Court Watch Part VIII. The only restraint edition.

Jefferson County Courthouse, Port Arthur, Texas.

July 14, 2026

In a blistering opinion, a Federal Court judge ruled that President Donald Trump improperly used a $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the IRS to extract personal benefits from the government and prevented the terms of a settlement agreement from taking legal effect.

And more locally:

Laramie County sheriff ordered to appear in court, explain why law firm can’t inspect records

July 23, 2026

Headline in the CST:

Wyoming attorneys oppose Trump’s AG pick

71 Wyoming attorneys signed onto the letter.  Lummis and Barrasso will ignore it.

August 1, 2026

Charges against an Olympic kayaker for vandalizing the reflecting pool have been dropped. 

That was predictable, but what the Justice Department admitted was not.  It admitted the damage was the result of "flawed installation by the contractor" as well as "the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026."

Every lawyer associated with this should be dismissed and disbarred.  Trump should be impeached.  The victim of these false charges should sue for malicious prosecution.

Closer to home:

Wyoming archaeologists take BLM to court over Native sites, human remains

August 5, 2026

The U.S. Attorney’s Office dismissed all charges against David Hearn, Justin Carreno, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Cameron Thiers for the pool vandalization that never occured.  Donald Trump had previously described these people as “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE".  He's the sick deranged people, but people who aren't victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome and think he's something other than a rampaging deranged narcissist know that. 

Now, even after the Toddler's tantrums, no charges are pending at all. They never should be.

Lawsuits should, and I predict will, be filed against the government over this.

August 8, 2026

The DC Circuit ordered Trump to halt his illegal ballroom construction but, in a wussy move, stayed its decision for fourteen days in order to allow Trump to appeal, which he, or rather his administration, will.

The Court, in its decision, noted:

Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help.

August 11, 2026

It's not that there aren't some really issues here.

Judge dismisses closed primary lawsuit for the second time

But it does provide a good example of why it hurts things for everyone when a gadfly like Skovgaard decides to play lawyer.

August 12, 2026

Court steps in to counter coup attempt.

August 18, 2026

Good news:

Retired Cheyenne attorney renews legal challenge to Secretary Gray’s handoff of voter data feds

Gray violated the law on this and needs to be held fully accountable. Courts looking at this issue have uniformly supported the states that refused to provide the information.

Gray should be made to recover the information he supplied.  This was illegal.  

August 25, 2026

This doesn't decide the ultimate issue:

Supreme Court allows Trump administration to move forward with order imposing restrictions on mail-in voting

But coming when it does, it may very well be the law in a practical sense this election cycle, and impact the election.  It's specifically designed to frustrate Democratic voting.  However, as Amy Howe reports:

A separate ruling by the same judge, in a case filed by a different set of plaintiffs, temporarily prohibits the U.S. Postal Service from implementing one provision of the executive order anywhere in the United States. That ruling remains in effect, at least for now.

The decision is flat out wrong and the Supreme Court will regret it.  The Democrats are increasingly like to win both houses of Congress this Fall and they will begin to work on major Supreme Court reform. Trump can prevent that while he's in office, but he's becoming the political kiss of death for GOP candidates and when a new Democratic President comes in, this order will come off and the Supreme Court will be radically reformed.  Perhaps first up will be age limitations, likely 70 years of old, which will wipe out the conservative majority on the court.

A decision like this one will help bring about that downfall.  So does stuff like this:

Supreme Court allows White House ballroom construction to continue for now

The mail in voting one at least has some think judicial reasoning Staying ballroom construction was the obvious choice here and the Court didn't do it. That probably signals that they'll let this insane project go forward.

August 27, 2026

After Election Loss, Reid Rasner Sues A Sixth Person For Defamation

One of Rasner's previous suits is in the CST today on the pending summary judgment motion.

August 31, 2026

The Supreme Court sealed its fate today in holding that the Plaintiffs in a case challenging the legality of Trump's illegal construction of a giant garden shed on White House Grounds lacked standing.

Bullshit.

Justice Roberts, who dissented in the 5 to 4 decision, noted that the construction was likely illegal.  It is. This was a standing decision.

So construction will commence and may well get completed. The legality will be ruled upon in the future, and then the heaping pile of shit hopefully blown to the ground by a future administration that will rely on this decision. The Supreme Court will go to 13 members, and an age limitation will be put on the justices guaranteeing a liberal majority on the court for a century.

September 10. 2026

Twenty states filed two separate lawsuits against the government alleging the Trump administration illegally weakened the Endangered Species Act.

September 11, 2026

The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals refused to lift an injunction on the USPS prohibiting the implementation of crybaby's attempt for a fall coup by banning mail in voting.

September 15, 2026

The US Supreme Court decided in a 7 to 2 vote to block the Trump USPS rule prohibiting mail in voting.  Alito and Thomas were the two dissenting votes.

October 14, 2026

That this is even a topic shows how absurd our times are.

Wyoming Supreme Court Hears Trans People's Argument To Change Sex On Birth Certificates

Your sex at birth, is your sex.  Nothing can or should change that.

October 15, 2026

Judge halts sweeping plan to move Forest Service headquarters west, including state office in Cheyenne

 

Judge halts sweeping plan to move Forest Service headquarters west, including state office in Cheyenne

Last edition:

Court Watch Part VII. When the last law was down.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Abortion, Chuck Gray, Court Watch, law, Politics, South Korea, St. Sir Thomas More, The 2021 Insurrection, The Second Trump Administration, Wyoming, Wyoming (Powell), You heard it here first

King Donald's War, Part 14. The Houthi Edition.

 

Emblem of Yemen.

September 20, 2026

The Houthis hit the Saudi capital of Riyadh with drones.

September 25, 2026

The Senate voted against a resolution demanding an end to the war or Congressional authorization 50 to 49.  Four Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — voted in favor.  Spinless wimp John Barrasso of course voted against.

October 5, 2026

The US withdrew its strategic bombers from the United Kingdom in reaction to some sort of attempted attack on a US installation.

Frankly, at this point, it's impossible to know what's a legitimate US. action vs. Trump drama.

October 10, 2026

The Houthis hit the airport at Riyadh again.

King Donald has declared there will be no strikes on Iran until after the election.

October 15, 2026

A container ship with 2,500 containers hit a mine and sank in the Strait of Hormuz.

King Donald stated yesterday that the war will end as soon as he wants it too, which he said will be soon.

Last edition:

King Donald's War, Part 13. A Second Rate Military lead by a Third Rate Clown College with a Secretary of War who should be impeached.

Labels: 1940, 1940s, 1941, 1948, 2020s, 2026, Curragh Mutiny, Israel, John Barrasso, King Donald's War, Mike Johnson, Military, Pete Hegseth, Thomas Massie, U.S. Navy, United States and Israel v. Iran, War, Women, Zeitgeist

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 12, the Deflect and Deny edition.

October 2, 2026.

We are, of course, about one month away from the General Election and it's universally agreed that, at least as of right now, the economy is not doing well, which is to say that it's not doing well for average people.  Having said that, all the monkeying around Trump has done with the economy has not resulted in a general collapse, as some feared.  This tends to give credence to the assertion that some make that the American economy in general is so strong that it tends to keep on chugging along in spite of everything.  

Having said that, prices on many things have gone up, and are now at the paint point for average people.  Beef prices, for example, are up about 25%.  That can't really be blamed on Trump, as its due to a historically low cattle heard, but Trump's efforts to address it were pretty much non existent at first, and the ineffectual when they were tried.

Beef Imports Haven’t Lowered Prices As Hoped. ‘I Told You So,’ Says Wyo Rancher

Addressing the price can only really come through a recovery of the North American herd.  Trump's constant crazy hatred of Canada and Canadians isn't helping this at all, as Canada is part of the North American market.  Mexican cattle, which had been banned from coming into the US due to screwworm, which we're not hearing much about, which is concerning, have started to come back in. That is likely to  have some effect.

Petroleum prices have shot up enormously since Trump started an ill advised and poorly planned war on Iran for no real discernable critical objective.

Wars are inflationary by their very nature, but attacking a critical global petroleum supplier is definitely going to be inflationary, and this is set to really start hitting home.  Everything in the US, whether it moves by truck, by rail, or in the air, uses petroleum.  That impacts the price of 100% of American goods.  Gasoline, Diesel fuel and Aviation fuel is way up in price.  Heating oil is up 50% to 70% just as we're entering the season where it starts to be used on the East Coast. NOAA, which usus science, predicts a warm winter in the East, like last years, so that might not be as impactful as it could be.  The Old Farmers Almanac, which I put no stock in whatsoever, predicts a cold winter.

An interesting side impact of the cost of things is that even Wyomingites are looking at electric vehicles.  I overheard a conversation the other day in which two people were wishing to get them, and they're both highly conservative individuals.  A report on increasing EVs appeared in one of the local online journals today.

Is Wyoming Going Electric? EV Registrations Surge Tenfold In Two Years

There are still a lot of naysayers out there, but there were when automobiles started to become common for that matter.

Anyway, the Trump Administration has handed out its flood of excuses for all of this, starting at first with "it's Joe Biden's fault".  Everything is Biden's fault according to Trump, whom while he routinely falls asleep in public still calls Biden, on occasion, "Sleep Joe".

The it's all Biden's fault is no longer selling very well so the "it's not much to pay to keep Iran from getting a bomb" has been tried and is still being tried, but it's not selling that well . First of all, well informed people know that while Iran is a very secretive state, the evidence that it was about to make a nuke is thin.  And frankly Israel's major early role in the war made it pretty clear that this was a joint Israeli American adventure in which the Trumpites had been heavily influenced by Israel.  That's adding to an anti Israeli sentiment that's been building in the US for several years and you'll even now hear, in response to the suggestion that it's all worth it to keep Iran from getting a bomb, that maybe we don't really care if Iran has a bomb.

We didn't care enough about North Korea having one in order for the US to attack it, and Trump loves the communist leader of North Korea.

So that excuse isn't working either.

So time to distract.

The government just announced that children under 16 years of age are being automatically enrolled in "Trump" savings accounts. The Government, which has no money whatsoever as it's borrowing piles, will place $1,000 of the money it doesn't have into such accounts, but parents need to claim it.

Will this achieve something?

Well, it might, or might now.  Truth be known with inflation being what it is, $1,000 that can't be touched until a person is 18 years old isn't going to seem like that big of a deal right now  But it might turn out to be.

Trump also promised people $5,000 if the GOP retains both houses of Congress, but then that would require Congress to do it, and Trump earlier promised everyone a $2,000 tariff dividend.  The government handing out cash it doesn't have isn't a good idea and frankly I thought it was a horrible idea when President Biden started handing out cash during COVID.  I've heard the Trump proposal compared to that, and that was a bad idea.

The Administration also just sent out $500.00 checks as supposed refunds for Obamacare overcharges.  They seem rather strategically placed, however.  

Anyhow, stayed tuned for coming attractions. The trade war with Canada is just starting, the war is no where near over, and prices are really set to climb.  Trump has less than thirty days to address all of this, or even some of it, which won't be easy at all.  Voters who are inclined to vote their pocketbooks are likely pretty much set in their opinions by now.

October 6, 2026

Casper's Grant Street Grocery closed.

Grant Street Grocery, Casper Wyoming

Grant Street Grocery in Casper Wyoming is the only surviving small neighborhood grocery store in the town and even advertises the same.

Opened in 1921, the store was converted into a specialty grocery store and deli some years ago, and features meats and cheeses, as well as many other items, that are unlikely to appear on the counters of regular grocery stores.  It's featured here for its simple sign, as well as being a remnant of something that was once very common, a neighborhood store.

President Trump signed an order allowing for the temporary sale of red diesel, which you tend to only find easily in farm country, for regular diesels.  Effectively its a sort of kind of temporary suspension of the Federal tax on diesel.

I'd quite frankly question the Presidents ability to legally do this, but if I see red diesel for sale, I'm buying it.  

I probably won't find it for sale.

October 7, 2026

Something is definitely going on.

Bush-Wells Sporting Goods to close its doors at the end of the year

The store has literally been in business my entire life.

Paramount Skydance took over Warner Bros Discovery on Tuesday giving the company, now just called Skydance, CBS, CNN, Paramount+, and HBO Max

Tribal Data Center Study Had 'A Lot Of Options', But Community Said No Thanks

October 10, 2026

And also 

2026-009  Emergency Relief Permits for Transportation of Oversize and Overweight Loads of Agricultural Products 

2026-010  Executive Order Recognizing and Adopting the Federal Monitor Carrier Safety Administration Hours-of-Service Waiver for the Intrastate Transportation of Gasoline and Diesel Fu

On the red fuel order, some states, or at least Montana, have warned diesel users that they're not lifting their provisions. Also, red diesel stains filters and engine parts, so when the suspension ends, and you take your truck in to be serviced, you may have a lot of explaining to do.

And now this:

Trump is so desperate to put the economic destruction of the Iran War behind him that he's made a deal with Putin to import diesel fuel.  

First of all, this isn't enough diesel to make any sort of difference and I frankly do not think it will even occur. But more significantly he's made a deal with a country that is engaged in a completely immoral war against a neighbor and losing, and by doing this, helping them.  The US, it might be noted, has just acted to increase sanctions on Russia.

Totally inexcusable. 

October 14, 2026

Inflation jumped in September.

Now, it's not Trump's fault.  It's Joe Biden's.  He set the inflation meter on 10 and then hid the key with the Epstein files, so you can see the problem.

It's not like an illegal war we're losing or tariffs had anything to do with that.

Governor Gordon and Cynthia Lummis came out against the Trump Russian diesel plan.  Barrasso, who is now a toady, predictably supported it.  Hageman when asked about it cited regulations in the US as the problem, which is absolutely and completely absurd.  She'd earlier voted against aid to Ukraine and has been in the Trump camp consistently.

By the way, the price per barrel for crude oil has gone up, as have the price of diesel futures, since Trump announced his "deal" with the Russians.

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 10, The Autarky Edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Adam Smith, Alcohol, Autarky, Chuck Gray, Economics, Ignorance, Nazi Germany, Petroleum, Stupidity, Taxes, The Second Trump Administration, Wharton, Wilhelm Röpke, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

25th Amendment Watch, 25th Edition and CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 161st Edition. The Time is Running Out Edition.

In looking for a photo to caption this, I found this fascinating World War Two (apparently) vintage Heuer advertisement featuring Swiss soldiers all synchronizing their watches.  Heuer is a Swiss company but was not part of the "Dirty Dozen" that sort of ignored Swiss neutrality laws in order to export watches to the British Army.  Fascinating advertisement.  Posted under the Fair Use exception.

October 4, 2026

Running out of time.

We're starting a new edition of this for several reasons.

To start off with, King Donald has been in rare form the last few days.  Whether these qualify as 25th Amendment events or not is another matter. They probably don't.  But they do show the titanic weirdness of the man.

The first was a long rambling post about trying to enact Permanent Daylight Savings Time.

Personally, I hate Daylight Savings Time and I always have.  It was a stupid idea when it came into being, and it still is.  I'd like to see it go.  But King Donald and some Republicans, and probably some Democrats as well, would like for it to be adopted year around.

This is dumb, and yes that's spelled with a "b".

The reason it's dumb is that the sun rises and sets when it does with no regard to the opinions and musings of man.  In real terms, there's a real high noon, and a real midnight. The clock should be based on that.

The stupidity of Daylight Savings Time somehow accepts the concept that by moving the arms of the clock, it somehow changes that.  What Daylight Savings Time is, in real terms, is Go To Work An Hour Earlier.  Apparently we're dim enough, however, to accept that if we pretend to move the arms of the clock, we're still going to work at 8:00 a.m. in the summer, rather than 7:00 a.m.

We're not.

Anyhow, Donalds wants the bill to pass.   If it does, at least it looks like the 119th Congress did something.  Here's his long screed:

As can be seen, Trump is personally blaming this on Tom Cotton, which isn't fair.  What this means is there aren't enough votes in the Senate to take it up and pass it, even if a majority in the Senate are in favor of it.

Cotton's reasons:

Cotton has been a pretty consistent back of Trump's all along, so this is really ironic.  He's getting stabbed in the back by the guy he supported, which isn't surprising.  Everything Trump touches gets destroyed. 

Cotton's reasons here are solid.  Everything he's stated here is correct.  I can personally recall the 1974 experiment with this.

Sunday, January 6, 1974. Messing with the time.

In a bizarre response to the ongoing oil crisis, the U.S. began a trial of year around daylight savings time.

I recall it well, as when I walked to grade school in the morning, it was pretty dark.  We still walked, however.

What I noted there has been noted by supporters of King Donald's proposal.  Kids don't walk to school as much as the culture's addiction to laziness and automotive transportation actually increased since 1974.

Anyhow, what are the reasons for this absurdity?

Golfing and tennis.  Oh, and "farmers want it".

On that last item, farmers don't care one whit about this.  They're going to work when they are going to work.  DST doesn't change that at all.

Indeed, I've always heard the justification for DST being the one that Trump is giving.  You can go out and play sports when you get home from work as you'll have more daylight.

M'eh.

The reason, anyhow, this appears here is that Trump posted, and therefore wrecked, Cotton's cell phone number. That's really mean.  Only a self centered asshole would do a thing like that.  Trump's been asked to justify it in a press interview and just repeats his reasons that he wants the vote.

Personally, and I have no way of really knowing this, I think he wants it as the Republican 119th Congress has done nothing and now we're headed into a general election with inflation ramping up, an  illegal war going on, and none of the list of usual suspects excuses working anymore.

Also for the same reason, Trump's been running around giving campaign rallies to the true believers.  I haven't tracked where he's been going, but I've read that it tends to be in places where there's a lot of MAGA.  Quietly some candidates in battleground states are trying to distance themselves from him.  Anyhow, at one such rally Trump, who didn't graduate from Wharton with honors and never appeared on the Dean's list, stated:

I am a person with very high intelligence—one of the highest IQs in the world.

Okay, this is at the really weird level.

Generally really intelligent people don't run around saying "I'm high IQ".  Trump says it all the time, which suggests that he's really insecure about his intelligence.

Frankly, at this point, if anyone believes he's super intelligent, they're probably either stupid or incredibly gullible.  MAGA by now is the bottom of the bell curve in intelligence and ignorance.

What's going on with the 25th?

It's rather clear at this point that my prediction that the 25th Amendment would be applied after the first 18 months of Trump's illegal occupation of the Oval Office were off the mark.  This probably should be regarded as a failed prediction.

Having said that, I saw somebody hinting at the possibility that their similar thought might not be.

I think it's a long shot right now, but there's still a chance, and a not insubstantial one, that a backroom plot, basically, remains in place.  The same basic parameters would be in operation, replacing Trump with J.D. Vance before the 2028 election.

My thought was that it would occur before the 2026 election in order that the GOP had a chance to save itself before that election. Clearly that was wrong.  But that in and of itself might be part of what's going on.  The various factions in the Trump backrooms that supported his campaign and which boost their pet theories on everything may very well have realized that the results would be unpopular.  Economic radicals behind the tariffs, for instance, likely were aware that they'd be hugely disruptive.  They may have given up the 2026 midterms from the onset.  They likely didn't appreciate that Trump would start a war with Iran, but most of the rest of the stuff Trump has done has backers within the administration.  All of those people also know that they're in the minority in terms of American culture so Trump is their best chance of making this stuff happen.

But, if I'm correct, at some point Trump has to go and take the stench out with him.  There will come a day, and it's probably in November, when Trump will be personally blamed for what's occurred.  The Republicans are going to lose both houses of Congress in a month.  A Fall Guy will be necessary, and Trump has made himself that person.  He's even asked for people to imagine him on the ballot.

A lot of people will.

After November 3 being a Trumpite in most places will have lost its value.  A lot of the Republican politicians who have supported him all along will grow silent, or more silent than they already are.  Harriet Hageman will likely not be heard to mention his name.  John Barrasso won't either.  Poor Chuck Gray, who has campaigned more than anyone else in Wyoming on being a deep lover of all things Trump, will be lost, but even he will rally to claim that "true conservative values"  need to be defended.

Anyhow, the point is Republicans are already dog trotting away from Trump. Trump is, at the same time, stabbing some of them in the back.  Chip Roy got it, and now Cotton is getting it.  After the vote in November, there will be very little reason to be a Trump backer in the GOP, save for being in a district of diehard MAGAs, which is a declining population.

The National Conservatives and Christian Nationalist still need Trump, however.  Nobody else is going to help them get in their worldview.  They can sort of home that Vance will, but Vance is too savvy to adopt anything fully that's going to wipe out his hopes of being President.

And hence the gamble.

Right now, it may well be the case that NatCons and Christian Nationalist are seeing how far they can have Trump carry on as a sort of dictator until it's too late, and Vance's chances in 2028 are destroyed.  That may have already occured.  Letting that occur might be one reason that Marco Rubio hasn't acted.  But my guess is that they're riding along and just don't quite know where that point is.

It might be coming very soon.  If Trump makes an effort to steal the 2026 midterms, and he will, that might present the opportunity.  If it isn't taken then, it has to be taken some time in 2027.  2028 will probably be too late.

October 10, 2026

This man is a titanic narcissist and deeply mentally ill.

Trump called Letitia James a "dog".

James has been a controversial Attorney General for the State of New York.  She went after Trump some time ago unsuccessfully.  I don't know what brought her back to mind for Trump, but she's been in the news recently over the Cornell rape story.  I'll have an item on that shortly, but in a comment he noted he feels "badly" for the seven men accused.

Eh?

It's hard to ignore that Trump is rapy wealthy men's best friend.

October 12, 2026

And you know what they're doing? They go straight down, you know, you can make those drill bits talk. You can make 'em sing, you can make them go, they go down. New York's over here, Pennsylvania-- they go down and they take a sharp left. And they suck our oil out. Can you believe it? Lines of different states, and you'll see one has Cadillacs, because they like Cadillacs better than they like Mercedes, but one has an Escalade, and one has a 50 year old Chevy. And you're talking about 3 ft. It's a line that goes right up. One has some beautiful drilling plants, and one has no drilling plants, it's got no money, it's got poverty.

Donald Trump.

This is a statement, I believe, on horizontal drilling.  It's posted as an example of his rambling speech.  This was just delivered over the weekend.

Cont:

Regarding the supposed agreement to cease hitting energy targets:

Reporter: You said Russia and Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire but both sides say they have not. 

Trump: They agree. You know why? Because I said you agree. That’s why. They agreed because I said they agreed.

Well, they didn't agree.  Apparently King Donald's word doesn't mean that much.

Related threads:

Daylight Savings Time, Dangers, and Crabbiness.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Agriculture, children, Daylight Savings Time, Economics, Growing up in the 1970s, Harriet Hageman, nature, Wyoming

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 160th Edition. On being a worthless sycophant

Labels: 2020s, 2026, 2026 Election, Cynthia Lummis, Donald Trump, Republican Party, The Second Trump Administration, Wyoming, Zeitgeist

25th Amendment Watch, 24th Edition. He's crying for help, or completely insane.

Labels: 25th Amendment Watch List, Cowards, Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, John Barrasso, megalomania, Mental Health, Mike Johnson, New Mexico, The Madness of King Donald, Xi Jinping