Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.

“There’s a reason why you separate military and police. One fights the enemy of the State. The other serves and protects the People. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the State tend to become the People.” ~ Commander Adama, “Battlestar Galactica” (“WATER”, Season 1 episode 2, at the 28 minute mark.)

“The policeman isn’t there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder” (0:05) ~ Mayor Richard J. Daley’s 1968 police speech was a misspoken response to criticism of Chicago police brutality during the Democratic National Convention (Quote starts at 0:39)

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig on KPFT Houston at 90.1-HD2, Galveston 89.5-HD2, and Huntsville 91.9-HD2. KPFT is Houston’s Community radio

 On this show, we discuss local, state, national, and international stories that may have slipped under your radar. At my website, THINKWINGRADIO-dot-COM, I link to all the articles I read and cite, as well as other relevant sources. Articles and commentaries often include lots of internet links for those of you who want to dig deeper. 

Trump’s National Guard troops have finally been removed from Los Angeles under court order. Nonetheless, it’s the 19th week of Trump’s military occupation of Washington DC; 10 weeks since Trump deployed National Guard troops to Memphis, Tennessee; and an ongoing federal law enforcement occupation in Chicago. 

There have been various court rulings that these military actions in US cities are illegal under the Posse Comitatus  Act, but our lawless regime is still resisting compliance. To be continued … 

1. In runoff election results for Harris County having runoff elections, Alejandra Salinas has won the remainder of the term of Houston City Council At-Large Position 4. Renee Jefferson Patterson has won the position of HCC Trustee, District II.
2. Greg Abbott has a sweeping plan to abolish Texas’ school property taxes. Would it work?; by Joshua Fechter | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Dec. 9, 2025, 5:00 a.m. Central. TAGS: Greg Abbott, Property Taxes, Texas Legislature,
   1. Texas lawmakers have gone big to rein in the state’s property taxes, spending tens of billions of dollars toward reducing the annual bill homeowners and businesses pay each year to help pay for schools. State lawmakers have also put tighter limits on how much local governments can increase taxes to pay for public safety, parks and other services. 
   2. Ahead of the 2026 election, Gov. Greg Abbott wants to go bigger. 
   3. The three-term governor’s signature proposal is a sweeping property tax-cut platform. 
   4. On Abbott’s tax-cut agenda: getting rid of school property taxes for homeowners, putting tighter limits on how much property values can rise and making it tougher for local governments to raise taxes even as their regions boom.
   5. [Abbott told a crowd at a campaign event Thursday in Fort Worth, touting the platform,] “Every single year, you, my constituents, keep saying our property taxes are too high. … We have to do more to lower them.”
   6. So far, several Texas House lawmakers have signed on to the platform. Some prominent conservative groups like the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Americans for Prosperity, too, have embraced the plan. 
   7. [Said James Quintero, policy director at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Taxpayer Protection Project,] “The governor’s proposals promise to radically improve the tax system’s affordability and predictability by limiting local spending growth, protecting home ownership, and empowering everyday Texans to hold tax cut elections. … With the governor’s plan in place, Texans will finally be able to breathe easy.”
   8. However, tax policy experts spanning the political spectrum are skeptical that Abbott’s pitch is realistic — or would meaningfully bring down the state’s high tax bills. 
   9. [Adam Langley, associate director of tax policy at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, said of Abbott’s platform,] “This is basically a collection of the worst types of policies meant to constrain property taxes. … The negatives here definitely outweigh the positives, and there are a lot of good policy options out there that are missing as well.”
   10. Cutting property taxes has proven a tricky task for state lawmakers. Texas doesn’t levy a statewide property tax. Nonetheless, Texans pay among the highest property taxes in the country, in part because the state doesn’t have an income tax and cities, counties and school districts rely heavily on property taxes to pay for public schools, police officers and firefighters among other public services.
   11. Any of Abbott’s ideas would have to get the green light from lawmakers in the Texas Legislature, where similar ideas have failed. At the very least, tax-cut proponents are treating Abbott’s platform as a conversation starter around how to wrangle the state’s high property taxes.
   12. Perhaps the most eye-popping proposal in Abbott’s platform: allowing Texas voters to decide whether to abolish school property taxes on homeowners, a goal long pursued by the state’s diehard conservatives.
   13. Abbott says the state is collecting enough revenue to backfill the money schools would no longer collect from homeowners. 
   14. School districts have long accounted for the biggest chunk of a given property owner’s tax bill, and state lawmakers have spent billions of dollars in recent years with the intent of driving down homeowners’ school taxes.
   15. In November, Texas voters expanded the state’s homestead exemption, or the amount of a homeowner’s primary residence’s value that can’t be taxed to pay for public schools, from $100,000 to $140,000. Voters approved even bigger breaks for homeowners age 65 and over and those with disabilities.
   16. Such moves have made a dent, but haven’t come close to eliminating school property taxes for most homeowners.
   17. Abolishing property taxes altogether is an idea that’s caught on in conservative circles in recent years as the state boomed and housing costs skyrocketed. But the idea has often run into a brick wall, including from Republicans. One reason why: Doing so would be enormously costly.
   18. Replacing all school property taxes would have cost the state $39.5 billion in tax year 2023 alone, the Legislative Budget Board, a joint legislative committee that helps lawmakers write the state’s budget, said last year. School districts collected more in 2024 to the tune of $42 billion. For comparison, the portion of the state budget paid for with state taxes in tax year 2023 was $58.8 billion.
   19. The state already plans to spend $51 billion over the next two years on school property tax cuts. Those funds will pay for the bump in the homestead exemption as well as targeted cuts for businesses. The state will also send a good portion of those funds to local school districts to replace revenue that otherwise would have been collected via property taxes, with the aim of driving down school districts’ tax rates.
   20. Had those measures been in effect last year, the owner of a typical Texas home, valued at $302,000, according to Zillow, would have saved more than $500 on their 2024 school taxes, according to a Tribune calculation.
   21. But $51 billion is a substantial chunk of money. For every six or seven dollars the state will spend in the next two years, one will be spent on cutting property taxes, a figure that has some budget wonks and even some Republicans worry may not be financially sustainable.
   22. [Said Shannon Halbrook, a fiscal policy expert at Every Texan, a left-leaning policy nonprofit,] Abolishing school property taxes for homeowners may be part of Abbott’s platform “for the purpose of messaging, but is not a realistic proposal.”
   23. Abbott’s proposal would cost less than that because it would only apply to homeowners, the governor said Thursday.
   24. Abbott’s campaign did not provide estimates of how much the proposal would cost. But school districts collected about $17.5 billion in taxes from owners of single-family homes in tax year 2023, according to an analysis by the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, a business-backed group that lobbies for tax cuts. That figure includes taxes on rental homes, which don’t qualify for homestead exemptions, so they wouldn’t be taken off the tax rolls.
   25. Owners of other property like apartments, stores, factories and warehouses would still have to pay school property taxes — a fact likely to rile business groups.
   26. … A push by Abbott and other GOP officials to drastically hike the state sales tax to pay for property tax cuts in 2019 went down in flames. That proposal, critics argued at the time, would have meant paying for property tax cuts on the backs of lower income Texans, who spend a bigger chunk of their income paying sales taxes than wealthier households.
   27. Texas would have had to more than double the state’s sales tax rate to replace all school property taxes in tax year 2023, another Texas Taxpayers and Research Association calculation found.
   28. Rather than touching the rate, it’s possible state lawmakers could raise the amount of sales tax revenue the state generates by nixing certain exemptions and taxing more services, some experts said. But that would only generate so much revenue, Halbrook said.
   29. [Halbrook continued,] “That really picks you up a billion dollars here and there. … It would not touch what they’d have to try and make up for if they completely got rid of” taxes that pay to operate and maintain schools, he said.
   30. This time, a sales tax hike is off the table, Abbott said Thursday.
   31. [Abbott said,] “There’s no reason to raise our sales tax. … We’ve got the money to reduce … property taxes right now.”
   32. Instead, Abbott said, state lawmakers would tap state budget surpluses to abolish homeowners’ school property taxes.
   33. That’s what state lawmakers have done the past two years to pay for tax cuts, drawing on surpluses created with tens of billions of federal COVID-19 pandemic dollars and higher-than-usual growth in sales taxes fueled by inflation.
   34. But state budget watchers have warned that those surpluses were an anomaly, and as those federal dollars have been spent and sales tax revenue wanes, lawmakers will likely not have as much wiggle room as they did in previous years. 
   35. Abbott is undeterred, confident that the state’s continued growth will keep at least some amount of surplus in the mix.
   36. [Abbott said,] “When you look at our economy and know how diverse our economy is, you know that we’re going to have plenty of money for a long time.”
   37. Abbott has proposed amending the Texas Constitution to get rid of homeowners’ school taxes, a measure voters would have to sign off on at the ballot box. Such a move would be difficult to reverse, and ensure that lawmakers would always have to find money to pay for the cuts.
   38. It’s likely homeowners’ school taxes wouldn’t be completely wiped out right away, Quintero said, and would take years to do away with if voters said so. But voters could theoretically compel lawmakers to keep chipping away at property taxes depending on how the constitutional amendment is worded, he said. For example, it might force lawmakers to put any state surplus toward further cutting homeowners’ property taxes, Quintero said.
   39. Others worry legislators would likely have to cut elsewhere in the budget to continue funding tax cuts if the state’s budget takes a hit as a result of a significant economic downturn.
   40. [Halbrook, the fiscal policy expert, said,] “In that case, all bets are off. … The Legislature can and may choose to cut schools, health care, worker pay, infrastructure or any other items to balance the budget.”
   41. MIKE: I’ve noted in the past that ALL Texas Constitutional amendments are hard to reverse. That’s the point, and is why voters should really take hard looks at any Constitutional amendment propositions. I have no doubt that if Abbott and the Republican-dominated Texas legislature put this constitutional amendment proposition on the ballot, it would pass, because when voters generally and Texans especially see any kind of tax cut on the ballot, it’s like a dog seeing a squirrel or a cat seeing a bird. They let the shiny thing distract them without thinking about the consequences.
   42. MIKE: But to paraphrase Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park (1993), “… [Y]our Republicans were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
   43. MIKE: This is just another example of Republicans being all for local government control until they are in a position to control local government. Nothing is more fundamental to local control than deciding how government revenue is to be raised, how much from which sources, and how it is spent.
   44. MIKE: A state and local income tax, at least as an option, would be the most equitable way to raise government revenue, but Texas Republicans made sure that’s unlikely to happen by getting a Constitutional Amendment passed that forbids a state income tax.
   45. MIKE: Especially if property taxes are to be abolished, a progressive income tax should be substituted for it. Ideally.
   46. MIKE: Remember, as always, you get the government you pay for.
3. Next, on the subject of taxes from WONKETTE-dot-COM is a light-hearted but informative piece on a Massachusetts tax policy that many rich people and Republicans swear would be a disaster for any state or nation that does it — Massachusetts’s Millionaire Tax Still Going Very Well, Thank You!; By Robyn Pennacchia | WONKETTE.COM | Oct 23, 2025. TAGS: Millionaire Tax, Massachusetts,
   1. Last May, we were very happy to report that the Millionaire Tax instituted in the state of Massachusetts was working out very well, not scaring off all of the rich people, and raising funds for necessary education and transportation initiatives. The state had raised $1.8 billion — $800 million more than they predicted — and none of the terrible things the naysayers had predicted happened at all.
   2. But how are things going a year later? Even better! The tax has now generated $3 billion more than expected, for a total of $5.7 billion that has been spent on projects that are positively benefiting Massachusetts residents and “being used to bridge repairs, bolster literacy programs and address the transportation system’s budget deficit.”
   3. In case you need a refresher, the tax is a 4 percent tax on anything people make over a million dollars.
   4. One million dollars. This means that if you make $1,100,000, they will be taxed a whopping $4,000 extra. That’s like, a single Chanel bag. They can deal — and deal they have! Most of them, anyway.
   5. Bloomberg reports that, although many millionaires (who still haven’t left) have been pushing for ballot measures to end it, some are actually pretty okay with the situation.
   6. [Said Sam Slater, a real estate developer who lives in the Boston suburb of Weston and pays the millionaire’s tax,] “At the end of the day, I happen to believe it’s a phenomenal place to live.” […] [H]e’s staying put. His family has roots in the region, and they also like Boston’s culture, sports teams and seasons, Slater said.
   7. Josh Isner, president of taser manufacturer Axon Enterprise Inc., said the millionaire’s tax makes it harder to recruit talent — particularly well-paid artificial intelligence specialists — to the Northeast hub the company opened in Boston last year. But the office is based in the city because “Boston breeds super-talented people,” he said earlier this year.
   8. But they did find one guy who split! Robert Reynolds, 73, the former chief executive officer of Putnam Investments, has moved down to Florida, citing the millionaire tax and the Massachusetts estate tax as a concern. Other people, of course, might just call that “retiring” after the company you work for is acquired by another company. According to an admittedly sketchy-seeming website that I’m not going to link to because no one needs that many pop-ups, Reynolds has a net worth of $319 million.
   9. My heart is not exactly breaking for him and the 4 percent tax he would have to pay on any money he’d make over $1 million. I think he’d be okay, personally!
   10. The fact that the state generated more money in the second year of its Millionaire Tax implementation than in the first suggests that not too many people have gone the way of Bob Reynolds — even if, according to him, he hasn’t “been to one meeting in Boston since this passed where there haven’t been a number of people saying that they’re moving out of the state.”
   11. Sure, people complain. Rich people are always going to complain about taxes. But they never flee the way they threaten to, largely because whether or not they like to admit it, they prefer to live in the kinds of areas where things are made nicer by the taxes they don’t want to pay.
   12. One of the biggest things that the “low tax” hysterics refuse to (or pretend not to) get is that there is a reason why rich people and big corporations are still centered in higher tax areas — and it’s because, really, what good is money if you can’t actually do much of anything with it?
   13. Sure, there are some people who like the idea of living out in the middle of nowhere, on a ranch, with nature. There are guys in their 70s who want to just move to Florida and play golf (though they almost always live in gated communities there with enormous HOA fees that serve a similar purpose as taxes). But, clearly, a whole lot more people like living in places where there are things to do. For especially rich people, they want to be able to spend some money on nice dinners, on fashion that people are actually going to see and appreciate, on cultural activities, [and] on events. They want to be able to send their kids to a good school, public or private. This usually entails living at least somewhat near a city, and very frequently in a “blue” state.
   14. It’s not just rich people, either. Many of the comedians who followed Joe Rogan to Austin now regret the move because, well, there’s not enough for them to do and power grid failures aren’t as much fun as we guessed they thought they’d be.
   15. Corporations need to be situated near good colleges they can pluck from, where a lot of talent is located. Sure, they could move to a state with extremely low taxes and hope that other people will move along with them, but they’ll be cutting their talent pool by a lot. People who don’t have kids aren’t going to want to move to places where there isn’t anything to do, and smart people who have kids don’t want said kids learning all about how Jesus rode dinosaurs or being taught by random military personnel (or their spouses!) who haven’t even completed a Bachelor’s degree, because so few actual teachers actually want to live in their state. I think even successful people who lean conservative and might want those things for other people’s children still want their own kids to be competitive.
   16. This is why rich people aren’t going to flee New York City if Zohran Mamdani institutes something similar. There are people living in walk-in closets just to get to live there — I’m pretty certain that there are rich folks who will be willing to deal with an imperceptible tax increase to do the same. We are talking about people who pay $50,000 a year for preschool. They will manage.
   17. And it’s worth noting that, if they can’t, it’s hardly as though there are not people willing and able to step up and take their places and make just a pinch less than a bajillion dollars a year. Because there are. Lots of them.
   18. It’s also why they aren’t going to flee the United States if Elizabeth Warren gets her way and a similar tax is implemented nationwide. Pretty much any other place they’d want to live would have higher taxes. The places with the highest quality of life in the world also tend to be the places with the highest taxes, and that is not a coincidence. You get what you pay for.
   19. But it’s not just about how the millionaires and billionaires feel. It’s about how everyone else feels, and 58 percent of the country would like to see taxes raised on those making more than $400,000 a year — including 23 percent who say they should be raised a lot. Sixty-three percent say they want to see taxes raised on corporations.
   20. Hell, 43 percent of Republicans say that taxes on these groups should be raised.
   21. Maybe we could have nice things after all?
   22. MIKE: It’s often said that the States are the test laboratories for national policies, so Massachusetts is effectively conducting a tax-the-rich experiment for the rest of us.
   23. MIKE: What the Massachusetts experiment suggests is that if a place has a desirable quality of life, then a small tax increase on incomes over $1 million is not a deal breaker, and can lead to even greater improvements in the overall quality of life for all residents. Not just the rich.
   24. MIKE: So, thank you, Massachusetts.
4. Speaking of Massachusetts, a story from WGBH that should have gotten much wider national coverage — Immigrants kept from Faneuil Hall citizenship ceremony as feds crackdown nationwide; By Sarah Betancourt | WGBH.ORG | December 05, 2025/Updated  December 06, 2025. TAGS: Immigration, U.S. Citizenship and Naturalization, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS),
   1. Becoming a U.S. citizen takes years and involves immigrants acquiring a green card, extensive interviews, background checks, classes and a citizenship test. The naturalization ceremony is the final step to the process, where the oath of allegiance and a citizenship certificate are granted.
   2. Immigrants approved to be naturalized went to Faneuil Hall … — known as the country’s cradle of liberty — [on Thursday December 4] for that long-awaited moment to pledge allegiance to the United States. But instead, as they lined up, some were told by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials that they couldn’t proceed due to their countries of origin.
   3. The same situation is playing out at naturalization events across the country as USCIS directed its employees to halt adjudicating all immigration pathways for people from 19 countries deemed to be “high risk”.
   4. [Said Gail Breslow, executive director of Project Citizenship,] “One of our clients said that she had gone to her oath ceremony because she hadn’t received the cancellation notice in time. … She showed up as scheduled, and when she arrived, officers were asking everyone what country they were from, and if they said a certain country, they were told to step out of line and that their oath ceremonies were canceled.”
   5. That client, a Haitian woman in her 50s, has had a green card since the early 2000s and started working with Project Citizenship in January. She declined an interview request through Breslow.
   6. [Breslow told GBH News,] “People are devastated and they’re frightened. … People were plucked out of line. They didn’t cancel the whole ceremony.”
   7. She said many clients with upcoming ceremonies and USCIS appointments have received cancellations via an online portal. She shared an example of the notices they’re receiving, which provide no further guidance or instructions.
   8. [Breslow said,] “One person was, you know, asking … what did I do wrong? Why is this happening to me? And, you know, needed to be reassured that it wasn’t anything she had done. This wasn’t her fault.”
   9. The ceremony, which usually involves immigrants having family and friends present to witness their life-changing moment, is usually presided over by a judge or a USCIS official. USCIS, and the agency it falls under — the Department of Homeland Security — have not returned direct requests for comment about the Faneuil Hall ceremony. USCIS issued a press release on Friday saying that [it] is launching a USCIS Vetting Center in Atlanta for immigration and naturalization processes.
   10. [Said USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow in the statement,] “USCIS’s role in the nation’s immigration system has never been more critical. In the wake of several recent incidents of violence, including a foreign national attacking National Guard service members on U.S. soil, establishing this vetting center will give us more enhanced capabilities to safeguard national security and ensure public safety.”
   11. Advocates are decrying the move.
   12. [Said Elizabeth Sweet, Executive Director of MIRA Coalition,] “As an immigrant takes the oath of citizenship, it’s a reflection and recognition of the tremendous sacrifice of time, energy, and financial resources they have made in the hopes of becoming a full member of our community and nation. … To have that final step canceled is unnecessarily cruel and does nothing to make this country a safer place.”
   13. The countries presently on the full travel ban list are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Those on the partial ban list are Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
   14. MIKE: This story infuriates me. My wife and stepdaughter are both naturalized US citizens, and I can say authoritatively that becoming a US citizen is not quick, easy or cheap. I also suspect that many, if not most, Americans could not pass the citizenship test on the first try. Many of the people I know are either naturalized citizens or longtime green card holders. The same may be true for most of KPFT’s listeners, possibly whether they know it or not.
   15. MIKE: When it comes to Trump and MAGA, the cruelty is always the point.
   16. MIKE: As my friend T. Greg Doucette noted when this story was brought to my attention by his Facebook post, “A reminder that ‘we just want immigrants to come here the *right* way!’ was always a lie”.
   17. MIKE: Trump and his MAGAts might as well dispense with the smokescreen and just admit that only White Europeans are welcome to immigrate to the US.
   18. MIKE: And the irony, as someone pointed out in social media, is the question of why would White Europeans want to come here? In most of Europe, they have socialized medicine, quality transportation in the form of public mass transit, roads, trains, and many benefits subsidized by social democratic governments.
   19. MIKE: Right now, the only impetus I can see for Europeans to come here is to get as far away from Russia as possible, but many might see that was fleeing the frying pan only to leap into the fire.
   20. MIKE: This discrimination by the USCIS is deplorable (yes … there’s that word) and I hope that there will eventually be prosecutions for the fear, anger, and hardship they have provoked against so many innocent people.
5. Next is a short article from AFP via Times of Israel that will require a commentary from me — Europeans demand US ‘security guarantees’ before Ukraine territorial concessions — Elysee; By AFP | TIMESOFISRAEL.COM | 12 December 2025, 11:00 pm. TAGS: United States, Ukraine, France, Russia, EU, NATO,
   1. Europeans and Ukrainians are asking the United States to provide them with “security guarantees” before any territorial negotiations in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, the French presidency says.
   2. “We need full visibility on the security guarantees that Europeans and Americans can give to Ukrainians before any settlement on contentious territorial issues,” the Elysee says ahead of a Monday meeting in Berlin with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, other European leaders and the heads of the EU and NATO.
   3. MIKE: I have just one response to this story. We can discuss further US security guarantees when the US fully implements its original security assurances as promised in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. As per Wikipedia, the memorandum said in part that it, “prohibited Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, ‘except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations’. As a result [of] the memorandum and other agreements, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.^[4][5]”
   4. MIKE: Now in fairness, elsewhere in the Wikipedia article, it clarifies that, “it is not entirely clear whether the instrument is devoid entirely of legal provisions. It refers to assurances, but unlike guarantees, it does not impose a legal obligation of military assistance on its parties.^[2][56]”
   5. MIKE: The article further states, “Whether or not the memorandum sets out legal obligations, the difficulties that Ukraine has encountered since early 2014 may cast doubt on the credibility of future security assurances that are offered in exchange for nonproliferation commitments.^[58] Regardless, the United States publicly maintains that ‘the Memorandum is not legally binding’, calling it a ‘political commitment’.^[27]”
   6. MIKE: And the credibility of future assurances by the US is the crux here. Whether the 1994 Budapest Memorandum is considered a legal treaty promising defense assistance or not, the wishy-washy, on-again/off-again response from the US to assist Ukraine’s defense makes further US “assurances” of questionable value.
   7. MIKE: And there is an irony that this memorandum was signed in Budapest, given US history there.
   8. MIKE: Depending on who you believe, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 may have been inspired in part by inference of some Hungarian activists that the West would intercede on their behalf if they rose up against the Soviet-supported regime ruling Hungary at the time.
   9. MIKE: The Wikipedia article I’ve linked to in this show post at ThinkwingRadio-dot-com touches on this subject and US rationales at the time for a failure to aid the Hungarian revolutionaries. It’s a long and, I think, fairly balanced discussion of the history of this event.
   10. MIKE: In any case, it reflects again on implied or inferred US commitments. How concrete must mutual aid language be for the US to be fully committed to “assurances” of defense assistance for Ukraine? Would the US find squirmy language in the event that such assurances were cited in demands by Ukraine or the EU for future defense assistance?
   11. MIKE: And most importantly, can any US treaty agreements be treated seriously in the absence of Senate approval?
   12. MIKE: Under Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution, the Senate must ratify international treaties negotiated by the president with a 2/3 vote before it becomes US law.
   13. MIKE: For decades now, US presidents have avoided sending most treaties to the Senate in expectation that they would fail to pass with the required supermajority. In such cases, treaties have been treated as morally binding by the parties involved essentially on the promise of that president and presumed to be morally binding on future US presidents.
   14. MIKE: I think it’s fair to say that no country, including Ukraine and the European Union, will be foolish enough in the future to assume a treaty agreement is effective without Senate ratification. And … perhaps not even then.
   15. MIKE: That is among the worst damage that Trump has done to the international standing of this nation. It’s a reason for Ukraine and the EU to be dubious of future US defense commitments, and this next story amplifies that damage even further.
6. I touched on this next story last week in a general discussion of another article. This next piece from WARONTHEROCKS goes into significant detail and discussion of the strategy document itself and what it could mean for the United States going forward — Ten Jolting Takeaways from Trump’s New National Security Strategy; By Rick Landgraf | WARONTHEROCKS.COM | December 5, 2025. TAGS: US National Security Strategy Document, United States, Donald Trump, Monroe Doctrine,
   1. The new National Security Strategy is out, and it’s a shock to the system. It is not just the latest public articulation of principles, ambitions, and priorities around which the United States organizes its foreign policy. Instead, it reads like a manifesto for a radically different American project. It is narrower, more partisan, more inwardly focused, and more personalized than any of its predecessors. Below are ten takeaways that matter for how the United States sees its role and place in the world.
   2. First, the strategy is overtly about this president and not the United States as such. Most national security strategies at least try to present the United States as a cohesive whole and leave domestic politics out of it. This one instead puts partisan division and the president himself front and center. It casts “President Trump’s second administration” as an expansion of his first term — a “necessary, welcome correction” — that began “ushering in a new golden age.” It calls Trump “The President of Peace,” “leveraging his dealmaking ability” to personally secure “unprecedented peace” in eight conflicts across the globe, including ending the war in Gaza with all living hostages returned to their families. In doing so, the document merges national strategy and political campaigning.
   3. This matters because when a national security strategy elevates the president as protagonist rather than the country, it blurs the line between institutional strategy and political messaging. That alters how allies gauge reliability, how agencies interpret guidance, and how adversaries assess continuity beyond one person.
   4. Second, it narrows American purpose to “core national interests” and explicitly disavows the post-Cold War liberal order that the United States has built and led. The strategy defines foreign policy as “the protection of core national interests” and says that is the “sole focus” of the document. It criticizes “American foreign policy elites” for chasing “permanent American domination of the entire world” and for tying the United States to “so-called ‘free trade,’” globalism, and “transnationalism” that allegedly hollowed out the American middle class and eroded sovereignty.
   5. [MIKE: There are a lot of air quotes in that last sentence which you can see if you read this show post. There will be a lot more of those in the rest of the story. Continuing …]
   6. Where previous strategies wrapped U.S. power in the language of democracy promotion and the rules-based order, this one is markedly different. It redefines leadership and power through coercive leverage, bilateralism, and transactional alignment. This is an America that is not necessarily retreating from the world stage but consolidating its power through bullying and dealmaking.
   7. [MIKE: That sounds exactly like Trump’s view of his so-called “dealmaking’. Continuing …]
   8. Third, immigration is elevated to the central national security problem. The text declares, bluntly, that “the era of mass migration must end,” and that “border security is the primary element of national security.” It frames mass migration as a driver of crime, social breakdown, and economic distortion, and calls for a world where sovereign states cooperate to “stop rather than facilitate destabilizing population flows” and tightly control whom they admit. In effect, this makes border control and immigration enforcement the organizing lens for national security policy, not just one concern among many. This has acute consequences for military force posture, diplomacy, and resource allocation. If border security is top priority, then missions in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East become subordinated to hemispheric enforcement. More than a mere rhetorical shift, this strategy reorders the hierarchy of threats and danger.
   9. Fourth, a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine puts the Western Hemisphere first and implies the realignment of global force posture. The strategy states that the United States will “assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine” to keep the Western Hemisphere free of “hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets” while ensuring stability sufficient to prevent mass migration and protect critical supply chains. It’s unclear how Latin America figures into the plan, whether as an external partner region or lying within an extended U.S. security perimeter. The text foreshadows a “readjustment of our global military presence” away from theaters judged less central and toward hemispheric contingencies. There is a sharp hierarchy of regions: the Americas first, with Asia, Europe, and the Middle East explicitly important but now competing against an official hemispheric priority. This is Monroe Doctrine logic repurposed for demographic control and economic nationalism.
   10. Fifth, protecting American culture, “spiritual health,” and “traditional families” are framed as core national security requirements. It is here where the influences of Christian nationalism and the vice president are the most apparent. The document insists that “restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health” are prerequisites for long-term security and links this to an America that “cherishes its past glories and its heroes” and is sustained by “growing numbers of strong, traditional families” raising “healthy children.” America is thus cast as defender of so-called traditional values, while Europe lacks “civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”
   11. The language of the document is not the typical passing nod to values and societal cohesion of previous national security strategies. It redefines culture and family as explicit national security issues, which brings domestic cultural politics into the domain of national security decision-making.
   12. [MIKE: I’ll add that to me at least, this sounds like very 1930s fascist Übermensch Continuing …]
   13. Sixth, the strategy elevates the culture wars into a governing logic for national security, and it does so through rhetoric that treats ideological and cultural disputes as matters of strategic consequence. The document denounces Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as a source of institutional decay and presents this as a national security problem. Yet the argument does not remain focused on personnel policy. It expands into a broader effort to define cultural cohesion, political identity, and even social change as indicators of strategic reliability. This is clearest in the European section, where the strategy suggests that some allies are drifting because of what it describes as failing political leadership, public dissatisfaction with policy toward the war in Ukraine, and supposed structural weaknesses in European democracy. The text also speculates about demographic and cultural shifts in Europe as a way to question whether future governments will share American views of their alliances. The strategy does not substantiate these claims. Instead, it uses them to imply that cultural alignment is essential to strategic partnership.
   14. What emerges is not a traditional assessment of allied capability or political will but a cultural test for geopolitical trustworthiness. European governments seen as insufficiently responsive to public opinion are depicted as suppressing legitimate democratic impulses. Their policy disagreements with Washington are presented as evidence of deeper cultural or ideological drift. The strategy therefore treats internal political debates within allied democracies as matters for American scrutiny, while insisting on strict insulation of American domestic politics from foreign influence. This asymmetry reveals a worldview in which cultural politics becomes an instrument of statecraft. It positions the United States to judge the internal order of its partners through the lens of ideological compatibility rather than institutional capacity or shared interests. In doing so, the strategy folds the culture war into alliance management and treats domestic cultural narratives as strategic tools rather than purely political ones.
   15. Seventh, the “Golden Dome” missile shield is identified as a strategic objective. The strategy calls for “next-generation missile defenses — including a Golden Dome for the American homeland” to protect the United States, its overseas assets, and allies. This is an ambitious vision of layered homeland missile defense that goes well beyond the traditional focus on limited protection against rogue states. In fact, it is a doctrinal pivot. If taken literally, it implies industrial commitment and immense investment. And what is the tradeoff? Scaled back power projection? A smaller army? Any attempt at comprehensive missile defense destabilizes established nuclear deterrence logic. Pursuing it would trigger concerns in Moscow and Beijing that Washington seeks first-strike advantage.
   16. Eighth, the long-running project of increasing burden-sharing with allies evolves into burden-shifting, anchored in the June 2025 Hague summit pledge by NATO countries to spend five percent of GDP on defense. While past strategies have asked America’s allies to do more, this one takes it to another level. “The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,” and touts a “Hague Commitment” under which NATO countries “pledge…to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense,” a standard it says allies have endorsed and now “must” meet. This is more than arm twisting and has implications for alliance cohesion. It treats compliance as a condition for political favor. If enforced, it would trigger severe budgetary and political shocks across Europe and beyond.
   17. Ninth, there is a harder-edged doctrine of sovereignty assertion paired with suspicion of international institutions. The strategy’s principles stress the “primacy of nations” and vow to resist “sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations,” promising to “reform” those institutions so they “assist rather than hinder individual sovereignty and further American interests.” It also warns against foreign attempts to “manipulate our immigration system to build up voting blocs loyal to foreign interests within our country.” By framing diaspora politics as a national security threat, the strategy blurs the boundary between counterintelligence and domestic political competition, a move without precedent in prior national security strategies. The assertions about sovereignty in the text expose a double standard: America is not to be messed with and yet the Trump administration sees no issue with inserting itself into the domestic political debates of allies, namely Germany.
   18. Finally, economic nationalism and reindustrialization sit at the center of security strategy, not at the periphery. The document calls cultivating American industrial strength “the highest priority of national economic policy,” with a strong manufacturing base described as essential to both peacetime and wartime power. It promises to rebalance trade, secure critical supply chains in a Hamiltonian spirit so the United States is “never…dependent on any outside power” for key defense or economic inputs, and position the energy sector as a leading export engine. Industrial policy, tariffs, and supply chain controls are therefore not separate from strategy. Rather, they are central instruments of statecraft, on par with traditional military tools. Herein lies contradictions. Tariff-driven reindustrialization requires massive federal outlays while the strategy also demands an enlarged defense budget. And “never dependent on any outside power” is materially impossible in some sectors, such as pharmaceutical precursors, cobalt, and rare earths, without reshaping global markets.
   19. Together, these takeaways point to a national security strategy that fuses “America First” economic and immigration policy, an assertive hemispheric doctrine, and domestic political objectives into a single organizing framework. That said, it’s unclear how much this matters in practice. All the principles put forth in the strategy have been said before by the president and his inner circle. For both allies and adversaries, the shock is not only the specific policies, but the message that the United States now sees its security in a more personalized, inwardly focused, and narrower way than before.
   20. MIKE: As I’ve said or suggested many times over the last decade, Trump and his cronies and manipulators, and his Republican Party sycophants are doing lasting damage to the United States and its role in the world. A role that we have built and maintained for the better part of the past century, and which has kept the nation reasonably safe and secure.
   21. MIKE: Unfortunately, I can’t say it’s kept us at peace, but that’s largely the fault of poorly-chosen leadership on the part of American voters. Some US wars since 1945 were fought with varying degrees of necessity or strategic purpose, but even then, they were sometimes fought with poor strategic vision. Further, I think that US wars lasting 20 years — especially wars of questionable strategic necessity — are both intolerable and inexcusable.
   22. MIKE: Even with all that said, I cannot see this new so-called security document as making us, our allies, or the world at large safer. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.
   23. MIKE: All you have to do is look at the implicit threat of a US invasion of Venezuela as an example.
7. Next, from the NYTIMES — S. Boarded [a] Ship and Seized Cargo Heading to Iran From China; By Chris Cameron and Eric Schmitt, Reporting from Washington | NYTIMES.COM | Dec. 12, 2025, 8:45 p.m. ET. TAGS: Iran, China, United States, Cargo Seizure,
   1. A U.S. special operations team boarded a ship in the Indian Ocean last month and seized cargo headed to Iran from China, a U.S. official said, a rare operation at sea aimed at blocking Tehran from rebuilding its military arsenal.
   2. The seizure, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, occurred amid a strategic stalemate between Iran and the United States over its nuclear weapons program.
   3. Iran faced off against Israel and the United States in a short war this summer that killed more than 1,000 people over 12 days of intense long-range missile and air strikes. A fleet of S. stealth bombers struck Iranian nuclear facilities during that war, an attack that U.S. officials said had “significantly degraded” Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but regional officials and analysts fear that a renewed conflict is inevitable.
   4. The United States had been tracking the shipment as it made its way from China to Iran, the U.S. official said on condition of anonymity, and the ship was sailing several hundred miles off the coast of Sri Lanka when U.S. special operations forces launched the operation. The commandos boarded the ship and confiscated its cargo before letting the vessel proceed.
   5. It was unclear what exactly the ship was carrying, but the cargo, the official said, consisted of dual-use components that could be used either for civilian applications or to make conventional weapons. The boarding occurred several weeks before the recent seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
   6. A spokesman for the United States Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees military operations in the regions, declined to comment.
   7. Iranian factories are working around the clock to replenish stockpiles of long-range missiles and drones that can be used to strike Israel. In the war this summer, Iran had sought to overwhelm Israel’s air defense network through sheer numbers, and will likely seek to import components to build as many new weapons as possible ahead of a renewed conflict.
   8. The United States has increasingly sought to control the delivery of dual-use goods, especially the microelectronics and software needed to manufacture guided weapons systems and remote drones. Many of these components are much harder to explicitly ban or embargo because of their plausible use in nonmilitary applications.
   9. Over the course of the war in Ukraine, U.S. officials have sought to interrupt the supply of these goods being shipped from firms in China to Russia. But that effort had never escalated to launching military operations against commercial shipping traffic.
   10. MIKE: About that last point, as adjacent countries, China can ship components to Russia by overland and rail routes that the US can’t possibly interdict.
   11. MIKE: Everything I’m going to say now requires that I stipulate in advance that I only have limited lay knowledge of international law, supplemented by Google.
   12. MIKE: Acts of War have gotten harder to define. I confirmed this by searching for definitions.
   13. MIKE: Formal Declarations of War would make the distinction simple, but to my knowledge, no nation has officially declared war on another nation since 1945 when the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. In our modern world, wars just sort of “happen”.
   14. MIKE: In the absence of formal declarations, I think that military invasions or attacks can clearly be seen as acts of war. But what about so-called “gray warfare” tactics? (I’ve provided an explanatory link in this show post.) Such tactics have been used increasingly by actors such as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and others.
   15. MIKE: Gray zone tactics are used because they are seen as below the threshold of so-called “kinetic” military retaliation, but they do real damage at various levels of severity.
   16. MIKE: Gray zone warfare can also be hard to attribute. Were actions committed by a national actor, a rogue non-national group, or simply criminals? At whom should a retaliatory response be aimed and of what kind?
   17. MIKE: On the other hand, physical searches and seizures of ships at sea could be seen as a more tangible act of war. The US has interfered with international shipping at least twice in the last month on grounds that may be legally questionable.
   18. MIKE: The War of 1812 was caused partly by British interference with US shipping on the high seas and impressment of US sailors into the British navy. Compare this with the US stopping a ship on the high seas and confiscating all or some of its cargo as happened in the Indian Ocean and with a Venezuelan-contracted oil tanker.
   19. MIKE: And what nation is this act actually committed against? The Venezuelan tanker Skipper was flying the flag of Guyana, but is not actually registered there. As of this writing, I can find no information on where this ship is actually registered or who owns it.
   20. MIKE: The same goes for the ship intercepted by the US in the Indian Ocean that was traveling from China to Iran with dual-use cargo believed to be intended for Iranian military hardware. I can’t find any mention of where that ship is officially flagged or even its name, but it raises the same questions. Who are these acts committed against and who, if anyone, should retaliate against the US and how? The nation of registry? The persons or companies who own the ship? The owners of the products seized? The country of origin? The nation or companies of destination? Some or all of the above?
   21. MIKE: I remember reading many years ago that military blockades such as the one we put around Cuba in 1962 and which China may employ against Taiwan at some future date are technically acts of war.
   22. MIKE: And yet, in the absence of a formal declaration, do they cross a threshold of military retaliation in the absence of an actual attack on territory? Is stopping a ship and seizing cargo on the high seas a form or part of an actual blockade or just a one-off interdiction?
   23. MIKE: The US is on very shaky legal ground here, but while these actions are more obvious, the US is not alone. Acts of war are getting much trickier to define in the modern age, and that’s a bad thing.
   24. MIKE: There is no question in my mind that at some future time, it’s essential that an international treaty, possibly under the auspices of the UN such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), must be negotiated to more clearly define what constitutes modern acts of war so as to remove the “gray zone” of responsibility.
   25. MIKE: Unless that happens, these hard-to-define acts of aggression will continue to proliferate.
8. Finally, in a story about slapping back at Trump’s ego, there’s this story from SFGATE-dot-com — This artist created a work-around to Trump’s face on national parks passes; By Sam Mauhay-Moore, National Parks Reporter | SFGATE.COM | Updated Dec 12, 2025 4:44 p.m. TAGS: Department of the Interior, America the Beautiful Passes, Jenny McCarty, National Park Passes,
   1. In response to the Department of the Interior’s announcement that designs on newly issued America the Beautiful passes will include President Donald Trump’s face, one artist has taken matters into her own hands. 
   2. Jenny McCarty, an ecologist and watercolor artist in Colorado, announced on Wednesday that she is selling stickers that cover up the controversial and allegedly illegal new designs on the front of the passes, which include Trump’s face next to a painted rendering of George Washington. McCarty’s stickers are adorned with her own artwork of landscapes and animals at various parks: One features a pika standing at the famous Rock Cut overlook in Rocky Mountain National Park with an alpine flower in its mouth; another shows a wolf howling on the banks of the Snake River with the Teton Range looming in the background; the third is of a grizzly bear looking out over a vast expanse in Denali National Park and Preserve. 
   3. “The national park pass is a pass to, essentially, heaven on earth for most of us, and I think that it’s important to have beauty on the pass,” McCarty told SFGATE. 
   4. Over a hundred orders have been placed over the last two days, McCarty said, which shocked her. 
   5. “I’m definitely surprised, and we’re a small business. So it is going to be a lot of volunteer hours dedicated to packaging everybody’s order, but it’s all for a good cause,” McCarty said. 
   6. The stickers are being sold through McCarty’s business, Sage Leaf Studio, and are going for $6 a pop. All profits made from their sales will be donated to the National Park Foundation and the National Parks Conservation Association, she said. 
   7. To make sure the stickers wouldn’t interfere with any of the passes official uses, McCarty made calls to several visitor centers at various national parks. She said that most of the employees she spoke with told her that they couldn’t offer any official guidance on the topic, but suggested that since signatures and barcodes are located on the backs of the passes, placing stickers on the front should be acceptable. However, in the event that new guidance is released regarding the passes in 2026, McCarty said that an easy solution might involve placing the passes in clear credit card cases and adhering the stickers to the front of them. 
   8. “So worst-case scenario, you could remove your parks pass and show that it hasn’t been altered in any way, but it covers up the image that people maybe don’t want to see,” McCarty said. 
   9. McCarty has been creating art for most of her life but began painting consistently three years ago as a way to honor her creative pursuits outside of her career as an ecologist and natural resources manager. This endeavor blossomed into Sage Leaf Studio, which sells prints and paintings depicting majestic landscapes and animal life. 
   10. “I use my art to inspire people to care about wildlife and wild places, and to remind everyone why they’re worth protecting,” McCarty said. 
   11. MIKE: This story has pictures of the optional stickers that can be used to cover Trump’s face. I’m also providing a link to a separate story that shows the card with Trump’s orange visage.
   12. MIKE: Remember that defiance of authoritarianism is made up of many different kinds of acts of protest and resistance.
   13. REFERENCE: Trump’s face on new national park passes outrages conservationists

There’s always more to discuss, but that’s all we have time for today.