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By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. For any close observer of the MAGA movement, the last week or two has been extremely revealing. Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are telling us exactly what they intend to do if they regain power. Shredding the...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. On October 25, a category 5 hurricane, Otis, caused catastrophic damage to Acapulco and surrounding areas on the west coast of Mexico. Otis had winds of 165 miles per hour. It left Acapulco looking like a...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. I would bet that if you asked most regular people who Leonard Leo was, the overwhelming majority would say they never heard of the guy. Leo first came to public attention when former President Donald Trump was...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. With so much news going on, one story did not receive the coverage it should have. The Biden administration agreed to settle an ACLU class action lawsuit, Ms. L v ICE, that will prohibit any future administration...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. In November, the Supreme Court will be hearing a case, United States v Rahimi, about whether the Second Amendment invalidates a federal law that prohibits possession of a firearm by an individual subject to a...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. I expect that many Americans remain uncomfortable with the notion that Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are fascist. The word “fascist” is a political football. Both sides of the political spectrum toss it around...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. The stories about corruption at the U.S. Supreme Court keep mushrooming. We first heard about Justice Clarence Thomas accepting expensive gifts from billionaire Harlan Crow that Thomas never reported. After Thomas...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. Lately I have been reading Naomi Klein’s brilliant new book “Doppelgänger.” It offers some acute analysis about the increasing role of conspiracy theories in our lives, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Without...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. There are periods in American history that don’t get much attention. One such period is the 1840s-1850s. Although it is not remembered now, there was an ongoing battle before the Civil War about the matter of...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. Many commentators have remarked upon the multitude of lawyers intertwined inside the political and business dealings of Donald Trump. When Jack Smith indicted Trump in Washington D.C., at least five of his six...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. September 11 marks the 50th anniversary of the military coup that overthrew Chile’s democratically-elected government led by Salvador Allende. It is the lesser known 9/11 but one that also had huge consequences. The...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. We are well over a year out from the 2024 presidential contest in November 2024 and most political commentators are assuming the race will be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. That is the conventional wisdom, but...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. In his book, “How The Word Is Passed,” the writer Clint Smith says that the history of the United States is the history of slavery. It was central to our American story. Of course, in my own educational experience,...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. While I am not an election predictor, I did notice the recent New York Times/Siena College poll taken before Donald Trump’s latest criminal indictment that indicated that he and President Biden are in a tight race...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. More than any single case, the biggest story about the Supreme Court has been the exposure of its blatant corruption and the failure of Chief Justice John Roberts to respond in any meaningful way. The ProPublica...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. Instead of supporting a ceasefire and peace talks, the Biden Administration continues to pursue an extremely hawkish approach to the war in Ukraine. This is exemplified in one particularly disturbing decision which...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. Although this association has rarely been made, the similarities between the 1920s Ku Klux Klan and Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement are marked. Both movements have preached the centrality of...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. For any student of the U.S. Supreme Court, the last term was anything but uneventful. The decisions crashed down and there was none bigger than the Court’s new decision on affirmative action, ending race-conscious...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. Last year, as we watched the U.S. Supreme Court destroy reproductive freedom for women, more attention was paid to the outcome of the Dobbs abortion case than the Court’s reasoning and justification. Justice Samuel...

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot. Recently my old friend Rusty sent me a video clip from a speech President John F. Kennedy gave 60 years ago. Given at the commencement ceremony at American University on June 10, 1963, the speech became famously...