Eamon de Valera proposed the name "Fianna Fáil" for his new political party which was scheduled to organize on May 16. "Fianna" (soldiers) and the Lia Fáil, the coronation stone for the ancient kings of Ireland, formed the basis of the name.
The hard to characterize republican party is still around. It's political positions have shifted a great degree over the past century and indeed the ability to do so is a self acknowledged feature of the party.
Watts residents voted to become part of Los Angeles.
Calvin Coolidge declined an invitation to send American delegates to a League of Nations conference in Geneva to discuss America's reservations about joining the World Court.
The United Kingdom extended the military court system over Boer guerillas.
The British were turning increasingly desperate, and harsh, in their effort to put down the ongoing resistance of Boer Bitter Enders.
William Carver of the Wild Bunch was killed in Jack Owens' Bakery in Sonora, Texas, by Sheriff E. S. "Lige" Briant and his deputies while attempting to effect an arrest for suspicion of murder.
Carver was one of the individuals in the famous Fort Worth portrait from 1900 and went by the nickname "News".
The British are hosting talks on opening the Straits of Hormuz.
The intellectual toddler King Donny is threatening to take the US out of NATO, which he cannot legally do.
Things are going to get very bad.
The illegitimate demented octogenarian would be king will address the nation tonight.
April 2, 2026
King Donald, his popularity sinking like a rock and facing the inevitability that Congress is not going to vote to fund an additional $200B for his losing vanity project war against Iran, came on to television last night to try to explain and get support for it.
I didn't watch it. I've been to nursing homes and, while I'm ashamed to say it, they make me uncomfortable.
It was the usual pile of shit. The war will be over soon, we're going to bomb Iran into submission, they've been at war with us for 47 years, other people should do the hard job of fixing the Straits of Hormuz that we broke.
We haven't been at war for 47 years, nobody is going to take on the ground fighting opening the Straits would require, the war won't be over soon. We didn't for Bibi.
It won't be over this time next year, but Americans, by that time, will be fighting and dying on the ground.
Trump's going to lose this case, which will be another example of the wheels coming off of his administration. His presence at the Court will not impress anyone, let alone the Justices. Trump seems to have lost any sense that he's not that impressive to about 70% of Americans.
His attendance is, frankly, appalling.
Cont (April 1, 2026)
JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH: Do you think Native Americans today are birthright citizens under your test and under your friend's test?
D. JOHN SAUER, U.S. SOLICITOR GENERAL: I think so. I mean, obviously, they've been granted citizenship by statute ...
GORSUCH: Put aside the statute. Do you think they're birthright citizens?
SAUER: No, I think the clear understanding that everybody agrees in the congressional debates is that the children of tribal Indians are not birthright citizens.
GORSUCH: I understand that's what they said. But your test is the domicile of the parents, and that would be the test you'd have us apply today, right?
SAUER: Yes, yes. So, if a tribal Indian, for example, you know, gives up allegiance to ...
GORSUCH: Are tribal members born today birthright citizens?
SAUER: I think so, on our test, if they're lawfully domiciled here. I'm not s—, I have to think that through, but that's my reaction.
GORSUCH: I'll take the yes. That's alright.
Gee Louise, this administration is really something.
It turns out that Trump left after Justice Jackson pretty much eviscerated the solicitor, D. John Sauer, who was sent to argue this. Sauer's career really ought to be over for such a lame argument that was so obviously legal deficient. He's a former Missouri solicitor and, more important, one of the lawyers who was willing to represent Trump in the past.
Trump's going to lose this case, which will be another example of the wheels coming off of his administration. His presence at the Court will not impress anyone, let alone the Justices. Trump seems to have lost any sense that he's not that impressive to about 70% of Americans.
His attendance is, frankly, appalling.
Cont (April 1, 2026)
JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH: Do you think Native Americans today are birthright citizens under your test and under your friend's test?
D. JOHN SAUER, U.S. SOLICITOR GENERAL: I think so. I mean, obviously, they've been granted citizenship by statute ...
GORSUCH: Put aside the statute. Do you think they're birthright citizens?
SAUER: No, I think the clear understanding that everybody agrees in the congressional debates is that the children of tribal Indians are not birthright citizens.
GORSUCH: I understand that's what they said. But your test is the domicile of the parents, and that would be the test you'd have us apply today, right?
SAUER: Yes, yes. So, if a tribal Indian, for example, you know, gives up allegiance to ...
GORSUCH: Are tribal members born today birthright citizens?
SAUER: I think so, on our test, if they're lawfully domiciled here. I'm not s—, I have to think that through, but that's my reaction.
GORSUCH: I'll take the yes. That's alright.
Gee Louise, this administration is really something.
The day couldn't be more appropriate. A man whose made his political career, and he is a politician, of fooling a large percentage of the population hopes to fool you again, even as his mind descends into mush. Anyone listening to him and believing him at this point is fooling themselves.
Trump is not qualified for his office. He's a liar, and he lacks the legal, ethnical, moral and mental ability to hold his job. He only remains in office as his cabinet is packed with sycophants, and the Republican Party made up of cowards.
The topic will be the war. By now Trump's grown bored of the war and his back is against the wall. It's illegal, and Congress isn't going to vote to keep funding it. The Iranians have shown themselves to be far tougher than Trump, a bully, and all bullies are cowardly, can imagine. They're not beaten, and they're not cowed. They're actually winning.
Listening to Trump is nearly pointless. His speeches are streams of lies. He's going to lie. Why bother?
Or should one listen? I ask sincerely.
Would you have listened, if you were German, to Hitler's radio addresses in 1945?
Like Trump's there weren't many by that time.
If you were to, it'd be out of morbid curiosity, or to try to discern what was coming next. Was there going to be a surrender and what would it consist of. Or was Der Fuehrer going to take the country down into defeat with him.
Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. One man worried his cabinet who planned around a possible mental collapse that didn't come, the other is having a mental collapse and his cabinet is doing nothing.
We later learned that in 1973 as Nixon came under increased pressure due to Watergate, his aids feared he would do something rash. Nixon was reacting badly under the stress. He was lashing out. He was drinking heavily.
Of course, in the end, he resigned.
Donald Trump, who like Hitler doesn't drink, is visibly collapsing before our eyes. He's obviously been in a state of mental decline for a decade now, and its increasing. He was heavily impaired when elected, making any rational person wonder why he was elected to the office, other than that people the weird insurrectionist feared that Joe Biden's dementia was too advanced to allow for him to hold office again, something that history should not forgive Biden for. Even that doesn't really explain it, as Harris was the alternative in the end, for people who play along with the two party system nightmare that actually doesn't have to exist.
A major difference between late stage Nixon and late stage Trump, other than that Nixon was not insane (a major difference) is that Nixon was surrounded by sane, if not always admirable, advisors. Trump is surrounded by sycophants.
That's a huge difference as we now know that Nixon's advisors consulted amongst themselves about his mental state. They were worried about it. None of them were as deeply loyal to Nixon at all costs as Trump's sycophantic advisors are to him.
Many, including me, have wondered how it is that Trump's cabinet hasn't acted to replace him. Heather Cox Richardson, in one of her video shorts, has provided the answer. The people surrounding Trump have nowhere else to go.
In Trump's first administration his cabinet included sane people. Trump didn't know how to take office and in fact his natural laziness kept him from really ever fully forming a government. That natural laziness came into effect when he was elected a second time. He was kept from acting like a king in his first term as his advisor wouldn't let him, and he didn't like that. In his second term he wanted people who would slavishly do what he wanted without question, and he got them almost exclusively.
If you look at the current cabinet you can see that, with perhaps two or three exceptions, it's wholly made up of people for whom Trump is their only chance. Some may be rich, but wealth is credited much more than it should be as allowing for intellectual independence. People lavish praise on Trump not because they believe it, but because they are his willing concubines and have prostituted themselves to him. Some of these people are outright dim. Some have just sold their souls and know that when Trump falls, they fall with him, as Richardson has noted.
Why these people are in this position is another matter. Some got there as they believe in Trump. Others were placed their by forces supporting Trump, knowing that he was too lazy to actually do the work to pick competent people. The Heritage Society, for example, saw Trump as a hollow vessel they could pour their radicalization through.
Trump's cabinet, therefore, is much like Hitler's. Where was Goebbels going to go? And Trump's true followers are much like members of the German SS, who fought to the bitter end. They didn't see a future, literally, in a post war Germany where they figured they'd be killed, if not by the Allies, then by the Germans. MAGA still shows up like the Waffen Grenadier Brigade of the SS Charlemagne, the French SS unit that went down fighting in Berlin. They thought the alternative to that was a bullet in the back of the head. Real Trump loyalist show up as they fear that if Trump fails, or more likely when he does, they're era is over. And like the SS in Berlin, they fanatically hope that Der Fuehrer will pull off a miracle, which he won't, or that they'll be saved by some mysterious outside force at the last hour.
That won't happen either.
Many people have wondered how the Germans were so cowed by a leader who was sending them into a disaster. It can't be said that Americans are. Only 30% of Americans actually support Trump. Probably an equal if not larger number outright hate him at this point. If the election was held today the Republicans would loose both houses, and in November when the election is held, they will.
But here's the dangerous thing. Between now and November the leadership of the US is in the bunker and Der Fuehrer is insane.
I've long held that Trump would be removed in 2026 by the 25th Amendment. I hadn't considered, however, the points Richardson raises. He still might be but as she notes if Trump goes down, they all go down with him. They're a bunch of cowardly sycophants and they do not appear to be willing to save their country any more than Goebbels was.
Still, even in Hitler's cabinet not everyone was unquestionably loyal towards the end. Himmler actually serious considered trying to cut a separate deal with the Allies and effectively remove Hitler via a coup. There was even one SS member in the July 20 plot. It remains possible, but only barely so, that the cabinet will vote to save itself.
We know that at least a few people in the cabinet likely are willing to do that. J. D. Vance is one. Marco Rubio another. Both of them hope to be President and neither benefits from going down with Trump. I've long thought they were playing out this string until they could act. But two men alone won't get it done. There's likely a few more, but only few. None of the ass kissers in cabinet meetings are amongst them.
Which brings us to this. Over the next few months things are going to be extremely bad. Trump's mental state is declining so rapidly it's difficult to gauge. He's going to pull out of the war he joined with Israel which will be a major defeat he can't disavow. The economy will not rapidly recover and he can't blame that on Biden. He's lost the Hispanic vote and he won't be able to get it back. The Arab American vote which dimly voted for him is lost as well. The people who are left in his cabinets who openly support him increasingly look like outright kooks. The financial flood to his family is not being ignored and is very likely to result in post Trump criminal prosecutions, maybe of Trump himself.
And yesterday, a judge made clear that his obscene bordello on the Potomac addiction to the White House will never happen.
He's a desperate, and demented, man.
Trump, from now to November, will try to steal the November election. He's already trying. And he'll do every odd thing imaginable or never imagined to try to deflect attention form his failure. There will be no limit to what he will try. Invasions of Cuba and Greenland are possible, with Cuba almost a certainty. Deals with Russia, or China, or whomever. Attempts to cancel the election, or seize the polls are probable. Ignoring the courts a near certainty.
The 25th Amendment should save us from this but might not. Impeachment of Trump should occur, but will not, unless there's a massive post November shift in Congress.
Instead, expect things to get worse and worse. And expect the few members of the administration who aren't willing to go down in the bunker to start resigning. Vance can't, Trump being removed or dying in office is his only hope of being President. Rubio can, and he will, likely before November.
The April 1, 1946 Aleutian Islands earthquake occurred which resulted in an tsunami that devastated parts of Hawaii, most notably Hilo. Up to 173 people were killed, mostly in Hawaii.
People fleeing the tsunami in Hilo.
Warnings were given but many ignored them, thinking them an April Fools Day joke. The event is responsible for a much improved warning system.
Bituminous coal miners went on strike in the U.S.
The U.S. Navy destroyed 24 Japanese submarines. Seems like a terrible waste really.
The UK made Singapore a Crown Colony and separated it and its mostly Chinese ethnic population from Malaya.
What does Russia want was a question that was posed (from more than one Reddit sub).