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.)

“If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm …” ~ Governor JB Pritzker famously said on August 26, 2025 (“JB Pritzker BLASTS Trump: POWERFUL SPEECH protecting Illinois’ largest city”, August 26, 2025)

Full text of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s speech at news conference on reported Trump military plan for Chicago (August 26, 2025)

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.

And welcome to our international listeners from Canada, Singapore, Bulgaria, China, and elsewhere.

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. I do try to fact-check myself and include the links I use to do so.

It’s the 36th week of Trump’s military occupation of Washington DC; and 25 weeks since those states’ governors deployed National Guard troops to Memphis, Tennessee and New Orleans, Louisiana, at Trump’s request, which is where they remain for now.  

The next gubernatorial election in Tennessee is in about 6 months. I really want to see how that one turns out.

LAWFARE has a frequently updated chart of where US troops are currently stationed around the US. It begins tracking from 2017 to current. The list can show in ascending or descending order, and the link is in this show post at ThinkwingRadio-dot-com.

Due to time constraints, some stories may be longer in this show post than in the broadcast show itself.

1. If you live in Harris County, There is also an election calendar that you an access at com/Event-Calendar
   1. Busy election calendars like we’re currently experiencing pretty much guarantee small voter turnouts either from election fatigue or general apathy. You can decide for yourself if that’s a feature or a bug.
   2. REFERENCE: Blue Voter Guide
2. On May 2^nd, there is another election, this time it’s the Republican Primary Runoff for Texas Senate District 4.
   1. Texas SD-4 serves all of Chambers county, and portions of Galveston, Harris, Jefferson, and Montgomery counties in the southeastern portion of the state of Texas.^[1]
   2. If you live in SD-4, Early Voting starts Apr 20, 2026 and ends Apr 28, 2026
   3. The candidates are Republican RETT W. LIGON vs. Democrat RON C. ANGELETTI
   4. If you don’t get mail-in ballots and you’re not sure if you’re in SD-4 district, you can get more information at HarrisVotes-dot-com, your county election clerk, or from the Texas Secretary of State’s office at VoteTexas-dot-gov.
3. For those Houstonians who are in City Council District C, that Runoff is scheduled for May 16^th. I’ll report more election information when we get closer.
4. And speaking of election fatigue, are you gonna be ready for the Texas STATE runoff elections? These will be from the results of the primaries for state offices.
   1. On May 26, 2026, we’ll have Texas State Primary Runoff Elections – Election Day
   2. Early Voting for that election will Start May 18, 2026 and End May 22, 2026.
5. There is a comprehensive article covering the statewide runoffs from TEXASTRIBUNE-dot-ORG. It’s long and detailed, so I’m just going to read the intro — Here’s how to vote in Texas’ May 26 primary runoff elections; By María Méndez; Graphic by Apurva Mahajan | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | March 18, 2026, 5:00 a.m. Central/Updated April 6, 2026, 3:45 p.m. Central. TAGS: 2026 elections, Congress, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, State Agencies,
   1. Candidates in more than 30 state and federal races are expected to face off again in the May 26 runoff after failing to secure more than half of the votes cast in the March Republican and Democratic primaries. This includes Attorney General Ken Paxton’s challenge to U.S. John Cornyn, as well as several candidates for statewide or district-based elected offices in Texas.
   2. In these undecided races, registered voters can choose their preferred candidate on May 26 or during the May 18-22 early voting period.
   3. But remember, Texas doesn’t allow double dipping. Voters who already voted in the Republican or Democratic primary this year can only vote in that same party’s runoff elections. Voters who didn’t vote in March can choose to vote in either party’s runoff. (Texans don’t have to formally register with a party.) …
   4. [The story has links to sections with information on what you need to know. Their titled:]
   5. What’s on the ballot?
   6. What dates do I need to know?
   7. What do I need to know about voter registration requirements?
   8. What do I need to know about mail-in voting?
   9. What do I need to know about going to the polls?
   10. How can I make sure my ballot is counted?
   11. MIKE: Among the high-profile state runoffs are Republicans: John Cornyn vs. Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate; and Mayes Middleton vs. Chip Roy for Texas attorney general
   12. MIKE: On the Democratic side, Democratic runoffs are Vikki Goodwin vs. Marcos Vélez for Lieutenant governor; and Nathan Johnson vs. Joe Jaworski for Attorney general
   13. MIKE: And thank goodness, there are no elections in June!
6. Whitmire loses Houston Police Officers’ Union endorsement after vote to limit ICE coordination; The mayor’s support for a measure limiting HPD coordination with ICE blew up his relationship with a staunch ally. The politically powerful police union will not endorse Whitmire for a second term, according to its president. By Dominic Anthony Walsh | HOUSTONPUBLICMEDIA.ORG | | Posted on April 8, 2026, 4:33 PM (Last Updated: April 8, 2026, 5:08 PM). TAGS: City of Houston, Houston, Local, News, Politics2027, Election, Houston Mayor John Whitmire, Houston Police Department, Houston Police Union, HPD, ICE,
   1. MIKE: I don’t have time in this show to read that article, but I thought I’d read the headline and intro because for some reason I find it ironically hilarious. I think it also shows where the HPD itself stands on ICE enforcement, and that may be essential to know when hiring and managing the HPD going forward.
7. In just one more bit of local election news, HOUSTONCHRONICLE-dot-COM published this — Turnout in Houston City Council’s District C special election falls short of 6%; By Abby Church, Staff Writer | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM | April 6, 2026. TAGS: Houston’s District C, Election News, Election Turnout,
   1. Though Houston’s District C is often the most engaged area of town, you wouldn’t be able to tell from the number of folks who voted in this weekend’s special election to choose the area’s new city council member.
   2. Only 9,408 people from neighborhoods like Montrose, the Heights, Meyerland and Oak Forest showed up to the polls, a turnout of just 5.6%. District C has about 169,000 registered voters, according to data from the Harris County Clerk’s Office, and typically posts the highest turnout among Houston’s 11 council districts in municipal elections.
   3. Community activist and green energy developer Joe Panzarella will face real estate professional Nick Hellyar in a May 16 runoff. The pair were the top vote-getters in a field of seven candidates hoping to replace Abbie Kamin on Houston City Council. Kamin resigned her seat to run for Harris County Attorney.
   4. The turnout numbers, though low, weren’t surprising to University of Houston political scientist Jeronimo Cortina. Voters are fatigued, he said, pointing to the recent March primary election and upcoming May primary runoffs.
   5. [Cortina said,] “It’s completely normal. … You have a special election after another election, previous to another election in a very competitive election year.”
   6. Cortina said turnout in the runoff will likely also be poor, as the District C contest will again be the only item on the ballot. 
   7. [Cortina said,] “We have a lot of elections here in Texas, and we’re electing someone almost every single year. … People may not simply just go out and vote if there is no other races for which they might be a little bit more enthusiastic.”
   8. MIKE: I’m always pretty disappointed when elections have poor turnouts, which means I’m almost always pretty disappointed.
   9. MIKE: A 6% turnout is nothing to cheer about. But considering that this was a special election for a seat that will soon be on the ballot again, and considering that this election was hyper local — meaning just one city council district — making it hard to get out the vote using mass media, I’m actually surprised that the turnout was this high. We’ve seen elections with turnouts of 3%. We often see precincts with zero votes.
   10. MIKE: In that context, 6% seems almost tolerable in this specific case.
   11. MIKE: But what made me really want to discuss this story was a post-election Facebook post by District C candidate Laura Gallier, who garnered the second lowest vote total at 4.6%.
   12. MIKE: I’m including a link to her comments in this show post at ThinkwingRadio-dot-com if anyone wants to read it, but I’m not going to because I think that in the fullness of time, she might find it a little embarrassing.
   13. MIKE: I’m going to address my next comments to Ms. Gallier.
   14. MIKE: I don’t mean to compare you to Richard Nixon in any way except to make this next point.
   15. MIKE: Your Facebook post reminded me a little of Richard Nixon’s famous quote after losing his bid for California governor in 1962. I’m linking to the Wikipedia story about in this show post. Nixon said to the press after the election, “you don’t have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
   16. MIKE: As history tells us, just 6 years later, Nixon accomplished the almost unthinkable by again winning the Republican nomination for president in 1968 and ultimately winning the general election.
   17. MIKE: To Ms. Gallier, I will say this: I’m sympathetic to your feelings about this election after the work you put into it. It’s something most of us never attempt, and for that, you deserve respect. But I think that your Facebook post is an excellent example of why you should never write something you intend to send or publish while feeling upset or disappointed or angry. Writing your feelings for yourself can be cathartic, but it’s also sometimes useful to get a second opinion from a trusted person before sending.
   18. MIKE: I think that’s good advice for anyone that I’ve also had to learn the hard way.
   19. MIKE: And it’s worth remembering that after a press conference that sounded very much like a political obituary, Nixon became president.
8. Next comes a story from Kansas that I believe has a larger national economic, political and historic context. From the KANSASREFLECTOR-dot-COM — Kansas lawmakers slashed taxes for tycoons and bigwigs. Now the budget won’t balance. Whoops!; By Clay Wirestone | KANSASREFLECTOR.COM | April 6, 2026 3:33 am. TAGS: Kansas Legislature, Kansas, Tax Cuts, State Budget,
   1. The Kansas Legislature is in the midst of making a historic mistake, one whose potential danger is only surpassed by its stupidity.
   2. Elected lawmakers have handed out repeated, enormous tax cuts to giant corporations and the richest among us. Now the state faces an impending — and entirely predictable — budget catastrophe. In the final days of the 2026 session, cries of angst echoed along the marble hallways.
   3. [Said Sen. Joe Claeys, R-Wichita, in the midst of a diatribe against public media,] “We’re deficit spending in this budget, in the red by $700 million last I looked.”
   4. [Said Sen. Virgil Peck, R-Havana, a prominent fiscal hawk,] “We cannot continue spending like this. … Look at the numbers and realize the spending in the state of Kansas over the last six years, and even before that, is ridiculous,”
   5. Excuse me while I roll my eyes and stifle a snort. What could have possibly caused this situation?
   6. Many subjects in government can be difficult to explain or understand. As someone who has written and edited pieces about state legislatures for the past quarter century, I’ve wrangled my share of perplexing policy. But comprehending why Kansas experienced budgetary catastrophe under former Gov. Sam Brownback shouldn’t stump anyone.
   7. The 2012 tax “experiment” cut too much, too fast. Lawmakers didn’t adjust spending levels to match the decreased revenue. The entire state suffered, and a new crop of legislators were elected in 2016 with the express goal of reversing the damage.
   8. Lawmakers repealed much of the experiment in 2017, and Gov. Laura Kelly’s election in 2018 enhanced fiscal stability. An experienced technocrat, Kelly painstakingly rebuilt state government.
   9. But within a few years, legislators wanted to cut taxes again. The COVID-19 pandemic swelled state coffers across the nation, as the U.S. Congress rushed out federal funds. Sure, Kansas could have used those funds responsibly and budgeted for a rainy day. But where’s the fun in that?
   10. In 2021, lawmakers overrode Kelly’s veto of Senate Bill 50, which cost $300 million over three years and slashed taxes for multinational corporations.
   11. In 2022, the Legislature passed and Kelly signed House Bill 2239, which bundled provisions from 29 different tax proposals. It cost $91 million for the first year alone, and even more for subsequent years.
   12. In 2024, lawmakers and the governor compromised on a tax-cut package squashing the state’s three tax brackets into a mere two. Senate Bill 1 was projected to cost $5 billion over five years.
   13. Finally, the 2025 session saw the emergence of a flat tax bill that passed over Kelly’s objections and promised to eventually level a flat 4% individual and corporate income tax. According to Kelly, Senate Bill 269 would cost up to $1.3 billion annually.
   14. After multiple rounds of slashing revenue, no wonder Kansas officials now wonder about their next steps.
   15. By next summer, the state will have blown through $1.1 billion in reserves over three years. We have about $2 billion in a rainy day fund at present.
   16. Analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy showed that Kansas was among the top five state cutting millionaires’ taxes last year. Once the law was fully implemented, the average tax savings for the Kochs among us would be $51,260 per person. Kansas joined such illustrious peers as Ohio (only a $19,010 cut) and Mississippi (a whopping $140,580). The two other [states] included were Missouri and Oklahoma.
   17. [Said Aidan Davis, state policy director for ITEP, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy,] “These tax cuts are not only fiscally reckless but also deeply inequitable. … At a time when state budgets are under immense pressure, it’s indefensible to hand millionaires five- and six-figure annual tax cuts while too many families struggle with affording the basics.”
   18. This situation is a choice. It is not an accident. It is not a trick. It is not an unforeseen sequence of legislative tomfoolery leading to a shocking result. Lawmakers knew the risks and the history.
   19. Republicans suggest things will be different this time around. Leaders called for spending restraint this session, but they steered clear of declaring an emergency. They have elections to run this fall.
   20. This year’s budget “helps chart a better future for Kansas,” said Rep. Troy Waymaster, a Bunker Hill Republican.
   21. [Said Sen. Chase Blasi, R-Wichita,] “We can go home and tell our constituents that we are providing stability for Kansas.”
   22. The infamous tax “experiment” received national publicity. Brownback was more than happy to take credit for those 2012 and 2013 bills. That meant that when things went wrong, voters knew who to blame.
   23. What’s happening now is gradual, an accumulation of sins against the people of Kansas, committed by lawmakers greedy for public approval. So far, they have escaped judgment for their actions. We’ll see how long that lasts, especially when the time comes for draconian cuts to public schools.
   24. Waymaster has already said his party plans to target K-12 education. You cannot hope to close budget holes without reducing spending on teachers, students and programs to educate the next generation.
   25. Simultaneously, shadowy conservative interests advocate a constitutional amendment that would shred the Kansas Supreme Court. Right now, justices are appointed and then face public retention votes. Hardcore right-wingers want direct election of justices so they can buy the court. Then, they believe, the new justices will allow bans on abortion and school funding cuts.
   26. [Senate president (and gubernatorial candidate) Ty Masterson told activists in Marion,] “The solution in Kansas is that Supreme Court election. … But you can’t go out there and say it because they’ll say that if you elect your Supreme Court, you won’t have any right to abortion anymore.”
   27. He added: “If we elect our Supreme Court, they won’t force you to spend money on schools.”
   28. Thanks for saying the quiet part out loud, Ty!
   29. The Kansas Supreme Court was one of the few obstacles standing in the way of lawmakers who wanted to proverbially drown government in the bathtub. Change its composition, and lawmakers can dodge the consequences of their disastrous tax cuts.
   30. The rest of us, on the other hand, will pay an all-too-real price: the future of Kansas.
   31. MIKE: Did you note the part about promising to eventually level Kansas taxes to a flat 4% for individual and corporate income tax?
   32. MIKE: Republicans love flat regressive taxes because they effectively put more money in the pockets of rich elites (who are usually Republicans), while taxing the middle and working classes at a proportionately higher rate of their disposable income.
   33. MIKE: For those who are unfamiliar with the why flat taxes and user fees are regressive and hurt you more if you earn less, consider this.
   34. MIKE: Pretend that the price of a brake job is like a user fee, perhaps like the one being considered for Houston trash pickup to help pay for the city’s impending budget deficit.
   35. MIKE: Someone earning $500,000 per year has a car that urgently needs a brake job. That brake job might cost $500. For that person, $500 is no big deal.
   36. MIKE: Now, a person earning $50,000 per year has a car that needs a brake job that also costs $500. For this person, that $500 brake job may be a very big deal. It may affect whether they can make rent that month or buy enough food.
   37. MIKE: Now let’s consider that 4% flat tax mentioned in the story. The person earning $500,000 per year would pay $20,000. Yes, that seems like a lot. But consider the person earning $50,000 per year. They would pay $2000. That’s 90% less, but what is the relative financial pain between the two? With $50,000 per year, a person today is living on the financial edge. On the other hand, the person earning $500,000 per year might only have to earn for an additional month to buy a new car.
   38. MIKE: That is the difference between regressive flat taxation and progressive taxation.
   39. MIKE: On last week’s show, I read a story called the The ‘Texas Three-Step’: Defund, Demonize, and Privatize Public Schools. The Texas Three-step is typically used to justify state-funded school vouchers.
   40. MIKE: At my age, this is an old Republican political and fiscal story. It can be summed up thusly: First, cut taxes. Then, crow about how those tax cuts will benefit everyone. At the same time, neglect to mention how little they will benefit almost everyone, while massively benefiting only a few “someones”.
   41. MIKE: Then, in following years, whine about how there are severe budget deficits because the state is spending too much money that it can’t afford on irresponsible programs and “giveaways”, and budgets must be cut to be balanced. (Never mind who the biggest “giveaways” are actually being given away to.)
   42. MIKE: Then cut programs and services, some of which are considered essential by most people. Things like education and health services, not to mention social safety nets.
   43. MIKE: Finally, after having cut and crippled programs that the public would never stand for actually eliminating — things like education and health services — start claiming how bad “big” government is, how government can’t to anything right, and that the only way to really make things work effectively and efficiently is to allow private enterprise to come in and straighten things out.
   44. MIKE: Then, every few years, generation after generation, Republicans metaphorically rinse and repeat.
   45. MIKE: Remember that phrase the article’s author used about “proverbially drown[ing] government in the bathtub”? He was citing a story mentioning Grover Norquist, who founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 at the urging of President Reagan. Norquist famously declared in 2001: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
   46. MIKE: Norquist became very powerful and influential in Reagan-era politics, to the point that his political blessing was sought by most Republican candidates. To get that blessing, candidates were forced to publicly sign pledges to never raise taxes.
   47. MIKE: Norquist’s political pressure on Republicans was the source of George H W Bush’s pledge when he famously said, “Read my lips. No new taxes.” (Spoiler alert: Bush did have to raise taxes, and the Norquistian-Reaganites never let him forget it.)
   48. MIKE: This is what Republicans have historically done during my lifetime, and note that I was born 18 days into the second half of the 20^th
   49. MIKE: It’s become funny to me how Republicans like to “tar” Democrats with the epithet of “tax-and-spend Democrats.” I can never understand why Democrats don’t respond with the observation of “borrow-and-spend Republicans”, because that’s what Republicans do.
   50. MIKE: That’s why deficits have the habit of growing under Republicans after their much-ballyhooed tax cuts, and mostly shrinking under Democrats who take the blame for raising taxes to balance budgets without draconian cuts to government programs and services.
   51. MIKE: The last time the US government ran a budget surplus was under Democratic President Bill Clinton. So you know what Republicans did when they took power in 2001? They cut taxes and created more deficits.
   52. MIKE: Republicans need to be branded as the party of bigger government deficits, because that’s what they’ve been guilty of consistently since at least 1981.
   53. MIKE: One of the foundational beliefs of Thinkwing Radio is that, “An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.”
   54. MIKE: Ever since free public education became universally available in all of the United States by 1918, there have been those conservatives who have resented and undercut it for various reasons.
   55. MIKE: I personally think that aside from the impact on public opinion of social media and so-called “news” organizations like Fox News, the intentional damage done to public education by the Right has also been the source of much of the narrow-mindedness and ignorance we see, particularly in knowledge of American government and civics. That ignorance is apparent not only in the general public, but even among our elected representatives.
   56. MIKE: Why do some Republicans hate public schools?
   57. MIKE: Aside from the money to be made by a few, cutting funding to public education and funneling it to private education helps to create a poorly educated working class for the rich elites.
   58. MIKE: Here’s a revealing Twitter quote by Republican Representative Jim Banks [@RepJimBanks] from Aug 25, 2022– “Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments.”
   59. MIKE: I get the general sense that many Republican elites see too much education as a bad thing. Even a dangerous thing.
   60. MIKE: Better-educated people want better jobs with better pay, and know that better options are, or should be, available to them.
   61. MIKE: Better-educated people ask better questions that may be harder for politicians or business leaders to answer satisfactorily.
   62. MIKE: It’s harder to deceive better-educated people because they not only have better training in critical thinking. They also have basic knowledge of government, history and economics, and that helps them become more-involved citizens and better-informed voters.
   63. MIKE: One of Rachel Maddow’s favorite sayings is, “Watch what they do, not what they say.” That’s almost always good advice,
   64. MIKE: But there’s also something called a Kinsley gaffe, defined as “when a political gaffe reveals some truth that a politician did not intend to admit.”
   65. Donald Trump is in the habit of saying the quiet things out loud that many elite Republicans believe but don’t usually say in public.
   66. MIKE: Donald Trump has said [PLAY AUDIO: 0m 02s] “smart people don’t like me.”
   67. MIKE: He’s also said, [PLAY AUDIO: 0m 03.5s] “I love the poorly educated.”
   68. MIKE: That should tell you all you need to know about how Republicans really feel about education for the masses.
   69. MIKE: As some of you may have noticed, I have a habit of collecting quotes. In this overall context, I also like this one.
   70. MIKE: Speaking just 10 years after the end of Civil War, President Ulysses S. Grant, said in 1875, “If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be the Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side – and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”
   71. MIKE: The role of effective universal free public education is to make that kind of war at least harder, if not impossible.
9. The following opinion piece was published by The New Republic-dot-com in February, so it isn’t entirely current, but it may be prescient. I’ll read it and then discuss — It Can Now Be Plainly Said: Trump Is Planning a November Coup d’État; By Michael Tomasky | NEWREPUBLIC.COM | February 27, 2026/10:22 a.m. ET. TAGS: November Coup d’État, Midterm Elections,
   1. Back in 2024, Kamala Harris and the Democrats struggled to convince voters that a second Donald Trump term would constitute a serious threat to democracy. We can debate the effectiveness of her, and their, rhetoric. But on a certain level, it was a hard argument to make because it was hypothetical. Voters aren’t very interested in wrapping their heads around hypotheticals, or at least vague ones. And Harris’s hypotheticals were mostly vague, so if she or any Democrat tried to say, for example, that there was a very real threat that once in office, Trump might try to cancel elections, most people kind of tuned that out.
   2. I was more than willing to believe that Trump might try to cancel elections or take over the media. But even I, when I sat down to think about exactly how, couldn’t quite pin down the specifics. No president had ever tried to do either of those things, so how exactly could Trump pull them off?
   3. Well, we’re now beginning to see. Let’s start with elections. The Washington Post — and yes, there’s still good reporting going on there — reported [on February 26^th] that pro-Trump “activists” (a rather generous and perverse use of that word, I think) who say they’re working with the Trump administration “are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.” The plan would mandate voter ID and ban mail-in balloting, and calls on Trump to issue an executive order announcing both measures.
   4. The premise, it almost goes without saying, is a total lie. China did not interfere in the 2020 election. Trump and his people often said so, the implication being that China interfered on behalf of its old friend Joe Biden and his son Hunter, whose alleged business dealings in China left his father hopelessly compromised.
   5. None of it was true. Hunter Biden did have some business interests in China, but nothing that reached his father. The U.S. intelligence services studied foreign influence in the 2020 election, and in March 2021, the government released an intelligence report concluding that China “considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election.”
   6. In fact, the report found — and isn’t this a surprise? — the biggest foreign actor in 2020 was Russia, trying to help Trump, [saying]: “The primary effort the IC [intelligence community] uncovered revolved around a narrative — that Russian actors began spreading as early as 2014 — alleging corrupt ties between President Biden, his family, and other U.S. officials and Ukraine.”
   7. But Trump administration officials — including Attorney General Bill Barr — pushed the China lie aggressively. So it’s very easy for Trump today to invoke China again and lie that the threat of even greater Chinese interference in 2026 demands that he take emergency measures.
   8. With respect to those measures, he has no power whatsoever to impose them. As anti-Trump legal expert Norm Eisen put it on Morning Joe [February 27^th]: “Just as the Supreme Court struck [down] his supposed emergency powers over tariffs, he has even less here.” That is true. But remember: Between tariff “Liberation Day” (April 2, 2025) and the day the Supremes finally ruled against Trump on tariffs (February 20, 2026), more than 10 months passed.
   9. Trump has no power to “decree” that voters must present ID or to end mail-in balloting. But that doesn’t mean he can’t at least try both. Under the Insurrection Act or some other dusty statute, he can declare a state of emergency. Then he can decide that said state permits, nay requires, him to take extraordinary measures. On October 5, say, that might mean outlawing early voting. By October 13, it might mean no mail-in voting. By October 29, a reminder that all voters must present ID to vote. And by Sunday, November 1, two days before the election — an announcement that all these “reasonable” measures have alas failed, and he is now forced, against his will, to postpone the election.
   10. Have trouble seeing that happen? I didn’t think so.
   11. As for the media takeover: What I didn’t foresee in 2024 was the aggressiveness of Trump patsy David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, in trying to take over both CBS and CNN. But he wouldn’t stop. Netflix bid $83 billion. Ellison topped that … with a bid of $111 billion, and Netflix dropped out.
   12. And somewhere in there, Ellison attended Trump’s State of the Union address, and Trump took to social media to “urge” Netflix to remove Obama and Biden administration official Susan Rice from its board. I once would have written that this is how things go in tinpot dictatorships, or in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. But today, it’s how things go in the United States of America.
   13. So picture this. It’s October. The mystery Trump accuser, the one about whom those FBI files have strangely gone missing, has come forward. Her allegations against the president of the United States are lurid and, to most of the country, credible. Trump is down to 29 percent in the polls. The economy is still limping. The polls all indicate that the GOP is in for a historic thrashing. Democrats are favored to win the House and, by now, are odds-on to maybe take the Senate too—their candidates in Alaska and Texas have now pulled slightly ahead.
   14. And Trump declares a state of emergency and postpones the election. The Supreme Court issues an emergency stay, saying he can’t do that. But the court has no army, and Trump does, along with a handful of lickspittle governors who just might follow him down whatever dark path he plows.
   15. That, not to mince words, is a coup d’état. Will he get away with it? I don’t know, but having effective control over how it is presented to viewers of CBS and CNN, and readers of the Bezos-owned Washington Post, to say nothing of the already vast pro-Trump propaganda empire of Fox News and the rest, will certainly make it easier.
   16. That’s how fascism descends. And it’s becoming less and less hypothetical by the week.
   17. MIKE: This was written and published less than two full months ago, and much of what it predicted has already come to pass, or may yet come to pass.
   18. MIKE: Forewarned is forearmed. That’s a reason I’ve been preceding some shows with Governor Pritzker’s quote: [PLAY QUOTE: 0m 13.5s] “If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm.”
10. I’ve been thinking a lot these days about why nations never declare war anymore before engaging in what are obviously wars. I found an article on the topic of declarations of war and why they no longer happen that I think offers a useful discussion — Why Don’t Countries Declare War Any More? The US hasn’t declared war since WWII; By Grant Piper | MEDIUM.COM | Aug 7, 2025. TAGS: History, Politics, World, War, News,
    1. The world feels as though it is engulfed in conflict. However, according to the letter of the law, no wars have happened in the past two decades. This is because nations no longer declare war on one another like they used to. In the past, a declaration of war was expected before engaging in widespread conflict. Those days are long gone.
    2. The United States hasn’t officially declared war since 1942, despite fighting in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Russia never declared war on Ukraine despite being embroiled in a multi-year invasion. The United Kingdom never declared war on Argentina over the Falklands.
    3. It is clear that these nations were at war, but there hasn’t been any official declaration, and there never will be. But why not? What changed? Why don’t nations declare war anymore?
    4. In a bid to reduce the potential of great power conflicts following World War I and World War II, numerous mechanisms were put in place on the international stage. Declaring war was essentially made illegal while the right to “self defense” against “aggressors” was enshrined. There are rules about belligerent nations and neutral nations when a war officially breaks out. Neutral nations must avoid certain exports to belligerent nations. They also have obligations in international waters. Countries officially at war open themselves up to international observation, war tribunals, sanctions, as well as domestic political considerations.
    5. For example, in the United States, the power to declare war and fund war lies with Congress. However, if the president never asks for a declaration of war, then Congress has no real authority to intervene.
    6. In order for an offensive war to be sanctioned by the United Nations, it must garner approval from the Security Council. Since three of the five members of that council are often opposed to one another, or even on opposite sides of particular wars, there is no way that such a vote would ever pass.
    7. It is much easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
    8. Wars come with responsibility and accountability. There are standard operating procedures and rules of engagement. There are diplomatic considerations and rules for how you treat foreign dignitaries and ambassadors during a state of war.
    9. Why go through all of that hassle when you can go to war without declaring war?
    10. Without an official declaration of war, countries have much more legal and political flexibility. They have plausible deniability. They have a greater ability to shape the narrative.
    11. Instead of war, countries now engage in “special military operations”, “peacekeeping missions,” “police actions,” or “counterterrorism missions.” Many of these nomenclatures leave the actions open to interpretation. Was this a one-time thing or an ongoing thing? Do we need a peace treaty? These questions are often presented and answered by the aggressive party, allowing them to sculpt the story to their liking.
    12. Avoiding war also avoids engaging a system of entangling alliances. There are alliances all around the globe that would trigger in the event of an official war. No wars, no alliance obligations.
    13. Internationally, the only enforcement comes from the big players. The United States. China. Russia. The UK. And these are often the nations avoiding war declarations like the plague. The United Nations has little recourse. Without an official declaration of war, neutral or interested third parties also have leeway to push the status quo, despite the potential violence occurring on the battlefield.
    14. Domestically, citizens allow their governments to get away with waging wars without accountability. The United States has struggled for decades with this issue, but thus far, Congress has been unable to retrieve its war-making powers from the Executive Branch.
    15. In fact, by allowing nations to wage war indiscriminately without a declaration, it does a direct disservice to citizens everywhere, which is why the power has remained conspicuously absent in the post-World War II world.
    16. So, despite the world being engulfed in war, despite people dying every day in air strikes, missile attacks, and drone strikes, there is no war the way the international authorities see it. No war. No accountability. Few rules.
    17. In the modern era, the formal declaration of war has become a political relic — rarely used and diplomatically avoided. Nations today often sidestep official declarations to maintain strategic ambiguity, preserve alliances, or avoid triggering international treaties and legal obligations. Additionally, the legal and moral scrutiny that accompanies a formal declaration often makes it politically and legally inconvenient. As a result, while wars are still fought, they are rarely named as such, making the battlefield no less deadly and often less defined.
    18. Governments win and civilians lose.
    19. MIKE: What we often refer to as the Korean War was not officially called that at the time. It was “the Korean Conflict”. Putin famously is insistent on calling his invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation”, even to the point of arresting people if they call it a war.
    20. MIKE: Trump recently echoed Putin — and I’m surprised that I haven’t heard anyone else make the connection — calling our attack on Iran “a military operation” or “a military conflict”.
    21. MIKE: A Huffington Post story discussed these semantics in more detail. According to the reporting, Trump is quoted as saying: “I said, ‘Look, you know, we have a thing called a war,’ or as they would rather say, a military operation. It’s for legal reasons,” said Trump. “I say ‘military’ because as a military operation, I don’t need any approvals. As a war, you’re supposed to get approval from Congress. Something like that.”
    22. MIKE: I’m sure that’s the essence of how Trump understood the semantic explanations he was given. The story from Medium gives us a little more nuance into the legal subtleties.
    23. MIKE: Maybe we need an international body that can decide when a war is actually a war, as opposed to when it’s a conflict, an operation, a special operation, a brushfire war, a border skirmish, an expeditionary force, or any of the other numerous euphemisms we have for military actions.
    24. MIKE: There is an old saying that the Eskimos have dozens of words for snow.
    25. MIKE: What does it say about so-called “civilization” that we have perhaps dozens of words and euphemisms for various kinds of wars? It’s something to think about.
11. From POLITICO.EU — JD Vance slams Brussels ‘bureaucrats’ for meddling in Hungary before election; By Jamie Dettmer and Max Griera | POLITICO.EU | April 7, 2026 3:15 pm CET. TAGS: Corruption , Crisis , Democracy , Elections , Elections in Europe , Energy , Energy crisis , Energy security , Hungarian elections 2026 , Hungarian politics , Imports , Intelligence , Kremlin , Media , Security, Hungary , Russia , Ukraine , United States , Donald Trump , JD Vance , Péter Magyar , Viktor Orbán ,
    1. S. Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday insisted that Brussels rather than Washington was interfering in Hungarian politics before a crunch election on April 12, which will decide the future of key MAGA ally Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
    2. Vance’s criticism of the EU came amid a full-throated endorsement of Orbán, although he denied he was trying to boost the flagging campaign of the Kremlin-aligned leader, who has run Hungary for the past 16 years.
    3. [Vance said at a press conference at the Hungarian prime minister’s office,] “Now, I don’t expect, of course, the people of Hungary to listen to the vice president of the United States, that’s not primarily why I’m here. … But I did want to send a signal to everybody, particularly to the bureaucrats in Brussels, who have done everything that they can to hold down the people of Hungary, because they don’t like the leader, who has actually stood up for the people of Hungary. And I think it’s important to say that.” 
    4. At a rally later in the day, he doubled down, saying he heard the EU “sneers” against “the normal, God-fearing people of Hungary.”
    5. Péter Magyar [PRON.: MAJ-yar], Orbán’s challenger in Sunday’s election, has indeed accused Vance of interference, tweeting: “No foreign country may interfere in Hungarian elections. This is our country.”
    6. Magyar added on X that Hungarian history “is not written in Washington, Moscow, or Brussels.”
    7. Vance’s anti-EU remarks in Budapest echoed Orbán’s own campaign narratives about European officials interfering and trying to turn Hungarians against him.
    8. He has sought to portray Magyar, leader of the center-right Tisza [PRON.: TEE-sa] party, as a stooge of both Brussels and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 
    9. S. President Donald Trump has already issued several endorsements of Orbán — a proponent of “illiberal democracy” — but polls suggest those interventions have done little to move the dial in the campaign.
    10. While arguing Orbán was a model of leadership for Europe more widely, Vance said: “Viktor Orbán has been the single sound leader in Europe on the question of energy security and independence. It is funny to watch prime ministers and leaders in some of the Western European capitals talk about the energy crisis, when, frankly, they should have been following the policies of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and if they had, the energy crisis that they were experiencing would be a lot less bad.”
    11. Those remarks refer to Orbán’s insistence that Hungary should be allowed to continue to import discounted energy from Russia, rather than cutting those supplies to support Ukraine.
    12. Trump has previously praised Orbán as “one of the strongest” world leaders, and the Hungarian prime minister anticipated MAGA’s obsessions more than a decade ago with his assertive nationalism, his contempt for the EU, and his success in asserting influence over Hungary’s media and public institutions.
    13. The U.S. vice president’s trip, however, appears unlikely to swing an increasingly bitter race in which Orbán is trailing on average by a significant margin, according to pollsters. 
    14. His rivals attribute their lead in the polls to their laser-focused attacks on the weakness of the Hungarian economy, and on the corruption and cronyism associated with Orbán.
    15. [Said Mario Bikarski, an analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft,] “Perceptions of the current U.S. administration have been turning more negative in Hungary. … Vance’s visit could have the opposite effect on Orbán’s popularity than the one intended.”
    16. Orbán and Vance continued to riff off each other at a rally later in the evening at a football stadium. The event was officially billed to celebrate the “day of Hungarian-American friendship,” but its campaign purpose was clear. 
    17. Orbán pointedly praised Vance and his Munich speech last year, in which the vice president chastised Europeans for ignoring the will of their people, overturning elections, ignoring religious freedoms, and not acting to halt illegal migration.
    18. On reaching the stage for his speech, Vance phoned Trump. [His] first attempt the call went to voicemail. But after getting through, Vance put Trump on the speaker. “I am big fan of Viktor,” Trump announced, praising Orbán as “a fantastic man,” who “did not allow people to storm your country and invade your country like the people have and ruined other countries.”
    19. Again Vance focused much of his speech on “the bureaucrats in Brussels, who should not be listened to.”
    20. “We have to get Orbán re-elected as prime minister of Hungary, don’t we?” Vance told the supporters of the governing Fidesz party, to rapturous applause. 
    21. MIKE: What unmitigated gall! For Vance, as Trump’s stooge, to go to Hungary to interfere in the Hungarian election while accusing the EU of interfering in Hungary’s elections is quite the height of hypocrisy!
    22. MIKE: But aside from that, I’ll note that Orban’s opponent in this race, Péter Magyar, is a bit of a question mark, so there are questions, in my mind at least, about how he might govern if elected, and whether, in the long run, his style will be dramatically different from Orbán’s.
    23. MIKE: Hungary’s election is on Sunday, April 12^th, the day of this show’s initial broadcast, so there’s little point in doing a bio of him, but here are some bullet points.
    24. MIKE: He’s considered to be center-right and much more pro-EU than Orbán, and less pro-Moscow.
    25. MIKE: Citing a POLITICO article that I’ll read next week if he wins, Magyar runs his party from the top down and has described it himself as a “one-man show”.
    26. MIKE: Magyar has occasionally been prone to public outbursts at journalists, which is worrying.
    27. MIKE: From the POLITICO article: “[Said …] a member of the Hungarian parliament from the Green Party who stepped down to clear the way for a Tisza candidate “We are not voting for Tisza, we are voting against Fidesz.”
    28. MIKE: There is no candidate I know of to the left of Magyar. The competition has basically cleared the field in the hope of ousting Orbán. So in a nutshell, Hungarians and the rest of us can only cross our fingers.
12. Finally, from THEGUARDIAN-dot-COM — Trump threats cause dilemma for US officers: disobey orders or commit war crimes; By Julian Borger Senior international correspondent | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Mon 6 Apr 2026 14.06 EDT. TAGS: War crimes, Donald Trump, US military, US-Israel war on Iran, Iran, Middle East and north Africa, analysis,
    1. Donald Trump’s threats to carry out mass bombing of civilian infrastructure in Iran present US military officers with a dilemma: disobey orders or help commit war crimes.
    2. It is an urgent matter for the US chain of command. In an expletive-laden threat, Trump set a Tuesday 8pm Washington time deadline for the Iranian government to open the strait of Hormuz or face “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one”.
    3. He wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday: “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the [F-ing] Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.” …
    4. There is little debate among legal experts that such an attack on the life-supporting infrastructure for 93 million Iranians would constitute a war crime.
    5. [Two former judge advocate general (JAG) officers, Margaret Donovan and Rachel VanLandingham, wrote on the website Just Security on Monday,] “Such rhetorical statements – if followed through – would amount to the most serious war crimes – and thus the president’s statements place service members in a profoundly challenging situation. … As former uniformed military lawyers who advised targeting operations, we know the president’s words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return.”
    6. They noted that Trump’s boast that he would bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages”, and the order by his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to show “no quarter, no mercy” were not just “plainly illegal” but they also represented a rupture from the moral and legal principles that US military personnel had been “trained to follow their entire careers”.
    7. Charli Carpenter, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said there were many historical examples of service-members questioning orders, refusing to obey, passively disobeying or even intervening to stop war crimes.
    8. She cited as an example US soldiers who refused to take part in the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, including a helicopter pilot who threatened to shoot the perpetrators.
    9. In his court martial, the officer who ordered his men to gun down hundreds of Vietnamese villagers, 2nd Lt William Calley, argued that he was only obeying orders, but the court ruled that was no defence as such orders were “palpably illegal”.
    10. The question is whether officers who carried out orders to bomb Iranian power stations and bridges could argue that they did not know it was “palpably illegal”. …
    11. [Carpenter said,] “There are many factors that make it hard to say ‘no’ or stand up to stop war crimes, especially where there are grey areas in the law. … What the law requires of enlisted troops is to disobey only ‘manifestly unlawful’ orders – orders so egregiously unlawful that a person of ordinary understanding would know they were wrong. … However, this skill and moral judgment is not drilled into troops in the same way as they are taught to follow the chain of command and go along with their small units, and troops can also be court-martialled for insubordination if they guess wrong.”
    12. Since taking office last year, Hegseth has made it harder for officers in the chain of command to find legal advice by firing the Pentagon’s top JAGs, and dissolving the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response unit set up by the Biden administration.
    13. Ordinary soldiers have the last-resort option of calling a “GI rights hotline” and calls have reportedly risen sharply under the Trump administration.
    14. A survey led by Carpenter last year found that most service members can distinguish between legal and illegal orders. …
    15. [Carpenter added,] “Recognising those situations in real time and acting appropriately is harder than in a survey experiment, but one thing we know is that when one person stands up, it’s easier for others to do so.” …
    16. The extremity of Trump’s threats, coupled with his growing desperation to find a way out of the conflict, has increased fears that a volatile president could try to use a nuclear weapon.
    17. Under the US system, a US president has sole authority to order a nuclear launch. …
    18. The only way to stop the order would be for those in the chain of command to deem it illegal.
    19. In January 2021, the-then chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, was so concerned about Trump’s volatility that he reportedly told his senior officers to make sure he was involved in any nuclear decision.
    20. Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said Trump had previously shown respect for the devastating consequences of nuclear use, but he added: “I don’t know how strong that respect is when he is losing the war and his mind at the same time.”
    21. In a 2018 book [titled], The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States, [Professor Lewis sketched out a scenario in which Trump started a war through misjudgment.
    22. At one point in the book, the military aide carrying the “nuclear football” tries to stop the president getting his hands on it and is disciplined for his actions.
    23. Asked what confidence he had that someone in the chain of command now would intervene to stop Trump, Lewis simply replied: “None.”
    24. [Said Lewis,] “He has consistently purged the military of anybody who he thinks would stand up to him or resist him,”.
    25. MIKE: This story raises important questions.
    26. MIKE: My current feelings on how the Trump regime is using our volunteer military is that our military people are being horribly abused and misused. Just because all our warriors are volunteers, there is no justification for this.
    27. MIKE: I’ve been waiting for leaders in our military to stand up and say “enough”. Military rules and laws make this both obligatory in some circumstances, but also fraught with personal and professional risk. It’s likely that leaders courageous enough to say “no” are simply being summarily fired, because we’ve seen a lot of that in the past year.
    28. MIKE: Trump once said that he wishes he had Hitler’s generals, thinking that would guarantee unquestioning obedience.
    29. MIKE: The Republican Party should not be allowed to separate itself from this regime and its actions. The whole party is enabling this, or ignoring it out of support, fear, or ignorance. That makes them all responsible for aiding and abetting.
    30. MIKE: What will it take before a solid majority of Americans to vote like this is the case?
    31. MIKE: My 30-40-30 rule says that 30% of voters at each end of the spectrum will vote for extremes like Communism or Fascism. We are seeing that Rightwing extreme dominating now, though it’s only a plurality.
    32. MIKE: When I was a department supervisor, I always tried to protect people working for me by softening the harsher demands of management above me.
    33. MIKE: In that context, I’ve thought a lot about “principled resignations”, and they’re a double-edged sword. If you leave, you make a “statement”, but you can no longer act or protect those working under you. This is even more important in the military.
    34. MIKE: On April 7^th, MSNOW’s Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell had two guests that I think outlined the dilemmas and responsibilities of the US military and its officers perfectly and succinctly.
    35. MIKE: The guests were Margaret Donovan, a retired captain in the Judge Advocate Generals (JAG) Corps and retired Lt. General Mark Hertling (40:09-43:36). I’m going to play those remarks now. They’ve been excerpted with light editing. Lawrence’s questions and comments are excluded for time. [TOTAL 3m 39s]

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