Ward on Words

On April 10, Trump took to his personal social media platform, Truth Social, to make a promise to the Hungarian people:    Trump Truth Social Post from April 10, 2026, promising to use "the full Economic Might of the United States" to sway the  election in favor of Viktor Orban     The election was today. Within three hours of the polls closing, Orban conceded he had lost to center-right candidate  Péter Magyar. It was an overwhelming defeat for the man who'd been at the helm of Hungary for 16 years.    It was also an embarrassing defeat for the current president of the United States, who has openly campaigned for the Hungarian authoritarian.       Here is a PBS story on the destruction of the East Wing:       Perhaps one day Americans will celebrate the end to authoritarianism. But right now, we have to endure it. 

Apparently Donald Trump, for whatever reason, has been gifting members of his cabinet with Florsheim shoes, and instead of asking for the sizes of everyone's feet, he's guessing. He likes to trust his gut, apparently, in times of war and in times of shoe shopping.  Anyway, though the war with Iran is in full swing, Trump still has time to look at the footwear of his lackeys and decide they need new shoes. Some, according to the Guardian , "snipe about having to wear middling footwear instead of their upmarket favorites."  Sadly for the lackeys, Trump's gut seems to be wrong when guessing the size of the shoes for his men beside him. He seems to prefer buying them larger than needed, perhaps to go with his larger-than-life personality. Here is an image of Marco Rubio in the gifted shoes - you'll see a lot of space between his heel and the heel of the shoe: Image from The Guardian  The gifting of the shoes has been covered in multiple media outlets: Vogue, Wall...

The rapid collapse of American constitutional order has been shocking to witness. Trump's authoritarian dreams have been nearly realized. His goals are aided and abetted by a corrupt SCOTUS, led by the spin-meister Roberts, a man whose legacy will be the destruction of the Constitution he swore to uphold. No one in his party seems to want to defend the Constitution and instead will do and say anything to get on TV to defend Trump.  With DOGE, he sent a wrecking ball through multiple government agencies. He unconstitutionally slashed funds allocated by Congress for cancer research, medical breakthroughs, historical accounts, the National Parks. Elon Musk, a foreign citizen from South Africa with billions in US contracts propping up his failing businesses, made off like a bandit with our private data.  ICE violence against civilians  Trump has unleashed a masked, armed and unregulated militia upon blue states. In Chicago, ICE/Border Patrol agents dropped from helicopters on...

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am merely a voter and in no way a constitutional scholar. I write these observations as an observer, a citizen and a voter (who also follows AP Style.)  We've seen this year that SCOTUS can act swiftly to allow Trump unchecked powers. They've used the shadow docket to give the president the power to halt payments that have been funded by acts of Congress (Trump constitutionally does not have power of the purse, but that seems unimportant to SCOTUS.)  Another unsigned SCOTUS shadow docket ruling – Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo –  has allowed Trump to round up people based on looks and skin color. Brett Kavanaugh included a brief concurrence outlining why he thinks it's okay for ICE to consider race and skin color as evidence of a crime , which ignores the 4th amendment, designed to protect people from unreasonable searches and seizures. Here is the language of the 4th amendment:   " The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers...

We are in the midst of extraordinary times right now in America. I personally know people who think everything is fine – they think the big issue we face is just that Democrats don't have a messaging strategy (they don't, and that's part of the problem) and Trump's just doing what he said he'd do (very true! Trump lies about a lot of things, but not about his goals for an " I alone can fix it " presidency.) However, none of this is fine and none of this is normal political discourse or behavior.  What's clear - we have a president without any guardrails or checks or balances. We have the Roberts Court to thank for much of this - John Roberts' immunity ruling is a travesty of justice , allowing the president unconstitutional unchecked powers because the six ideologues on the court wanted to protect a president's right to act without fear of prosecution. How "originalists" can twist themselves into this pretzel is essentially unknowab...

On Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025, millions of Americans poured into the streets to participate in the nation-wide "No Kings" protest. Early estimates places this as one of the largest national protests, if not the largest, with millions of people protesting in communities across every state . In the cities, large crowds assembled to protest the authoritarianism of the Trump administration.                                                      Other 98 Instagram collage of No Kings protests                                                                 across the country The New York Times decided to place the story...

War has come to America and it is in the shape of US military troops sent to US cities to attack and beat down any dissent shown by citizens to any of Trump's actions. It is absolutely terrifying to watch the GOP assert military control in US cities.  Pete Hegseth, whose o wn mother calls "an abuser, " recently called all generals in the US military to Quantico so he could peacock on stage in front of them and brag about how his war fighters were no longer going to be fat and out of shape .  "It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look. It’s not who we are," [Hegseth] said to a room full of generals.  Trump has declared that the Department of Defense is now the Department of War - to hell with the fact that changing the name of a department requires congressional approval. He is a dictator and what he says goes. ( My question – how much does it c...

On Sept. 15, 2025, Trump filed a $ 15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times and other parties. The pleading runs 84 pages. On Sept. 19, 2025, Judge Steven D. Merryday, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, issued a four-page ruling ripping Trump's pleading to shreds . (It's short, to the point, and definitely worth the read.)  The ruling allows Trump's team to refile within 28 days and requires that the new pleading cannot exceed 40 pages. In his spare, four-page ruling, Judge Merryday provides multiple lessons in writing that all of us could benefit from following, lessons that I would like to share here: Lesson 1) Cogently present the issue: "In this action, a prominent American citizen (perhaps the most prominent American citizen) alleges defamation by a prominent American newspaper publisher American newspaper publisher (perhaps the most prominent American newspaper publisher) and by several other  corporate and natural persons.   ..." Les...