Category: Politics

The Lethal Consequences for Women of Trump’s Suspending Foreign Aid

Waist up portrait of young African American doctor consulting female patient using digital tablet in clinic setting

Yesterday, in a 6-3 vote, liberal members of the court dissenting, the US Supreme Court granted an emergency stay of a lower court decision mandating that the Trump administration disburse the $4 billion dollars in foreign aid approved by Congress.

While the Court’s decision isn’t a final one, the funds must be spent before the end of the fiscal year, endangering their being ever dispensed.

The Court’s decision violates the right of Congress to legislate the nation’s purse, as granted by the Constitution.

The consequences from the holdup are lethal, especially for women in developing nations.

In Uganda, 88 teachers have been dismissed and thousands of students have dropped out, the majority of them girls. In Uganda, only a quarter of remaining students are females.

Early sell off of daughters as young as thirteen is increasingly common, as families seek to buttress income through dowries, consequent with the government’s reduction in food subsidies.

As is, numerous African women have been raped by warring militants, especially in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rape victims face social stigma and diminished prospects of marriage. The
administration’s policies only add to their plight.

Let me tell you what’s happened in Lesotho, whose primary industry is textiles, its workforce 80% female. Due to Trump’s tariffs and a decrease in aid, orders have dried-up, resulting in mass layoffs.

Across Africa, reduced employment impacts health, imperiling the progress made against AIDS/STD. Most health care workers are women. It used to be that women could access an HIV test, averaging 12 cents a test. With suspension of aid, that option has virtually disappeared.

Pap smears are now largely unavailable; the fallout, cervical cancer rivals maternal mortality.

African children, many of them already undernourished, stunted in growth and suffering mental retardation, face the bleakest of futures.

Some women may resort to transactional sex as means to economic survival, increasing health risk.

With the pervasive suspension of birth control assistance, women lose the ability to limit family size. The average family size in Africa is 4.5. Still more in the Sahel. By the century’s turn, Nigeria alone will have a projected 750 million population.

Poverty is an enemy of the social fabric, contributing to domestic violence.

Poverty contributes to crime, much of it food theft.

Poverty increases migration pressures and with dislocation, still more violence, as is occurring in South Africa, migrants resented as competitors.

Menaced by climate warming, which Trump calls a hoax, Africans are confronted with daily survival made worse by prolonged droughts and tropical diseases.

Trump, however, dismisses developing nations as “shithole countries,” his racism creating a vast milieu of unprecedented suffering.

I’ve largely centered on Africa, but its experience is reenacted in other developing countries as well.

Women, tragically, are Trump’s primary victims.

rj

Ernest and Eloquent: Kimmel Returns

By any measure, Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue last night following several days of suspension from America’s TV screens, gracious and moving, reconciliatory and earnest, may well represent a turning point in returning our nation back to sanity and preserving what distinguishes America from other countries.

We have a constitution, though not always adhered to, that remains the touchstone of our nation, latent with promise of “liberty and justice for all.”

Our Founding Fathers got it right with the Constitution, knowing firsthand the myriad dangers imposed by despotic government, leading to a violent seven year war of confrontation.

Credit them with foresight to intuit the latent dangers of the new nation lapsing into the old tyrannies, designing a Constitution of checks and balances, supplemented by the Bill of Rights that includes the First Amendment, America’s warranty of the citizenry’s right to to be heard.

Kimmel exercised that warranty last night, and we should all be grateful. I had begun to worry we might never see an election in 2028. Kimmel gives me hope.

Engraved on America’s Liberty Bell are these words: “Proclaim Liberty thro’ all the Land to all the Inhabitants thereof.”

Again, Jimmy, our abundant thanks.

rj

On the Other Hand: Reminiscence of Charlie Kirk

We’ve been hearing a great deal about Charlie Kirk in the aftermath of his assassination, much of it pejorative in public media—and in some cases, disturbingly celebratory—even from a few of my own friends on Facebook.

Whatever one’s politics, Kirk consistently embraced conversation across divides, something rare in today’s climate of weaponized rhetoric on both right and left—rhetoric that too often spills over into violence.

I’m reminded of my own university experience decades ago at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, when state police were brought in after radicals seized several buildings. Over lunch one day, a friend who later became a professor at UC Davis told me bluntly, “blood was needed to prevail.”

Kirk, however controversial his views, waded into the near-universal tide of leftist polemic across university campuses. He did so not with violence but with debate—introducing new lanes of conversation and allowing dissident voices to be heard.

Journalist and bestselling author Michael Easter (The Comfort Crisis), himself a staunch liberal, shared this reflection on his encounter with Kirk:

A years ago, I got a message from Charlie Kirk. He wanted me to come on his podcast.

All I knew about him then was that he was a right-wing political commentator.

I don’t publicly discuss politics because my books cover health and the human experience, which is universal. So I asked my publicist—who is extremely progressive—if I should go on.

“Do it,” she said. “If politics comes up, steer it back to health.”

Charlie didn’t ask me a single political question. He was exceptionally kind and genuinely curious about my work. He had a better reading of my book than nearly any other interviewer, and he drew out faith-based parallels I’d never considered. That actually deepened my own understanding of my work. He mentioned my book far more than he had to.

I’ve been on big podcasts with meditation and self-help gurus who weren’t a fraction as present, kind, and curious as Charlie Kirk.

Our conversation changed how I see public figures. The 20-second clips and 280-character hot takes we see in our media ecosystem don’t capture the full breadth, depth, and humanity of a person. I now have no hesitations talking to anyone.

I respect Charlie as a curious thinker and fellow human. I respect his devotion to his faith and family. His willingness to talk with anyone was inspiring, unique, and beneficial. I’m sad he’s gone (Substack, September 13, 2025).

Easter’s words remind me of John Stuart Mill’s enduring warning against censorship:

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; if the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; and if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error (On Liberty).

rj

 

 

A Heinous Crime That Could Have Been Prevented

It had been the end of a long day when 23 year old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zartuska boarded Charlotte’s Lynx Blue Line train at 9:46 on August 22, 2025.

Also boarding the train, but evading paying for his ticket, was Decarlos Brown, Jr., a homeless man with fourteen run-ins with the police, awaiting trial for a new offense.

In four minutes, Iryna, who had fled the violence of the Ukraine conflict for a better life in America, would be dead, stabbed three times in the neck while looking at her cellphone by Brown, who sat behind her.

She died almost instantly.

Still wielding a bloody pocket knife, Brown was heard repeatedly shouting, “I got that white girl.”

Video captured the killing.

Brown, 34, has been charged with first degree murder.

In 2014, he was sentenced to prison for armed robbery and released in September, 2020.

In February, 2021, he was arrested for assaulting his sister, leaving her with minor injuries.

A few weeks later, he was arrested for injury to private property and trespassing.

In July 2022, he was arrested for a domestic disturbance.

Shortly after, he was arrested for injury to personal property and trespassing.

Brown’s criminal history is lengthy, reaching back to when he was a minor.

He has a documented history of mental illness. After the armed robbery, his aggressiveness intensified, resulting in his mother having him committed under court order for psychiatric observation—the diagnosis: schizophrenia.

Following his release, his aggressiveness increased still further and his mother ordered him to leave the household.

A few weeks before murdering Zarutzka, police detained Brown for misusing 911.

Despite all of this, he remained free to walk Charlotte’s streets.

Subsequently, Magistrate Teresa Stokes allowed him freedom from incarceration in exchange for his written promise to show up for a later hearing.

In a July 22 continuance hearing on Brown’s 911 misuse, judge Roy Wiggins ordered a forensic evaluation.

Unfortunately, he did not detain Brown in the meantime, a mistake with lethal consequence four weeks later.

As for the evaluation, it never happened.

In the aftermath, some on the Left argued that Brown was as much a victim of a system that failed as was Iryna. In turn, they initiated a GoFundMe account that raised $75,000 dollars to defray his legal expenses as part of the “fight against the racism and bias against our people.”

GoFundMe pulled the account.

Iryna’s murder became politicized, Trump labeling Brown a “lunatic.” Democrats, in turn, accused Trump of exploiting the tragedy for political gain.

Otherwise, Democrats have been largely silent about the murder.

In fairness, North Carolina governor Josh Stein (D) did speak out, denouncing the crime as senseless and calling for a greater police presence.

For many Democrats, however, the story didn’t fit their narrative.

Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles commented that the Charlotte transportation was safe, “by and large,” despite a recent survey reporting just 37% of Charlotte residents consider the Charlotte Area Transit System safe.

It can be argued that Progressives share responsibility for people like Brown being on the streets, abetted by black leadership and liberal media frequently engaging in racial framing that rationalizes black criminality as the offspring of white racism.

Many on the right fault Progressive advocacy of cashless bail, reduced incarceration, expunging felony records; and last, but not least, defunding the police, constitute a litany of liberal efforts more focused on criminals than the law-abiding.

Apart from the Washington Post, liberal news media, by and large, did not report the murder, consequently censoring the public’s right to know through omission, a noticeable detour from its intense coverage of the subway death of Jordan Neely by Daniel Perry, a white man.

Among media not reporting the story,

The New York Times
CNN
NPR
USA Today
Reuters
Axios
ABC News
PBS
MSNBC

(CNN did finally reference the crime, but only after the video’s release on September 5, devoting a two minute blurb to the story in its morning show).

Even Wikipedia has been caught up in the frey, one of its editors calling for the deletion of the posting titled “Killing of Iryna Zarutska.” A box message, later deleted, appeared above the post: “An editor has nominated this article for deletion.”

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sander believes Wikipedia is now “too left” and “unreliable” (Manhattan Institute).

Brown, obviously mentally ill, should have been removed from the streets long ago in the interest of public safety.


The Brown case is not unprecedented when it comes to the American justice system’s failing the mentally ill, many of them homeless.

As Charlotte council member Edwin Peacock put it,
“If you’re constantly arresting people and they keep coming back out on the streets, what type of message is that sending?”

In 2020, former Democrat governor Roy Cooper, now running for the senate, established the “Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice,” co-chaired by then Attorney General and current Governor Josh Stein. It recommended “reimagining public safety” to “promote diversion and other alternatives to arrest,” “deemphasize” some felony crimes, prioritize “restorative justice,” and “eliminate cash bail” for many crimes (The Department of Justice (September 9, 2025).

In 2020, Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings declared  “law enforcement, in general, is based on racism” and their department can “probably slow down” on “discretionary arrests.”

In 2020, Democrat State Senator Mujtaba Mohammed, who represents Charlotte,  declared “independence from rogue police” (DOJ, September 9, 2025).

As I write, the Department of Justice has announced Brown will face federal charges, making him eligible for the death penalty. In a statement, Attorney General Pam Bondi depicted Iryna Zarutska “as a young woman living the American dream. Her horrific murder is a direct result of failed soft-on-crime policies that put criminals before innocent people.”

Ironically, the media is now weighing in. Where have they been? Is it the White House intervention and possibility of the death penalty that motivates this sudden rush to reporting in?

News comes that Paramount has now appointed an ombudsman to review bias at CBS news.

As for our courts, my thoughts drift to the late, gifted satirist Tom Wolfe of “Radical Chic” fame. His acclaimed Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) got it right—America’s highly politicized, often incompetent judicial system, is a sham.

rj

Classified Secrets, Political Scores: Trump and Bolton Revisited

The recent raid on the home and office of former National Security Advisor John Bolton, ostensibly to search for classified documents, reiterates a familiar narrative about Donald Trump’s abuse of power.

The raid is seen by many as a form of political vengeance against a former critic, ironically mirroring the very charges on which Trump himself was indicted for illegally possessing classified documents after leaving office, some of which reportedly contained nuclear secrets.

Bolton, in turn, exacted his own form of revenge by publishing his 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened, despite Trump’s feverish attempts to prevent its publication.

The book is intriguing for its revelations, among them, that Trump expressed his surprise to learn that the U.K. was a nuclear power and his confusion as to whether Finland was a part of Russia.

Further, that he asked China President Xi Jinping’s help with his 2020 reelection campaign by increasing US imports of agriculture products, while expressing approval of China’s concentration camps for Uygur Muslims and willingness to overlook the Tiananmen Square massacre and other civil rights issues.

Bolton says that Trump pressured Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens, meanwhile withholding $400 million in military aid.

He hasn’t changed any, as his recent fawning over Putin in Alaska clearly demonstrates—incompetent, vindictive, narcissistic, autocratic and worse, willing to sell out his country to secure his personal interests.

–rj

James Dobson Dies: A Legacy of Hate

James Dobson, the evangelical founder of Focus on the Family, and advisor to three presidents (Reagan and the Bushes), has died at age 89.

I do not mourn this disseminator of hate—he denounced President Clinton yet supported convicted sexual felon Donald Trump.

He vilified gays, same-sex marriage, and transgender equality, branding the gay rights movement “a particularly evil lie of Satan.”

In 2004, he absurdly warned that legalizing same-sex marriage would open the door to “marriage between a man and his donkey.”

His propagating “conversion therapy” continues to do irreparable harm.

At its peak, his radio broadcasts aired on 1,500 stations, reaching some 500,000 listeners weekly, while his 70 books, many still in print, sold an estimated 50 million copies.

He died a millionaire.

rj

No Longer a Democrat. Nor a Republican Either

I’m registered as a Democrat, but am switching to Independent. While an incipient coalition of congressional Democrats has begun voicing opposition to sending arms to Israel—given its genocide Gaza policies— it’s far from enough.

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich aptly expresses my view of our current political morass: “There is no longer a Democratic Party as such. There is a big financial machine called the Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee. On the Republican side, there’s a bunch of absolute zombies that follow Donald Trump. That’s what we have today. We don’t have two governing parties as we did before.”

But I’m also troubled by the increasing infiltration of Leftists into the party such as AOC and Mamdani, who some have hailed as “the future of the party,” active members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

As I write, 250 DSA members, running largely as Democrats, now hold office at federal, state, or local levels. Read its platform. Advocating seizing the means of production, defunding police, open borders, dismantling our armed forces, should send goosebumps up your spine. Both parties must abandon the peripheries and embrace the center.

The polls are clear: It’s what Americans want.

rj

America’s 250th Birthday: Reflections

Next year, America will mark its 250th birthday. Unfortunately, this historic milestone is likely to be politicized, with competing narratives of our past reflecting the deep polarization of our present.

But this need not be our path. If we are to bridge rival ideologies and transcend partisanship, we must come together—not in denial of our differences, but in honest recognition of both our shared ideals and our collective shortcomings.

As true patriots, we can celebrate the birth of a free nation while also acknowledging the ways in which we have fallen short of the Declaration’s enduring promise: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Our nation was forged in both hope and violence. The challenge before us is not only to remember, but to reckon. To share openly what we love about America—and what we do not. And to commit ourselves to remedying the ills that still confront us.

History taught from the periphery, filtered through rigid ideology or simplified into monolithic narratives, is intrinsically dangerous. It rests on a priori assumptions and is too often promulgated with dogmatism. True understanding requires nuance, humility, and courage.

In a very real sense, our genesis as a nation continues. That reality carries both hope and foreboding—hope, if we can get the conversation right; foreboding, if we fail to heed the lessons of our past. As Jefferson warned: “When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.” Politicians, take heed.

With this in mind, I eagerly await Ken Burns’ six-part PBS documentary on the American Revolution this November. It may be a vital first step in rekindling the national conversation we so urgently need—and in recovering the promise of the American dream.

RJoly

The Epstein Files: The Hoax Within a Hoax

The news media has found its current raison d’être in Trump’s reneging his campaign pledge to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, leading to myriad conspiracy theories.

This happens, of course, whenever a tourniquet gets applied to information sources. My own thinking is that Trump’s pledge was a calculated “hoax” of his own weave in which he’s now entangled.

As Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s high profile defense lawyer, informs us, “I was Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer. I know the facts, some of which I can’t disclose because it is privileged or subject to court-imposed sealing orders. But what I can disclose makes several important things clear: that Epstein never created a client list. The FBI interviewed alleged victims who named several ‘clients.’ These names have been redacted. The courts have also sealed negative information about some of the accusers to protect them. Neither the Justice Department nor FBI interviewed alleged victims who named several ‘clients.’ I know who they are. They don’t include any current officeholders. We don’t know whether the accusations are true.”

What remains troubling is that key portions of this testimony—especially the names—were redacted. As a result, we may never learn the identities of the public figures who may have participated in Epstein’s trafficking ring, one of whose victims died by suicide in April.

As for the alleged thousands of extant videos showing public figures engaged in sexual activity, these claims appear to trace back to Attorney General Pam Bondi. She, too, promised to release Epstein-related materials supposedly sitting on her desk. Yet, like Dershowitz, PBS investigators found no evidence such videos exist (AI Overview)

What cannot be easily dismissed is the disturbing nature of Epstein’s death:

His cellmate had been removed shortly beforehand.

Guards did not carry out their cell surveillance rounds.

Two minutes and fifty-three seconds of the cell video were erased (wired, July 15, 2025).

All of this won’t deter the politicians and media from churning their conspiracies. It makes for great political theater. Politics, of course, has never been blameless of gamesmanship, frequently without limits.

House speaker Mike Johnson’s adjourning the House early for a six-week hiatus serves only to thicken the conspiracy broth.

rj

A President Unhinged: Menace To All


The stock market went crashing yesterday, precipitated by Trump’s glibly informing press that a recession may well happen.

Apparently, he’s blown it with the Ayatollah as well, urging renewed negotiations to limit Iran’s march to a nuclear arsenal or face a military response, resulting in the Ayatollah’s rebuff that Iran won’t negotiate with bullies.

Ignoring the consensus of the science community, he’s branded environmentalists as “lunatics,” caring more about “a half inch sea rise” than the threat of nuclear war. It seems a favorite term of his, used previously on Democrats critical of DOGE.

He’s even got Israel rattled, calling Hamas leaders with whom he’s been negotiating, “really nice guys.”

His most shameful moment, however, was declaring Ukraine’s valiant Zelensky a “dictator,” resonating Putin’s lies.

My wife, an ardent Trump resistor, who’s joined protest marches and calls the White House daily, tells me Trump suffers from “diarrhea of the mouth,” reviving a once widely used phrase of unknown origin for political loudmouths drawn to impulsive, insensitive utterance. It deserves reviving.

And yet it doesn’t go far enough.

What we have on our hands is a full-blown case of diplomatic dysentery, and America left cleaning up the mess.

Trump’s words are as reckless as his policies, grenades lobbed into the world order, heedless of the consequences.

Mind you, Trump’s dangerous—no less a menace than Putin, Xi, or Kim Yong-Un.

In just a week, he’s managed to offend Israel, embolden Iran, undermine Ukraine, tank markets, and insult allies, in keeping with his penchant for blurting out half-formed nonsense in the syntax of a child.

If political lunacy exists, and it does, Americans increasingly know where to find it.