The 25th Amendment Watch Eighteenth Edition. The devalued currency edition.

Trump is seriously seeking to have Congress amend the law so that his demented visage can appear on a $250.00 bill.

This is completely sick.

Or evil.

On the sick item, a recent video shows Donald Trump getting off of Marine Corps 1 (which frankly shouldn't be a thing) and veering all over as he walks.

FTD is notoriously hard to diagnose while a person is alive.  It's slow moving as a rule and the person afflicted with it often just seems weird and mean before it's really advanced.  It's horrific to watch up close.  Pneumonia ends up being what kills most people with FTD.

A person with the affliction shows these signs.

Symptoms of FTD start slowly and progress steadily, and in some cases, quickly. They vary from person to person. They depend on the areas of the brain involved. These are common symptoms:

Behavior or personality changes, such as swearing, stealing, more interest in sex, or a decline in hygiene habits

Socially inappropriate, impulsive, or repetitive behaviors

Impaired judgment

Apathy

Lack of empathy

Decreased self awareness

Loss of interest in normal daily activities

Emotional withdrawal from others

Loss of energy and drive

Trouble using or understanding language, such as a hard time naming objects, expressing words, or knowing the meanings of words

Hesitation when speaking

Less frequent speech

Easily distracted

Trouble planning and organizing

Frequent mood changes

Agitation

Growing dependence

Some people have physical symptoms, such as:

Tremors

Muscle spasms or weakness

Stiffness

Poor coordination or balance

Trouble swallowing

Mental health symptoms also may occur. These include hallucinations or delusions. But these are not as common as other changes.

This is what Trump appears to have.

It if isn't this, then he's otherwise severely mentally ill, or actually seeking to sabotage the country for some reason, with being a foreign agent the only good explanation.  This would fit into that, as it would seriously impair the value of U.S. currency.

The good news, if there is any, is that this would take an act of Congress and it appears to be unlikely that smiling sycophant Bessant aside, anyone is going to be able to convince a sufficient number of Congressmen to go along with this, particularly by July 4, 2026.

May 31, 2026

The "yips"?

Trump spent last night absolutely freaking out.  It was an endless stream of bizarre tweets.

The man is clearly mentally unstable.  Failure to do something about it by Congress is abject cowardice.  

Yes, Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso, this means you.  Have some coffee, or take a belt, or whatever it is that you do, and find your spine.

June 4, 2026

Marco Rubio was confronted with video of an obviously sleeping Trump sitting next to a yapping Marco Rubio and denied that he'd ever seen Trump asleep.

Rubio is a liar, and was laughably exposed as such.

June 5, 2026

Yesterday:

Direct link in of Reuters photo, fair use as its the only way to depict this.

Anyone not supporting Trump's immediate removal now is either; 1) mentally unstable, 2) so dependent on his political largess they're willing to see the country destroyed, or 3) a rank cowards.

In an event, history will judge ever single one you bastards as worthless pieces of trash who hurt their country.

June 6, 2026

Trump's cognitive impairment endangers us all

It's undeniable if you actually watch him.

Justin Glawe

June 8, 2026

In spite of myself, I listed to the Meet the Press interview of Donny.

True to form, he got frustrated when the reporter wouldn't accept his obvious lies, had a tantrum, and walked out.

This demented toddler is who you are worshipping, Chuck Gray and John Barrasso.

June 9, 2026

A demented King Donny, acknowledging that he acted like a spoiled baby, blamed his performance on Meet the Press on the rain.

Yes, that's right, he went into an unhinged tirade due to, he says, rain.

On other Trump news, albeit not quite in this category,. the "let them eat cake" attitude of King Donny was evident when he attended a basketball game at Madison Square Gardens with his granddaughter.  His presence proved to be a massive disruption to the area and actually had a negative impact on local taverns in the area which would normally be full after a championship game.  Trump claimed there were more cheers than boos.

On today's entries, the former shows his growing insanity, but the latter merely his rudeness.  He left the game early.  He appeared to fall asleep during it.

Last edition:

The 25th Amendment Watch List, Seventeenth Edition: The Doctors are In.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, 25th Amendment Watch List, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, James Schlesinger, Marco Rubio, Medicine, Pete Hegseth, Richard Nixon, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration

Wednesday, June 9, 1926. The Kingdom of Afghanistan founded.

The Kingdom of Afghanistan came into existence when Emir Amanullah Khan Barakzai of the British protectorate of Afghanistan declared the independence with British approval and himself king.

A  heavy handed ruler, and also a dedicated reformer, his rule faced continual opposition and rebellions and he'd only retain power into 1929.  He died in exile in Switzerland in 1960.  The kingdom he founded, however, lasted until 1973.

Last edition:

1926 Mobile Telephone

Labels: 1920s, 1926, Blog Mirror, Communications, Railroads, telephone

Friday, June 9, 1876. Battle of Prairie Dog Creek.

The Battle of Prairie Dog Creek, also known as the Skirmish at Tongue River Heights, or the Battle of the Tongue River, occurred at the confluence of Prairie Dog Creek and the Tongue River primarily in Wyoming Territory, but also in part of Montana.

Crooks command was camped on the creek when it was attacked by a large party of Sioux, which engage them with volley fire.  Crook had his men mount an attack in response, which pushed the Sioux back three times before they disengaged.  Two Sioux warriors were killed in the battle.

The Sioux goal had been to steal the Army remuda.

Last edition:

Thursday, June 8, 1876. "It's Harder Not To: 1876 in Deadwood" First issue of the Deadwood Pioneer.

Labels: Blog Mirror, South Dakota (Deadwood), The Press

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military. Paring the list, much ado about nothing?

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military.: The Department of Defense scaled back its list of recognized religions.   There were 211, now there are 31.  Here is the full list: Agnostic...

The big flap over the Pentagon's new list of religions, mostly focused on the LDS insisting it be recognized as a Christian religions which at least conventional Christianity holds that it is not, is obscuring the fact that frankly the list may not matter all that much.

All the list does is to provide some guidelines on anticipating the patrol needs of troops.   T/he prior list was so large there was no way that it was useful.  The original list, Protestant, Catholic and Hebrew, was probably too narrow, in the modern world, to be useful.

Arguably the current list is too big.  It'd make more sense, actually, to have Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Judaism, Islam and Other.  Every one of those categories, it might be noted, has various groups within it.  Probably only Catholic expresses a singular religious group, but even there, there are a lot of Catholic rites.  The Orthodox are a collection of Orthodox churches and have a major division between Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox.  

Anyhow, that's probably more useful.

Of note, listing religions isn't an endorsement of them.  

About 70% of all service members are some sort of Protestant.  20% are Catholic.  I've given the figures already, but the number of LDS troops is very small, although in National Guard units from Utah the opposite would be true.  At least one religion on the list discourages its members from joining the military and last had any presence in the military when there was conscription in place.  

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military. The back currents of religion in the Trump administration and the New Apostolic Reformation.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military.: The Department of Defense scaled back its list of recognized religions.   There were 211, now there are 31.  Here is the full list: Agnostic...

So, in our last installment of this, we sort of defended Pete Hegseth's Department of Defense.  But we have to ask, is there more to this story?

Probably not.  The classification is correct.  Mormons are in fact not Christians in the fashion that Christians would define the faith.  Mormons of course disagree, which is there right.

And some feel that more is going on.

Dem Saints

@LDS_Dems

Under new military guidance from Pete Hegseth, the LDS Church is officially classified as a non-Christian religion. My fellow Saints, you can love these Christian nationalists all you want, but they will not love you back.

6:13 PM · Jun 5, 2026

·

1.5M

Views

"Dem Saints" is a really good and irreverent group made up of Mormon Democrats.

Yes, there are Mormon Democrats.

Branding their irreverence is the use of the "Dem Saints" name, which is really borrowing from Louisiana Catholics, whom minstrels' lampooned with the line "Who dat, who dat, who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?"  In the second half of the 20th Century it got picked up as a line boosting the New Orleans Saints football club.

That there are Democratic Mormons shouldn't be surprising.  In most regions of the country they are actually a little known faith, but where they are strongly represented they are in all walks of life and all stations of education.  Most Mormons are fairly conservative of a rule, but in no way shape or form does that mean they're all part of the far right.  "Dem Saints" are probably what used to be regarded as middle of the road Republicans in the West.  Of those I know fairly well, all are in the GOP but none of them are in the far right.

Dem Saints aren't the only ones taking note of this. Deseret Mike Lee, whose radical right wing political positions are highly informed by his being a devout Mormon is absolutely freaking out, noting:

I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints My church membership is inextricably intertwined with my Christianity, as it is for 17 million other Latter-day Saints Regardless of what the Pentagon thinks

Last edited10:01 PM · Jun 6, 2026

·

110.9K

Views

Lee has absolutely hitched his wagon to Donald Trump.  I've written about him here before, but his views are radially different than Dem Saints, and probably for the most part radically different in terms of religious views.  We've discussed Mike Lee in that context before, and won't replough that ground, but a good guess is that Lee, like Mike Johnson and Pete Hegseth, is highly informed and often extremely motivated by a unique religious view of the United States and its mission, as he conceives of it.  He'd fit into a minority group of Mormon's in that sense, just as Hegseth and Johnson do as to Christians.  The difference here is that his view, if I'm correct, and I may not be, would be vastly different than the overwhelming majority of Americans, and probably the majority of Mormons.

Hegseth in particular has been the public face of the New Apostolic Reformation and there's no place for Mormons in it.  For that matter, there's no place for Catholics or Orthodox in it either.

The question is whether Deseret Mike is too besotted with Trump to realize that.  Based on his surprise to this reclassification, which likely isn't motivated by people like Hegseth viewing Mormons as really not counting, it would appear so.

Lee just totally freaked out and posted over 37 time over 24 hours on Twitter.  Eventually he got an audience with Trump on the telephone, and reported back.

Mike Lee

@BasedMikeLee

I just got off the phone with President Trump We discussed the Pentagon’s “Christian list” I won’t speak for him, but I’m thrilled about where this is heading We’re most fortunate that President Trump (1) loves Latter-day Saints, and (2) is our commander in chief Stay tuned

Based on that, Trump will probably issue some babbling change to the list, but the wake up call should already be there.

Trump isn't a religious man.  Trump loves himself and at this point Mormon's don't really matter to him most likely.  He shouldn't presume  that Trump "loves Latter-day Saints" or members of any other religion.  And we're not fortunate that he's the commander in chief.  If he's going to order the list changed, it's to gain a little support from a group right now that's likely shocked, and frankly to address a situation in a state, Utah, that has shown a surprising willingness at the grass roots level to rebel.

But now Lee is out there.  If his shameless sycophantly doesn't pay off, it's a lesson for people who think that Trump is carrying water for you.  He isn't, you are carrying water for him.

And in terms of the back channels in the administration, it's the view of Doug Wilson on what sort of religion the Latter Day Saints is that may matter more than what Trump thinks, who doesn't really have any deep thoughts about religion at all.