation in Minneapolis, became the flashpoint. According to reporting from the Associated Press, she was not armed, was not suspected of a violent crime, and posed no immediate threat. Yet she was killed anyway.

Within days, federal officials closed ranks. The Department of Justice declined to open a civil-rights investigation. ICE defended the agent’s actions. Administration officials insisted the operation was lawful and necessary.

But the story didn’t fade. It spread.

Video footage, eyewitness accounts, and independent reporting continued to surface. So did protests — not riots, not chaos, but large, disciplined, nonviolent demonstrations involving faith leaders, labor groups, families, and ordinary residents.

The administration expected outrage from activists. What it didn’t expect was skepticism from people who usually give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt.

Even the lawyer representing the ICE agent who fired the fatal shot publicly acknowledged what many Americans were thinking: ICE has gone too far.

That’s not a radical talking point. That’s a warning from inside the system.

Peaceful protest is doing what force can’t

Minnesota’s response has been notable not just for its size, but for its restraint.

Protesters shut down streets. Clergy members staged sit-ins. Workers organized economic boycotts. Communities formed rapid-response networks to document ICE activity — not to interfere, but to make it visible.

No burning buildings. No mobs. No excuses.

That matters, because it stripped away the administration’s favorite defense: “law and order.”

When protest remains peaceful and the violence still comes from the state, people notice.

When the victims are neighbors, nurses, parents, and U.S. citizens, it’s harder to dismiss them as “others.”

And when images of masked federal agents with military equipment show up in American cities, the question stops being about immigration status and starts being about power.

The cracks are showing — even on the right

The Wall Street Journal reports that senior Trump advisers, including Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, are doubling down publicly on aggressive tactics. Privately, however, Republicans are starting to worry about the political cost.

That worry isn’t coming from progressive activists. It’s coming from libertarians, civil-liberties conservatives, and voters who supported strong borders but did not sign up for unchecked federal force inside U.S. communities.

Polling now shows rising support — including among Republicans — for limiting ICE’s authority or fundamentally restructuring the agency. That would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Even Texas Governor Greg Abbott, hardly a critic of immigration enforcement, publicly questioned whether ICE’s tactics in Minnesota are sustainable.

That’s not a conversion. But it’s a crack. And cracks are how change starts.

Why this moment feels different

America has seen immigration protests before. Many were ignored. Some were crushed. Others faded.

Minnesota is different for three reasons:

1. The victims are undeniable. This isn’t an abstract policy debate. It’s dead Americans, documented on camera.

2. The protests are disciplined. Without violence to point to, official narratives collapse under scrutiny.

3. The coalition is widening. Faith leaders, unions, libertarians, moderates, and disillusioned conservatives are now in the same conversation.

This isn’t about abolishing borders or ignoring the law. It’s about whether federal agencies can operate without meaningful oversight, transparency, or accountability — and whether Americans are willing to accept that.

Increasingly, the answer is no.

A necessary pause

Before anything else, we should name what this is: grief.

None of this analysis — none of the political or cultural interpretation — is meant to minimize the loss of life — not Renee Good’s, not Alex Pretti’s, not anyone’s.

Renee was a 37-year-old mother whose death shocked her community and raised urgent questions about when and how force should be used. Alex was a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, a caregiver who had spent his life helping others — and who was killed while trying to document and de-escalate a situation during a protest. His family, friends, and patients are left grieving and demanding answers, even as competing narratives emerge about what happened.

Talking about what this moment means — about shifting public opinion and how peaceful protest breaks through denial — is not meant to turn their deaths into something useful. It’s to make sure they are visible, and that Americans understand what happened in their names.

This isn’t abstraction. It’s real pain. It’s real families. And it’s a reminder that when a society tolerates the killing of its own citizens without accountability, something is deeply broken.

If there is a reason this moment feels different, it is because people took to the streets not to exploit tragedy, but to demand that these lives — and the questions around their deaths — be taken seriously.

We should mourn. We should demand accountability. We should hold leaders responsible. And in that mourning, we should also hold fast to the belief that ordinary people, when they refuse to let silence and complicity win, can change what comes next.

What happens next

The administration may try to ride this out. History suggests that approach rarely works once public trust breaks.

Civil lawsuits are coming. Congressional hearings are being discussed. State and local governments are exploring ways to limit cooperation with federal enforcement when constitutional rights are at risk.

More importantly, Americans are starting to ask better questions — not just who is being targeted, but how much power we’re willing to hand over in the name of fear.

Peaceful protest didn’t force that conversation overnight. But it made it unavoidable.

And once people start seeing state violence clearly, it becomes very hard to unsee.

Hope

Hope, in moments like this, doesn’t look like celebration. It looks like attention.

It looks like neighbors who refuse to accept that this is “just how things are.” It looks like peaceful protest that keeps showing up, even when it’s uncomfortable or inconvenient. It looks like people across political lines beginning to ask harder questions about power, accountability, and the kind of country they want to live in.

Minnesota doesn’t offer closure. It offers proof — proof that denial can crack, that conscience can be stirred, and that nonviolent pressure still has the power to reach people who once weren’t listening.

That doesn’t bring back Renee Good or Alex Pretti. Nothing can.

But it does mean their lives — and the questions raised by their deaths — are not being quietly erased. And if change comes, it will come not because tragedy demanded it, but because ordinary people refused to let tragedy be the end of the story.

Jack Smith’s Congressional Testimony: What He Said About Trump and January 6

This week, former Special Counsel Jack Smith appeared before the House Judiciary Committee for the first time since the Justice Department dropped its federal cases against President Donald Trump following his 2024 election victory.

The hearing was predictably combative. Republicans framed Smith as a political actor. Democrats framed the moment as a defense of the rule of law. Smith himself stuck closely to the record — and that may have been the most revealing part.

Here’s what actually came out of the testimony.

Smith Stood by the Charges — Without Hesitation

Smith made clear that he does not regret bringing charges against Trump in either federal case:

• the effort to overturn the 2020 election, and

• the mishandling of classified documents.

He testified that the decisions were driven by evidence and longstanding legal standards — not politics — and said plainly that he would bring the same charges again under the same facts, regardless of who the defendant was.

That point matters, because Republicans repeatedly tried to reframe the prosecutions as unprecedented or partisan. Smith’s response was simple: powerful people are not exempt from the law.

He Said Trump Was Responsible for January 6

Perhaps the most direct moment of the hearing came when Smith addressed the Capitol attack.

Smith testified that the evidence showed Trump caused January 6, that the violence was foreseeable, and that Trump attempted to exploit the chaos as part of a broader effort to block the peaceful transfer of power.

He did not rely on rhetoric. He relied on the same evidentiary theory laid out in the indictment: pressure campaigns, false claims of fraud, and deliberate efforts to replace lawful electoral outcomes.

Importantly, Smith did not claim Trump personally planned the riot. He testified that Trump’s actions created the conditions for it — and that distinction reflects how prosecutors actually think about criminal responsibility.

He Defended the Investigation Tactics — Calmly

Republican members focused heavily on investigative tools they argued crossed the line, including subpoenas and records requests involving lawmakers and Trump allies.

Smith responded that each step was taken within DOJ guidelines and approved through established legal processes. He framed these methods not as aggressive, but as necessary to understand how coordinated efforts to obstruct the election unfolded.

There were no dramatic revelations here — just a reminder that investigations of complex conspiracies don’t happen without following evidence wherever it leads.

The Cases Were Dropped — Not Disproven

One of the most important clarifications of the hearing is also the easiest to miss.

The cases against Trump were dismissed because DOJ policy bars prosecution of a sitting president — not because the evidence failed, and not because Smith reversed his conclusions.

Smith emphasized that point repeatedly, even as critics tried to treat the dismissals as exoneration. They weren’t.

That distinction matters, especially as political messaging continues to blur the line between charges dropped and claims debunked.

What Smith Didn’t Do

Smith did not:

• attack Trump personally

• speculate about future prosecutions

• comment on political consequences

• argue that Congress should act

He confined himself almost entirely to explaining what his office did, why it did it, and what the evidence showed.

That restraint may not satisfy partisans — but it reinforced the core argument of his testimony: this was a legal process, not a political one.

Why This Testimony Still Matters

The hearing wasn’t about reopening cases. It was about recording history.

Smith’s testimony put a marker down: federal prosecutors concluded that a sitting president engaged in criminal conduct, gathered evidence to support that conclusion, and were stopped only by institutional rules — not by lack of proof.

Whether Americans accept that reality or not will shape how future abuses of power are judged.

And that, more than any soundbite from the hearing, is what made this week matter.

Can ICE Enter Your Home Without a Judge’s Warrant? What the Constitution Actually Says

When most people hear the word “warrant,” they assume one thing:

a judge reviewed the case and gave the government permission to act.

That’s how warrants work in the criminal justice system.

It’s also how the Constitution is supposed to protect people — especially in their homes.

But a recent report reveals that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now telling agents they can enter people’s homes and make arrests without a judge’s approval, using only paperwork signed by other ICE officials.

That isn’t just confusing.

It crosses a constitutional line.

This post explains, in plain language:

• What kind of “warrants” ICE is talking about

• Where that authority comes from

• Why homes are treated differently under the Constitution

• Why ICE’s new position is likely unconstitutional

What People Think a “Warrant” Means

For most Americans, a warrant means:

• A neutral judge reviewed evidence

• The government showed probable cause

• The judge signed off on it

That expectation isn’t political. It’s basic civic knowledge.

The problem is that ICE often uses the word “warrant” to describe something very different.

There Are Two Kinds of Warrants — And They Are Not Equal

Judicial warrants

These are what most people are familiar with.

• Signed by a judge

• Required for police to enter a home without permission

• Rooted directly in the Fourth Amendment

Administrative warrants

These are different.

• Issued internally by ICE or the Department of Homeland Security

• Not reviewed or signed by a judge

• Created for civil immigration enforcement, not criminal cases

Administrative warrants are real documents — but they are not judicial permission.

And that difference matters most when it comes to homes.

Where ICE’s Administrative Warrant Power Comes From

ICE’s authority comes from immigration laws passed by Congress decades ago.

In the 1950s, Congress created a civil immigration enforcement system. Later, in the 1990s, lawmakers expanded detention powers. None of these laws said immigration officers could decide for themselves when to break into homes.

They allowed officers to:

• Arrest people suspected of immigration violations

• Detain people during immigration proceedings

They did not erase the Constitution.

Why Homes Are Treated Differently

The Constitution treats the home as special.

For centuries, courts have said the same thing, over and over:

If the government wants to force its way into your home, it needs permission from a judge.

That rule exists because the home is where people sleep, raise families, and expect privacy. It’s the line the government is not supposed to cross lightly — or by accident.

This protection applies regardless of immigration status.

The Fourth Amendment doesn’t say “citizens only.”

How Administrative Warrants Were Traditionally Used

For years, administrative warrants were used to:

• Arrest people in public places

• Take someone into custody after a court hearing

• Handle paperwork inside the immigration system

They were not treated as permission to break down doors.

That understanding wasn’t just shared by advocates. It was reflected in:

• ICE’s own past practices

• Court rulings

• Longstanding guidance given to communities

If ICE wanted to enter a home without consent, it needed a judge’s warrant — just like everyone else.

What Courts Have Said

Courts have been clear about this basic rule:

• Administrative paperwork is not the same as a judge’s warrant

• Forced home entry without judicial approval is presumptively illegal

• Labeling something “civil” does not cancel constitutional protections

When ICE or local police have crossed that line, courts have found violations.

That legal baseline matters — because it’s the standard ICE is now pushing against.

What Changed — According to New Reporting

According to a recent investigative report, ICE has issued new internal guidance telling agents they can enter homes using only administrative warrants, without going to a judge first.

In at least one case, agents forced their way into a home under this interpretation.

ICE claims this is allowed under immigration law and the Constitution.

But here’s the problem:

No court has ever said that is true.

Why This Crosses a Constitutional Line

This isn’t a small policy tweak.

ICE is claiming that:

• An executive agency can decide for itself

• When it is allowed to force entry into a home

• Without a judge reviewing the case

That flips the Constitution on its head.

The whole point of requiring a judge is to keep the enforcing agency from being the one that decides how far it can go.

If ICE’s logic were accepted, any federal agency could give itself permission to enter homes, simply by calling its paperwork a “warrant.”

That is exactly what the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent.

What This Means for People Right Now

Despite what ICE’s internal memo says:

• The Constitution has not changed

• Courts have not changed the rules

• A judge’s signature still matters

If ICE shows up with only an administrative warrant, people still have the right to:

• Ask to see a judicial warrant

• Refuse entry without consent

• Assert their constitutional protections

Whether ICE’s new approach survives court challenges remains to be seen — but it is already on legally shaky ground.

The Bigger Picture

This isn’t just about immigration.

It’s about whether the government can slowly redefine basic rights by changing its internal paperwork instead of following constitutional rules.

Once agencies are allowed to bypass judges, the safeguard disappears for everyone.

Bottom Line

• ICE’s administrative warrant power comes from old immigration laws

• Those warrants were never meant to replace a judge’s authority

• The Constitution treats forced home entry as a serious act that requires judicial approval

• ICE’s new policy claims it can skip that step

That is not how lawful searches work in the United States.

If the courts accept this reasoning, the protection of the home — one of the most basic rights Americans expect — becomes optional.

This is what it looks like when enforcement replaces due process. As I wrote earlier, broken and outdated immigration laws have created a system where agencies are left to fill the gaps with force instead of fairness, speed instead of safeguards. Rather than fixing the law, ICE is now claiming more power for itself — even when that means pushing past the Constitution. The result isn’t order or security. It’s a system where internal memos matter more than judges, and where basic rights depend on who happens to be knocking at the door.

When Congress Fails, Force Fills the Gap

How Broken Immigration Law Turned Civil Enforcement Into Paramilitary Policing

America’s immigration debate is often framed as a fight between compassion and enforcement. That framing misses the real problem.

What we are witnessing today is not the natural outcome of strict law enforcement—it is the predictable result of legislative failure. Congress created an immigration system that cannot resolve legal status in a timely or coherent way. Instead of fixing it, lawmakers have allowed enforcement agencies to compensate for that failure with increasingly aggressive tactics. The result is a system that looks less like civil law enforcement and more like domestic occupation.

This is not strength. It is institutional drift.

A System Designed to Stall, Not Decide

U.S. immigration law has quietly created a permanent gray zone—millions of people who are neither clearly authorized nor clearly removable.

Asylum seekers wait years for hearings. Temporary Protected Status is extended and threatened in cycles. Work authorization is granted without permanent resolution. These are not loopholes exploited by individuals; they are structural outcomes of a system Congress refuses to modernize or adequately fund.

Immigration courts are overwhelmed. Backlogs stretch into the millions. Cases take years to resolve, even when individuals follow the rules and show up for every required appointment.

In any functioning legal system, unresolved status is the exception. In U.S. immigration law, it has become the norm.

When law cannot decide, enforcement begins to improvise.

Enforcement Is Replacing Adjudication

Civil immigration enforcement was never meant to substitute for a functioning legal system. Its role is to carry out decisions made by law and adjudicated by courts—not to fill policy gaps left by Congress.

But part of today’s chaos comes from the fact that recent administrations have interpreted the same immigration statutes in dramatically different ways. With Congress unwilling to clarify the law, successive executive branches have relied on executive orders, agency guidance, and enforcement priorities to impose their own interpretations of what the system should do.

The result is instability by design.

One administration narrows enforcement and expands temporary protections. The next reverses course, rescinds guidance, and accelerates removals. None of this resolves the underlying legal questions. It merely shifts enforcement pressure back and forth, often abruptly, leaving courts overwhelmed and enforcement agencies tasked with implementing political swings rather than settled law.

In this environment, enforcement begins to replace adjudication.

When legal outcomes depend more on who occupies the White House than on timely court decisions, agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are pushed into the role of policy instrument rather than neutral executor of law. Speed and visibility become tools for signaling control, especially when executive authority is used to bypass slow-moving courts.

This is not a failure of enforcement. It is the predictable consequence of governing through executive discretion instead of legislation.

Until Congress establishes clear statutory rules that survive changes in administration—and funds courts to apply them consistently—immigration enforcement will remain volatile, politicized, and increasingly reliant on force to compensate for legal uncertainty.

Paramilitary Tactics Undermine Public Order in Cities

Law and order depend on clarity: who has authority, who answers to whom, and how civilians are expected to respond.

Paramilitary-style immigration enforcement breaks that clarity.

When heavily armed federal agents operate openly in cities, they inevitably come into contact with ordinary citizens—people who are not subject to immigration enforcement and over whom ICE has no general policing authority. These encounters are not theoretical. They happen in neighborhoods, near workplaces, and in public spaces where civilians expect normal civil governance.

Unlike local police, federal immigration agents are not accountable to city leadership, do not operate under local command, and are not trained or structured for routine de-escalation with the general public. In some cases, federal units operate in numbers that rival or exceed local police presence, without the community relationships or jurisdictional clarity that make public order possible.

To residents, this does not feel like protection. It feels like an outside force operating without consent or accountability.

Public order erodes not because citizens reject the law, but because enforcement no longer looks lawful. Confusion replaces legitimacy. Authority becomes ambiguous. And cities are left to manage the fallout.

This is not how order is maintained. It is how trust breaks.

“If You’re Legal, You Have Nothing to Fear” Misses the Point

Law-abiding citizens do not expect to prove their innocence during daily life in their own communities.

Civilians are not required to carry proof of status. They are not obligated to submit to questioning by immigration agents. And they have no clear way to assess authority when agents are masked, unidentified, or operating outside local command structures.

In those moments, legal status is irrelevant. What matters is whether the system respects clear jurisdiction, due process, and predictable rules.

A lawful society does not rely on ambiguity or intimidation to function. When enforcement tactics create uncertainty even for citizens, the failure lies with the system—not the public.

Enforcement Theater Is Not Policy

Paramilitary immigration operations persist because they are visible, fast, and politically useful. They create the appearance of action while avoiding the harder work of reform.

But they do not reduce court backlogs.
They do not resolve legal status.
They do not improve long-term compliance.

They are a substitute for governance.

The longer Congress delays, the more expensive and destabilizing this substitute becomes—for cities, for law enforcement, and for taxpayers.

What Real Law-and-Order Immigration Policy Would Look Like

A serious system would restore the proper sequence of responsibility:

• Congress writes clear, modern immigration law

• Courts are funded to decide cases promptly

• Enforcement carries out decisions within firm civil limits

That means ending permanent legal limbo. It means timelines measured in months, not years. And it means drawing hard boundaries between civil enforcement and armed operations in American cities.

Force should be rare, restrained, and clearly justified—not a routine tool for compensating for broken law.

Conclusion: Responsibility Can’t Be Deferred Forever

Strong nations do not govern by force. They govern by law.

Paramilitary-style immigration enforcement is not evidence of strength—it is evidence that institutions at the top have failed to carry out their responsibilities. When Congress avoids hard decisions, pressure flows downward, and enforcement is left to manage problems only legislation can solve.

Responsibility in a lawful system is sequential. Legislators decide. Courts adjudicate. Enforcement executes. When that chain breaks, disorder follows—no matter how much force is applied.

If Congress wants order, it must reassert its role. That means funding immigration courts, replacing temporary patches with durable law, and restoring clear boundaries that citizens can recognize and trust.

None of this is easy. Responsibility rarely is.

It is time for United States Congress to do the hard work it has deferred for decades—so civil enforcement can return to being lawful, limited, and accountable, and so cities are no longer forced to absorb the cost of legislative failure.

Every year Congress delays real immigration reform, taxpayers spend more on enforcement theater, emergency responses, and instability—while the underlying problem grows more expensive to fix.

An Account of January 6—and Those Who Finished the Work

On January 6, 2021, American democracy was meant to break.

The United States Capitol had been breached. Windows were smashed. Lawmakers fled through hallways and tunnels. Police officers were beaten. A mob, driven by false claims of a stolen election, roamed the seat of government looking for leverage, trophies, and targets.

Outside, a gallows stood.

Inside, the constitutional process was interrupted—but not yet defeated.

Because when the building was secured, when the blood was cleaned and the broken glass swept away, people returned to the chamber.

They stayed.

The moment that mattered

The certification of the 2020 presidential election was not ceremonial. It was the final step in a process that had already survived recounts, audits, and dozens of court challenges.

Every state had certified its results. Judges—many appointed by Republicans—had ruled. The outcome was settled.

What remained was fragile and essential: counting and certifying the electoral votes.

The attackers understood this. That is why they came that day.

Finishing the count was not an act of politics. It was an act of resistance—resistance to the idea that violence, intimidation, or personal loyalty could override law.

Leadership under pressure

Some of those who stood that night did so knowing the personal cost would be real.

Mike Pence, facing explicit demands to overturn the election and chants calling for his death, refused to violate the Constitution. He remained in the Capitol and made clear he would not interfere with the lawful transfer of power. The decision likely ended his political future. He made it anyway.

Nancy Pelosi reconvened the House the same night, insisting the work continue without delay. Violence would not be rewarded with surrender.

Mitch McConnell rejected efforts to discard certified state results, acknowledging that Congress did not have the authority—or the right—to overturn the election.

These were not dramatic speeches. They were procedural decisions. That is precisely why they mattered.

Republicans who chose oath over party

History should record those who broke with their party when the test arrived.

Mitt Romney returned to the Senate chamber after being directly targeted by the mob, calling the attack what it was: an insurrection.

Liz Cheney voted to certify the results and later to impeach the president who incited the attack, fully aware of the cost to her career.

Adam Kinzinger spoke plainly about the danger facing the country and refused to normalize the lies that led to violence.

Lisa Murkowski rejected objections and later acknowledged her party’s failure to act sooner.

They were not flawless. They were necessary.

The quiet backbone of democracy

Beyond Washington, countless state and local officials deserve recognition.

Secretaries of state. County clerks. Election workers—Republican, Democrat, and independent—who certified results while facing threats to their lives and families.

They received no protection, no national attention, no guarantees.

They simply did their jobs.

And because they did, the chain of lawful succession held.

What they stood against

January 6 was not a protest. It was not a debate. It was not about election integrity.

It was an attempt to replace ballots with force.

The goal was to stop the count, break the process, and create enough chaos to justify discarding the results.

That effort failed—not because it lacked violence, but because it failed to break enough people.

Why this account matters

Democracies do not collapse in a single moment. They erode when enough people decide that rules no longer apply, that loyalty matters more than law, that fear can substitute for consent.

On January 6, 2021, American democracy did not survive because it was strong.

It survived because enough people—shaken, exhausted, and afraid—returned to their desks and finished the work.

They stayed.

And because they did, the Republic did too.

The U.S. Strike on Venezuela and the Return of a Failed Latin America Policy

Early on January 3, 2026, the United States launched a direct military attack on Venezuela, striking targets in and around Caracas and carrying out a special operations raid that, according to U.S. officials, resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

According to reporting from AP News, CBS, Reuters, and PBS, U.S. forces flew both out of the country, with the Trump administration saying they will face criminal charges in New York. apnews.com | cbsnews.com | reuters.com | pbs.org

President Donald Trump framed the operation as a decisive blow against “narco-terrorism,” echoing long-standing indictments brought by U.S. prosecutors years earlier. He also suggested the United States would oversee a transition of power — language that sounds less like law enforcement and more like occupation.

This moment matters not just because of what happened, but because of what it exposes: the widening gap between how the U.S. claims to apply the law and how it actually uses power.

The “Narco-Terrorism” Justification Falls Apart on Contact

The administration’s stated rationale is familiar. Maduro, U.S. officials argue, is not a legitimate head of state but a criminal — a narco-terrorist whose removal is an extension of justice, not war.

We’ve seen this argument before, and we’ve already called out its hypocrisy — see Trump’s Pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández Exposes the Truth Behind America’s “Narco-Terror” Narrative

If indictments were a legitimate basis for military invasion, the United States would be endorsing a world where powerful countries can kidnap foreign leaders by force whenever prosecutors file charges. That isn’t international law. It’s might-makes-right, dressed up in courtroom language.

Maduro has been under U.S. indictment since 2020. Nothing about those charges suddenly changed this week. What did change was the political willingness to use overwhelming force — and then retroactively justify it as law enforcement.

This is not how extradition works.
This is not how sovereignty works.
And it certainly isn’t how the U.S. treats allies accused of serious crimes.

A Clear Break with International Law — and Recent U.S. Practice

Under the U.N. Charter, the use of force against another country is prohibited except in cases of self-defense or with Security Council authorization. Neither condition has been publicly claimed here.

That’s why global reaction has been swift and largely critical.

Brazil called the strikes a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty. China, France, Mexico, and others issued condemnations or grave warnings. Even governments deeply critical of Maduro’s rule expressed alarm at the precedent being set. axios.com | time.com

The last time the U.S. openly invaded a Latin American country to seize its leader was Panama in 1989. That operation was widely criticized then — and it’s still cited today as an example of American overreach.

The fact that this administration appears comfortable reviving that model should concern anyone who believes international rules are meant to apply universally, not selectively.

Congress Was Cut Out — Again

Domestically, the legal footing is just as shaky.

There has been no new Authorization for Use of Military Force. No emergency congressional debate. No vote. Once again, the executive branch acted first and left Congress to argue afterward — a pattern we’ve documented repeatedly in past posts on emergency powers and executive overreach.

Calling this “counter-narcotics” does not magically erase the constitutional requirement for congressional authorization when U.S. forces are sent into combat.

If this action stands unchallenged, it further cements the idea that presidents can unilaterally launch wars — as long as they pick the right label.

Oil, Power, and the Parts Left Unsaid

The administration has also been unusually candid about one consequence of the attack: U.S. involvement in Venezuela’s oil sector.

Trump openly suggested that the U.S. would be “very strongly involved” in Venezuelan oil production going forward. theguardian.com

That statement alone undercuts the claim that this operation was narrowly about justice or drugs. You don’t seize a country’s energy infrastructure as a byproduct of a criminal arrest.

You do it when power — economic and geopolitical — is part of the objective.

A Return to a Discredited Hemispheric Playbook

What is happening in Venezuela is not a break from American foreign policy — it is a return to one of its worst chapters.

For much of the 20th century, the United States treated Latin America as a sphere of influence rather than a region of sovereign nations. When governments became inconvenient, they were labeled corrupt, dangerous, or illegitimate. When legal or diplomatic avenues failed, force filled the gap — often justified after the fact with claims of moral necessity.

In 1954, the CIA helped overthrow Guatemala’s elected government under the pretense of stopping communism, protecting U.S. corporate interests in the process. In Chile in 1973, U.S. backing helped clear the path for a military coup that replaced a democratic government with a dictatorship. In Panama in 1989, the U.S. invaded to arrest Manuel Noriega on drug charges, insisting it was law enforcement rather than war, despite heavy civilian casualties and long-term destabilization.

Each intervention was framed as exceptional. Each was described as unavoidable. And each was later recognized as a failure — morally, legally, or both.

The Venezuela operation fits that pattern cleanly.

Labeling Maduro a narco-terrorist does not meaningfully distinguish this action from earlier interventions that were justified with different language but the same underlying logic: U.S. power overrides sovereignty when the outcome is deemed important enough.

That logic corrodes the very international norms the United States claims to defend. It also reinforces a message Latin America has heard before — that elections, borders, and self-determination are conditional, subject to revocation when they conflict with U.S. interests.

History is clear about where this path leads. These interventions do not bring stability or democracy. They produce resentment, instability, and cycles of political violence that last long after American attention moves on.

If the United States is serious about a rules-based international order, it cannot resurrect the Monroe Doctrine mindset under modern branding and expect a different result. Venezuela is not an isolated incident. It is a reminder of how easily old habits return when power goes unchecked.

Guardrails Are Cheaper Than Crashes

Why This Argument Keeps Coming Back

Part VI of “Why the New Deal Still Matters”

Every generation believes its problems are new.

The technology changes. The vocabulary shifts. The faces in power rotate. But the underlying argument—about markets, rules, and restraint—keeps resurfacing for the same reason:

When the system breaks, someone has to pay for the repair.

The question is never whether there will be a cost.

It’s who pays it, and when.

The Misleading Cost Debate

Modern debates about the New Deal often begin and end with one question:

“How much did it cost?”

That framing misses the reality policymakers were confronting in the early 1930s.

The New Deal was not evaluated against the option of “doing nothing.” It was measured—implicitly and urgently—against systemic collapse.

By 1933, collapse did not mean slower growth or a painful downturn. It meant:

• One in four Americans unemployed

• Thousands of banks permanently closed

• Life savings wiped out overnight

• Farms and factories sitting idle while people went hungry

• State and local governments unable to provide basic services

• Growing fear that democratic institutions themselves might not survive

Markets weren’t correcting. They had stopped functioning.

So the real comparison was never abstract. It was concrete:

• Guardrails vs. mass unemployment with no recovery path

• Banking rules vs. repeated bank runs and frozen credit

• Public investment vs. idle capacity and widespread hunger

• Enforcement vs. economic despair feeding political instability

Collapse is not free.

It is ruinously expensive—economically, socially, and politically.

The New Deal didn’t eliminate costs.

It changed when they were paid, how they were distributed, and whether the system survived long enough to recover.

Why Markets Don’t Self-Repair Fast Enough

In theory, markets correct themselves. In practice, they often do so after enormous damage.

Prices can fall faster than wages adjust. Credit can vanish overnight. Fear can spread faster than confidence returns. Power can consolidate more quickly than competition re-emerges.

When that happens, waiting for “natural correction” isn’t neutral. It favors those with reserves, scale, and influence—while everyone else absorbs the losses.

That’s not market discipline.

That’s attrition.

Guardrails exist because markets move faster than societies can safely absorb shocks.

Rules Are Not the Opposite of Freedom

One of the most persistent misunderstandings in American politics is the idea that rules and freedom are opposites.

They aren’t.

Rules are what make freedom usable.

• Traffic laws don’t prevent driving—they make it possible

• Contract law doesn’t prevent commerce—it enables trust

• Antitrust doesn’t punish success—it preserves opportunity

The New Deal applied this same logic to an economy that had outgrown its informal norms.

It didn’t ask markets to behave better.

It required them to.

What the New Deal Actually Proved

Looking back across the full arc—from the 1920s to today—the New Deal demonstrated a simple, uncomfortable truth:

Markets are strongest when no one is powerful enough to bend them permanently in their favor.

When guardrails held:

• Growth was broad

• Crises were rarer

• Democracy was more stable

When guardrails weakened:

• Power concentrated

• Fragility returned

• Politics destabilized

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s pattern recognition.

Why This Keeps Getting Re-Litigated

If the lesson is so clear, why does the argument keep coming back?

Because the benefits of deregulation are immediate and concentrated, while the costs are delayed and diffuse.

Those who gain first argue loudly.

Those who pay later argue from weakness.

By the time the bill comes due, the story has already been rewritten:

• “No one could have seen this coming.”

• “The market failed unexpectedly.”

• “Extraordinary measures are now unavoidable.”

That cycle isn’t accidental. It’s structural.

The Real Choice Isn’t Ideological

This series isn’t an argument for bigger government or smaller government.

It’s an argument for functional markets.

The real choice is not:

• Capitalism vs. regulation

It’s:

• Managed competition vs. recurring collapse

• Prevention vs. emergency repair

• Rules up front vs. bailouts later

Every society chooses one—whether it admits it or not.

Why Selling This Again Matters

We live in an era where:

• Market power is highly concentrated

• Labor is fragmented

• Finance is opaque

• Political influence follows wealth

• Trust in institutions is thin

That doesn’t guarantee disaster. But it does guarantee vulnerability.

The New Deal wasn’t created because Americans suddenly loved regulation.

It was created because the alternative nearly destroyed the country.

Remembering that isn’t radical.

It’s responsible.

The Closing Lesson

The most important takeaway from the New Deal era isn’t a program or a policy.

It’s a principle:

Guardrails cost money.

Crashes cost societies.

We’ve paid both before.

The only question left is whether we prefer to pay early—quietly, deliberately, and fairly—or late, loudly, and in crisis.

That choice hasn’t gone away.

The Modern Echo

Same Dynamics, New Technology

Part V of “Why the New Deal Still Matters”

History rarely repeats itself exactly. It adapts.

The modern American economy does not look like the 1920s. We have more technology, more data, more global integration, and far more complex financial systems. But beneath those differences, the same structural dynamics that once destabilized the economy have quietly returned.

The lesson of the New Deal wasn’t that markets inevitably fail.

It was that markets fail when power concentrates, counterweights weaken, and risk disconnects from responsibility.

Those conditions are no longer hypothetical.

Concentration Without Smokestacks

Market power today doesn’t always look like factories and railroads. It looks like platforms.

A small number of firms now control the infrastructure through which commerce, communication, and information flow:

• Amazon dominates online retail and logistics

• Google controls search, digital ads, and mobile ecosystems

• Apple controls hardware, software, and app distribution

• Meta controls social networks and attention markets

These firms don’t just compete within markets—they set the terms of participation.

You can start a business, but only inside their systems. You can reach customers, but only through their algorithms. You can innovate, but only if it doesn’t threaten their core advantage.

This isn’t classic monopoly behavior. It’s something more durable: structural dependence.

Competition Exists—But on Unequal Ground

As in the late 1920s, competition hasn’t disappeared. It’s just uneven.

Small businesses compete fiercely with one another. Workers compete globally. Entrepreneurs scramble for venture capital.

But at the top, dominant firms face little meaningful threat.

Market entry is difficult. Acquisition replaces rivalry. Scale creates permanence. The appearance of dynamism masks the reality of consolidation.

Once again, competition survives mostly among the powerless, not the powerful.

Labor Is Flexible—and Fragile

Modern labor markets are often described as “flexible.” In practice, that flexibility usually cuts one way.

Gig work, contract labor, and on-demand scheduling shift risk from firms to individuals. Job security weakens. Benefits disappear. Bargaining power fragments.

Productivity continues to rise. Wages do not.

This mirrors the pre–New Deal pattern: an economy that produces abundance, while steadily disconnecting work from security. Consumption holds up only through debt, dual incomes, and exhaustion.

Flexibility looks efficient—until a shock arrives.

Finance Is Calmer on the Surface, Riskier Underneath

Compared to 1929, today’s financial system appears safer. Deposit insurance exists. Capital requirements exist. Regulators exist.

But risk hasn’t vanished. It has migrated.

• Into shadow banking

• Into private equity and private credit

• Into algorithmic trading

• Into opaque financial instruments

Just as before, complexity substitutes for resilience. Profits rise while fragility accumulates quietly.

Crises don’t disappear. They become harder to see coming.

Shocks Don’t Create Fragility—They Expose It

The COVID recession is a clear example.

The pandemic didn’t originate in the financial system. But its economic damage followed existing fault lines with precision.

Workers without protections lost income overnight. Small businesses collapsed. Supply chains optimized for efficiency snapped under stress.

Meanwhile, asset markets recovered quickly. Wealth concentrated further. Once again, the system protected capital faster than labor.

The shock didn’t create inequality. It revealed how exposed the system already was.

The Trust Problem Returns

As in earlier eras, economic structure bleeds into public confidence.

When people see:

• Rules applied unevenly

• Bailouts for the powerful

• Insecurity for everyone else

• Little accountability after failure

They stop believing the system is fair—or fixable.

That loss of trust doesn’t stay economic. It reshapes politics.

Anger replaces patience. Identity replaces policy. Strongman promises start sounding more attractive than institutional reform.

This isn’t a cultural mystery. It’s a structural one.

Technology Accelerates Old Problems

What’s different today is speed.

Algorithms amplify advantage faster than railroads ever could. Capital moves instantly. Influence scales globally. Misinformation spreads cheaply.

That acceleration doesn’t change the underlying lesson—it raises the stakes.

When markets tip, they tip quickly. When trust breaks, it fractures widely. When capture sets in, it becomes harder to unwind.

We’ve Seen This Shape Before

The modern economy is not doomed. But it is out of balance.

High concentration. Weak counterweights. Fragile labor markets. Opaque finance. Political influence flowing upward.

These were the warning signs before.

The New Deal didn’t respond to them because of ideology. It responded because ignoring them nearly destroyed both the economy and the democratic system that depended on it.

The Question We Face Now

The choice today is not between markets and rules. That argument was settled once already.

The real question is whether we remember the lesson in time:

Markets only stay free when power is constrained.

And democracy only stays stable when markets are trusted.

That brings us to the final task—not nostalgia, not repetition, but renewal.

Next: Part VI — Guardrails Are Cheaper Than Crashes: Selling the Lesson Again: Why This Argument Keeps Coming Back

The Great Unlearning

How We Dismantled What Worked

Part IV of “Why the New Deal Still Matters”

By the late 1970s, the postwar economic model had been so successful that many Americans began to forget why it existed in the first place.

For decades, growth had been steady. Financial crises were rare. A broad middle class had become the norm. The guardrails that stabilized markets faded into the background—visible mostly as costs, constraints, or inefficiencies.

That’s when a new story took hold:

that the rules were no longer necessary.

The problem, this argument went, wasn’t too little balance—it was too much restraint.

A Shift in Economic Faith

Beginning in the late 1970s and accelerating through the 1980s, policymakers increasingly embraced the idea that markets worked best when left alone. Regulation was reframed as inefficiency. Antitrust enforcement was recast as hostility to success. Labor protections were described as market distortions.

The assumption was simple:

If the guardrails came off, growth would accelerate—and everyone would benefit.

This shift wasn’t framed as radical. It was framed as modernization.

What changed wasn’t the law overnight, but the philosophy behind enforcement.

Antitrust: From Enforcement to Tolerance

Antitrust law remained on the books—but its purpose quietly narrowed.

Instead of asking whether markets were becoming too concentrated, regulators increasingly focused on a single question: Are consumer prices rising right now?

If prices stayed low, consolidation was often approved—even when it:

• Eliminated competitors

• Raised barriers to entry

• Locked in dominant market positions

Over time, entire industries consolidated. Market power became durable. Competition was assumed rather than protected.

“Too big to compete with” replaced “too big to fail.”

Labor Power Was Deliberately Weakened

At the same time, labor’s role as a counterweight steadily eroded.

Union membership declined sharply. Enforcement of labor law weakened. Employers gained greater leverage over wages, scheduling, and job security.

Productivity continued to rise—but wages flattened.

This wasn’t an accident of globalization alone. It reflected policy choices that treated labor power as a cost to be minimized rather than a stabilizing force.

As wages stagnated, households relied more heavily on debt to maintain living standards. Demand became fragile again—just as it had in the 1920s.

Finance Relearned Risk—Badly

Nowhere was the Great Unlearning more dangerous than in finance.

Over several decades, New Deal–era safeguards were chipped away, reinterpreted, or abandoned. The most symbolic moment came with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had separated commercial banking from investment speculation.

Financial institutions grew larger, more complex, and more interconnected. Risk migrated out of view—into shadow banking, derivatives, and off–balance sheet vehicles.

Once again, profits rose while fragility accumulated.

Just as in the 1920s, the system looked efficient—right up until it wasn’t.

The Warning Crises We Ignored

The breakdown didn’t happen all at once. There were warnings.

The Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s followed deregulation that allowed institutions to chase higher returns without adequate oversight. Fraud spread. Hundreds of banks failed. Taxpayers absorbed the losses.

The dot-com bubble of the late 1990s showed how speculation could detach from fundamentals under lax oversight.

Each time, the lesson could have been relearned.

Instead, the response was often narrow fixes paired with renewed faith that “the market had corrected itself.”

It hadn’t.

2008: The Cost of Forgetting

The financial crisis of 2008 was not a bolt from the blue. It was the logical outcome of decades of concentrated risk, weak enforcement, and moral hazard.

Banks took on enormous leverage. Financial products grew so complex that even insiders struggled to understand them. When the system cracked, it wasn’t just investors who paid the price.

Millions lost homes. Jobs vanished. Retirement savings evaporated.

And once again, private risk was socialized.

The irony was hard to miss:

the same voices that warned against “big government” demanded massive public intervention when markets collapsed.

Political Instability Becomes Political Capture

When Economic Power Buys the Rules

Economic instability creates anger. Concentrated wealth creates leverage. When the two coexist, politics stops acting as a corrective and starts acting as an amplifier.

As inequality rose and market power reconsolidated, so did the ability of wealthy individuals and large corporations to shape the rules of the system itself. This rarely took the form of outright corruption. It happened legally, incrementally, and often quietly.

Money flowed into campaigns, lobbying, think tanks, and media ecosystems. Regulatory agencies were defunded, pressured, or staffed in ways that aligned outcomes with donor interests. Enforcement budgets shrank. Policy debates narrowed.

The result wasn’t the collapse of democracy—but the erosion of its corrective function.

From Influence to Advantage

Democratic systems are meant to counterbalance economic power. But concentrated wealth can overwhelm that safeguard.

As elections became permanent fundraising exercises, access followed money. Lawmakers grew increasingly dependent on donors with the resources to sustain campaigns. That dependence shaped priorities:

• Tax policy tilted toward capital

• Antitrust enforcement softened

• Financial oversight narrowed

• Labor protections weakened

• Bailouts became acceptable while accountability faded

This didn’t require conspiracy. It required incentives.

When those with the most to lose from strong enforcement also had the most influence over policy, the system bent predictably in their favor.

Rigged Markets Breed Rigged Politics

This feedback loop matters because markets and democracy are not separate systems.

When people see that:

• Profits are privatized

• Losses are socialized

• Rules change after crises

• The same actors keep winning

They don’t just lose faith in markets. They lose faith in institutions.

That loss of trust fuels disengagement on one end and radicalization on the other. It creates demand for leaders who promise order without accountability, punishment without reform, or shortcuts around democratic process.

History has seen this pattern before.

What This Era Actually Delivered

Supporters of deregulation promised faster growth and broader prosperity. What arrived instead was:

• Slower wage growth

• Higher inequality

• Greater market concentration

• More frequent and severe financial crises

• Repeated public bailouts

Markets weren’t freed. They were tilted.

And as trust eroded, instability spread from the economy into politics.

The Lesson We Chose to Forget

The New Deal generation understood something later generations unlearned:

Unchecked markets don’t just fail economically.

They fail civically.

That’s why antitrust mattered. That’s why financial regulation mattered. That’s why labor had power. Those weren’t just economic choices—they were democratic ones.

When those guardrails were dismantled, fragility returned. And as fragility grew, wealth rose—and influence followed it upward.

The system didn’t just break again.

It began protecting the breakage.

The Bridge to the Present

By the 2010s, many of the conditions that defined the pre–New Deal era had quietly re-emerged:

• Concentrated power

• Weak counterweights

• Financial opacity

• High inequality

• Low institutional trust

The economy still functioned—but it was brittle.

And when the next shock arrived, the consequences would not be evenly shared.

That’s where the story turns to now.

Next: Part V — The Modern Echo: Same Dynamics, New Technology

When It Worked: The Guardrail Economy

Why the Middle-Class Boom Wasn’t an Accident

Part III of “Why the New Deal Still Matters”

Critics of the New Deal often argue that even if the reforms were well-intentioned, they didn’t actually work. The postwar boom, they say, was a coincidence—driven by technology, demographics, or America’s position after World War II.

Those factors mattered. But they don’t explain the full picture.

What followed the New Deal wasn’t just growth. It was broad, durable, and unusually stable growth—the kind that builds a middle class, sustains competition, and limits crises. And it followed directly from the economic framework that emerged in the 1930s.

This wasn’t luck. It was structure.

A Different Kind of Economy

From the late 1940s through the early 1970s, the United States experienced something historically rare:

• Rising productivity and rising wages

• Strong corporate profits and broad household prosperity

• High business investment

• Low inequality by historical standards

• Fewer and milder financial crises

The economy grew—but it also worked for most people.

That outcome wasn’t the result of markets being replaced. It was the result of markets operating within guardrails that kept power from concentrating too far in any one place.

Competition Was Enforced, Not Assumed

Unlike the 1920s, competition during the postwar period wasn’t treated as automatic. It was actively protected.

Antitrust enforcement was routine, not symbolic. Large mergers faced scrutiny. Market dominance was viewed with suspicion, not admiration. The goal wasn’t to punish success—it was to prevent success from turning into permanent control.

This mattered because competition disciplines prices, encourages innovation, and spreads opportunity. When firms know they can’t simply buy or crush rivals, they invest in productivity instead of rent-seeking.

Markets stayed markets because power had limits.

Labor Had Bargaining Power

One of the most important—and most misunderstood—features of the postwar economy was labor’s role.

Strong unions were not a bug in the system. They were a counterweight.

Through collective bargaining, workers captured a meaningful share of productivity gains. That translated into rising wages, stable employment, and growing consumer demand.

This wasn’t charity. It was market logic.

Workers with income buy goods. Businesses with customers expand. Expansion drives investment. Investment creates jobs.

The feedback loop worked because bargaining power was not one-sided.

Profits Were High—and So Were Taxes

Another inconvenient fact: corporations thrived under this system.

Profit margins were healthy. Investment was strong. Innovation continued. American firms dominated global markets.

At the same time, top marginal tax rates were high by today’s standards, and corporate taxes were substantial. That revenue funded infrastructure, education, and research that lowered costs and expanded opportunity across the economy.

High taxes did not kill growth. They recycled idle capital back into productive use.

The system rewarded success—but prevented it from ossifying into permanent advantage.

Public Investment Crowded In Private Growth

Postwar America invested heavily in the foundations of a modern economy:

• Transportation

• Energy

• Housing

• Education

• Scientific research

Programs like the GI Bill expanded access to higher education and homeownership. Infrastructure projects reduced transaction costs for businesses. Public research fueled private innovation.

These investments didn’t replace private enterprise. They made it more productive.

Markets don’t thrive in a vacuum. They thrive on shared platforms.

Stability Reduced the Need for Bailouts

Perhaps the most overlooked feature of this era was what didn’t happen.

There were recessions—but they were generally shorter and less destructive. There were financial disruptions—but not systemic collapses. Bank failures were rare. Speculative bubbles were constrained.

That wasn’t because people became wiser. It was because the system was less fragile.

Guardrails prevented risk from concentrating unchecked. When shocks arrived, the economy could absorb them without imploding.

This Wasn’t Socialism—and It Wasn’t Laissez-Faire

The postwar economy doesn’t fit neatly into modern political categories.

It wasn’t a planned economy. Prices were set by markets. Businesses competed. Innovation flourished.

But it also wasn’t a free-for-all. Rules mattered. Enforcement mattered. Power was balanced.

It was managed competition—and it delivered the most prosperous and stable period in American economic history.

Why This Matters Now

This era matters not because it can be perfectly recreated, but because it proves something fundamental:

Markets perform best when no single group—capital, labor, or finance—can dominate the system.

When those balances erode, instability returns. When they are maintained, growth becomes inclusive and resilient.

The postwar boom wasn’t an accident of history. It was the result of deliberate choices about how markets should function.

And those choices would not last forever.

The Setup for What Comes Next

Beginning in the late 1970s, a new idea took hold: that these guardrails were unnecessary, inefficient, or even harmful. That markets would perform better if constraints were loosened and enforcement relaxed.

What followed was not a return to dynamism—but a slow rebuilding of fragility.

That story comes next.

Next: Part IV — The Great Unlearning: How We Dismantled What Worked

The Deal That Restored the Market

Why the New Deal Wasn’t About Bigger Government—but Better Markets

Part II of “Why the New Deal Still Matters”

By 1933, the argument over whether markets should be “left alone” was already settled—not by theory, but by reality.

Banks were failing by the thousands. Credit had frozen. Businesses collapsed not because demand had vanished, but because trust had. Millions of Americans were unemployed, not due to laziness or inefficiency, but because the economic system had seized up.

The question facing the country was no longer ideological. It was practical:

Could the market system survive without repair?

The New Deal was the answer—not as an experiment in socialism, but as a last effort to restore the basic conditions that make markets work.

Adam Smith’s Forgotten Warning

Modern debates often treat regulation as something imposed on markets. But that idea would have baffled Adam Smith, whose work is routinely invoked—and just as routinely misunderstood.

Smith did not argue that markets thrive when rules disappear. He argued the opposite.

He warned that:

• Concentrated power undermines competition

• Monopolies distort prices and suppress innovation

• Self-interest becomes destructive when unchecked

• Markets require trust, fairness, and enforcement to function

One of his most famous lines is rarely quoted in full context:

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public.”

Smith understood that without rules, markets don’t stay free—they become rigged.

By the early 1930s, that warning had become reality.

When Markets Stop Behaving Like Markets

What collapsed during the Great Depression wasn’t just output or employment—it was market function itself.

Prices stopped sending reliable signals. Credit stopped flowing. Competition gave way to panic. Ordinary people pulled their savings from banks not out of hysteria, but because it was rational to do so.

Voluntary restraint failed. Moral norms failed. Self-regulation failed.

At that point, insisting on non-intervention would not have preserved capitalism. It would have finished destroying it.

The New Deal began from a simple premise:

If markets are going to function, the conditions that make them possible must be restored.

What “Restoring the Market” Actually Meant

The New Deal is often described as a grab bag of programs. In reality, its core economic logic was remarkably consistent.

It focused on rebuilding trust, competition, and stability.

1. Fixing the Banking System

Bank runs were contagious because depositors had no protection. Once fear started, the rational move was to withdraw everything.

The creation of the FDIC changed that overnight.

Deposit insurance didn’t eliminate risk—it eliminated panic. It restored confidence that money placed in a bank would still be there tomorrow. With confidence restored, credit could flow again.

That wasn’t “big government.” It was market plumbing.

2. Making Financial Markets Trustworthy

Before the 1930s, investors were often flying blind. Fraud, insider dealing, and opaque accounting were common.

The creation of the SEC didn’t guarantee profits—but it did guarantee rules of the road.

Transparency restored credibility. Credibility restored participation. Participation restored liquidity.

Markets cannot function when participants assume the game is rigged.

3. Restoring Competition

The New Deal revived antitrust enforcement not to punish success, but to protect competition itself.

Markets dominated by monopolies do not allocate resources efficiently. They extract rents. They suppress challengers. They slow innovation.

Breaking up or restraining excessive market power wasn’t anti-business. It was pro-market.

Adam Smith would have recognized this instantly.

4. Stabilizing Demand So Markets Could Clear

An economy cannot recover if businesses have nothing to sell.

Programs like the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps weren’t charity. They were demand stabilization.

People with income buy goods. Businesses with customers invest. Investment creates jobs. Jobs create income.

This wasn’t central planning—it was restarting circulation in a system that had seized up.

5. Creating Baseline Security

The introduction of Social Security is often framed as pure redistribution. Its economic function was simpler.

When people fear destitution in old age, they hoard. When fear eases, they participate.

Baseline security made long-term planning possible—for households and for businesses alike.

Markets do not thrive on desperation. They thrive on predictability.

Why This Wasn’t “Big Government”

Here’s the key point modern debates miss:

The New Deal did not tell businesses what to produce, what to charge, or whom to hire.

It did not abolish private ownership.

It did not replace markets with planning.

What it did was restore the preconditions for competition:

• Trust

• Transparency

• Broad participation

• Enforceable rules

In other words, it repaired capitalism after it broke.

The Cost Argument Misses the Point

Critics often focus on what the New Deal cost. That question is incomplete.

The relevant comparison is not:

“How much did it cost?”

It is:

“How much did collapse cost—and what did prevention save?”

Unchecked failure destroys wealth, institutions, and legitimacy. Repair is expensive, but collapse is ruinous.

The New Deal was not free. Neither was the alternative.

The Real Legacy

The New Deal did not end debate about markets. It ended a much more dangerous experiment—the idea that markets can survive indefinitely without rules, enforcement, or moral limits.

It proved something quietly radical:

Capitalism works best when it is disciplined.

That lesson held for decades.

And when we began to forget it, the consequences slowly returned.

Next: Part III — When It Worked: The Guardrail Economy and the Rise of the Middle Class

The Real Economy of the 1920s

Before the Fall: When Markets Lost Their Balance

Part I of “Why the New Deal Still Matters”

The 1920s are often remembered as a golden age of American capitalism—a time of innovation, prosperity, and confidence in the future. And in some ways, that reputation is deserved. Industrial output surged. New technologies transformed daily life. Corporate profits soared.

But beneath that surface, the American economy was quietly losing its balance.

Growth was real—but it was narrow. Wealth accumulated—but unevenly. Markets expanded—but the conditions that make markets resilient were steadily eroding. By the end of the decade, the system looked strong on paper and brittle in practice.

The Great Depression was not a freak accident. It was the predictable result of an economy that had outgrown its guardrails.

Growth Without Broad Participation

Productivity rose sharply throughout the 1920s. Factories became more efficient. Output increased. Corporate earnings climbed.

Wages, however, did not keep pace.

A growing share of economic gains flowed to owners and executives rather than workers. Most households saw modest income growth at best, even as the economy produced more goods than ever before. This imbalance mattered more than it appeared at the time.

Markets depend on broad purchasing power. When most people can afford what the economy produces, demand is stable and self-reinforcing. When income concentrates at the top, demand becomes fragile—propped up by credit, speculation, and optimism rather than wages.

By the late 1920s, consumption increasingly relied on household debt, while investment flowed into financial assets instead of productive capacity. The economy was growing, but the foundation underneath it was thinning.

Competition in Name Only

The era is often described as one of free enterprise, but many key industries were not truly competitive.

Several sectors were dominated by a small number of firms—or even a single firm—with the power to control prices, supply, and market access. Among the most prominent:

• Standard Oil, which at its peak controlled roughly 90 percent of U.S. oil refining

• U.S. Steel, which dominated steel production and pricing

This kind of concentration did not reflect healthy competition. It reflected markets that had stopped functioning as markets.

When dominant firms can undercut competitors, buy them out, or block new entrants, prices no longer signal true supply and demand. Innovation slows. Risk concentrates. Smaller businesses are squeezed out. The appearance of efficiency masks the loss of resilience.

Antitrust Laws Existed—Enforcement Didn’t

This concentration of power was not illegal in theory.

The Sherman Antitrust Act had been on the books since 1890. The law was designed to prevent exactly this kind of market dominance.

In practice, enforcement was inconsistent and often reluctant. Courts frequently favored arguments about “efficiency” and scale. Trust-busting actions, when they occurred, typically came after monopolies were already entrenched.

A rule that is rarely enforced sends a clear message: it can be ignored.

By the 1920s, antitrust law existed more as a symbol than as a constraint, and market power continued to consolidate.

Finance Without Guardrails

Nowhere was the lack of restraint more dangerous than in finance.

The financial system of the 1920s operated with remarkably few protections:

• No deposit insurance

• No securities regulator

• No separation between commercial banking and investment speculation

• Minimal transparency for investors

Banks routinely lent depositors’ money into speculative ventures. Margin trading—borrowing heavily to buy stocks—was widespread. Risk was not eliminated; it was obscured.

Confidence substituted for safeguards. As long as asset prices rose, the system appeared sound. But it had little capacity to absorb losses when prices fell.

When stress arrived, there was no backstop—and no margin for error.

The Quiet Collapse of Trust

Markets do not run on prices alone. They run on confidence.

By the end of the decade, that confidence was already fraying. Ordinary Americans distrusted banks. Investors worried about overvaluation. Businesses hesitated to extend credit. Workers, shut out of the boom, had little cushion against downturns.

Trust is invisible when it exists and devastating when it disappears. Once confidence breaks, markets freeze. Credit dries up. Even a wealthy economy can grind to a halt almost overnight.

Why Collapse Became Inevitable

By 1929, the system carried multiple structural weaknesses:

• Extreme wealth concentration

• Weak competition

• Overleveraged finance

• Wage stagnation

• Debt-driven consumption

• No meaningful safety nets

The economy was not resilient enough to absorb a shock—any shock.

So when the downturn came, the question was never whether the market would correct itself smoothly. It was how much damage would be done before correction arrived.

The answer, as history showed, was catastrophic.

The Question America Faced

By the early 1930s, the debate was no longer about ideology. It was about survival.

The central question wasn’t whether markets should be left alone. It was whether the market system, as it existed, could survive at all.

What followed was not an attempt to replace capitalism—but to restore the conditions that allow markets to function.

That story begins next.

Next: Part II — The Deal That Restored the Market: Why the New Deal Wasn’t About Bigger Government—but Better Markets

A Stronger Energy Future Doesn’t Depend on Oil Profits

In This Isn’t National Security Policy — It’s Big Oil Policy, we looked at how U.S. actions against Venezuelan oil function less like national security policy and more like oil market enforcement — raising prices and protecting large oil interests in the process. That analysis raises a larger question: if maintaining the current energy system requires constant intervention and risk, what would a more stable and productive alternative actually look like?

This post focuses on that question.

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For decades, U.S. energy policy has been shaped around protecting oil supply. That approach has produced predictable results: volatile prices, constant geopolitical risk, and repeated pressure to use force to stabilize markets.

But it’s not the only path available — and it’s increasingly not the smartest one.

A growing share of America’s energy future is being built around something simpler: infrastructure that produces power at home, lowers long-term costs, and creates durable economic value without relying on global fuel markets.

Clean Energy Is an Economic Opportunity, Not a Sacrifice

There’s a common assumption that moving away from oil means giving something up — reliability, affordability, or growth.

In practice, the opposite is increasingly true.

Across much of the U.S., new solar and wind projects are now among the lowest-cost ways to add electricity capacity. They can be built quickly, scaled in stages, and operated without fuel costs that fluctuate with global events.

That matters for households and businesses alike:

• Lower operating costs over time

• Less exposure to price spikes

• More predictable energy planning

This isn’t about ideology. It’s about economics.

Jobs That Stay Put

Oil wealth often concentrates profits far from where energy is used. Clean energy investment works differently.

Building and maintaining power infrastructure creates jobs that:

• Can’t be outsourced

• Exist in rural and urban areas alike

• Support local tax bases

Construction, installation, grid upgrades, maintenance, and storage all require skilled labor on site. Those jobs stay local — and the economic benefits do too.

Instead of sending money overseas or into global fuel markets, energy spending circulates through communities.

Stability Beats Volatility

Oil markets are inherently unstable. Supply disruptions anywhere affect prices everywhere. That volatility benefits traders and large producers, but it creates uncertainty for everyone else.

Energy systems built around domestic infrastructure behave differently.

Once solar, wind, and storage are built:

• Fuel costs are zero

• Operating costs are predictable

• Exposure to global shocks is reduced

That kind of stability supports long-term investment, manufacturing, and small business growth — the parts of the economy that depend on reliable, affordable power.

A Transition That Strengthens the System

None of this requires abandoning oil overnight. The U.S. energy system has always evolved by layering new sources on top of old ones.

What changes over time is what carries the marginal load.

Each new megawatt of fuel-free generation:

• Reduces pressure on oil and gas markets

• Lowers the impact of supply disruptions

• Weakens the link between foreign conflict and domestic prices

Over time, that adds up to a system that is more resilient and less reactive.

Less Dependence, Fewer Tradeoffs

An economy that relies less on global fuel shipments has fewer reasons to intervene abroad to protect energy supply.

That doesn’t just reduce risk — it reduces cost.

Fewer disruptions mean:

• Less emergency intervention

• Less pressure to “stabilize” markets

• Fewer moments where force is treated as policy

Energy systems that don’t require enforcement free up resources — economic and human — for more productive uses at home.

A Choice About the Future

The question isn’t whether oil disappears tomorrow. It won’t.

The real question is whether the U.S. continues structuring its energy policy around protecting oil profits — or whether it prioritizes building systems that deliver stable power, local jobs, and long-term economic gain.

Clean energy doesn’t ask the country to accept less. It offers a way to build more — more resilience, more predictability, and more shared prosperity.

That’s not a rejection of the past.

It’s an investment in a future that costs less to maintain and delivers more in return.

This Isn’t National Security Policy — It’s Big Oil Policy

Recent U.S. actions against Venezuelan oil shipments are being framed as enforcement and security. But when you step back and look at the results, a different picture emerges.

The United States is seizing oil tankers and blocking Venezuelan oil exports. The predictable effect of restricting oil supply is higher prices. Higher prices benefit oil producers, traders, and refiners.

That outcome doesn’t depend on intent. It follows directly from how oil markets work.

When a policy reliably raises prices and boosts industry profits, it’s reasonable to ask who benefits — and whether the public interest is actually being served.

Policing Oil Markets Is Not Public Safety

If the primary goal were public safety or counter-narcotics, enforcement would focus on financial networks, corruption, and trafficking routes.

Instead, the focus is on oil shipments.

Seizing tankers does not stop drug trafficking.
It does not reduce violence inside Venezuela.
It does not make Americans safer at home.

What it does do is restrict oil supply in global markets.

Calling this “enforcement” doesn’t change its function. In practice, it is oil market control backed by military force.

Who Benefits From Higher Prices?

When oil supply tightens, prices rise. That benefits companies that produce, trade, and refine oil. It also benefits firms positioned to export fuel into higher-priced global markets.

Those gains are real and measurable.

At the same time, higher prices are felt by consumers and businesses, and the risks associated with enforcement are carried by U.S. servicemembers tasked with patrolling shipping lanes and boarding vessels.

The benefits and the risks are not shared evenly.

The Risk Is Shifted Downward

Oil market enforcement is not abstract. It requires:

• Naval patrols

• Boarding operations

• The risk of escalation with other countries

Those risks are not carried by oil executives or shareholders. They are carried by people in uniform and by their families.

Using military force to influence energy markets shifts risk downward while concentrating reward upward. That tradeoff deserves scrutiny, especially when it is presented as a security necessity rather than an economic choice.

Venezuela Is the Case Study, Not the Exception

What’s happening with Venezuela isn’t new. Similar tactics have been used wherever oil supply intersects with U.S. strategic interests.

Venezuela isn’t being targeted because it poses a unique threat. It’s being targeted because it is economically vulnerable and because its oil still matters in global markets.

That distinction matters.

This isn’t about defending democracy or protecting the public. It’s about controlling supply in a way that benefits a powerful industry.

A Question Worth Asking

If enforcing oil policy requires military power, and if the predictable result is higher prices and higher profits for large oil companies, we should be honest about that reality.

Is this really national security policy?
Or is it energy policy shaped around the interests of Big Oil?

Those questions don’t require defending Venezuela’s government or excusing corruption. They simply require looking clearly at who benefits from these actions — and who bears the cost.

Before accepting the next escalation as necessary or inevitable, it’s worth asking whether this approach serves the public interest, or whether it primarily serves an industry that has long shaped U.S. foreign policy to its advantage.

The U.S. Just Seized a Venezuelan Oil Tanker — And We Have No Legal Right To Do It

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the U.S. government has been leaning hard on a new “narco-terrorism” story to justify a more aggressive posture toward Venezuela. It’s a narrative built on dramatic language but thin evidence — a story that makes military actions sound like law-enforcement necessities rather than political choices.

Now we have a real test of that narrative:

The United States just seized a massive oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.

Not a drug boat.

Not a weapons shipment.

A tanker carrying crude oil — the same commodity that has dragged this country into conflict again and again.

And here’s the truth: we have no legal authority to do this.

Not under international law. Not under any treaty. Not under the rules the U.S. once insisted the rest of the world follow.

This isn’t counterterrorism.

It’s not stopping cartels.

It’s a military power grab aimed at someone else’s oil supply.

And the American people are tired of it.

What Actually Happened

U.S. forces — Navy assets, Coast Guard teams, federal tactical units — boarded a foreign-flagged tanker operating near Venezuela’s waters. They took control of the ship, its crew, and its cargo.

Officials immediately framed the move as a “sanctions enforcement” action. They claimed the tanker was tied to illicit trade, that it was carrying oil linked to sanctioned actors, and that the U.S. had every right to intervene.

Venezuela called it what it is: a violation of sovereignty and an act of piracy.

And legally, they’re not wrong.

International Law Isn’t Complicated Here

There are a lot of gray areas in maritime law.

This is not one of them.

The United States cannot:

• Use military force to seize a commercial vessel in another country’s maritime zone.

• Enforce U.S. domestic sanctions on the high seas as if the entire planet is under American jurisdiction.

• Board a ship without UN authorization, treaty authority, or consent from the flag state.

None of those conditions exist here.

So what is the U.S. really enforcing?

Its own power — and its own interests — not international law.

When we condemn other nations for ignoring rules and acting like regional bullies, this is exactly the kind of behavior we’re talking about.

The Story Americans Are Being Told Doesn’t Match the Reality

The government wants people to think this is a narcotics case. It’s not.

They want people to believe this is about terrorism. It’s not.

The cargo wasn’t fentanyl, cocaine, weapons, or anything remotely connected to those threats.

It was oil.

Venezuela’s most important source of revenue.

Cuba’s most important source of energy.

And a long-standing point of U.S. interest in the region.

The “narco-terrorism” language is a smokescreen — a political shortcut that attempts to turn a geopolitical action into a moral crusade. It’s the same strategy used in past decades to sell the public on policies that had far more to do with resources than national security.

Let’s Be Honest: Our Military Is Still Being Used to Control Oil

Most Americans — across the political spectrum — have had enough of oil-driven foreign interventions.

They remember Iraq.

They remember the promises that “energy independence” would finally get the U.S. out of overseas oil conflicts.

They remember being told that our military presence abroad was about democracy, freedom, and global stability.

And here we are again:

• U.S. helicopters chasing down a commercial oil tanker.

• Armed personnel taking control of a foreign cargo.

• Washington insisting it has the right to police global oil flows.

This isn’t what Americans voted for.

It’s not what they were promised.

And it’s not a path to greater security — it’s a recipe for escalation.

You don’t have to support the Venezuelan government to recognize a simple truth:

We are using the U.S. military to interfere with another country’s natural resources.

That is the oldest story in modern American foreign policy — and the one people are most tired of reliving.

Why This Is Bigger Than Venezuela

When a country with as much power as the United States starts seizing commercial ships near foreign coasts, several things happen:

• Other countries stop trusting international rules because they see that we ignore them when convenient.

• Rival powers feel justified in acting the same way.

• Global shipping becomes less stable and more dangerous.

• The U.S. loses the moral authority it once used to shape maritime law and global norms.

And for what?

Another oil shipment? Another opportunity to flex U.S. power? Another crisis framed as a noble mission?

Americans don’t want another conflict tied to oil.

They’re struggling economically. They’re exhausted by foreign entanglements.

They want their government focused on things that actually improve life at home — not replaying the last 50 years of mistakes.

A Pattern We Can’t Ignore

The tanker seizure is not a one-off.

It fits the pattern of the administration’s broader approach:

• Inflate a threat.

• Invoke “terrorism,” “drugs,” or “security.”

• Use military force where legal authority is thin or nonexistent.

• Claim victory and expect the public not to ask too many questions.

This is exactly what the “narco-terrorism” narrative was built for:

to make controversial actions seem inevitable, righteous, and beyond debate.

But nothing about this seizure was inevitable.

And nothing about it was legal.

The Real Question

At some point, Americans deserve to ask:

If we’re no longer supposed to be fighting wars for oil, then why is our military still being used to seize it?

That’s the question at the center of this story.

And it’s a question the administration doesn’t seem eager to answer.

When Pardons Become Shields: How the Cuellar Case Undermines Justice

The presidential pardon was designed as a last resort to correct miscarriages of justice — a constitutional safety valve to protect individuals from unfair punishment. It was never intended to be a political reset button for the powerful. Yet that is exactly what happened when Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) received a presidential pardon before his bribery case ever reached a verdict.

Cuellar’s indictment involved serious allegations: accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars through shell companies, allegedly trading his office for foreign influence, and laundering the proceeds. These weren’t minor technical violations. They went to the heart of public trust and democratic integrity.

But instead of letting the case move forward, the White House intervened. There was no jury. No verdict. No opportunity to examine evidence in open court. The process simply stopped. It wasn’t justice — it was a shortcut.

A System Built for the Connected

This is how the legal system breaks down, not in dramatic collapses, but in quiet acts of selective protection.

If an ordinary person is charged with felony bribery, the case proceeds. They hire counsel, appear in court, and face the risk of conviction. They don’t have access to lawyers who can speed-dial the West Wing. They can’t ask for a presidential signature that erases the consequences.

But indicted politicians can — and increasingly do.

When people in power are immune from the consequences of their actions, it erodes faith in the rule of law. The message is simple: accountability is optional for the well-connected.

Pardons Were Meant for Mercy — Not Impunity

The Founders imagined pardons as acts of mercy, used sparingly in cases of:

• wrongful conviction

• disproportionate punishment

• extraordinary circumstances

What we have now is something different: preventive pardons — pre-emptive political interventions that interrupt the legal process itself. The goal isn’t justice; it’s damage control.

A pardon granted before a trial is fundamentally anti-democratic. It denies:

• transparency

• public evidence

• a fact-finding process

• a verdict based on law

Even if Cuellar were innocent — and he maintains he is — we will never know, because the system was blocked from doing its job.

The Public Loses Twice

When a powerful politician is shielded from trial, the public suffers in two ways:

1. Loss of accountability.

There is no record of testimony, no discovery process, and no chance to examine how influence was allegedly bought and sold.

2. Loss of deterrence.

Others in office see that consequences are optional. The cost of corruption goes down. The incentive to take money under the table goes up.

Justice isn’t just about punishment; it’s about truth. We now live in a system where the truth is something you can pardon away.

A Legal System Worth Defending

Letting the Cuellar case proceed would not have guaranteed a conviction. It would have guaranteed a conclusion — reached publicly, through evidence, argument, and law.

Maybe he would have been cleared. Maybe he would have been found guilty. Either outcome would have served the public interest by showing that the same rules apply to every elected official, regardless of party or influence.

That principle is worth defending. Because if justice only applies to the powerless, it isn’t justice. It’s a favor.

What We Can Do Next

The Cuellar pardon isn’t an isolated event — it’s part of a growing pattern of leaders using public office to protect their allies instead of the law. Reforms worth considering:

• Ban pre-trial pardons. A pardon should not be issued until conviction and sentencing.

• Require transparency. Public disclosure of evidence, charging documents, and correspondence related to the case.

• Limit pardons involving close political or financial allies.

These ideas won’t fix everything, but they would restore a basic expectation: Let the legal process run its course.

Because democracy doesn’t die when one politician escapes justice. It dies when millions of people decide the system isn’t worth believing in.

Trump’s Pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández Exposes the Truth Behind America’s “Narco-Terror” Narrative

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández is serving a 45-year U.S. prison sentence for trafficking massive quantities of cocaine into the United States. The evidence against him was extensive. A New York jury found that Hernández worked with cartels, protected cocaine shipments, and took millions in bribes. In the eyes of U.S. prosecutors, he wasn’t just a corrupt politician — he helped turn Honduras into a “narco-state.”

Now Donald Trump says he will give him a full pardon.

Trump announced the decision on social media just days before Honduras’s presidential election and tied it directly to his endorsement of conservative candidate Nasry Asfura, Hernández’s political ally. It’s an extraordinary move: undoing a major federal conviction in the middle of another country’s election. And it raises a much bigger question — one that goes far beyond Honduras:

What does this say about the credibility of the U.S. “war on narco-terrorism,” especially in places like Venezuela?

To answer that, we need to look beyond the headlines.

The Hernández Case Was a Major Victory for U.S. Anti-Drug Policy

Hernández’s conviction wasn’t symbolic. It was the product of years of investigations by the DEA, U.S. prosecutors, and cooperating witnesses who tied him to hundreds of tons of cocaine shipped to the United States. At his 2024 sentencing, the Justice Department called him a “co-conspirator” with some of the most violent cartels in Central America.

In other words, this wasn’t a gray area. It was one of the largest drug-trafficking cases ever brought against a foreign leader in a U.S. court.

A presidential pardon wipes that away.

It tells every partner government, every anti-corruption unit, every prosecutor who risked their life to expose Hernández: “Your work doesn’t matter if Washington finds it politically inconvenient.”

A Pardon With an Election Attached

If the pardon stood on its own, it would already be unprecedented. But Trump publicly tied it to the upcoming election in Honduras — signaling that he supports Hernández’s party and its chosen successor.

That’s not foreign policy.
That’s political intervention.

And it sends a clear message: the United States will protect foreign leaders, even convicted ones, when it serves U.S. political goals.

This is exactly the kind of transactional foreign policy the world has learned to expect from Trump — loyalty above law, and political convenience above consistent principles.

The Narco-Terror Narrative Falls Apart

This brings us back to Venezuela.

I previously wrote about the U.S. narrative that Venezuela is run by “narco-terrorists.” That label has been used to justify military strikes, sanctions, and a broad pressure campaign. But as I explained, the evidence behind those claims is thin, disputed, and often shaped by politics rather than facts.

The Hernández pardon makes that even clearer.

If the United States truly believed it was fighting a real, principled war against narco-terrorism, the last thing it would do is pardon the only foreign head of state ever convicted of trafficking cocaine into the U.S. A man a federal court found to be deeply tied to the cartels the U.S. says it wants to dismantle.

You can’t claim to be cracking down on narco-terrorists while pardoning an actual one.

You can’t bomb boats off Venezuela and declare them “narco-terrorists” when your political allies get a free pass for documented drug trafficking.

You can’t talk about “narco-states” while rehabilitating the leader prosecutors said turned Honduras into one.

The inconsistency isn’t subtle — it’s the point.

This Creates a Crisis of Credibility Across Latin America

The consequences will ripple far beyond Honduras:

It Encourages Impunity for the Powerful

Foreign leaders watching this now know that even the strongest federal cases can be undone with a single political gesture. That makes anti-corruption work harder, not easier.

It Weakens Anti-Drug Partnerships

Countries that partnered closely with the U.S. may now wonder whether Washington will stand behind its own investigations. Trust is fragile, and this erodes it sharply.

It Damages U.S. Claims in Venezuela

If the U.S. can selectively ignore proven drug trafficking when it benefits a political ally, then its claims about “narco-terrorism” elsewhere — especially in Venezuela — carry far less weight.

In short: Washington can no longer argue that its actions are driven by principle. The Hernández pardon shows they are driven by politics.

The Broader Pattern Is Impossible to Ignore

Look at the sequence:

• A former president is convicted of moving tons of cocaine into the U.S.

• He is sentenced to 45 years.

• Days before an election, Trump promises him a pardon tied to the political future of his party.

• Meanwhile, the U.S. bombs alleged “narco-terrorists” in Venezuela and labels political enemies “narco-states.”

This isn’t strategy.
This isn’t anti-terror policy.

This is political theater — and the theater is coming at the expense of truth, justice, and U.S. credibility across an entire region.

Conclusion

The pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández isn’t a one-off. It’s part of a pattern that reveals the real purpose behind many of the Trump administration’s actions in Latin America: political advantage, not justice. It shows that the narco-terror narrative is not a consistent national-security doctrine but a flexible political tool — used aggressively in places like Venezuela and discarded when inconvenient in places like Honduras.

At a moment when the U.S. is claiming to fight “narco-terrorism” abroad, pardoning a convicted trafficker at home sends a message that will not be forgotten in the region.

Latin America can see the contradiction clearly.

Americans should see it too.

The Montana Plan: A New Way to Push Back Against Citizens United

When the Supreme Court handed down Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, it reshaped American politics in ways most of us are still grappling with. I’ve written before about how the ruling opened the door to unlimited corporate spending in elections and changed the political landscape for the worse. And I’ve explored how it fueled the rise of dark-money groups that operate with little accountability. Those two posts laid out the core problem: when corporate money floods elections, public power starts drifting toward private interests.

Now Montana—a place with a long memory of what unchecked corporate power can do—is trying something new. The state is preparing a ballot initiative for 2026 that could become the most important test of campaign-finance reform in years. People are calling it “The Montana Plan,” and depending on how things play out, it may offer a path that other states can use to weaken the impact of Citizens United without waiting on Congress or the Supreme Court.

This post walks through what the Montana Plan does, why it matters, and what it could mean beyond Montana’s borders.

A Quick Refresher: What Citizens United Changed

In Citizens United, the Court ruled that corporations and unions have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited money on “independent expenditures” supporting or opposing political candidates. The logic rested on the idea that restricting a corporation’s spending restricts its “speech.” The practical result has been a surge in outside spending—much of it funneled through super PACs and dark-money groups where donors can remain anonymous.

If you’ve followed the changes in campaign finance over the past decade, you know the pattern: more big money, less transparency, and more influence for well-funded interests. That background is essential for understanding Montana’s new approach.

Montana’s Long History of Fighting Corporate Influence

Montana isn’t new to this fight. In the early 1900s, the state was dominated by mining companies that effectively bought elections. In response, Montanans passed the 1912 Corrupt Practices Act, which banned corporate political spending. That law stood for nearly a century—until the Supreme Court struck it down in 2012, saying Citizens United applies to all states.

So Montana has been here before. The difference is that this time, reformers aren’t trying to set contribution limits or disclosure rules. They’re attacking the problem at the structural level.

What the Montana Plan Actually Does

At the center of the Montana Plan is a simple but powerful idea: states have broad authority to define what powers corporations have. Corporations exist because states charter them. If a state chooses, it can narrow or expand the powers that come with that charter.

The Montana Plan uses that authority in a new way.

The initiative would amend the state constitution—or the rules governing corporate charters—to say that corporations operating in Montana do not have the power to spend money to influence elections. Not “not allowed,” not “restricted,” but simply: Election spending is not one of the powers granted to corporate entities in this state.

Here’s why that matters. Under Citizens United, corporations may have a constitutional right to spend money in elections. But a right is only meaningful if the corporation has the power to exercise it. If Montana says, “Corporations we charter don’t have that power,” then there’s nothing for the First Amendment to protect.

Reformers describe this as “taking the engine out of the car.” The Supreme Court may say corporations can drive, but if the state removes the engine, there’s nothing to drive with.

Polls show the idea has strong support in Montana—more than 70 percent, including many Republicans and independents. And because states usually apply the same limits on domestic corporations to foreign or out-of-state corporations doing business there, the rule could have broad reach.

How This Could Neutralize Citizens United in Montana

The key distinction here is between rights and powers.

Citizens United says corporations have a First Amendment right to make independent political expenditures.

But Montana is saying:

“You may have the right, but under our corporate law, you don’t have the power.”

That difference matters because the First Amendment generally protects people—and corporations—from government restrictions on actions they are otherwise legally permitted to take. If a state says a corporation literally doesn’t have the authority to spend money on politics, then restricting that nonexistent authority isn’t the same thing as regulating speech.

If the Montana Plan survives legal scrutiny, it would create a state where corporations are simply not political actors by design. It would not overturn Citizens United, but it would make the ruling largely irrelevant in that state.

What Happens If It Passes

Inside Montana

If voters approve the initiative in 2026:

• Corporate independent expenditures in Montana elections could drop sharply.

• Dark-money groups tied to corporate funding streams may lose influence.

• Candidates may rely more on grassroots fundraising and individual donors.

• Election messaging may become less dominated by outside spending.

The state would effectively become a test case for what politics without corporate election spending looks like.

Beyond Montana

If the plan works—and especially if it holds up in court—it could spread.

Other states, especially those with ballot-initiative systems, could adopt similar reforms. Reform advocates have already begun discussing where this might go next: Colorado, Oregon, New York, and even some Midwest states with strong anti-corruption traditions.

Over time, that could create a patchwork of states where corporate political spending is curtailed, shifting the balance of influence in state-level elections and possibly altering national political dynamics.

And because reform at the federal level remains stalled, state-level action may be the only path forward for the foreseeable future.

Challenges and Legal Headwinds

None of this will happen without resistance.

• Corporations and political groups will almost certainly sue, arguing that the initiative violates the First Amendment or interferes with interstate commerce.

• Election-spending groups are likely to pour money into Montana to oppose the ballot measure.

• Some dark-money organizations may try to restructure in ways that avoid classification as corporations.

• Courts may ultimately rule that states can’t restrict corporate powers in this way—though the legal theory behind the initiative is strong enough to merit serious consideration.

There’s also the practical question of enforcement. Defining which entities count as “corporations doing business in the state” matters. So does tracking how money flows through intermediaries. But these are administrative challenges, not deal-breakers.

Why This Matters for Democracy

For the past fifteen years, critics of Citizens United have been stuck in a cycle of frustration: Congress won’t act, the Court won’t reverse itself, and wealthy interests continue to dominate political spending.

The Montana Plan breaks that pattern. Instead of begging the Supreme Court to change its mind, it asks a more fundamental question:

What powers do we want corporations to have in our democracy?

By focusing on corporate charters rather than campaign-finance regulations, the initiative goes beneath the symptoms and aims at the underlying structure. It’s a reminder that corporations are creations of public law, not independent political actors with inherent authority.

If you believe, as I do, that democracy works best when the influence of money is balanced by transparency, accountability, and public voice, then this approach is worth watching closely.

What to Watch Next

Here are the key things I’ll be tracking:

• Whether the Montana attorney general approves the initiative for the 2026 ballot

• Signature-gathering efforts and public-opinion shifts

• Early lawsuits and legal opinions on the state’s authority over corporate powers

• Interest from other states exploring similar reforms

• How national dark-money groups respond

Montana may be about to run the country’s most important experiment in reducing corporate influence on elections. If it succeeds, other states might follow—and that could change the landscape far more than anything happening in Washington right now.

Tariffs, Refunds, and a Conflict of Interest Hiding in Plain Sight

Most people hear the word tariff and imagine a simple tax on imported goods — something that gets paid and forgotten. But behind the scenes, tariffs are governed by a maze of legal rules, agency decisions, and court challenges. And right now, the way those rules work has created a situation that should concern anyone who cares about basic fairness in government.

This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s an ethics issue. And the story starts in a place almost no one pays attention to: tariff refunds.

The Hidden World of Tariff Refunds

When a company pays a tariff, that payment isn’t always final. U.S. law requires that tariffs be calculated using specific formulas and procedures. If the government miscalculates the tariff, or if a court finds the tariff wasn’t applied properly, companies that paid those tariffs are entitled to refunds — sometimes millions of dollars at a time.

Because recent tariff policies have pushed into legally contested territory, a wave of lawsuits is arguing that some of these tariffs weren’t set correctly. If courts agree, companies stand to see enormous refunds.

But those cases can take years, and companies don’t always want to wait.

Selling the Rights to Future Refunds

Here’s the part that surprises almost everyone: companies can sell their rights to potential refunds long before the courts rule.

It works like this:

• A company paid $10 million in tariffs.

• It might get that money back, depending on litigation outcomes.

• But the company needs cash now or wants certainty.

So a financial firm steps in and offers to buy the right to that future refund for a fraction of its value — often 20–30 cents on the dollar.

The company gets guaranteed money.
The financial firm gets the chance at a large payout later.

This kind of claims trading is legal and fairly common in other areas: bankruptcy claims, tax credits, carbon credits, and more. Tariff refund rights have simply become the newest niche.

The Commerce Department’s Outsized Role

Tariff refund cases don’t turn solely on courtroom arguments. The Department of Commerce plays a huge role in whether refunds happen at all.

Commerce:

• reviews how tariffs are calculated

• determines whether foreign companies are dumping goods

• grants or denies tariff exclusions

• issues retroactive corrections

• helps shape the government’s legal positions

• controls the timing of key decisions

Any one of these actions can swing refund eligibility or refund size. Commerce doesn’t disburse refunds directly, but it controls the determinations that make refunds possible.

That’s the first half of the conflict.

The Players: Howard, Brandon, and Kyle Lutnick

Three names sit at the center of this story:

Howard Lutnick

• Longtime Chairman and major shareholder of Cantor Fitzgerald

• Major figure in global finance

• Confirmed in 2025 as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce

Brandon Lutnick

• Howard’s son

• Chairman & CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald

• Oversees the firm’s trading and investment strategies

Kyle Lutnick

• Howard’s son

• Executive Vice Chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald

• Managing general partner of Cantor

Brandon and Kyle control a vast financial firm and a federal agency whose decisions directly affect a market their firm participates in. Their control was passed down via a trust from their father, Howard.

What Cantor Fitzgerald Has Been Doing

Multiple news outlets (Wired, Esquire, Washington Post)— and two Senate committees — report that Cantor Fitzgerald has been active in the tariff-refund market. According to those reports, the firm has approached companies that paid sizeable tariffs and offered to buy the rights to future refunds at steep discounts.

Some reported details include:

• offers in the range of 20–30% of a refund’s possible value

• capacity to trade “hundreds of millions” in claims

• positioning to profit if tariffs are overturned or reduced

Cantor denies improper behavior. But the issue isn’t about proving intent — it’s about the structure of the situation.

A Conflict Created by the System Itself

When you put the pieces together, it isn’t hard to see the problem:

• Commerce plays a central role in decisions that affect tariff refunds.

• Cantor Fitzgerald profits if refund claims pay out.

• The Commerce Secretary is Howard Lutnick.

• Cantor Fitzgerald is led by Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, Howard’s sons.

Even if every decision at Commerce is made with perfect integrity, the overlap alone is enough to undermine public trust. A public official’s family company is financially exposed to the outcome of decisions made by his agency — decisions that can move millions of dollars.

You don’t need wrongdoing for the situation to be wrong.

The Larger Issue: Weak Ethics Rules

The truth is, the Lutnick scenario exposes something deeper: our federal ethics system isn’t built to handle modern conflicts of interest. Cabinet officials can retain significant business holdings, recusals are often voluntary and invisible, and “appearance of conflict” carries almost no legal weight in federal law.

This means that situations that would be blocked outright in many other democracies are technically allowed here. And that leaves the public in a position where they’re asked to trust a system that doesn’t meaningfully guard against conflicts in the first place.

We Can — and Should — Expect Better

We don’t need to assume bad motives to see that something isn’t working. When a single family has influence on both sides of a process that involves government decisions and private profit, the system has failed to protect the public interest.

Americans deserve stronger, clearer ethics rules — ones that prevent conflicts before they happen, not after a headline makes them obvious. This is about reinforcing trust, not assigning blame. When the rules are strong, the public can have confidence that decisions are being made for the country, not for connected insiders.

That’s not a partisan idea. It’s a basic expectation in a healthy democracy.

What’s Really Going On in Venezuela? A Look Behind the “Narco-Terrorism” Story

If you’ve been watching the news lately, you’ve probably noticed the White House talking a lot about “narco-terrorists” off the coast of Venezuela. It’s been a steady drumbeat: drug-running boats, criminal networks, threats to the homeland. And then you see the scale of the U.S. military response — carriers, destroyers, covert surveillance, intelligence assets — and something doesn’t quite add up.

It’s the kind of mismatch that makes you lean back and say, “Okay… what’s really going on here?”

So let’s walk through it step by step. No shouting. No conspiracies. Just a clear look at the facts and a few honest questions.

The Official Story: A War on Drug-Traffickers

The administration’s explanation for the escalation is simple and dramatic:

Venezuela is supposedly a major source of narcotics flowing into the United States, and these operations are necessary to crack down on “narco-terrorism.”

It’s a tidy narrative.

Drug traffickers are bad.

Stopping boats full of cocaine sounds defensive, not aggressive.

And the public has been conditioned for decades to accept “drug war = military force.”

It’s an easy sell.

But when you actually look at the data, things start getting weird.

What the Numbers Say

According to the DEA’s own threat assessments, Venezuela is not a major direct source of U.S.-bound cocaine. Most of that stuff comes through the Eastern Pacific or Central America before it ever gets close to the Caribbean. Some Venezuelan shipments exist, but a lot of them head toward Europe or West Africa.

Yes, corruption in the Venezuelan government has been documented.
Yes, some officials have been involved in trafficking.
But the idea that Venezuela is the main artery of drugs flooding into the U.S. simply doesn’t match the empirical record.

And that’s where the story starts to crack. Because if the threat isn’t that big, why is the U.S. response so huge?

Peeling Back the First Layer: Oil

Here’s where motivations start to shift.

Venezuela holds some of the world’s largest heavy-crude reserves. Enormous fields. Massive potential. And for years, U.S. companies — especially Chevron — have been entangled in joint ventures with Venezuela’s state oil company. Those ventures have been hamstrung by sanctions, political instability, failing infrastructure, and contractual uncertainty.

A friendlier government in Caracas would:

• open doors for U.S. investment,

• stabilize long-term oil flows,

• secure sunk capital,

• and reduce dependence on Gulf producers.

So yes, oil is part of the story. Not because Washington wants to “steal” it, but because oil companies and national-security planners have real stakes in how access plays out.

But even that explanation feels incomplete. Because—let’s be honest—the world is changing.

The Energy Landscape Is Moving On

Here’s the thing people misunderstand: clean energy isn’t expanding because we all suddenly became virtuous. It’s expanding because it’s getting cheap.

Solar is now the least expensive source of new electricity in much of the world.
Battery costs keep falling year after year.
Solar-plus-storage is beginning to outcompete natural gas for round-the-clock power.
Electric vehicles are becoming mass-market.

This doesn’t mean oil disappears tomorrow. Far from it. But it does mean the long-term strategic value of controlling foreign oil reserves is slowly declining. The edge just isn’t what it was in 1985 — or even 2005.

So why, in the middle of a global energy transition, is Washington risking conflict to secure leverage over a resource whose future value curve isn’t rising?

That’s where the next set of motives comes in.

Why the White House Isn’t Telling the Full Truth

If you connect the dots, the picture gets clearer — and a lot less flattering. There isn’t one hidden motive. There are several, and none of them make for good sound bites.

The narco narrative polls better than the truth

“Drug traffickers” is a clean, emotionally charged villain.
“Protecting oil investments” or “countering China in the Caribbean” is not.

Admitting regime-change goals would be a diplomatic disaster

Nations remember Iraq. They remember Libya. They remember Chile.
Openly pushing for regime change invites global backlash.

Venezuela is tied into China, Russia, and Iran

All three have deep economic, military, or intelligence relationships there.
Acknowledging that turns the operation into a proxy confrontation — something no White House wants to advertise.

Domestic politics reward looking tough

A high-profile military operation is a convenient way to look decisive, especially during turbulent political seasons.

Legal gray zones matter

“Counter-narcotics” fits under existing authorities.
“Regime pressure” or military coercion does not.
So the label becomes a legal shield.

U.S. companies have billions at stake

Chevron alone has major joint ventures.
If the Venezuelan state collapses unpredictably, those assets could vaporize.

Nobody wants a new migration crisis

A rapid Venezuelan collapse would send another wave of displaced people north.
No administration wants that during an election cycle.

Put bluntly:

The simple drug-interdiction story is political cover.

The real motivations are messier — and far harder to defend publicly.

So What Are We Really Watching?

A policy caught between eras.

On one side: the old Cold War logic — secure oil, counter rivals, exert force.

On the other: an energy market shifting underneath it — cheaper solar, cheaper batteries, new supply chains, new centers of power.

Instead of adjusting to that new reality, Washington is doubling down on familiar, expensive, and increasingly outdated instincts. It’s fighting yesterday’s strategic battles with tomorrow’s budgets.

And the White House can’t admit that openly because it would raise the most obvious question of all:

Why are we risking conflict over a resource whose strategic value is gradually declining?

A More Sensible Path Forward

A smarter U.S. approach would look nothing like the one we’re watching unfold. It would focus on:

• building clean-tech supply chains with partners in the region,

• encouraging transparent investment frameworks,

• using diplomacy instead of force projection,

• supporting regional development to stabilize migration pressures,

• and accelerating clean energy at home to reduce strategic exposure to unstable oil markets.

None of that requires idealism.

It just requires updating the playbook.

Final Thought

If the administration’s explanation doesn’t match the facts…
and if the energy landscape is shifting away from the very resource we’re risking conflict over…
and if the real motivations are a mix of geopolitics, corporate interests, and political optics…
…then maybe the problem isn’t Venezuela at all.

Maybe the problem is that Washington hasn’t adjusted to the world we actually live in — and until it does, we’ll keep seeing military operations justified with stories that don’t quite hold together when you look at the data.