Trump's New World Order of Make-Believe
A United Nations of misfit toys
Yes, it’s cold here. The temperature was minus-18F when I got up. And that doesn’t count the windchill which makes it feel something like minus-45F. Fun times.
In today’s frigid newsletter:
Jack Smith defies the GOP and makes the case for the rule of law.
Autopsy of Renee Good shatters MAGA/ICE narrative.
Trump insults NATO (again)… and unveils his United Nations for Misfit Toys.
Why disrupting church services is not protected by the First Amendment.
What I told the Brits.
Happy freezing Friday. Note to readers:
A quick reminder, if you find all of this deeply un-American, you are not the crazy ones. But this is the fight of our lifetimes, and the challenge of our generation.
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WTF is the “Board of Peace”?
Glad you asked, because nobody seems to know just what this freak show is all about. Except, of course, Trump’s bottomless narcissism and Will to Power of some sort or other.
The “Coalition of the Willing,” it is not.
Indeed, we have not seen such an extraordinary collection of grifters and second-raters since the last meeting of Trump’s cabinet. While most of the Free World took a pass, Trump was joined by a motley gaggle consisting of countries like Belarus, Morocco, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Armenia, Egypt, the UAE, Jordan, Kosovo, Pakistan, Paraguay, Albania, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
Nellie Bowles has some questions.
Does the Board of Peace have an army? A constitution? Does it include Trump golf club memberships? Gift bags? Is it just that you get invited to Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff’s text chain? All we know for sure is that it costs $1 billion for a permanent seat on the Trump Board of Peace, which is just a little less than your average private K–8 school board seat.
Seriously, though. What is it supposed to do?
Some of you may have been under the impression that it exists to help reconstruct Gaza. But the word “Gaza” does not appear in the group’s proposed charter, which is basically a monument to the Man Who Will Never Ever Win a Nobel Prize. Via the NYT: The board’s charter says its mission is to “secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.” But, really, it’s all about one man.
In the proposed charter of the “Board of Peace” that the United States sent to national capitals in recent weeks, one man has the power to veto decisions, approve the agenda, invite members, dissolve the board entirely and designate his own successor.
His name is spelled out in Article 3.2: “Donald J. Trump shall serve as inaugural chairman.”
Naturally, his ambitions for the fake board are Trumpian. He seems to regard it as a sort of bizarro United Nations.
[Many] officials and experts in international affairs were stunned by the breadth of the initiative, the latest example of Mr. Trump taking apart the American-built, post-World War II international system and building a new one, with himself at the center.
“This is a direct assault on the United Nations,” said Marc Weller, a Cambridge international law professor who specializes in peace negotiations and has worked closely with the global body. “This initiative is likely to be seen as a takeover of the world order by one individual in his own image.”
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BONUS: Trump is disinviting Canada from the “most prestigious Board of Leaders ever.” NOT A PARODY —→
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Meanwhile, Trump insults the fallen heroes of our NATO allies. “Trump angers allies with claim NATO troops 'stayed a little back' from frontlines in Afghanistan.”
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US became the first and so far only NATO member to invoke Article 5, which states that an attack against one member is an attack against all. For 20 years, NATO allies and other partner countries fought alongside US troops in Afghanistan – a sacrifice Trump has routinely downplayed.
“We’ve never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that. And they did – they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines,” he said.
The president’s comments have rankled US allies in NATO, coming at the end of a week in which he has severely strained the alliance through his repeated threats to seize control of Greenland, an autonomous part of Denmark, another NATO member.
While in absolute terms the US lost by far the most troops of any NATO country in Afghanistan, some European countries – with much smaller populations than the US – lost almost as many troops in relative terms.
So, a reminder to Private Bonespurs:
Around 3,500 allied troops died in the conflict, of which 2,456 were Americans and 457 were British. Denmark, with a population of around 5 million when the invasion began, lost more than 40 troops.
The force dispatched to the southern Helmand province – a Taliban stronghold and a center of opium production – initially comprised mostly British and Danish troops, before the US sent reinforcements in 2008. Britain and Denmark suffered most of their casualties in Helmand.
An Autopsy for Renee
Via NBC: “Renee Good was shot in the head, autopsy commissioned by her family finds.”
One of the injuries was to Good’s left forearm, the lawyers said in a statement, while another gunshot struck her right breast without piercing major organs. Neither of those wounds was immediately life-threatening, the attorneys said.
A third shot entered the left side of Good’s head near the temple and exited on the right side, according to the statement, and she also appeared to have sustained a graze wound.
Why this matters: According to the autopsy, the gunshot wound that killed Renée Good entered through the left temple. That strongly suggests that the fatal shot came from the side — not the front — of the vehicle. It was, in other words, the shot fired when the ICE agent was no longer in any direct danger from the moving vehicle. It was not fired in self-defense.
Disrupting church services is not protected speech
It’s hard to overstate how counter-productive this tactic was: the disruption of a church service by protesters has become a viral moment for the Right. Coverage and reaction starkly exposed our information divides:
Since Sunday, Twitter/X generated 3.4 million posts about ICE protesters bursting into the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Meanwhile, a story about a 57 year-old Hmong-American named ChongLy Thao who was led by ICE agents onto a snowy street in boxers and Crocs generated about 2,600 posts in the same time period. On the smaller Bluesky platform the situation reversed: the #Hmong story generated enormous heat, while traffic about the Cities Church affair was minimal, only what was there was nearly all negative.
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The anti-ICE protesters who interrupted a service at Cities Church in St. Paul, were targeting pastor David Easterwood (who is apparently also an ICE official). Afterward, the protesters defended their action as an exercise of their free speech rights.
But the folks at FIRE are reminding us that the First Amendment does not protect the actions of protesters who disrupt church services.
Whatever one thinks of the protesters’ underlying cause, the constitutional question here is not a close one.
There is no First Amendment right to enter a house of worship and engage in conduct that effectively shuts down a religious service, even as part of a protest. Nor does anybody have the right to remain on private property after being asked by its owner or authorized representatives to leave.
The First Amendment offers its strongest protection to speech in traditional public forums — streets, sidewalks, and parks — while also protecting freedom of association, religious exercise, and freedom of conscience. A society committed to free expression depends not only on protecting speech, but on maintaining a clear delineation between protected speech, on the one hand, and unprotected civil or criminal conduct on the other.
The First Amendment restrains government action, not private individuals or institutions. Courts have long distinguished between public spaces, including those that must remain open to expressive activity, and private spaces where those who control them retain the right to exclude unwanted speech. Private property owners are not required to open their spaces to expressive activity simply because the message is political or morally urgent.
Treating the First Amendment as a roaming permission slip for disruption misstates both the law and the logic of free expression.
A worship service held inside a church is not a public forum. It is a private religious gathering, typically held on private property, convened for a specific and constitutionally protected purpose: religious exercise.
Jack Smith Won’t Back Down
VIA NBC: “'I will not be intimidated': Jack Smith says he'll stand up to Trump despite attacks.”
“I have seen how the rule of law can erode. My fear is that we have seen the rule of law function in this country for so long that many of us have come to take it for granted,” Smith said during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.
“But, the rule of law is not self-executing — it depends on our collective commitment to apply it. It requires dedicated service on behalf of others, especially when that service is difficult and comes with costs,” he said. “Our willingness to pay those costs is what tests and defines our commitment to the rule of law and to this wonderful country.”
As Smith spoke, Trump continued his attacks against him, this time on Truth Social. Smith said that Trump had made statements that “are meant to intimidate me.”
“I will not be intimidated,” he said. “I think these statements are also made as a warning to others what will happen if they stand up. And I am, as I say, I’m not going to be intimidated.”
What I Told the Brits
This morning, I joined The Trump Report’s Maddie Hale to discuss Donald Trump’s claim that NATO troops who fought in Afghanistan stayed “off the frontlines”; the trilateral talks over Ukraine; and the growing tension between the United States and Canada as Donald Trump disinvites its neighbor from his Board of Peace.
Friday dogs
Polar vortex dogs.
reminder to ICE jackbooted gestapo thugs: there is no statute of limitations for murder.
I am glad that Ms Good’s autopsy shows that the fatal shot was from the side, as I suspected, since the video shows the agent holding his pistol against the window - point blank!
We won’t likely see a trial for intentional homicide, but the court of public opinion has now received a verdict.