Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too? by 6ixStringJack

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 14, 2026 07:38
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VIEWED: 132999
PAGE 91 of 91

Saturday, April 11, 2026 12:26 PM

The only news that matters today is how your party is destroying the reputation of one of its own as a sacrifice for maintaining power in California.

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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Sunday, April 12, 2026 2:06 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The only news that matters today is how your party is destroying the reputation of one of its own as a sacrifice for maintaining power in California.

--------------------------------------------------

Be Evil. Be a dick.

So, you want Democrats to elect a rapist much like Trump so that authentic Trumptards who elected a rapist President don't look foolish, comparatively? Why do Trumptards defend rapists, tax cheats, bribe-takers, and the generally incompetent?

Donald Trump’s Incompetence Is Costing Him the Country

An unpopular war, skyrocketing gas prices, unsteady financial markets, a cabinet filled with sycophants — the president’s colossal missteps have led to calamity at home and abroad

By Matt Bai | April 12, 2026

Illustration by VICTOR JUHASZ (Look closely at the illustration. Can you see Trump's error?)

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/donald-trum
p-incompetence-chaos-maga-1235544798/

It was the first week of September in 2005, about a week after Hurricane Katrina leveled New Orleans, when George W. Bush uttered the line that would come to define his second term, if not his entire presidency: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” It was a throwaway comment, a plainspoken president telling his aide, FEMA Director Michael Brown, that he appreciated the effort. But the effort wasn’t nearly adequate, the federal response pitiful, and Bush’s ad-lib became the slogan for an out-of-touch administration that either couldn’t run the government or, worse, didn’t care. For the rest of Bush’s dismal time in office, every new failing would be met with the same sardonic response from his critics. Heckuva job, Brownie.

Donald Trump’s “great job” to Marco Rubio, tossed out during his State of the Union speech in February, didn’t have quite the same staying power. (“I think he’ll go down as the best ever,” Trump told his secretary of state, causing Henry Kissinger to bolt upright in his grave and laugh out loud.) But however much he may try to distract us with outrageous posts and circus-like spectacle, it’s becoming clear that second-term Trump is sinking faster and deeper than Bush ever did, and the dead weight on his back is pretty much the same.

It’s really not ideology that’s tanking Trump right now. I mean, yes, his administration is the meanest, most xenophobic, and most imperialist in at least the past century. And I’d like to think that would be a deal-breaker for the vast majority of middle-ground American voters, but if we’re being real, it probably isn’t. Independent and moderate voters have been with Trump on immigration, broadly speaking, since he first started doing his nativist routine a decade ago. And even a lot of populist leftists can get behind an “America First” foreign policy and protectionism for American manufacturers. Maybe Trump should be flailing politically because he’s brazenly profiting off the presidency and renaming half of Washington after himself, but near as I can tell, that part doesn’t especially trouble people, either.

No, what’s killing Trump right now isn’t the extremist agenda — it’s the mind-blowing incompetence. Deporting immigrants is one thing; masked agents executing American citizens on Midwestern boulevards is another. Ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions might get majority support on paper, but launching a war without any clear rationale, without having thought through even the most basic consequences, is how you lose the electorate in a hurry. (About six in 10 Americans disapprove of Trump’s wartime performance, according to Pew Research, and that number isn’t going down anytime soon.) Gas prices are spiking, mortgage rates are soaring, financial markets are lurching back and forth. Airport terminals look like Disneyland in July.

Competence — and by that I mean the most fundamental, entry-level, don’t-blow-up-the-world kind of competence — was more of a thing in the first Trump term, when the president cycled through a series of senior aides, old-line party and military types, who saw themselves as buffers between Trump and the various agencies. Four years in exile liberated Trump from all of that. His second-term team comprises mainly fringe players and pugnacious pundits, people more comfortable with pancake makeup than managing complex bureaucracies, for which they have nothing but contempt anyway. It’s a bold experiment, but one that seemed ill-fated from the start.

I could waste the rest of this column dredging up examples, I guess — the Homeland Security secretary spending $220 million on ads that showed her on horseback at Mount Rushmore; the FBI director shuttling his girlfriend around with a security detail and chugging beers with hockey players while there are actual crimes to solve; the defense secretary who thinks it’s fine for Apache helicopters to buzz the backyards of washed-up rock stars; the attorney general installing U.S. attorneys who really ought to be doing wills and closings (if that). Better if we just stipulate to staggering daily malfeasance and enter it into the record.

Put it this way: When Trump finally replaced Kristi Noem with Markwayne Mullin, a former plumber and MMA fighter who keeps intimating that he’s been some kind of secret military agent but can’t talk about it, every sane person in Washington applauded as if this were the second coming of James Baker in his prime. That tells you all you need to know.

I’ve long advanced a theory, probably stemming from my childhood in the Carter years, that voters can abide almost anything from a president — as long as it isn’t a descent into chaos. (Nothing says chaos like getting attacked by a rabbit.) Fairly or not, we like the illusion of a president who is at least mostly in control of events, because otherwise it’s just too hard to sleep. I will admit that Trump has given me doubts about this theory; there were moments, especially in his first term, where it seemed like destructive chaos really worked for Trump, perhaps because it was the most predictable thing about him. It’s not working now.

Trump’s economy — and, more to the point, the impression that he always seems focused on something that isn’t the economy, like this obsession with election fraud that no one outside his Truth Social feed actually believes or cares about — has driven away a legion of independents who voted for him, while his Napoleonic foreign policy has opened a bitter and widening rift in his own base. You could walk from the Jefferson Memorial to K Street (farther than it looks, believe me) and not run into a human being who thinks Republicans are going to keep the House after November. And count me among those who think Democrats now have a reasonable shot at taking back the Senate, too, by putting in play Republican seats in Texas, North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, and Alaska. MAGA may yet have some currency as a movement, but as a governing entity, it is now presiding over a failed state.

IT’S OFTEN SAID that people just become more who they are as they reach the final stage of life, and you can already see how Trump will probably spend the last two years of his paralyzed presidency — as a builder, obsessed with his ballroom and his arts center and his silly Arc d’Trump, railing at architects and racing to leave behind a legacy in gold leaf. What happens to his movement is a more complicated question. What does Trumpism become once the voters have rejected Trump?

Already, the contours of factions are taking shape. One is what you might call the “True MAGA” wing — Trump followers who will argue that Trump abandoned his own “America First” ideology, because he was corrupted by insiders, or maybe because he lost his mental grip. The way forward, then, isn’t to abandon MAGA, but rather to return to its nativist, anti-globalist roots. (Maybe even ease up on the white nationalism, indulge a little antisemitism instead.)

Marjorie Taylor Greene has very shrewdly set herself up as the heir to authentic Trumpism. So has Tucker Carlson, who should not be dismissed. Even J.D. Vance could stake a claim to this faction, having cleverly made it known that he opposed the Iran war while simultaneously demonstrating, again, his slavish loyalty.

Then there’s what I’d call the “Trump But” crowd, as in: “I’m just like Trump, but maybe better.” After a late and zealous conversion to MAGA, Marco Rubio seems to be setting himself up as the softer-edged, more experienced, more broadly appealing version of Trump. Senators like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz might position themselves as more cerebral Trumpian successors — ideologically aligned in all the right ways, but also more focused on economic fairness. Robert Kennedy Jr. wouldn’t be crazy for thinking he could merge what’s left of MAGA with his own anti-corporate following. (He’d be crazy for other reasons, but not that one.)

The posturing among these factions might be fun to watch — and perhaps even substantive in a weird way. But if I were a Republican politician looking to salvage the remains of MAGA right now, I’d give some thought to the governing part, too, and how I might convey a grasp on it. Competence by itself has never been a compelling theme in presidential politics; just ask President Dukakis or President Romney. But stupefying incompetence isn’t much of a calling card, either.

We know now that George W. Bush’s decline into chaos wasn’t merely a temporary nadir for the right. It marked the end of a 40-year run for neoconservatism and ultimately led to Trump’s hostile takeover of the party. Similarly, whether MAGA outlives Trump as a viable political force won’t only depend on whether it can still appeal to some slim margin of white voters. It will also depend on whether Republicans can shake the image of a party that seethes with contempt for government but is fundamentally unserious about running it.

Heckuva job there, Trump. Heckuva job.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, April 12, 2026 5:06 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The only news that matters today is how your party is destroying the reputation of one of its own as a sacrifice for maintaining power in California.

--------------------------------------------------

Be Evil. Be a dick.
So, you want Democrats to elect a rapist much like Trump so that authentic Trumptards who elected a rapist President don't look foolish, comparatively? Why do Trumptards defend rapists, tax cheats, bribe-takers, and the generally incompetent?

Nope.

I want Democrats to stop attempting to ruin men by any means necessary for the sin of being in their way.

You're nothing but a bunch of liars, and you manipulate women's minds more than any Muslim leader ever did.

Quote:
Donald Trump’s Incompetence Is Costing Him the Country

All polling data still shows that this is just another lie.

--------------------------------------------------

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Sunday, April 12, 2026 5:36 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Peter Magyar: former govt insider promising system change

https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/peter-magyar-former-govt-insider-
promising-system-change/article

Good for Hungary.

Now there will be ZERO Muslims in the country.

Lefties wanted this guy, and I just can't figure out why...

He's for no immigration. He's going to end any work programs they had under Orban and there won't be anybody in Hungary that doesn't belong there.

Maybe he can teach Trump how to finally get that done here, because we're going on 2 years now and the poison of the Democrats has still blocked us from doing what needs to be done.

--------------------------------------------------

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Monday, April 13, 2026 6:31 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The only news that matters today is how your party is destroying the reputation of one of its own as a sacrifice for maintaining power in California.

--------------------------------------------------

Be Evil. Be a dick.
So, you want Democrats to elect a rapist much like Trump so that authentic Trumptards who elected a rapist President don't look foolish, comparatively? Why do Trumptards defend rapists, tax cheats, bribe-takers, and the generally incompetent?

Nope.

I want Democrats to stop attempting to ruin men by any means necessary for the sin of being in their way.

You're nothing but a bunch of liars, and you manipulate women's minds more than any Muslim leader ever did.

Quote:
Donald Trump’s Incompetence Is Costing Him the Country

All polling data still shows that this is just another lie.

--------------------------------------------------

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

Why are Trumptards so angrily opposed to Trump paying $88.3 million for raping E. Jean Carroll?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Jean_Carroll_v._Donald_J._Trump

Why are Trumptards so indifferent to Trump taking $billions in bribes in exchange for government contracts, pardons, and tax relief directed toward billionaires?

Trump net worth increased by $4 billion in one year
https://www.bing.com/search?q=trump+net+worth+increased+by+%244+billio
n+in+one+year

I know why, and it's the same reason why Trumptards struggle in America, but I love hearing Trumptards explain their own version of why they act as badly as they do.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, April 13, 2026 6:31 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Donald Trump, the worst US president ever?

Under his administration, governance became performance; truth became negotiable; and power became personal.

By Kua Kia Soong, former MP and a former director of Suaram

March 31, 2026

https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2026/03/30/donald-t
rump-the-worst-us-president-ever

Have you often wondered how history will remember Donald Trump?

If history were a meritocracy, Trump would be remembered as a footnote – an eccentric real estate showman who mistook television ratings for governance.

Unfortunately, history is not so tidy. It occasionally hands immense power to a man who believes instinct outranks knowledge, volume outranks reason, and spectacle outranks substance – and then watches as the consequences unfold in real time.

To call Trump “the worst president in American history” is not merely an insult. It is an attempt to describe a presidency that did not just fail – it redefined failure itself.

His tenure can be understood through four defining breakdowns: the collapse of intellectual seriousness, the corrosion of truth and law, the reckless mismanagement of economic power, and the normalisation of cruelty without borders.

The cult of ignorance in power

Previous US presidents at least paid homage to expertise. Trump treated it as an obstacle.

His handling of Covid-19 stands as the clearest indictment. Faced with a once-in-a-century public health crisis, he downplayed the threat, saying “it will disappear”, contradicted his own scientists, and publicly mused about injecting disinfectants, turning White House briefings into global spectacles of confusion. While other governments mobilised coherent responses, the US lurched between denial and improvisation.

This was not merely poor communication; it was a governing philosophy.

Expertise was sidelined, agencies were undermined, and scientific consensus became politically negotiable. The result: one of the world’s highest death tolls, paired with a president more interested in television optics than epidemiology.

The war on truth, law and democracy

Trump did not merely bend the truth – he attempted to bury it under an avalanche of falsehoods. Fact-checkers stopped counting after tens of thousands of misleading or false claims. But the deeper damage lay not in any single lie, but in the normalisation of unreality as a political environment.

This culminated in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Having lost, Trump refused to concede, promoting baseless claims of fraud and pressuring officials to overturn certified results.

His call to Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” votes was not satire – it was an unvarnished attempt to bend democratic machinery to personal will. The inevitable climax came with the Jan 6 Capitol attack, when a mob, animated by his rhetoric, stormed the seat of American democracy. It was a moment that would have been unthinkable in a system that still commanded universal allegiance to the rule of law.

Human rights norms, already fragile, were further weakened as they became transactional. The message was unmistakable: principles were negotiable, truth was optional, and power was personal.

Economic nationalism as strategic self-harm

Trump promised to restore American economic greatness through toughness, chiefly in the form of tariffs and trade wars. The results were instructive.

His trade confrontation with China triggered retaliatory tariffs that hit American farmers particularly hard, forcing the government to spend tens of billions in bailouts – an ironic outcome for a policy meant to strengthen domestic industry. Supply chains were disrupted, uncertainty surged, and businesses faced rising costs.

Even allies were not spared. Tariffs were imposed on steel and aluminium imports from partners like Canada and the European Union under the dubious justification of “national security”, straining ties that had underpinned decades of economic stability.

Markets oscillated wildly, not because investors admired bold strategy, but because they struggled to predict the next policy lurch. Economic governance became indistinguishable from brinkmanship.

The broader consequence was a weakening of the global trading system itself. Institutions and norms that had structured international commerce since World War II were treated as constraints to be broken rather than frameworks to be improved.

Trump’s great irony as a self-proclaimed dealmaker is this: he managed to make nearly every party worse off – including his own.

Cruelty without borders: power without sovereignty

If Trump’s domestic record revealed ignorance and impunity, his conduct abroad exposed something even more disturbing: a capacity for cruelty unconstrained by respect for human life or national sovereignty.

Nowhere is this more evident than in his unwavering political and military support for Israel’s actions in Gaza, widely condemned across much of the world as genocidal in scale and intent.

Civilian suffering – children buried under rubble, entire neighbourhoods erased – was not a deterrent but background noise to geopolitical calculation.

This same disregard for international norms was evident in the normalisation of targeted assassinations. The killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad was not merely an act of escalation – it was a declaration that sovereignty itself was conditional, subject to unilateral American force.

Similar patterns emerged in the treatment of leaders linked to groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, where assassination and extrajudicial murder displaced diplomacy entirely.

Even more brazen was the posture toward Nicolas Maduro. Open discussions of capture, removal, or forced regime change signalled a return to an earlier era of imperial intervention – one in which smaller nations exist at the mercy of great power whims.

The principle that states are sovereign equals under international law was not merely weakened; it was openly mocked. Taken together, these actions reflect a presidency that did not simply neglect international law – it treated it as irrelevant.

Violence became a tool of convenience, sovereignty an obstacle to be bypassed, and human life a variable in a larger spectacle of power.

A presidency without precedent

It is tempting to rank Trump alongside past presidential failures. But such comparisons risk understatement. They failed within a system they at least recognised.

Trump’s distinction lies in his apparent indifference to the system itself. He did not merely lower expectations – he dismantled them. Governance became performance; truth became negotiable; power became personal.

In the end, Trump’s presidency may be remembered not just as a failure of governance, but as a failure of humanity, where ignorance enabled recklessness, impunity enabled lawlessness, and cruelty was exercised without restraint, at home and across the globe.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, April 13, 2026 6:50 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump, the worst US president ever?

I'm sure you have no shortage of idiots who will tell you that.

So why are you picking the guy nobody heard of, from the country that nobody could point out on a map, working for an organization nobody ever heard of?

--------------------------------------------------

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Monday, April 13, 2026 8:00 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump, the worst US president ever?

I'm sure you have no shortage of idiots who will tell you that.

So why are you picking the guy nobody heard of, from the country that nobody could point out on a map, working for an organization nobody ever heard of?

--------------------------------------------------

Be Evil. Be a dick.

6ixStringJoker, read Trump's words. If you conclude he is NOT the worst President in history, you demonstrated why your own life is a goddamn mess that you ought to be ashamed of:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. He talks about “fear” of the Trump Administration, but doesn’t mention the FEAR that the Catholic Church, and all other Christian Organizations, had during COVID when they were arresting priests, ministers, and everybody else, for holding Church Services, even when going outside, and being ten and even twenty feet apart. I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn’t! I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States and, even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers, and killers, into our Country. And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History. Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican. Unfortunately, Leo’s Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons, does not sit well with me, nor does the fact that he meets with Obama Sympathizers like David Axelrod, a LOSER from the Left, who is one of those who wanted churchgoers and clerics to be arrested. Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Apr 12, 2026, 8:03 PM

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116394704213456431

Roll Call tracks Trump's written nonsense:
https://rollcall.com/factbase/topic/twitter

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, April 13, 2026 9:08 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

IRS Cuts Open Door For Cheats. More Taxpayers Bet ‘The IRS Isn’t Going to Catch Me’

The Internal Revenue Service shed thousands of enforcement employees — and some taxpayers appear eager to cheat

By Richard Rubin | April 12, 2026 9:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/irs-staffing-tax-enforcement-1a18e
33f

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is scaling back tax enforcement, leaving fewer federal employees to audit returns, collect unpaid tax debts and deter Americans from skirting the law.

The Internal Revenue Service has shed thousands of enforcement workers since President Trump returned to office, and his fiscal 2027 budget proposal seeks further cuts amid the administration’s broader pullback of white-collar law enforcement. The IRS enforcement workforce would fall below 30,000, fewer than at the end of Trump’s first term and about a third less than the Biden-era peak.

The retrenchment is spurring a vibe shift across the tax landscape ahead of the April 15 deadline, and lawyers say they see more taxpayers and tax-shelter promoters eager to cut corners or cheat.

“There’s seemingly this mentality building which is, ‘The IRS isn’t going to catch me,”’ said Carolyn Schenck, a former IRS national fraud counsel, now at law firm Caplin and Drysdale in Washington.

Audits of people with at least $10 million in income dropped 9% last year, and they are on track to decline another 39% this year. Partnership audits declined, reversing an attempt to scrutinize private-equity firms and other complex entities that have long bedeviled the government. In 2025, the IRS collected less direct revenue from audits and appeals than in any year since at least 2012, though the money can arrive years after audits start.

Even without the proposed cut for next year, inflation-adjusted spending on tax enforcement is already the lowest in at least 20 years, according to the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“They have defunded the police,” said Matthew Rappaport, a tax lawyer at Falcon, Rappaport and Berkman in New York. “There’s no more succinct way to describe what’s happened.”

The cutbacks will be costly for the government's bottom line and expand budget deficits. The administration’s own IRS budget document acknowledges that chasing scofflaws generates more money than it costs. “Reductions in enforcement spending create missed opportunities and lost revenue for the United States,” the document said.

The IRS workforce reductions so far would cut an estimated $46 billion in federal spending over the next decade and reduce revenue collections by $643 billion, according to The Budget Lab at Yale.

While in office, Charles Rettig, who was Trump’s first-term IRS commissioner, described the agency as outgunned by wealthy, well-advised taxpayers. He estimated that the tax gap — the difference between taxes owed and paid — was approaching $1 trillion a year.

More at https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/irs-staffing-tax-enforcement-1a18e
33f

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, April 13, 2026 5:18 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Parable of the President

Trump’s criticism of Pope Leo XIV reveals that to him, religion is primarily about power, not morality.

By David A. Graham | April 13, 2026, 2:15 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/2026/04/trump-vs-pope-contradi
ctory-message/686784/

Many people get the Sunday scaries, but most of them are not a sitting president facing self-inflicted global chaos and the growing possibility of a bruising midterm election in a few months. What feels like a weekly social-media crashout from the president of the United States usually starts some time on Sunday and continues into the early hours of the next morning. Given the failure of negotiations with Iran on Saturday, the likelihood of elevated gas prices for months, and the resounding defeat of Trump’s ally and role model Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Donald Trump had plenty of fuel for a freakout last night.

But the most notable subject in this week’s edition was Pope Leo XIV, who has been critical of Trump’s attack on Venezuela and war in Iran. The posts illustrate that Trump views religion much the way he views everything else: as something that can serve him but does not create any obligations on him.

“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, kicking off a lengthy jeremiad. “I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History.” Trump claimed that Leo XIV was elected only because the cardinals believed he’d be good at dealing with the current administration. Trump is also upset that Leo met with David Axelrod, the Democratic strategist and commentator. “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician,” Trump said.

Forty-six minutes later, Trump posted an illustration of himself as a Jesus-like figure, reaching out to heal a man in bed while a nurse, a soldier, and others look on, and with a background of patriotic bric-a-brac (flag, eagles, fighter jets). The image has been circulating for at least a couple of months, during which time an angel near the top of the image has somehow transformed into a creepy monstrosity, presumably through the wonders of generative AI. The illustration drew claims of blasphemy and even demonic possession from some usual Trump allies on the right; the president has since deleted it, telling reporters he believed that the picture depicted him as a doctor.

Too many contradictions appear here to list them all. For example, Trump insists that Leo renounce politics yet also complains about the pope’s policy stance on crime. What he’s referring to here is a mystery. (The Catholic Church could be said to have a decarceral agenda: Jesus, quoting the Prophet Isaiah, said that he had been sent to preach freedom to prisoners, and the first pope, Peter, was imprisoned at least once and likely executed for professing Jesus. Then again, the Vatican City has, by some accounts, the highest per-capita crime rate in the world, due mainly to pickpocketing.)

Another contradiction is that Trump doesn’t actually seem to have any problem with the intermingling of religion and politics—as the Christlike image shows, and as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s aggressive rhetoric about the war demonstrates. The president’s reflexive response to criticism (or perceived criticism) from any public figure is to unleash a social-media barrage against them, without much thought about who the person is or what their role in society might be. This black-and-white view of the world owes more to Mani, another religious leader whose death was depicted as a crucifixion, than to Jesus of Nazareth.

The tirade at Leo is the latest escalation of anti-Catholic sentiment among some figures on the MAGA right. Trump has a number of devout Catholics in his administration, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President J. D. Vance, although some, like Vance, have sometimes disagreed with the Holy See under Leo and his predecessor, Francis. The Free Press reported last week that the Pentagon had summoned a Vatican official, the first known time such a meeting had been held. It didn’t go well, with administration officials reportedly invoking the Avignon papacy, the 14th century domination of the role by the French crown. Both sides downplayed the report, but Trump’s post makes it hard to dismiss the friction between them.

Speaking with reporters as he flew to Algeria today, Leo said, “I have no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor of speaking out loudly about the message in the Gospel.” And though more restrained than Trump, he showed that he can dish it out as well as take it, quipping about Truth Social, “It’s ironic—the name of the site itself. Say no more.”

But although Leo separated himself from involvement in electoral politics in the way that Trump meant it, he defended his claim to speak on social issues, citing Jesus’s statement that “blessed are the peacemakers.” Matters of peace, poverty, and privilege are central to Christianity, and navigating how and how much to take on these issues is a challenge to any secular leader—indeed, any individual—who professes the religion.

Trump’s theological vision shares much with, and may have come from, Norman Vincent Peale, a popular Protestant minister of the mid-20th century. Peale, who wrote The Power of Positive Thinking, attracted congregants including the Trump family with a version of Christianity that emphasized happiness and material wealth but perhaps asked less of its followers, even though Jesus repeatedly says in the Gospels that following him is not a casual endeavor.

As an adult, Trump showed few signs of religiosity or familiarity with scripture even as he courted Christians in the 2016 election. Since surviving an assassination attempt in 2024, Trump has sounded more overtly religious, and has publicly mused about his chances to get into heaven. But his rhetoric has not been matched by any clear change in behavior, quest for absolution for past sins, or increased attendance at church. Matters of peace, poverty, and privilege do not seem front of mind: After briefly portraying himself as a peacemaker in pursuit of the Nobel Prize, Trump has now embraced military adventure; he has shrugged at economic tumult; and he has brushed aside faith leaders’ concerns about his immigration enforcement. Trump well understands the iconographic and organizational power of Christianity, but he seems to reject the idea that it should create any constraints on him.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, April 14, 2026 7:38 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

State Department Tells Human Rights Watchdog to Ignore Trump’s Extrajudicial Killings

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights “lacks the competence” to review Trump’s campaign of deadly boat strikes, a State Department spokesperson said.

By Nick Turse | April 13 2026, 1:37 p.m.

https://theintercept.com/2026/04/13/trump-boat-strikes-iachr/

The United States is waging a pressure campaign against the leading inter-American human rights watchdog to squash a potential investigation into illegal U.S. attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

After a recent meeting of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the State Department pushed the organization to shift its focus to other issues instead of the monthslong campaign of extrajudicial killings by the U.S. military.

Though the president of the IACHR disputes that the U.S. is pressuring his organization, the State Department responded to questions about the meeting with a statement urging the commission to move onto other matters. A past IACHR president said the organization may fear the “wrath” of the United States, which is the largest financial contributor to the commission’s parent organization, if it launches an investigation.

U.S. lawmakers and experts say an investigation by the IACHR could be an important mechanism to hold the Trump administration accountable for the lethal strikes. Scores of civilians have been killed in the campaign, which has seen families of victims petition the IACHR and sue the U.S. government, accusing it of wrongful death and extrajudicial killings.

Last month, the IACHR — an arm of the Organization of American States, or OAS, charged with the promotion of human rights in the Western hemisphere — held a first-of-its-kind hearing on the legality of the boat strikes. The IACHR considers petitions dealing with violations of rights by member states, including the U.S. At the March 13 hearing, the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, International Crisis Group, and the U.N. special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights made the case that the U.S. boat strikes violate both U.S. domestic and international law.

Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program, noted that the attacks were conducted without the authorization of Congress and were “in violation of international law on the use of force.” Ben Saul, the U.N. special rapporteur and a professor of international law at the University of Sydney, accused the United States of “responding with lawless violence that flagrantly violates human rights, in its phony war on so-called narco-terrorism.” He said these “serial extrajudicial killings gravely violate the right to life” and were not permissible as law enforcement actions or in the name of national self-defense or allowed under the law of the sea, under international humanitarian law, under international counter-terrorism law, or treaties targeting narcotics.

The hearing drew sharp criticism from the United States, which sent representatives to the meeting. State Department legal adviser Carl Anderson rebuked the commission for holding the hearing and said it wasn’t fit to review legal claims. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said the commission “strayed far outside its mandate” and was being manipulated by the ACLU.

“The IACHR lacks the competence to review the matters at issue,” Pigott said. “Convening hearings under these circumstances risks undermining — not strengthening — the credibility of the inter-American human rights system.” Pigott also instructed the commission to work through decades-old petitions instead of focusing on the boat strikes.

Under Operation Southern Spear, the U.S. military has conducted 48 attacks since September 2025, destroying 50 vessels and killing almost 170 civilians. The latest strikes, on April 11 in the Eastern Pacific, killed five people and, according to the Coast Guard, left one “person in distress.” The Trump administration claims its victims are members of at least one of 24 or more cartels and criminal gangs with whom it claims to be at war but refuses to name.

In December, the IACHR expressed “deep concern regarding reports of lethal operations against non-state vessels” that it said “allegedly resulted in the deaths of a high number of persons.” It called on the U.S. to “refrain from employing lethal military force in the context of public security operations” but emphasized a “willingness to maintain continued dialogue and technical cooperation with the United States to support the protection of human rights in all security and defense policies.”

“If it is a law enforcement issue, then you cannot just kill them. You have to try to arrest them.”

“What it is is murder,” Juan Méndez, a former president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said of the attacks, stressing that he was speaking as an expert on international law, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law and not on behalf of the commission. “You’re deliberately shooting at people who may be engaged in illegal action. But if it is a law enforcement issue, then you cannot just kill them. You have to try to arrest them. You have to try to bring them to justice.”

A source close to the IACHR said the United States was clearly pressuring the organization to ignore attacks under fear of losing funding, pointing to Pigott’s decree.

The State Department responded to questions by pointing The Intercept to a statement by Pigott in which he told the IACHR to ignore U.S. “counter-narcoterrorism” operations. “The Commission needs to redirect its focus toward the individual petitions languishing on its docket, sometimes for decades,” he decreed. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment or clarification about which petitions it wants the IACHR to prioritize.

Mendez outlined the potential pressures the IACHR was under. “The Commission may well feel that this is a very delicate situation, and if they take the initiative, they’re going to incur the wrath of the United States,” he explained. “They are stretched for funding. And if the United States cuts the funding, they probably would have to shut down — at least for a while.”

During President Donald Trump’s first term, the U.S. reduced its contributions to IACHR from $2.7 million in 2017 to zero in 2018, leaving other member states and permanent observers from the European Union to make up the shortfall. In 2019, the U.S. withdrew funds from the IACHR due to its promotion of abortion legalization. By last May, the Trump administration had terminated funding for at least 22 OAS programs. The administration did not request specific funds for the OAS in 2026, although the House appropriations report for 2026 provides $46.5 million, similar to 2024 levels.

The State Department did not provide the total number of OAS programs that saw their funding cut or terminated, nor say how often the Trump administration has threatened to withdraw funding from the IACHR.

Stuardo Ralón, the current president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, pushed back on the claims of bullying by the U.S. “There is no pressure from the United States on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights,” he told The Intercept.

When The Intercept asked if the commission intends to carry out an investigation into the United States’ lethal strikes, Ralón said, “The IACHR does not conduct investigations. Doing so falls outside its institutional nature and mandate.”

The commission is actually well known for high-profile investigations, including of U.S. immigration detention centers during the Obama administration, and an attack on 43 students from a Mexican teacher training school who were kidnapped and presumably killed in 2014. In fact, the OAS website is filled with references to the “Commission’s investigation[s].”

When The Intercept pointed out that the first line of the Commission’s 10-point mandate states that the IACHR “receives, analyzes and investigates individual petitions in which violations of human rights are alleged to have been committed,” an IACHR spokesperson offered a clarification. “In the context of public hearings, the IACHR does not carry out investigative functions in the strict sense,” wrote Corina Leguizamón. The Intercept did not inquire about the use of public hearings as a means of inquiry.

“We have asked the Commission to fulfill its responsibilities as the premier regional human rights body to conduct a fact-finding investigation of these heinous killings and to ensure that no country can act in this fashion because that will have severe implications on human rights in the region and beyond,” Dakwar, of the ACLU, told The Intercept. “The U.S. government has not put forward any justifications for its premeditated murders. The commission is within its competency and its bounds to fully investigate the egregious violations of international law happening in its own backyard.”

U.S. Reps. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, and Sara Jacobs, D-Calif,, also sent a letter to the commission urging them to “scrutinize this administration’s policy and help advance accountability in the international arena.” They added, “The challenges we have faced in securing transparency and achieving accountability underscore the importance of your respected Commission’s contribution.”

Ralón said the IACHR had not taken any steps toward the ACLU’s requests to launch an investigation into the strikes; convene a special meeting with OAS Member States affected by them; or request an advisory opinion from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the legality of the policy. “The IACHR will continue to monitor the situation in accordance with its mandate,” he told The Intercept, stating it “does not have the competence to initiate ex officio actions under the terms proposed, nor to assess the proportionality of the use of force in scenarios that may involve operations in international waters or situations between States.” Ralón added: “The Commission neither anticipates nor rules out future actions; it acts based on the information available, at the appropriate time, and with strict adherence to its mandate.”

Mendez, the former president, said that the IACHR was in a challenging situation. “The Commission could, if they wanted to take the initiative, take the case forward. If they get a formal complaint, they do investigate. They inquire. They ask for information. But under the present situation, they’re unlikely to take any action on their own initiative,” he told The Intercept.

In December, the family of Colombian fisherman Alejandro Carranza, who was killed in a September 15 attack in the Caribbean, filed a complaint with the IACHR. The petition names Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as the perpetrator, stating that he “was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza Medina and the murder of all those on such boats.” It also notes that Hegseth’s conduct was “ratified” by Trump.

The next month, family members of Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian men killed in a U.S. boat strike on October 14, 2025, sued the U.S. government for wrongful death and extrajudicial killing. Lawyers from the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and Seton Hall Law School professor Jonathan Hafetz called the entire campaign of attacks in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean “unprecedented and manifestly unlawful” in their complaint.

The suit was brought in U.S. federal admiralty court under the Death on the High Seas Act, a congressional statute that covers wrongful maritime deaths. The plaintiffs also brought claims for extrajudicial killing under the Alien Tort Statute, which gives federal courts jurisdiction over violations of the law of nations, including extrajudicial killing. Another federal statute, the Suits in Admiralty Act, waives U.S. sovereign immunity — which ordinarily protects the federal government from being sued — over both claims.

The State Department referred to the cases in its rebuke of the March 13 hearing, accusing the IACHR of allowing “the ACLU to exploit the hearing to try to force the United States to prematurely disclose arguments and evidence in two cases pending before U.S. federal courts.”

Last month, Joseph Humire, the acting assistant secretary of war for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, told members of the House Armed Services Committee that attacks on Latin American drug cartels are “just the beginning” as he unveiled a terrestrial effort dubbed “Operation Total Extermination.”

Humire announced that the Pentagon supported “bilateral kinetic actions against cartel targets along the Colombia-Ecuador border” and referred to the attacks as “joint land strikes,” saying that America was providing Ecuador with “capabilities that they otherwise would not have.” In a war powers report announcing the introduction of U.S. armed forces into “hostilities” in that country, the White House also informed Congress of “military action taken on March 6, 2026, against the facilities of narco-terrorists affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.”

Gen. Francis Donovan, the chief of U.S. Southern Command, told lawmakers last month that “boat strikes are not the answer,” but teased an even broader campaign. “What we’re moving for right now might be an extension of Southern Spear, but really a counter-cartel campaign process that puts total systemic friction across this network,” he told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I believe these kinetic [boat] strikes are just one small part of that.”

Mendez — also formerly a U.N. special rapporteur on torture and a recently retired professor of international law at American University’s Washington College of Law — said he did not believe that U.S. pressure would affect any future investigation if the IACHR moves forward with an inquiry into the boat strikes. “It doesn’t affect their impartiality and independence, but it does affect what they might do on their own initiative,” he said. “I’m not saying that they will duck and forget about it. This is a very important issue. But they probably want to wait to see who brings what kind of case to them.”

Ralón also said the commission would not be cowed. “The IACHR exercises its functions with full independence and autonomy, in accordance with its conventional and regulatory mandate, and its decisions are not subject to external interference by any State,” he said.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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