We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
🇺🇸 The Constitution Is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous? — NYT
One of the biggest threats to America’s politics might be the country’s founding document.
The United States Constitution is in trouble. After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he called for the “termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Outraged critics denounced him for threatening a document that is supposed to be “sacrosanct.” By announcing his desire to throw off constitutional constraints in order to satisfy his personal ambitions, Trump was making his authoritarian inclinations abundantly clear.
It’s no surprise, then, that liberals charge Trump with being a menace to the Constitution. But his presidency and the prospect of his re-election have also generated another, very different, argument: that Trump owes his political ascent to the Constitution, making him a beneficiary of a document that is essentially antidemocratic and, in this day and age, increasingly dysfunctional.
After all, Trump became president in 2016 after losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College (Article II). He appointed three justices to the Supreme Court (Article III), two of whom were confirmed by senators representing just 44 percent of the population (Article I). Those three justices helped overturn Roe v. Wade, a reversal with which most Americans disagreed. The eminent legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, worried about opinion polls showing “a dramatic loss of faith in democracy,” writes in his new book, “No Democracy Lasts Forever”: “It is important for Americans to see that these failures stem from the Constitution itself.”
Back in 2018, Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley’s law school, still seemed to place considerable faith in the Constitution, pleading with fellow progressives in his book “We the People” “not to turn their back on the Constitution and the courts.” By contrast, “No Democracy Lasts Forever” is markedly pessimistic. Asserting that the Constitution, which is famously difficult to amend, has put the country “in grave danger,” Chemerinsky lays out what would need to happen for a new constitutional convention — and, in the book’s more somber moments, he entertains the possibility of secession. West Coast states might form a nation called “Pacifica.” Red states might form their own country. He hopes that any divorce, if it comes, will be peaceful.
The prospect of secession sounds extreme, but in suggesting that the Constitution could hasten the end of American democracy, Chemerinsky is far from alone. The argument that what ails the country’s politics isn’t simply the president, or Congress, or the Supreme Court, but the founding document that presides over all three, has been gaining traction, especially among liberals. Books and op-eds critiquing the Constitution have proliferated. Scholars are arguing that the Constitution has incentivized what Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt call a “Tyranny of the Minority.”
The anguish is, in some sense, a flip side of veneration. Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us; a growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.
Ukrainian forces have begun training and testing exoskeletons for battlefield use. Soldiers from the 147th Separate Artillery Brigade are using them in the Pokrovsk sector for both logistics and frontline operations. The goal is to reduce physical strain, especially when loading heavy artillery shells into howitzers without automatic loaders. Artillery crews can handle up to 1200 kg of ammunition per day, and early tests show that exoskeletons help them work faster and with less fatigue Above all, by improving the conditions for those soldiers on the front lines who handle such heavy loads, plus the stress of work. Seeking to reduce overall fatigue in the troops
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🇮🇷🇮🇱 - 14 wounded in Iranian missile strike in central Israel, according to Israeli media.
🇬🇧🇮🇶 - A drone struck British Castrol oil warehouses in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, causing extensive damage.
🇮🇷🇮🇱 - Iran launched 9 missiles towards Israel this morning alone, with at least 3 of them being cluster missiles.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - Over the past 12 hours, Hezbollah launched counterattacks in Khiam and Qantara, in the Nabatieh direction, southeast Lebanon. Hezbollah recaptured northern Khiam, with fighting ongoing for the south of the town. Hezbollah units also re-entered Qantara; frontline sources reported clashes in the center of the town last night.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - 48 IDF soldiers have been wounded in clashes with Hezbollah over the last 24 hours in southern Lebanon, according to the Israeli Army.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - "The Israeli army is barely catching its breath in southern Lebanon, and its resources are less than in the previous round of fighting," - Haaretz....
🇺🇸 Blue Owl Capital just disclosed that investors tried to pull 40.7% of one fund and 21.9% of another in a single quarter, and both funds gave the same answer, you can only have 5% back, and everyone else waits in line.
This is a bank run, not a normal withdrawal.
Wall Street spent the last decade selling millions of investors on something called semi-liquid private credit, higher yields, steady income and the promise you could get your money back every quarter if you needed it. What they buried in the fine print was what happens when too many people try to leave at the same time.
Analysts who have covered private credit for decades say nothing on this scale has ever been reported before at any major private credit manager.
These funds do not hold stocks you can sell on a Tuesday afternoon, they hold private loans to mid sized companies that cannot be liquidated quickly without destroying the price for every investor still trapped inside.
This product was originally designed for ...
🇺🇸 President Trump wants to switch to war economy in 2027 with massive increase in military spending and massive cuts to healthcare and other domestic agencies
Once a deficit hawk — he said in 2016 that he thought he could balance the budget in five years — Trump ended his first term with $7.8 trillion in added debt. His 2027 proposal is expected to give an update on 10-year deficit projections currently estimated at around $16 trillion.
The GOP's message for the Midterms will be focused on the "need" for a massive defense build up while the Democrats' message will be focused on affordability.
The fiscal 2027 budget will be the first time Trump puts his second-term governing agenda into one comprehensive document — with the numbers to back it up. The budget he released last year lacked detailed line-by-line spending targets and the economic assumptions necessary to project the long-term cost of his proposals.
Investors in US Treasuries will be looking to see if the debt and ...
