[PJMedia] When a president defies a court, the media pulls the fire alarm. Legal experts fill TV panels with words like "unconstitutional" and "authoritarian." The phrase “constitutional crisis” gets tossed around like glitter at a political parade.
But what most people forget is that history doesn’t always side with the judiciary. Some of America’s greatest presidents defied court rulings, and history later confirmed that those examples of defiance were not only justified but necessary. They didn’t do it to seek power. They did it to protect the country when others froze.
That’s not a crisis. That’s leadership.
Now that two federal courts have blocked President Trump’s new economic tariffs, it’s worth revisiting the long American tradition of presidents ignoring the gavel when national security, survival, or sovereignty are on the line. In every example below, the court ruled against the president, but the president was right.
LINCOLN AND HABEAS CORPUS: BREAKING THE LAW TO SAVE THE UNION
In 1861, as the nation buckled under secession, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus. That gave Union generals the authority to arrest Confederate sympathizers without a judge reviewing the case.
This was no hypothetical fear. Pro-Southern saboteurs in Maryland had torn up railroad tracks and destroyed bridges, threatening troop movements near Washington, D.C.
Chief Justice Roger Taney, still clinging to the robes of his infamous Dred Scott legacy, ruled that Lincoln had no such authority in Ex parte Merryman. Taney claimed only Congress could suspend habeas corpus.
Lincoln ignored him.
FDR AND THE GOLD CLAUSE CASES: LEGAL ORTHODOXY VS. ECONOMIC RECOVERY
When Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office, the country was sliding off a cliff. Unemployment had reached biblical proportions. Banks were failing. People hoarded gold. Deflation made debt impossible to repay.
FDR made a radical move: he took America off the gold standard. He voided “gold clauses” in contracts, which guaranteed payment in gold instead of paper dollars.
The move enraged investors and Wall Street lawyers, who saw it as a direct violation of property rights.
In Perry v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court acknowledged that Roosevelt's move was unconstitutional. He had broken binding contracts. However, the Court effectively shrugged and ruled that the plaintiff hadn’t suffered actual damages since he had been repaid the equivalent amount in currency.
Roosevelt stared down the Court and dared them to stop him.
The gamble worked. Inflation began to rise, banks stabilized, and Americans could breathe again. Critics accused him of shredding the Constitution.
TRUMAN AND THE STEEL SEIZURE: NO COURT CAN BUILD A TANK
Fast forward to 1952. The Korean War was raging. The United Steelworkers threatened a nationwide strike. Without steel, the U.S. military couldn't make tanks, artillery, or warships.
President Harry Truman, unwilling to let war production halt, ordered the federal seizure of America’s steel mills.
The case reached the Supreme Court quickly. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the Court ruled that Truman had exceeded his constitutional authority. They said Congress had not authorized the seizure, and therefore it was unlawful.
Truman lost. Legally.
But he complied with the ruling and found other ways to keep steel flowing. The military stayed supplied, and the war effort never stalled.
JEFFERSON AND THE JUDICIARY: MIDNIGHT APPOINTMENTS AND MORNING RESOLVE
When Thomas Jefferson took office in 1801, he faced a judiciary packed with Federalist loyalists thanks to John Adams’ last-minute “Midnight Judges.” Jefferson refused to deliver some of their commissions. One of the snubbed appointees, William Marbury, sued.
That case became Marbury v. Madison.
Chief Justice John Marshall used it to establish judicial review, the principle that courts could declare laws unconstitutional.
But while flexing the Court’s power, Marshall also agreed that Jefferson didn’t have to deliver Marbury’s commission.
Continued on Page 47
#1
“Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure “good” government, it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare — most people want to run things, but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the “backseat driver” syndrome.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
#5
The doctrine of judicial immunity, which basically means that activist judges don't have skin in the game, is not a part of the Constitution. I can think of a bunch of reasons not to abolish that doctrine, but it would be fun to see Trump issue an executive order limiting it in some way. For example: "Any district judge who declares an executive order unconstitutional shall within 10 days appear before Congress to explain the basis for the court's decision." I'd like to see Senator Kennedy ask these folks his typical pointed questions in public. After all, democracy dies in darkness.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/31/2025 9:51 Comments ||
Top||
[Daily Signal] A majority of voters say America is headed in the right direction. That has never happened in the nearly 20 years Rasmussen Reports has been posing the question.
A Rasmussen survey taken May 18-May 22 and released Sunday said 48% of Americans say the country is headed in the "right direction," while 47% say the U.S. is on the "wrong track." Five percent are "Not Sure."
Rasmussen’s Mark Mitchell put the numbers in context, saying, "In 20 years, the % of people who say the U.S. is headed in the right direction has never been higher than today."
The pollster began conducting its right track-wrong track surveys in 2006.
The sharp-eyed and those critical of the administration were quick to note that, technically, 48% is not a majority. For that, you’d need 50%. Indeed, search "Rasmussen Right Direction" on X and you’ll find a run of people quoting Grok saying that same thing.
However, Rasmussen posted an update Tuesday morning. "Rolling average of last night and prior 4-nights" hit the "unchartered territory" of 50%.
Continued on Page 47
[PJ Media] The latest economic data proves once again that President Donald Trump's economic policies are delivering results for the American people, and you can bet the Democrats aren’t happy about it. The Commerce Department's April report shows inflation remaining well-controlled at 2.1% annually — the lowest rate of 2025 — even as Trump implements strategic trade measures to protect American interests.
Personal income surged an impressive 0.8%, dramatically outperforming expectations and showcasing how Trump's policies are putting more money in Americans' pockets. This isn't just a minor victory; it's a vindication of the president's economic vision that the liberal media keeps trying to discredit.
Why? Because that number is nearly three times what the so-called "experts" predicted.
"We could talk about a lot of issues, but when you look at income for the first four months of the year, they're powerful numbers," explains CNBC’s Rick Santelli. "Up six tenths in January, up seven tenths in February, up a half of 1% last month, up eight tenths this month. This is a great four-month start to any year.
"Now, with the income shooting up — and by the way, eight tenths is the strongest income month-over-month jump since May of '21 when it was 1.9," he added.
Continued on Page 47
[American Thinker] Despite all the excuses and finger pointing, liberals/socialists don’t think that they lost the last election -- they think that the people just voted wrong. As Lenin said: "People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics." To influence these people, Lenin said: "We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us." We have seen this tactic repeated in the negative stories about Trump and his supporters over the past decade. This is where totalitarianism starts. It ends with gulags and death.
U.S. socialists have been sowing Lenin’s hate, revulsion, and scorn at even a higher rate since the last election. They have been so successful that a recent poll indicated that 55% of them thought that assassinating President Trump would be justifiable.
To understand the thoughts, methodologies, and goals of modern leftists, you have to go back to the beginning and look at Lenin, the founder of the first socialist state.
The quest for power is what motivates today’s socialists just as it did Lenin. Their agenda today is to attack their capitalist/bourgeois enemies to gain power no matter what the human cost. Some of the Left’s favorite issues were in Lenin’s crosshairs in the 19th century and socialists return to the same Marxist playbook.
Lenin was very clear on what he wanted to do to his political enemies. He called for a "war to the death" with no mercy for the enemies of socialism. He also said that any who opposed his armed uprising were enemies, traitors, and cowards. The Red Terror of the Russian Revolution and civil war cost between 10-12 million lives.
By 2020, things hadn’t changed. Bernie Sanders’ paid staffers wanted to kill the ’rich’ in an armed rebellion, favored the execution of moderate liberals, gulags for Trump supporters, and violence if Sanders lost the election. The GULAGs, (Glavnoye Upravleniye LAGerey) were started under Lenin and greatly expanded under Stalin.
2025 saw Trump’s victory called an "existential crisis." And, as with Lenin, Democrats have been told they have to be ready to fight and die for the "cause." A Democrat congresswoman said that liberals are at "war." University staffers have said that Musk and DOGE employees are wanted dead or alive.
At the same time, news "fact checkers" have said that the supposed threats made by Democrats, aren’t really threats at all. They even question whether attacks on Teslas, owners, and dealerships are actually terrorism.
Still, Democrats want to be seen as "patriots" by the masses -- at least when they’re on camera. However, what did Lenin say about patriotism?
Continued on Page 47
Text taken from a posted article in arsenal-otechestva.ru
[ColonelCassad] Ensuring US hegemony is a constant in political strategy and practice. It is invariant in relation to White House administrations. Trump's Manifest destiny is a reconstruction of American greatness on new principles - no longer globalism, but exceptionalism.
Among the key donors of Trump's 2023/2024 election campaign are the largest manufacturers of the military-industrial complex, such as Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon General Dynamics, Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, transport and oil and gas corporations.
The 47th US President is supported by the military-industrial, as well as the IT-venture-technological lobby. Among them are those who are interested in maintaining the US dominance in the world by force, technology and economy, those for whom war is a business, an opportunity for development and a guarantee of enrichment.
The reboot of the real sector of the economy planned by the Trumpists, the rearmament and re-equipment of the Pentagon and intelligence services based on the latest technologies, total control of the information field and the humanitarian sphere to ensure info-cognitive and mental dominance based on AI, strengthening the resource potential of the United States through the accumulation of economic and military-economic power and technological superiority over 3-5 years, which surpasses all and everything, cemented by a right-wing conservative ideology - this is the technological and semantic platform of global leadership and the New World Order (NWO) from Trump-Vance - "Peace through strength".
Trumpists propose to return America's leadership and competitive military advantage through start-ups for the development and production of weapons, financed primarily through venture schemes.
The manifesto article “Arsenal Reset,” posted back in June 2022 on the resources of one of the most influential Trumpists, Vice President J.D. Vance’s political curator Peter Thiel, says: “Modernizing our military will require not just a handful, but dozens of new innovative companies. Tens of thousands of engineers will have to ask themselves if there is more to their careers than just money. And our government officials, without whom these efforts will be in vain, will have to listen and lead…” The ambitions and
MAGA strategy are in the Americans taking over global technological leadership. To do this, the United States will need additional energy capacity and natural resources, which Canada and Greenland should provide. Then the US will be able, according to Trumpists, to become global leaders not only in weapons and the cryptocurrency mining race, but also, what is strategically more important, in the total power of the computer industry, ensuring primacy in the development of AI as a critical factor in the modern economy, military-industrial complex, intelligence and defense.
The entire team that came with Trump is highly ideologically charged. Trumpists have written and promoted strategic concepts for a financial-technological and managerial revolution in the White House and the Pentagon.
The concept of a new American dynamism has been developed, launched, and is being introduced into the consciousness of the elites and society. American dynamism in the field of defense technologies implies the foresight and active application of technological innovations. This approach emphasizes that the pursuit of technological dynamism is the pursuit of a strong, secure, and innovative America.
At the Shift's Defense Ventures Summit in Washington in November 2023, Catherine Boyle, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital fund associated with Peter Thiel, expressed the opinion: "We are convinced that a strong America leads to a strong and secure world, a more civilized world (we should use this word more often). Technology plays a key role in maintaining this order and civilization, and this will continue. We call this direction American dynamism.
In the fall of 2024, a programmatic military-economic text was published - "Reforming the US military-industrial complex" (The Defense Reformatiom). Its author is the executive director of Palantir, Shyam Sankar.
Let us present the theses of Sankar's "manifesto" in detail, because they are important not only for understanding the enemy's strategy, but in part they are a "mirror" of our problems.
At the very beginning of the article, the author categorically and scathingly states: "The Western strategy of containment no longer works... As a nation, we are already in a state of undeclared war... In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea... China stuffed the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea with weapons, and Iran continued to develop an atomic bomb... This is a new Cold War in its hot stage...".
Let us immediately note a truth that is not at all cinematic: "in America, everything is simple, except for money" (a quote from the cult film "Brother 2"). The logic of Sankara's "escalation of the situation" is clear and, despite the obvious emotional charge, quite pragmatic. The formation of an information-political "war space" is an information-cognitive technology for ensuring the "interception of budgets" and levers of development of the military-industrial complex and the Pentagon, it is an effective mechanism for managing society through fear, it is a political "catch 22" that allows lobbyists and involved elite groups to avoid possible claims from competitors in the long term: they say, "war will write off everything."
Having outlined the "reality of war," Shyama Sankara then directly states that the United States is not ready for a serious war, stating that the country's economy, its real sector and its "core," the military-industrial complex, are in a systemic crisis: "US national security requires a powerful industrial base, otherwise it will lose the next war, and the world will plunge into the darkness of "authoritarian regimes ...".
In a carefully measured and well-placed way, “adding salt to the wounds,” the CEO of Palantir argues that the inertia of the American military-industrial complex that has developed over decades is high, while its mobilization potential is low.
Raising the tension, Shyama Sankara emphasizes that in the event of a hot phase of a possible war between the United States and rival powers — China or Russia — ammunition and weapons will last only a few days. Even more alarming, in his opinion, is the lack of capacity and capabilities for the rapid repair and restoration of our weapons systems, not to mention the production of weapons on new principles. Sankar believes that this ideological and managerial approach, deeply rooted in the American military-industrial complex, is based on the concepts of scientific management, which were once fashionable in the Soviet Union and in the vanguard of the US automobile industry in the 1950s.
Centralized, predictable, programmatic budgeting, management and control were then considered superior to the trial-and-error market system, as well as the "mess and waste" of the decentralized trial-and-error experimentation system, which did not imply 100% "sprouting of startups" in the search for new solutions and technologies. The time for such approaches and solutions, according to Sankara, has passed. Noting the crisis, Shyama Sankara then not only analyzes its causes, but also identifies ways for the US military-industrial complex to emerge from the crisis, based on, along with a technological reboot, the interception of budget flows and levers of control over the military-industrial complex and the Pentagon from the arms "traditionalists".
Let us cite Sankara's main statements, arguments and proposals, not verbatim, but in essence.
Monopoly is our main problem. In 1993, after the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon worked with more than 50 companies. Today there are five (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Boeing)! The most important consequence was not the reduction of competition in the defense industry, but the separation of commercial innovation from the military-industrial complex and the growth of a state monopoly on procurement.
It is necessary to avoid a monopoly buyer at all costs, using market mechanisms and dynamics as the key operating principle of the Ministry of Defense. What sometimes looks like duplication is an insurance against complacency and unpredictability.
If the monopoly remains, production will not work as it should. The final product will remain expensive, and this will make us weaker.
The root of our pathology is the lack of competition within the Ministry of Defense.
It will take a decade or two to begin delivering new major weapons systems in sufficient quantities.
In the hot phase of war, we have only a few days' worth of ammunition and weapons. Even more alarming is the lack of capacity and capability to quickly repair and refurbish our equipment and weapons systems.
Under current conditions, American industry can no longer be content to produce a minimum range of ships, submarines, ammunition, aircraft, etc.
Cost-plus contracts make us slower and poorer. This may be the right way to buy an aircraft carrier, but it is wrong for 95% of other things.
Innovation will always be painful, unclear, and subject to "pejorative and retrograde" bureaucratic criticism from those outside the process: they value costs and effort, not value and results.
There is also no reward for speeding up the process and developing innovative approaches, and there is no incentive to compete on price, since it is time and money spent that count, not saved.
We must understand: productivity is more valuable than weapons stockpiles. We obsess over stockpiles, but stockpiles don’t matter. Our ammunition shipments to Ukraine consisted of Cold War-era kits that sat on shelves collecting dust while decades of innovation took place. The depletion of 10 years’ worth of production in 10 weeks of fighting in Ukraine has shown that the real weapon is the speed of retooling and intensification of production.
We must produce what is needed quickly and in sufficient quantities. We must develop requirements and incentives for production and never stop producing.
There will be no more prizes for participation (guns sitting on shelves). Participation only counts if you can consistently produce them.
The ability to modernize production is critical.
Government attempts to avoid problems in advance by locking in to a single supplier will fail. For any non-trivial innovation, it is impossible to “deductively” design a master architecture of a winning structure in advance. Instead, we must slog along and let that architecture emerge. You maximize your chances if you break away from the “precedent principle” of established practices early on.
The most important projects are not created by accepting terms and conditions. In a fight, no one cares about the official paper. The only requirement is to win.
And winning involves engaging in a messy, duplicative, seemingly wasteful but actually effective process of improvement.
No monopoly. Creative, faster, and ultimately cheaper results.
We must rely on talent, on people who propose bold solutions and ensure their implementation, in which knowledge and know-how are combined.
The talent to solve a problem quickly is rare. It is very difficult, but such talent is decisive.
The Pentagon Personnel Management Act (the rules for the career and promotion of officers and civilian specialists) must be reformed. We need to worry more about achieving victory, and not about how to fill the staffing table and correctly draw up service documentation.
We need more competition between the services. No joint program directorates. No monopoly. Creative, fast and ultimately cheaper results.
The main idea is how the members of the company communicate, collaborate and compete.
Synergy of dual-use technologies is the key to victory. RAND thought that Lockheed would dominate the field of integrated circuits, because it had fifty Ph.D.s, and Intel only two. But Intel executives knew that military and intelligence clients were just a stopover to business success. And they succeeded.
Audit paralysis is a paralysis of growth. Money must work and be mobile. The fiscal OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) cycle for moving money is unsustainable. Money must be able to be reprogrammed and redirected in two months, not two years.
Simple contractual mechanisms exist to guarantee the government continuity of operations and the desired flexibility, debureaucratization, objectivity, and complete freedom of action through the introduction of automated security checks for budgeting. We are not even close to that now.
Venture capital is the future—the United States needs risk capital, not taxpayer capital, to achieve technological breakthroughs. Independent research and development (IRAD) with reimbursement for costs is a kind of indulgence. It is not real R&D. Cost Plus contracts allow contractors to manipulate house money (reimbursed by taxpayers). Private R&D in the commercial market is vastly superior to public R&D.
Companies must invest their own capital in developments and solutions. They must be ready for any challenges if we want innovation. Contractors should not take money from the taxpayer if their lab experiments fail. There must be effective feedback between consumers, customers and developers-manufacturers.
Secrecy should not be a “monopolist’s defense.” Today, defense companies cannot understand the fighter, and the fighter often cannot understand what he himself needs. His needs, it is said, must be transmitted through a “priestly class” of contractors, middlemen, buyers, customers. The result is countless Kafkaesque dilemmas of cause and effect. You cannot get a security clearance unless you have a secret contract, and you cannot get a security clearance unless you belong to a special class of people who have security clearance.
The same goes for SCIF (Secret Shared Information Facility) sponsorship and access to classified networks. Only the “priestly” middlemen determine the timing and schedule of a company’s access to a top-secret network from its offices.
Monopolies and secrecy are too much, but we are long past the point where they worked in the interests of security.
The main conclusion of Sankar’s “manifesto” is this: “The United States is in a state of undeclared war. For more than three decades, we have put up with stagnation in the military-industrial complex, born of a complacent monopoly without competition from the great powers. We have prayed to the “old altar” for too long. Now change is possible, because we all understand that there is something worse than change: lagging and obsolescence. We cannot waste time resurrecting the American industrial base on which we relied during the height of the Cold War…”.
Let us note not only the systematic nature of Shyam Sankar’s proposals, but also the fact that many of his conclusions should not only be taken into account, but it is advisable to apply them here in Russia, primarily in the military-industrial complex and defense, due to their relevance not only for the United States.
The “Peace through Strength” concept implies a focus on preparing for war, forming an information-cognitive agenda for war. This does not mean that the Americans themselves will fight - this is unlikely, but preparing the world for war - that is for sure. For a war for hegemony through reorganizing the world in the American way.
This way will be played according to the notes written by artificial intelligence. To prepare for war, the corresponding financial and scientific-technological reserve has been created. The military-industrial complex, primarily of the USA and partly of NATO countries, will be rebooted, re-equipped and restarted based on the latest modern technologies - and above all, robotics and AI. The potential for the massive use of autonomous weapons systems is especially dangerous. Tens of thousands of drones, invulnerable to modern electronic warfare and air defense systems, combined with hypersonic missiles create an unprecedented threat to the strategic facilities of any enemy.
The battlefield of the coming war, as seen by the MAGA-imperialists of Trump-Vance, will be filled with mental confrontation, artificial intelligence, unmanned systems and cyber warriors who will fight with all available and most modern hybrid methods, collecting and exchanging intelligence, making decisions with breathtaking speed and efficiency, totally covering the entire world with their control, like a battlefield.
It must be understood that Trump's "Peace through Strength" is, in fact, a forceful reorganization of the world, it is a form of violence against the world "packed" in a political strategy, it is a hybrid war for US hegemony declared for a decade.
In this, and not in the "peacekeeping chatter" is the real American policy. The confrontation with China and Russia was, is and will be the focus of US military policy. To win in an existential clash with the West, Russia needs to concentrate and mobilize all resources - military, economic, spiritual. It is important to realize and take action on the fact that the victorious solution for Russia will come from within, not from without.
Let's become sovereign and strong!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
