TRUMP - ROUND TWO

TRUMP RETURNS TO POWER

JD Vance is America's youngest vice president (only 40 years old as of his election), serving as US Senator from Ohio only since 2023.  Prior to that he served four years as a U.S. Marine, graduated from both Ohio State University and at Yale Law School, and then worked as an attorney ... but also a writer, his 2016 best-selling book (and 2020 movie) Hillbilly Elegy describing the tough childhood that shaped him.

Susie Wiles, as Trump's chief of staff, has a long history working on various election campaigns and by serving political officeholders, all the way back to the Reagan days of the 1980s, particularly with New York congressman Jack Kemp ... before serving in Florida in the 1990s and 2000s as a Jacksonville mayoral chief of staff, then setting up her own political consulting firm, working as a lobbyist in DC.  In 2016 she ran Trump's campaign in Florida and in 2018 helped Ron DeSantis win the Florida governorship ... although she and Ron had a parting of the ways when Trump's re-election campaign came around in 2020 and Ron wanted to put his own people in charge of the Florida campaign.  But in 2021, Trump chose her to direct his Save America PAC ... in essence, putting her at the head of Trump's campaign operations.

Elon Musk, Trump's nominee to head up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is South-African-born to wealth, who became an American citizen in 2002, by way of Canada (his mom was Canadian and thus so was he) ... thus a truly international figure – as well as the world's wealthiest individual (valued presently at over $400 billion)!

At a very early age, while still in grad school in California, he and his brother founded a software company, sold it for just over $300 million, beginning his climb in the tech world.  In 2002, at age 31, he acquired both Paypal and SpaceX.  Two years later he invested in Tesla electric-vehicle manufacture, and two years after that (2006) a solar energy company, which eventually became Tesla Energy Company (2016).  In 2105 he founded OpenAI, stepping him into the world of artificial intelligence.  But he ran into trouble in 2018 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission which sued Musk for the way he acquired Tesla ... forcing him to pay a substantial fine and step down as Tesla chairman.  But not being one to quit, in 2022 he acquired Twitter and merged it with his X Corp, and thus coming to command the social media's now very-popular X.  And in 2023 he stepped up his interest in artificial intelligence in founding xAI.
     As the Trump campaign geared up, Musk contributed over $200 million to Trump super-PACs, was with Trump at Mar-a-Logo on election night ... and has continued since then to be a presence in Trump doings rather consistently (including even the Trump Thanksgiving dinner).
      So it is that Trump has decided that Musk would be the perfect individual to help him in trimming deeply the DC superstate, to make it smaller and more efficient. 
      But whether two extremely highly self-motivated people, Trump and Musk, will be able to work cooperatively – rather than by their own natural instincts, competitively – remains highly in question.

Marco Rubio, as Trump's Secretary of State, comes out of a Florida-Cuban background, serving Florida's House of Representatives as Miami representative (2000-2008) and its speaker (2006-2008), then (because of term limits) teaching at Florida International University, until he was elected U.S. senator representing Florida in 2010.  Then he ran for U.S. president in 2015, but dropping out in 2016 after losing to Trump in the Republican nomination race ... though  he would then move on to support Trump strongly.  In the Senate he continued as a leading voice, especially in American relations with Latin America ... and in his strong opposition to China in the international game.

Pete Hegseth, as Trump's Secretary of Defense, is another most unusual appointment, Hegseth having no experience in government work, and having entered the public domain along a very controversial path ... particularly the way he apparently mismanaged funds for a Veterans charity organization.   But he is well-educated (Princeton), a very experienced soldier on the battlefield  (Iraq and Afghanistan) who simply worked his way up the ranks to major – the latter not something typical of a Secretary of Defense – and he claims to have undergone a deep spiritual transformation as a Christian back in 2018, one that changed his life profoundly.  He entered the world of politics in 2014, running unsuccessfully for the Minnesota seat in the U.S. Senate, but was able to bring notice to himself with the beginning of his service that year as a Fox commentator.  And he became a Trump adviser during Trump's 2016 campaign.  And as a Fox commentator, he has become well-known for his very conservative views on America's foreign policy and its political readiness to stand in a very competitive world.

Michael Waltz, as Trump's National Security Advisor, comes to the cabinet as a U.S. Congressman (Florida) since 2019 – recognized as something of a "hawk" on the House Armed Services Committee (although more liberal in some matters) – and prior to that as a combat-experienced Green Beret, having served 26 years in the Army (Afghanistan, the Middle East, Africa) ... after graduating from Virginia Military Academy.  He also served as an advisor to both Rumsfeld and Gates during their years as Secretary of Defense.  He understands that wars are not fought with just guns but with ideas – ideas that take generations to develop.

Tulsi Gabbard, as Trump's Director of National Intelligence, will supervise all 18 intelligence agencies, including the CIA, DIA and NSA.  She grew up in Hawaii in a mixed culture (Samoan father, "Middle-American" mother) and decided to take up Hinduism as her foundational faith.  But in 2002, when only 21 and merely attending community college, she succeeded in getting herself elected to Hawaii's state legislature! And then the next year she enlisted in the Hawaiian National Guard (subsequently deployed in 2004 to Iraq for a year).  She went on to make a career of military service (Kuwait and elsewhere), attaining the rank in 2015 of major ... and then in 2021 becoming a lieutenant colonel. 
     But during much of this time she also pursued a civilian political career, eventually (2013) getting herself elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (for Hawaii), and re-elected thereafter ... running as a Democrat.  By 2020 she even made a run for the U.S. presidency – but lost out to Biden in the Democratic primaries ... involving a nasty characterization of her political views.  Although she supported Biden, she began to appear on Fox News, offering comments that resembled more the Republican Party's rather than the Democratic Party's views on matters ... also supporting the views (held strongly by Trump) that the U.S. military was an organ of defense – not intervention in the affairs of other countries.  Ultimately in 2022 she announced herself as an Independent ... moving even to support Trump when it became clear that he was readying himself for a 2024 presidential run – as well as a number of Republican congressional candidates.  When then in 2024 she announced herself as being fully a Republican, it was assumed by many that Trump would choose her as his Vice-Presidential running mate.  But instead, he wanted her to serve as his Director of National Intelligence.

John Ratcliffe, as director of the CIA, grew up in the Midwest, became a lawyer and eventually (2004) joined the U.S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Texas, also becoming a mayor of a small town outside of Dallas that same year.  He returned to private practice in 2008, but held his mayoral job until 2012.  In 2014 he succeeded in replacing long-serving Texas Republican Ralph Hall in Congress – his district reliably conservative ... along with Ratcliffe.  His conservatism got– Trump's attention, who in 2020 got him to take the position as Director of National Intelligence – a position he held until the end of the first Trump presidency.  He faced much criticism going into the job, that Ratcliff's conservatism would "politicize" the intelligence world ... something Ratcliff claimed he would not do. But it was a strange accusation ... because everything that happens in DC is political!  Anyway, Trump has now asked him to head up the CIA.

Pam Bondi, was Trump's second pick for the position of Attorney General, after a sex scandal about his first choice, Congressman Matt Gaetz, broke immediately upon his appointment ... and Gaetz withdrew completely from the DC political realm.  Bondi began as an assistant district attorney in Florida, eventually winning the election in 2010 to become Florida's Attorney General, a position she continued to hold up until 2019. In 2018 she began to appear as a commentator, even a host, on Fox News – drawing much political criticism in doing so.  She then returned to private practice in 2019, serving also as a lobbyist for Qatar and Kuwait ... and advising Trump during his impeachment hearings in Congress during the Biden years.  And now Trump wants her to serve as his Attorney General.

Kristi Noem, as Secretary of Homeland Security, comes to office with eight years of experience as South Dakota's sole representative in the U.S. House of Representatives (2011-2019), district representative in South Dakota's House of Representatives prior to that (2007-2011) ... and as South Dakota governor since 2019.  She is well-known for her conservative views on family life (coming from a farming/ranching  background), energy (Keystone Pipeline and offshore drilling supporter), defense (like Gabbard, opposed to U.S. troops being used to determine foreign regimes), immigrants (ban on refugees from terrorist-held areas) and budget reform (lower taxes but also reduced government spending).

Kash Patel has been named by Trump to take over the FBI from (Trump-appointed) Christopher Wray, who took office in 2017 and who was thus entitled by law to a 10-year position, but who decided to step down at the end of the Biden Administration in January of 2025 (disagreeing with Trump on some matters).  For a young man of only 44, Patel has already had a huge amount of experience as a lawyer working in the DC bureaucracy, serving as assistants to the secretaries of state and defense and as deputy director of national intelligence during Trump's first presidential round, as well as Republican counsel or aide to congressional committees ... in particular, the one looking into the case of the Russian interference in the 2016 national election.  But most importantly, he is a true Trump loyalist, defending Trump in the media – and in his own publication against the conspiratorial "Deep State" ... and in an organization he helped direct, Trump Media & Technology Group, one that supported Trump during Trump's years out of office.

Tom Homan, whom Trump has called to be his "border czar," is a New Yorker, who began his adult career as a local police officer, soon (age 24) becoming a border patrol agent ... and then supervisor in the Immigration and Naturalization Service.  He continued his way up the ranks, finally in 2013 being appointed by Obama as associate director of  Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ... where he took a hard line against the policy of letting immigrant children be the door opening immigration to undocumented adults. Obama even awarded him a Presidential Rank Award in 2015.  When Trump took office in 2017, he elevated Homan to the position of director of ICE.  As such, Homan became quite opposed to the development of "sanctuary cities" offering refuge to undocumented immigrants.  Then in 2018 he retired from ICE, becoming a Fox News commentator and then a member of  (now quite conservative) Heritage Foundation. He made it clear that he was highly opposed to the mass immigration into America by Muslims, and is prepared, under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, to see mass deportation of individuals in America illegally!

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as we well know, came from a very Democratic-Party political family, to now be Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services.  He struggled with drugs and wild behavior in his youth, college and early-career years (his uncle's and father's assassinations certainly being part of his problem) ... but finally followed the Kennedy political tradition in becoming an assistant district attorney in New York City in 1982 ... but failed the bar exam and resigned the next year.  He then became deeply interested in environmental protection, joining a related organization, Riverkeeper, and becoming an adjunct professor in the field.  This interest absorbed him completely over the next decades.  He even set up his own Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic to fight polluters, especially power plants and chemical industries ... and pollution by even by the U.S. military.  He would extend his interest into the matter of how modern farming contributed to pollution and poor nutrition.  He would also continue to work with Riverkeeper, until he resigned in 2017.  He also became an "anti-interventionist" with respect to the U.S. military's involvement in the affairs of other nations.
    But most oddly, after turning down an opportunity to run (probably successfully) for the Senate when in 2008 Hillary was in line to vacate that position in order to join the Obama cabinet, he finally in 2023 announced his decision to run for the U.S. presidency.  But as of that October he declared himself now to be an Independent, not a Democratic Party candidate.  Actually this made him something of a "spoiler" of Biden's efforts – and as such, he received considerable Trump support ... although there was little likelihood of his gaining the presidential office. Then the possibility opened up of his full support of Trump – in the exchange of a cabinet appointment if Trump should win the election.  And thus a deal was struck ... particularly as it became clear that he and Trump shared many opinions in common (others not so much, however).  It will be interesting to see how long this Trump-Kennedy alliance lasts.

Chris Wright, as Trump's Secretary of Energy, founded or chaired two major shale gas production companies from 1992 until 2006 and then founding Liberty Energy in 2011 ... attempting to produce non-dangerous fluid energy.  And he strongly proposed at hearings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the way the climate movement was being conducted was highly misleading and destructive.  Receiving the endorsement of various energy specialists close to Trump, Trump decided that Wright was the innovative person he wanted to head his Department of Energy.

Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education was designed to arouse deep hostility from the political Left, for her own concern that education should be directed locally and not nationally is well known.  It has been claimed that her world was one of business, not education.  Indeed, in the business world, she and her husband  were very successful in developing the world of national wrestling ... and as a very successful businesswoman, she served in Trump's first cabinet as head of the Small Business Administration (2017-2019) – until she stepped down to head Trump's Super PAC, America First Action.  But in fact, her and and husband's successful business, Titan Sports, across many years funded most generously (millions of dollars) numerous charity and education organizations, she serving on the board of directors of educational organizations she founded or supported, winning awards for her work, even having a building named after her at Sacred Heart University because of her work in supporting education. In 2009 she was appointed to the Connecticut State Board of Education ... although she served only one year, but stepped down because Connecticut does not allow public officials to work with organizations funding elections.  Anyway she was planning to run for the U.S. Senate in 2010 (solely self-funded in the campaign), although Connecticut voters ultimately elected her Democrat opponent. 
     McMahon is well-known for her very conservative social views (anti-abortion and her support of charter schools and school-choice laws).  So we will soon see what a strong business-minded woman will make of the federal government's education programming.

He intends also to work closely with some of the tech elite

We have, above, already met Elon Musk, of Tesla, SpaceX, and X, whom Trump has chosen to head up his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency).

Then there is Jeff Bezos, of Amazon and Blue Origin. He is the second wealthiest individual in the world (net worth at $250 billion, ranking second behind Musk at $420 billion), based primarily on his development of Amazon  and – the world's biggest e-commerce and cloud computing operation ... which in 1994 at age 30 he founded in a rented garage! – (quitting his job on Wall Street as  a successful hedge fund mathematician in order to do so).  Amazon had its beginning as an on-line bookstore – which Bezos, beginning in 1998, extended its marketing operations to include other items – until today it is the largest online sales company ... Amazon now (since 2002) directing internet services in other fields as well.  From this realm he ventured into the aerospace world, founding Blue Origin in 2000, offering manufacture and spaceflight services in anticipation of the aerospace industry becoming  a growing part of the future world.  He actually took a flight into space himself in 2015 and again in 2021 to experience this realm personally!  He also jumped into the media world, purchasing The Washington Post in 2013.  In 2012 he stepped down as operational head of Amazon, to focus his work in his other fields, namely aerospace, news media, and artificial intelligence.  Meanwhile, as a Liberal, a big supporter of same-sex marriages and open borders, Bezos was long a Democratic Party supporter.  Trump, however, in 2016 tried, but failed, to enlist him as a technological supporter.  But in purchasing the Washington Post, he blocked it from endorsing either Trump or Harris (it was intending to endorse Harris).  And then he donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund.  He went on to offer Trump high praise on his 2024 electoral victory ... and was invited to sit among Trump's special guests at his inauguration. 

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and executive of Facebook and its parent company Meta, and traditionally quite Liberal in social matters, recently warmed up to Trump by donating $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund and co-hosting a reception celebrating the inauguration. 
      He was attending Harvard when, in February of 2004, he and classmates launched Facebook .. resulting in legal contests among these cofounders as Zuckerberg took the initiative to expand Facebook's operations and reach quickly and considerably.  Equally quickly, even as of only 23 (in 2008), Zuckerberg was a billionaire from the venture ... and in  2010 of movie fame, with the very popular Academy-Award winning film, The Social Network, narrating (not entirely favorably) his startup of the famous website.  In 2012 he took the company public.  Ultimately, Facebook was intended not just for an American community but for the world ... Zukerberg building the Facebook community globally ... Russia and China becoming big users. In 2103 he set up internet.org, offering service to countries without such service – but had the operation cut back in 2016 when complaints (heavily from India) that internet.org was more self-promotion of Facebook than true neutral internet service.  Also most interestingly, in 2010 Zuckerberg signed The Giving Pledge with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, promising to donate at least half of their wealth to charity (something that other super-wealthy individuals have also signed onto).  He and his wife were quick to follow through on the agreement, donating to various education and research groups – and setting up their own such operations.

India-born Sundar Pichai is CEO of Google and its holding company Alphabet Inc.  After graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1993, he earned master's degrees from both Stanford (1995 in science and engineering) and Wharton (2002 in business admin).  After working as a management consultant at McKinsey & Co., in 2004 he joined Google to engage in product development ... including most importantly, the search engine, Google Chrome (2008).  Over time he also developed Google Drive, Gmail, Google Maps, and Chromebooks.  In 2013 he also headed up the Android smartphone division.  In 2014 Microsoft wanted him to head up their company.  But in 2015, Google (actually its parent company Alphabet Inc., incorporated that same year) responded by making him Google's CEO ... with a huge salary.  And in 2019 he was also selected to be Alphabet Inc.'s CEO.  As Google's head, he found himself facing sharp criticism for Google's place in China (involving government censorship, of course) ... and for Google's possible political bias – Pichai answering that the Google search engine does not operate according to any particular political perspective.

Sam Altman is CEO of OpenAI, heavily Microsoft supported (owning 49% of the company's equity), and best known for its ChatGPT – an atrifical intelligence chatbot that that can answer questions of almost any nature posed to it by any inquirer.  This of course raises all kinds of questions about human intelligence being replace by sophisticated machine intelligence ... and by problems of plagarism and misinformation.  Altman attended Stanford, but dropped out after two years (age 19) to co-found Loopt in 2005, a social networking application ... founded on $30 millon in venture  capital he was able to assemble.  The company did not do greatly ... but he nonetheless took on additional ventures, in 2011 co-founding Y Combinator or "YC" (heading the company in 2014) – a compnay focused on developing funding for or offering counsel to various startup tech operations (Airbnb, Dropbox, TriNet Zenefits, Reddit, for instance).  Then in 2015 he began to work with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Microsoft, Amazon and others, in forming the company, OpenAI ... which he then headed up as its CEO as of 2019.

Tim Cook  is the current CEO of Apple  Although Apple Inc. did not make any contributions to the Trump campaign, Cook donated $1 million on his own to Trump's inaugural committee, quick to congratulate Trump on his electoral victory .. and also visiting Trump at Mar-a-Logo in December.
      Cook was brought onto Apple in 1998 by Apple founder Steve Jobs, after Cook had distinguished himself at IBM as director of sales ("fulfillment").  He was brought on to help develop Apple's international market.  Then when in 2011 Jobs resigned and died of cancer, Cook was made Apple's CEO ... continuing Apple's growth (almost $400 billion in revenue in 2023 and $1.9 trillion in market value as of 2020).

Shou Zi Chew is the CEO of TikTok ... a very popular online user-submitted video platform  (surpassing even Google in downloads by 2021) ... founded in 2016 and owned by the Chinese company ByteDance – although, through the purchase of a local internet platform operating there, actually based in both Singapore and Los Angeles.
      Chew was Singapore-born and raised, served in the Singapore military, until he went off to study at London's University College – graduating in 2006 in the field of economics.  He stayed on in London in the world of investment, working for the Russian firm DST Global, and investing in Alibaba and Xiaomi ... and in 2013 leading a group to invest in ByteDance.  By 2015 he was Xiaomi's chief financial officer and in 2019 its foreign business president.  Then in 2021 he joined ByteDance as its chief financial officer ... and ByteDance's subsidiary TikTok as its CEO. 
    But the Chinese connections of the popular TikTok raised fears in the U.S. Congress of the platform becoming a tool of the Chinese government – or at least posing serious security issues.  Thus he appeared before Congress in 2023 to confirm that it posed no such danger.  Ultimately Congress and President Biden were not convinced ... and voted to have TikTok separated from ByteDance or to be shut down in the U.S.  The U.S. Supreme Court also upheld this decision unanimously as the day of closure approached – just one day before Trump's inauguration.
      Yet ... despite deep opposition by fellow Republicans, and Trump's own former opposition to TikTok, Trump now wants to work with TikTok (and China's President Xi Jinping).  Trump wants to find an American buyer of TikTok.  But ByteDance refuses to sell off its holdings in TikTok.  Meanwhile, Trump has given the company time to work out some kind of sale.

Jen-Hsun ("Jensen") Huang is co-founder and CEO of Nvidia and now one of the world's wealthiest individuals.  Born in Taiwan, he and his parents moved to Thailand. Then he was sent on to America to live in Kentucky with an uncle. He ultimately attended Oregon State University and upon gaduatiobn took on a job at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in California, designing microprocessors ... while working on a master's degree at Stanford.  He left AMD to work at LSI Logic ... but then left that company (1990) with two colleagues to develop their own venture making graphics chips for PC games.  This then led to the official creation of Nvidia in1993 ... with financial support even from LSI.  Over the years, with support from other tech companies (the Japanese company Sega, for instance) the company grew slowly, building their graphics processing unit (GPU) as they went ... finally (by 2017) exploding in size and operation with the AI tech boom (Nvidia now being worth $3 trillion).
      Although Huang was in Taiwan during Trump's inauguration, he and Trump met at the end of January to go over America's AI policies ... including how to handle the DeepSeek's AI operation in America – because, as a Chinese company, it raises all kinds of security questions.

Trump's bizarre proposals Soon after the November election, but before actually taking office in January of 2025, Trump began to make pronouncements as to how things were going to change, now that America was about to have him as president.  He felt that it was time for America to take control of mineral-rich Greenland. Needless to say, Denmark, whose territory that actually is, was not consulted on this matter.  He also talked about the fact that it was high time for Canada to come into the American Union as its 51st state – shocking Americans and outraging Canadians in the process.  And he declared that the Federal government (and soon Google Maps as well) would no longer designate the waterway below the American southern coast as the Gulf of Mexico.  It would now officially be known as the Gulf of America.  Americans wondered why was that so important ... especially to Trump, when no one else had thought that there was a need for such change.  But if Trump gets his own thoughts on matters, that's all that matters – as Trump sees things. Indeed, America needed to get used to the idea that with Trump in the White House, presidential aides, including cabinet members, were there not to advise Trump wisely, but only to obey Trump ... in carrying out whatever his most unusual mind was working on at the moment.  Turnover would once again be rapid in the Trump cabinet to those that did not understand the Trump program. Ukraine With Trump in the White House, an immediate reversal of America's (and its NATO allies) support of Ukraine in its fight to fend off Russian aggression was announced. Trump even blamed Ukrainian President Zelensky for having "started" the war – ignoring the fact that there was no such war until Russian President Putin took it upon himself to invade Ukraine and bomb its capital city Kiev – without warning or any particular provocation coming from Ukraine.   Trump claimed that by ending further support of Ukraine, this would force the combatants to come to peace terms ... a strange thing to propose by someone supposedly knowledable about how power works on the world stage.  In fact all this would do would be to support Putin in his Hitler-like urge to secure his regime by bringing surrounding peoples under his control.  That's what the whole thing was about from the very beginning.   Trump was acting like Chamberlain in 1938 when he let Hitler take over the Sudenland, with the naiive (and costly) belief that by doing so he was bringing peace to the world.  Surrendering Ukraine's ability to defend itself from a massively larger military power bent on muscling its neighbors back under a Russian dependency (that those nations had broken away from at the end of the 1980s) would not only end Ukrainian independence, it would likely then result in a Russian grab of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.  And Finland understood that danger of playing into Putin's hands by recently joining NATO – as did even "neutral" Sweden.  In fact, all this "Trump diplomacy" would do would bring the world back to an ugly Cold War.   So why was Trump so bent  on pulling a "Chamberlain" on Ukraine? And when Zelensky came to the White House at the beginning of March (2025), he was simply shouted down by both Vice President Vance and by Trump ... the well-televised meeting proving to be most ugly – and shocking to all.  What was going on here? The border wall The border wall was a big issue in the 2024 campaign, a quite serious matter – as it had been for years, even back in 2016, when Trump first ran for the presidency.   Sections of the wall were already in place when Trump first took office, some 654 miles ... although they were not terribly resitrictive walls.  They needed to be upgraded ... and added to considerably.  And during his first four years in office, most of the effort went to upgrading walls already in place.  Of the 452 miles worked on during those years, only 80 miles of that were new coverage. The actual cost of building a truly prohibitive wall across the 1,954 miles stretching from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico (Trump's Gulf of America) is massively expensive, way more than the Federal government was was willing to take on.   To make things even more confusing, the Biden administration, adamant from the beginning that construction of the wall was to cease, was forced (May 2024) to spend funds designated anyway by Congress for the construction of the wall – after he had tried to redirect those funds to other areas of the Federal budget.  Then in his last days in office, Biden was caught by the Attorney General trying to sell cheaply sections of the wall already in place (the bid starting as low at $5 per section). He was trying to make border wall construction as handicapped as possible – despite the fact that this was an issue supported strongly by America's voters.  Texas, in the meantime, proposed to do part of the job itself, expecting its 1,254 mile stretch of the border to cost an estimate $25 million per mile (and rising in cost) and another 30 years and more than $20 billion to complete – building a half-mile of wall per week.   As of mid-2024, only some 34 miles had been completed.  But the work has continued.  And with Trump coming to power, more construction contracts were signed ... with Texas hoping that Congress might somehow reimburse the state for its part in the effort.

Deeply shocking to most of the world was the way talks at the White House with Ukrainian President Zelensky on March 1st turned so combatative. A well-organized anti-Trump "Hands Off!" protest across the nation on April 5th involving 150 different organizations, with Indivisible.org  and MoveOn.org taking the lead.  Millions of people particpated in over 1000 locations – in Europe as well as America – protesting Trump's anti-Woke policies ... and calling for his impeachment and removal.  But most amazingly, the press gave relatively little coverage of the event! MIDDLE AMERICA'S FINANCIAL CATASTROPHE Sadly, the financial figures speak for themselves Notice the jump coinciding with the Covid outbreak Not only are houses more expensive than any middle class individual can afford, the rent is becoming way beyond reach for most Middle Americans Meanwhile the political-social system that has been directing this country over the last couple of generations serves incredibly well to make the rich all the richer ... at the cost of the lower and middle classes. And nobody of any political signifigance seems interested in doing anything about this grand social-moral catastrophe.  After all, those in power benefit the most from such inequality. A YOUNG, CONSERVATIVE AMERICA LOSES A HERO – CHARLIE KIRK On Wednesday, September 10, 2025 – while speaking before a huge audience at the Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah – very popular (at least with America's younger generation) Charlie Kirk was shot and killed by a very expert rifleman located atop a distant building.   The reaction of America was fairly uniform ... even among American Liberals:  the killing of a young man (he was only 31!) who was well-known for his strong promotion of Conservative American values – but only through polite discussion and debate – was itself another attack on America's moral foundations themselves.   This needed to stop!  But how?  And who was to blame for this horrible piece of thuggery?  Was this a lone act?  But the event was expertly planned ... with the rifleman even able to make a clean escape.  Was this a part of something bigger – politically speaking?  Prominent Liberals – such as Obama and Biden – were quick to condemn the act.  So who – or what – was behind this well-planned event? Charlie Kirk was an amazing young man.  His entry into politics came early, even while still in high school, Kirk working to support a Illinois Senate candidate, writing an essay for Beritbart News, and getting even Fox News's attention!  He headed off to Harper College ... but soon dropped out in order to devote himself to the promotion of Conservative politics among America's youth.  Thus in 2012 – when only 18 years old – he founded a youth-focused political organization, Turning Point USA ... designed basically to contest MoveOn.org, the strongly pro-Democratic-Party internet organization.  By 2016, at age 22, he was even called on to address the Republican National Convention on his views ... views he claimed were those held widely by American youth. Kirk was particularly opposed to what he saw as the indoctrination of college-aged  American youth by the Liberalism that formed the foundation of American higher education.  He insisted that America not lose its traditional social values – undercut over the past few generations by "Progressive" thinking ... thinking that was purposely aimed at exactly those traditional social values – Progressives claiming that in doing this, they were "freeing up" American thought.  But Kirk found such "freeing up" in fact to be quite "unfreeing" in the way it cut off serious debate – or even just discussion – discussion of these vital moral matters.  Such "free-thinkers" had a habit of cutting off all discussion attempting to come from those not agreeing with them. He was accused of spreading hatred ... when in fact his style was to go around to campuses and invite those that stood opposed to his Conservative (and Christian) values to come forward and explain what it was that they were opposed to ... and why they supported the values they did.  And he was well-known to respond simply quite carefully – actually quite gently –  in explaining why he held the values he did.  This was not spreading hatred.  It was an attempt to open back up the discussion about the country's moral foundations. What was particularly annoying to his opponents was the immense popularity he seemed to be acquiring among American youth ... millions of them.  His three-hour talk show – begun in 2020 – was widely popular, and his podcast was downloaded each day at a count reaching from 500 to 750 thousand daily.  Unsurprisingly, he thus had something of a huge impact on that younger generation ... getting many of them out in the country's elections to help bring Conservatives (Republicans) to power.   He identified closely with Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign ... which pleased Trump mightily ... and infuriated deeply the anti-Trump world. So ... someone finally decided to end the debate ... and simply take Kirk out of the political discussion engaging America. Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University ... just prior to being shot and killed – September 10, 2025 Go on to the last section:  The Lessons of History            Miles H. Hodges