This week’s “Elie v. US” explores the authoritarian threat beneath Trump’s bonuses for military families. Plus, a case for getting rid of the Second Amendment.
Donald Trump addresses the nation on December 17, 2025.
(Doug MILLS / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)
As you know, there was another school shooting this week, this time at Brown University. The coverage has been what we’ve all come to expect: Republicans act like there’s nothing we can do about it, and Democrats make meek noises about gun control. Nothing happens, and nobody even expects anything will happen. The suspected shooter was caught, after apparently killing himself, late Thursday night.
The only thing novel about this school shooting is that it happened at Brown, an Ivy League university. I don’t know any person who would have said that getting an elite, expensive education protects people from being shot while at school, and yet, I don’t think I’m the only person who kinda, sorta privately assumed that sending your kids to elite institutions made them more safe from the violence that envelops America. I wouldn’t argue the shooting “shattered” my false sense of security, because I always knew it was a false sense. It just “reminded me” that nowhere is safe.
But feeling that nowhere is or can be safe is, indirectly, part of the problem. It is what MAGA and the NRA and the politicians running the government want us to believe. If nowhere is safe, then the Republicans are right that nothing can be done about it. If nowhere is safe, then we all just have to live like this. It makes people say, “I hope my kids don’t get shot at school,” as opposed to “I will do everything in my power to make sure my kids do not get shot at school.” It doesn’t lead to activism but to acceptance.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Schools could be safe. They are safe in pretty much every other highly industrialized country. The thing that makes our country exceptionally violent is not some unsolvable problem; it’s the Second Amendment. If Republicans say that we can’t make our country safe because of the Second Amendment, then I say we must repeal the Second Amendment.
I know that sounds impossible, both politically and culturally. To that I say, in other countries dead children at school is the thing that sounds politically and culturally impossible.
School shootings should radicalize us, not numb us.
Current Issue
The Bad and the Ugly
- The Department of Justice sued the Virgin Islands over its gun restrictions. Of course, the Republicans are interested in making this country’s “territories” as violent and unsafe as the mainland is.
- Donald Trump used the stabbing death of Rob and Michele Reiner as an opportunity to further debase his office. I will remember his comments when Trump finally dies.
- Senate Judiciary chair Chuck Grassley will not allow there to be a public hearing on the Trump administration’s murders of people on boats in the Caribbean.
- Enrollment of Black students is down at the nation’s top law schools, just as racist ghouls like Stephen Miller, Ed Blum, and Clarence Thomas wanted it to be.
- And just so you really understand: Getting into a top law school is apparently all you need to do in order to have a successful legal career. You don’t even have to, you know, do well in law school, according to the nation’s top law firms. These firms have started extending offers of full-time, six-figure jobs to students who haven’t even completed a single semester of study. Getting into a top law school is a golden ticket, and Black students are not welcome.
Inspired Takes
- Michael Harriot wrote a brilliant “preemptive statement” that officials can use for all future mass shootings. I’d call it “satire” but… it’s not. It’s just reality.
- The Nation has an exclusive interview with incoming New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. History tells us that New Yorkers inevitably end up hating their mayor, so I’m saving my own personal “hey, do you want to talk to The Nation” chip for when everybody else hates his guts.
- This cartoon that was published in The Nation about the White House ballroom really got me thinking: One of the easiest symbolic gestures that a future Democratic president can take is nuking Trump’s garish ballroom from orbit. Unfortunately, I know Democrats, and I can already anticipate the millions of excuses they’ll make for not doing that. They’ll say, “I’m focused on the people’s work, not a silly ballroom.” They’ll say that they have to follow protocols before destroying the ballroom, protocols Trump didn’t follow when he destroyed the East Wing. Then they’ll create some kind of committee or commission to try to figure out what to replace the ballroom with, and that committee will be gridlocked between people who want to restore the old East Wing, versus people who want to build something actually useful. People will complain and moan about the cost, and Congress will eventually hold oversight hearings to prevent what they’ll call a presidential boondoggle. No actual plan will be made until the Democrat is a lame-duck president, and the incoming Republican administration will just cancel those plans, AND THE BALLROOM WILL JUST KIND OF STAY THERE FOREVER. Basically, the stupid freaking ballroom will be an early, simple test of how serious the new Democratic administration is at undoing the Trump era, and I already know how they’ll fail to demolish this low-hanging fruit.
Worst Argument of the Week
Donald Trump went on television Wednesday night and shouted at the American people for 20 minutes. As usual, he made things up, bald-face lied, and mischaracterized the nature of reality. Here’s the CNN fact-check of the speech.
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Most notably, to me at least, Trump promised 1,450,000 military service members a “warrior dividend” of $1,776 (to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776), by Christmas. He said the checks were already in the mail.
They might be. Their $2.6 billion cost is just a fraction of the military budget already approved by Congress. I’m not necessarily opposed to military families’ getting a little extra cash this holiday season. They were hit hard by the government shutdown, and while my sensibilities tend toward giving people living on the margins the extra money, I don’t believe in zero-sum politics. Giving military families extra money doesn’t preclude Trump from giving working families extra money; instead, being a jackboot unsympathetic asshole precludes Trump from giving working families extra money.
However, paying the military in this way, or framing the payments in this way, is one of the most dangerous things I’ve ever heard Trump say. Yes, ever. History is literally full of dictators or would-be dictators who rose to power on the strength of private military forces who were paid by their strongman general, not the state. That made the troops loyal to their general, not the state. Indeed, having military payments controlled by the Congress or parliament, as opposed to the executive or king, is the key liberal reform that is meant to stop would-be dictators from amassing the military strength needed to overthrow republics.
Even though this money was already authorized by the state (once again, great job caving on the shutdown, Democrats), it is incredibly bad to have Trump framing the payments as the result of his largesse (no doubt his big, stupid, auto-pen signature will be on those checks as well). It purposely creates the false sense that Trump, and not the American government, is responsible for these families’ financial well-being. And Trump knows this. He’s a man who has never engendered any heartfelt loyalty, only transactional loyalty. He doesn’t earn respect; he buys it.
We have an election coming up before next Christmas. Trump just told the most powerful military on earth that if they want bonus money next season, he needs to stay in his position of unassailable power.
Of all the things that Trump has done, $1,776 checks to the military is the one that could most directly lead to an authoritarian takeover of the United States of America. The irony that it’s being framed around the Declaration of Independence will not be missed by future historians.
What I Wrote
I am deep in the weeds on a feature print piece about artificial intelligence. And since I don’t let AI do my research, I’ve been a bit busy. But a print piece I wrote about the Supreme Court’s tyrannical use of the shadow docket is available online now.
In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos
Sitting in the hospital with my wife while she was in labor with our second child, I turned on the television. For our first child, I had prepared an entire comedy routine to take her mind off of the bowling ball slowly making its way through her cervix, and… it went over like a bowling ball. Lesson learned. My plan for “Unimaginable Pain II” was just to find something for us to watch.
The television worked, but the sound did not. After some pathetic and failed attempts to fix it, we found a channel that was playing The Princess Bride. For that movie, we didn’t need the sound. For about a half hour, from when Cary Elwes confronts André the Giant through the final showdown with Wallace Shawn’s Vizzini, we just quoted the movie back and forth to each other, with her generally playing the Dread Pirate Roberts and me playing the other characters. Then, you know, she started screaming and, soon after, we had another baby.
I got to meet Rob Reiner a couple of years ago and tell him that story. He smiled and said with a laugh, “Happy to help! You never know how you’re gonna help people.”
I’d like to think Reiner knew that he helped many, many people.
* * *
Elie v. U.S. will be on hiatus next week but will return in the new year.
Over the past year you’ve read Nation writers like Elie Mystal, Kaveh Akbar, John Nichols, Joan Walsh, Bryce Covert, Dave Zirin, Jeet Heer, Michael T. Klare, Katha Pollitt, Amy Littlefield, Gregg Gonsalves, and Sasha Abramsky take on the Trump family’s corruption, set the record straight about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s catastrophic Make America Healthy Again movement, survey the fallout and human cost of the DOGE wrecking ball, anticipate the Supreme Court’s dangerous antidemocratic rulings, and amplify successful tactics of resistance on the streets and in Congress.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and publisher, The Nation
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