Looking for the Truth? Hand Me Your Spyglass

Posted on February 26, 2026 by bpriddy

As is our custom, we are turning the CNN’s Daniel Dale and his team of fact searchers when President Trump entertains his supporters with another State of the Union, uh, speech. He spoke for 107 minutes, including all of the overboard partisan applause.

Daniel and his truth sleuths were turning things around even as the president shouted, pointed, insulted, and performed. Here’s the result:

Fact check: Trump makes false claims about the economy, elections and crime in State of the Union

By CNN staff

President Donald Trump made numerous false or misleading claims in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

Many of them were long-debunked falsehoods familiar from his rallies, interviews and social media posts. These include various lies disparaging the fairness of US elections, his false claim that he ended wars that were never actually wars or never actually ended, and his fictional “$18 trillion” figure for supposed investment in the US over the past year.

The subject on which he was most frequently inaccurate was the economy. Among other things, Trump overstated the performance of the economy during this presidential term to date, overstated the inflation he inherited from the Biden administration, used highly misleading figures when discussing gasoline prices, and wrongly asserted, twice, that foreign countries are paying the tariffs that are actually being paid by US importers.

Here is a fact check of some of Trump’s remarks:

Economy and inflation

Fact check: Trump falsely claims US has secured ‘$18 trillion’ in investments

Trump repeated his regular false claim that he has secured $18 trillion in investments in the US since returning to office, saying, “In 12 months, I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.”

The $18 trillion figure is fiction. As of the night of Trump’s address, the White House’s own website said the figure for “major investment announcements” during this Trump term was “$9.7 trillion,” and even that is a major exaggeration; a detailed CNN review in October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges, pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US and vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s misleading claims on gasoline prices

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Trump claimed gas prices are “now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places, $1.99 a gallon.” But no state had an average gas price on Tuesday below $2.37 per gallon, according to AAA; only two states had an average below $2.50 per gallon. And while there are some individual gas stations selling gas for below $2 per gallon, they are scarce; Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for the firm GasBuddy, said during the speech that the firm found just four stations across the country below $2 (aside from special discounts) out of the roughly 150,000 stations the firm tracks, so about 0.003% of the total.

Trump could fairly say gas prices have fallen during this presidency. They have declined from a national average of $3.12 per gallon on his inauguration day in January 2025, according to AAA, to a national average of $2.95 per gallon on Tuesday.

In addition, Trump claimed, “And when I visited the great state of Iowa just a few weeks ago, I even saw $1.85 a gallon for gasoline.” We don’t know what Trump saw, but the average price for a gallon of regular gas in Iowa on the day of the January 27 speech was $2.57, according to data published that day by AAA – and Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, told CNN at the time that GasBuddy found just four stations in the state selling for $1.97 per gallon (aside from special discounts) out of 2,036 total stations the firm tracks, so 0.19% of the total.

Trump was fact-checked on this subject by an attendee at the Iowa speech he was referring to. When he spoke of gas in Iowa being $1.95 or $1.85 per gallon, someone in the crowd shouted, “No, $2.63,” according to CNN reporter Steve Contorno, who was on scene. Contorno saw that the gas station right outside the venue where Trump spoke was selling for $2.69 per gallon.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump falsely claims he inherited record inflation

Trump falsely claimed that when he gave his previous address to Congress early last year, he had “just inherited … inflation at record levels.” He added a bit later that former President Joe Biden and his congressional allies “gave us the worst inflation in the history of our country.”

Trump didn’t inherit the worst inflation in US history, and Biden never had the worst inflation in US history. The year-over-year inflation rate in Biden’s last full month in office, December 2024, was 2.9%, and the rate in the month in which Trump took over partway through, January 2025, was 3.0%; the most recent rate, for January 2026, is 2.4%. The rate did hit a 40-year high, 9.1%, in June 2022, but that was far from the all-time high of 23.7%, which was set in 1920. Regardless, the rate then fell sharply over Biden’s last two-and-a-half years in office.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump touts declines in a smattering of grocery prices, but overall grocery prices are up

Trump accurately touted declines in the prices of a small number of grocery products or product categories during this presidency to date, mentioning eggs, chicken, butter and fresh fruits. But he did not acknowledge that overall grocery prices are up an average 2.1% since January 2025, nor that far more grocery products have gotten more expensive during this presidency than have gotten cheaper.

Trump also said, “And even beef, which was very high, is starting to come down significantly.” The average price of beef and veal did decline in January compared to December, by 0.9% (or 0.4% using seasonally adjusted figures), but it was still 15% higher than it was in January 2025.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s baseless claim about the economy

Trump claimed that he inherited a “stagnant economy” from the Biden administration and that it is now “roaring like never before.” Though there is no firm definition of “stagnant” or “roaring,” the facts don’t corroborate the suggestion that he has presided over a massive economic boom since returning to office in January 2025. The US economy grew 2.2% in 2025, which was lower than in any year of the Biden presidency; there was 2.8% growth in 2024. (The fall 2025 government shutdown likely reduced growth in late 2025.) The unemployment rate, meanwhile, increased from 4.0% in January 2025 to 4.3% in January 2026.

The total number of jobs added in 2025, 181,000, was by far the lowest since 2020, the year the Covid-19 pandemic hit; about 2.52 million jobs were added in 2023 and about 1.46 million were added in 2024.

The year-over-year Consumer Price Index inflation rate did fall from 3.0% in January 2025 to 2.4% in January 2026, and Trump certainly has some other positive data points to cite. But his story about taking the economy from deceased to scorching is just not supported by the overall numbers.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump falsely claims foreign countries are paying his tariffs

Trump repeated his regular false claim that tariffs are “paid for by foreign countries.” In fact, tariff payments are made by importers in the US, not foreign countries, and those importers often pass on some of their costs to consumers. While foreign exporters may sometimes drop their prices to try to keep their products competitive, various analyses have found that the overwhelming majority of the costs of the tariffs Trump has imposed this term are being covered by a combination of US businesses and US consumers.

In an analysis released in February, officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York wrote, “We find that nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers.” The nonpartisan federal Congressional Budget Office wrote in a February report that “the net effect of tariffs is to raise U.S. consumer prices by the full portion of the cost of the tariffs borne domestically (95 percent),” from a combination of price hikes by US businesses that are importing tariffed products and price hikes by US businesses that are facing less foreign competition because of the tariffs.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s claim that more Americans are working today than ever

Trump repeated his regular claim that there are more people working today in the US than ever before. That’s true, but the claim needs context: the number of people working tends to rise over time because the US population tends to rise over time. Economists say there are far better measures of the health of the labor market.

The employment-population ratio, which measures the percentage of the population that is employed, is down slightly this presidential term so far, going from 60.1% in January 2025, the month Trump returned to office, to 59.8% in January 2026. The unemployment rate, which measures unemployment as a percentage of the labor force, has increased, going from 4.0% in January 2025 to 4.3% in January 2026; it hit a four-year high of 4.5% in November before easing. The labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of the population that is employed or actively looking for work, has been almost unchanged, ticking down 62.6% in January 2025 to 62.5% in January 2026.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Taxes, government programs, and the budget

Fact check: Trump’s claim he passed largest tax cuts in American history

Trump once again claimed that the sweeping domestic policy agenda that he signed into law last summer contained the largest tax cuts in American history. But that is not actually the case.

The so-called big, beautiful bill made numerous permanent and temporary changes to the tax code, including eliminating taxes on tips and overtime, giving additional tax relief to senior citizens and parents of young children and allowing companies to deduct certain investments more quickly. The tax cuts amount to $4.8 trillion, or 1.3% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), over a decade, according to the latest Congressional Budget Office analysis, released earlier this month.

However, the bill is not the largest tax cut in history, experts said. It ranks seventh in terms of share of GDP since 1918, according to Chris Towner, policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan watchdog group. The largest was former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax package, which cost 2.9% of GDP over four years. (Looking at revenue changes as a share of GDP is a common way to assess the size of tax cuts because it shows the changes relative to the size of the economy. It allows for comparisons across time despite shifts in inflation and population, for example.) Similarly, the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank, found that the bill is the sixth largest tax cut since 1940, in terms of share of GDP.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Fact check: Trump already broke his promise to always protect Medicaid

Trump promised to “always protect” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But he has already broken that promise on Medicaid, making big cuts to the safety net program last year.

The “big, beautiful bill,” which Trump signed into law last summer, slashed more than $900 billion in federal funding over 10 years for Medicaid, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The CBO estimated that the law’s Medicaid provisions would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 7.5 million in 2034.

Among the law’s most impactful provisions are requirements that certain able-bodied Medicaid enrollees ages 19 to 64 work, volunteer, attend school or participate in job training for at least 80 hours a month. The mandate, the first of its kind, also applies to parents of children ages 14 and older.

In addition, low-income adults enrolled through the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion provision will have their eligibility reviewed more frequently and will have to pay up to $35 for certain care. Plus, many enrollees will face more paperwork and verification requirements, which could make it harder for some to apply for and maintain their benefits.

Medicaid enrollees could also face other changes, since states would receive less federal funding for the program. This could force some states to eliminate certain benefits or tighten enrollment, among other alterations.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Fact check: Trump falsely claims he achieved no tax on Social Security

Trump again falsely claimed that he eliminated taxes on Social Security, one of his key campaign promises in 2024.

“With the great ‘big, beautiful bill,’ we gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security,” he said during his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

The massive domestic policy package that Trump signed last summer did create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more). But as the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged, millions of Social Security recipients age 65 and older will continue to pay taxes on their benefits – and that new deduction, which expires in 2028, doesn’t apply to the Social Security recipients who are younger than 65.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Fact check: Trump’s false claim on balancing the federal budget by ending fraud

Trump baselessly claimed that eliminating fraud in federal programs would balance the federal budget, saying, “If we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight. It’ll go very quickly.”

The annual budget deficit far exceeds the estimated amount of money the federal government loses to fraud each year.

A first-of-its-kind estimate that the federal Government Accountability Office released in 2024 found that between $233 billion to $521 billion is lost to fraud annually. But the federal budget deficit came in at just under $1.8 trillion for the most recent fiscal year, which ended in September, according to the Treasury Department – more than triple the highest estimated fraud total.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Fact check: Trump’s false claim that payments to service members came from tariffs

Trump said, “Every service member recently received a warrior dividend of $1,776,” then added, “We got the money from tariffs and other things.” But these one-time payments did not come from tariffs. Rather, as CNN’s Haley Britzky reported in December, “a senior administration official said the $2.6 billion cost of the bonuses was being taken from $2.9 billion in extra funding for basic allowance for housing, or BAH, payments appropriated by Congress in July.” The funding was part of Trump’s big domestic policy bill and marked for “improving the quality of life for military personnel.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Immigration and foreign affairs

Fact check: Trump falsely claims a Charlotte killer ‘came in through open borders’

Trump lamented the murder last summer of a refugee from Ukraine, Iryna Zarutska, who was killed on public transit in Charlotte, North Carolina. But Trump added a false claim that the alleged killer had migrated to the US, saying Zarutska “had escaped a brutal war only to be slain by a hardened criminal set free to kill in America – came in through open borders.”

In reality, the man charged with first-degree murder over the killing was, according to all available evidence, from the US. The Charlotte Observer has reported that the man’s Facebook page said he was born in Charlotte and attended high school there, and the newspaper has interviewed his American mother.

The Observer published its own fact check on Tuesday night noting Trump’s claim was not true.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump falsely claims that Biden allowed ‘11,888 murderers’ to enter US as migrants

While criticizing the Biden administration’s border policies, Trump repeated his regular claim that the Biden administration allowed 11,888 murderers to enter the US as migrants – saying, “They were murderers, 11,888 murderers. They came into our country.”

Trump was inaccurately describing federal data. The Department of Homeland Security and independent experts have noted that the figure it appears Trump was referring to when he uses the “11,888” number is about non-citizens who entered the US not just under Biden but over the course of multiple decades, including during Trump’s own first administration. They were convicted of homicide at some point, usually in the US after their arrival, and are still in the US while being listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket” – which includes people who are currently serving their prison sentences, not roaming free as Trump has also claimed.

Fact check: To attack Harris, Trump falsely describes new stats on immigrants and homicide

By Daniel Dale, CNN

Former President Donald Trump is wildly distorting new statistics on immigration and crime to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump falsely claimed Friday and Saturday that the statistics are specifically about criminal offenders who entered the US during the Biden-Harris administration; in reality, the figures are about offenders who entered the US over multiple decades, including during the Trump administration. And Trump falsely claimed that the statistics are specifically about people who are now living freely in the US; the figures actually include people who are currently in jails and prisons serving criminal sentences.

“Kamala should immediately cancel her News Conference because it was just revealed that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during her three and a half year period as Border Czar,” Trump wrote in one post on Friday, the day Harris visited the southern border in Arizona. Harris “allowed almost 14,000 MURDERERS to freely and openly roam our Country,” Trump wrote in another Friday post. They “roam free to KILL AGAIN,” he wrote, escalating his rhetoric, on Saturday.

Facts First: Trump’s claims are false in two big ways. First, the statistics he was referring to are not specifically about people who entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration. Rather, those statistics are about noncitizens who entered the country under any administration, including Trump’s; were convicted of a crime at some point, usually in the US after their arrival; and are now living in the US while being listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket” — where some have been listed for years, including while Trump was president, because their country of citizenship won’t let the US deport them back there. Second, that ICE “non-detained” list includes people who are still serving jail and prison sentences for their crimes; they are on the list because they are not being held in immigration detention in particular.

The new statistics, released by ICE in a letter to a Republican congressman this week, said there were 425,431 total convicted criminals on the non-detained docket as of July 21, 2024, including 13,099 people with homicide convictions.

The statistics have been deployed by Trump and various Republican lawmakers and right-wing commentators as alarming evidence of Harris’ supposed mismanagement of immigration policy. But in addition to exaggerating her role on the file — she was never actually “border czar” — much of the chatter has inaccurately described what the statistics show.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a Saturday email: “The data in this letter is being misinterpreted. The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration. It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.”

It’s not clear how many of the 13,099 people with homicide convictions on ICE’s non-detained docket as of July 21 are currently incarcerated in jails and prisons. Regardless, John Sandweg, an attorney who served as acting director of ICE during the Obama administration, said in a Saturday interview that it is “100% false” to say all the homicide offenders on the non-detained docket entered the US during Harris’ vice presidency. Sandweg added: “These are individuals who undoubtedly entered the United States over a long period of time. … A lot of them have probably been on the list for 20 years, where the US has just been unable to deport.”

CNN could not immediately find public statistics on how many people with criminal convictions were on the non-detained docket during Trump’s presidency. But there are public statistics from just before and just after his presidency — and those statistics, which we’ll discuss later in this article, make clear that Trump, too, presided over a non-detained docket that included hundreds of thousands of people with criminal convictions.

A Supreme Court decision requires ICE to release some offenders

Trump’s posts left open the impression that the homicide offenders on the non-detained docket had foreign homicide convictions but were nonetheless allowed to cross the US border and live freely in this country. In reality, public data makes it clear that the overwhelming majority of people with criminal convictions on the non-detained docket were convicted in the US, as Sandweg and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, which supports immigration, both told CNN.

Why aren’t these people in immigration detention if they have been convicted of a crime as serious as homicide? Under a 2001 Supreme Court decision, the US government is not allowed to indefinitely keep someone in immigration detention after they have been ordered removed from the country. So if someone has served their criminal sentence for homicide and then is ordered to be removed from the US, but their country is uncooperative with the US on immigration and won’t take them back, they must be released in the US — usually after no more than six months in immigration detention.

“Let’s say you have a Russian who was convicted of homicide. There’s nothing we can do there,” Sandweg said, given how Russia simply won’t accept the deportation. “There comes a point where you just have to release them.” He added that this doesn’t mean the person is “completely free” — people on the non-detained docket often have to check in with ICE or be monitored electronically — “but there’s just no more legal authority to continue the detention.”

Sandweg added: “ICE, of course, is not willy-nilly saying, ‘Okay, people convicted of murder, you’re not a priority.’ … We have a guy convicted of homicide, our strong preference is not to release them onto the streets.”

Reichlin-Melnick, who noted Saturday on social media that the non-detained docket includes people in jails and prisons, wrote on social media on Friday that “anyone on ICE’s non-detained docket with a homicide conviction has likely been in the country for decades, served a full criminal sentence, and can’t be removed because they’re from a country which restricts US deportations.”

Reichlin-Melnick continued: “There are others on ICE’s non-detained docket who have serious criminal records who, after serving their time, managed to win some form of protection and relief from removal. They are now here legally, but remain on the docket and are required to check in with ICE periodically.”

The list of convicted criminals on the non-detained docket includes both people who crossed the border illegally and people who came to the US legally, such as with a visa or green card, and then committed a crime and were placed in removal proceedings or were given a removal order.

What the numbers show

The non-detained docket is not a new creation of the Biden-Harris administration. In fact, there were hundreds of thousands of people with criminal convictions on the non-detained docket during the Trump presidency, too.

A reporter for Fox News, the right-wing outlet whose reporting on these statistics Trump repeatedly promoted on Friday, noted Friday evening on social media that “not all of these criminals entered during the Biden admin, as some are claiming” and that “some of these criminals go back many years across multiple administrations.”

A previous official federal report said there were 368,574 total convicted criminals on the non-detained docket as of August 2016, under the Obama administration, about five months before Trump became president. And another federal document said there were 405,786 total convicted criminals on the non-detained docket as of early June 2021, less than five months into the Biden-Harris administration. Again, the July 2024 number was 425,431 total convicted criminals.

In other words, the list grew about 10% between August 2016 and June 2021 — a roughly five-year period that included the four-year Trump administration — and then grew about another roughly 5% in the three-plus years under the Biden-Harris administration between June 2021 and July 2024.

Because official information on people on the non-detained docket with criminal convictions has only been released sporadically, with dates that don’t line up with the start and end dates of presidential administrations, it’s not possible to say how much of the increase happened under the Trump administration versus how much happened during the final months of the Obama administration and the first months of the Biden-Harris administration.

Regardless, there’s no basis for saying, as Trump kept doing Friday, that all of the people on the docket with homicide convictions came in during the Biden-Harris administration — and the numbers show “the docket certainly grew under the Trump administration,” Sandweg said. (He added that, to be fair, Trump faced the same stubborn issues with uncooperative foreign countries as other presidents.)

The crimes committed by people on the non-detained docket in July 2024 ranged from the most serious offenses, like homicide and sexual assault, to “gambling,” “liquor,” and “obscenity” offenses. The conviction categories with the highest number of people on the non-detained docket were “traffic offenses” (77,074), “assault” (62,231), “dangerous drugs” (56,533) and “immigration” (51,933).

CNN could not immediately find public data on the number of people with homicide convictions specifically who were on the non-detained docket in past years, including during the Trump administration.

It is clear that the total number of people on the non-detained docket, including people without any criminal conviction, has spiked during the Biden-Harris administration. (There are numerous reasons that people can end up on the docket; we won’t get into those here.) ICE says the docket jumped from roughly 3.3 million in the 2020 fiscal year, the last full fiscal year under Trump, to roughly 6.2 million in the 2023 fiscal year.

Harris critics are entitled to cite this real increase. Her presidential opponent, though, is criticizing her dishonestly.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump makes unsupported claim about migrants from prisons and mental institutions

Trump also claimed of migration to the US under Biden, “They poured in by the millions and millions – from prisons, from mental institutions.”

He was vaguer here than he usually is; in many other speeches, he has claimed that foreign countries have deliberately emptied their prisons and mental institutions to send undesirable citizens to the US as migrants. But his Tuesday phrasing still left open the impression that some massive number of former prisoners and people from mental institutions had entered the US under Biden. He has never provided any corroboration for such claims.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump falsely claims he ended eight wars

Trump repeated a familiar false claim about his role in foreign affairs: “My first 10 months, I ended eight wars.” While Trump has played a role in resolving some conflicts (at least temporarily), the “eight” figure is a clear exaggeration.

Trump explained during the speech that his list of supposed wars settled includes a war between Egypt and Ethiopia, but that wasn’t actually a war; it is a long-running diplomatic dispute about a major Ethiopian dam project on a tributary of the Nile River. Trump’s list also included another supposed war that didn’t actually occur during his presidency, between Serbia and Kosovo. (He has sometimes claimed to have prevented the eruption of a new war between those two entities, providing few details about what he meant, but that is different than settling an actual war.) And his list included a war involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, but that war has continued despite a peace agreement brokered by the Trump administration in 2025 – which was never signed by the leading rebel coalition doing the fighting.

Trump’s list also included an armed conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, where fighting temporarily erupted again in December despite a peace agreement brokered by the Trump administration earlier in 2025.

One can debate the importance of Trump’s role in having ended the other conflicts on his list, or fairly question whether some have truly ended; for example, killing continued in Gaza after the October ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, and Trump said in the speech, “The war in Gaza, which proceeds at a very low level; it’s just about there.” Regardless, Trump’s “eight” figure is obviously too big.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s claim about what Iran has said about nuclear weapons

Trump said of Iran, “We are in negotiations with them; they want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’”

We don’t know what representatives of Iran’s government have said during the closed-door negotiations. However, Iranian officials have repeatedly said in public comments that they will never have a nuclear weapon. In fact, on Tuesday afternoon before Trump’s address, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on social media platform X: “Our fundamental convictions are crystal clear: Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon; neither will we Iranians ever forgo our right to harness the dividends of peaceful nuclear technology for our people.”

In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said, according to a translation on the UN website, “I hereby declare once more before this Assembly that Iran has never sought and will never seek to build a nuclear bomb.”

Trump is of course entitled to be skeptical of Iranian leaders’ words about the country’s nuclear intentions, as many others around the world have been for years. But Trump’s claim here was about their words, not their actions.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s inaccurate claims about NATO

Trump repeated his claim that before he prodded NATO members to spend more on defense, the US was “paying for almost all of NATO.” That’s an exaggeration. NATO figures show that in 2016, the year before Trump took office the first time, US defense spending made up about 72% of total NATO defense spending; in 2024, the year before he returned to office, it was about 63%. Both figures are big, of course, but “almost all” is a stretch” – and the US contributes a smaller percentage to NATO’s own organizational budget. Under an agreed formula, the US provided about 16% of that budget at the time Trump returned to office in 2025. When he took office in 2017, the US was contributing about 22% of the budget.

In addition, Trump touted NATO members’ 2025 commitment to spend 5% of gross domestic product on defense-related and security-related spending by 2035 – including at least 3.5% of GDP on the “core” defense requirements that were covered by the previous target of 2% of GDP – saying they agreed “to pay 5% of GDP for military defense, rather than the 2% which they weren’t paying … Now they’re paying 5 (percent) as opposed to not paying 2 (percent).”

But most NATO members are not yet meeting the new higher target, which, again, they have given themselves a decade to meet. NATO estimates show that just three members, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, were at or above 3.5% in core defense spending in 2025, though they may be joined by others in 2026.

“It’s absolutely not true that the Allies are currently ‘paying 5%’ on hard defense, and even by 2035 they’ve only committed to 3.5%, in terms of their defense budget conventionally-understood. As of mid-2025, *no* Ally is spending 5%, in fact not even 4.5%,” professor Erwan Lagadec, who leads the NATO and European Union studies program at George Washington University’s international affairs school, said in a January email.

Lagadec added: “In 2025 the U.S. was ‘only’ at 3.2%, *down* from 2014 in terms of ratios to GDP (the only country in that situation). Hence the case can be made that the U.S. is now the ‘laggard’ going ‘in the wrong direction’; although of course the fact that the U.S. was spending a lower ratio in 2025 than 2014 on defense could be seen as a sign of success, i.e. the outcome of the other Allies doing more.”

Trump’s claim that “they weren’t paying” when the target was 2% needs context. Although most NATO members were not hitting the 2% target as late as 2023, a majority hit the target in 2024; NATO figures show that 18 member countries were at or above 2% out of 31 countries subject to the target.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Elections and crime

Fact check: Trump’s multiple false claims about US elections

Trump made a rapid-fire series of false claims about US elections while calling on Congress to pass a bill requiring voter identification and proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

Trump falsely claimed, “Cheating is rampant in our elections. It’s rampant.” It’s simply not; all evidence suggests fraud makes up a minuscule percentage of votes cast. Trump referred to “crooked mail-in ballots”; the incidence of fraud is also tiny with mail-in ballots, though experts say it is slightly higher than with in-person voting, and there is no basis to categorically describe them as “crooked.”

He suggested that a Republican elections bill called the SAVE America Act would completely eliminate the use of mail-in ballots, but it wouldn’t. And Trump said, “They have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat.” That is a lie, as Democrats, like Republicans, are elected all the time in free and fair US elections.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump claims he inherited ‘rampant’ crime, but it was very low by historical standards

Trump claimed that he inherited “rampant crime at home” from the Biden administration. There is no firm definition of the word “rampant,” but crime was very low by historical US standards at the time Trump returned to office in January 2025.

“The US violent crime rate in 2024 was the lowest since 1969 and the property crime rate was the lowest since 1961. Moreover, murder in the US fell at the fastest rate ever recorded in both 2023 and 2024 and was down 25 percent from 2020 levels,” said crime data expert Jeff Asher, co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics.

Murder spiked nationally amid the turmoil of the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, under both Trump in 2020 and Biden in 2021. But even before the decline in violent crime in the second half of Biden’s presidency and in the first year of Trump’s second presidency, crime rates were nowhere near what they were in the early 1990s and at various points of the 1970s and 1980s.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s two false claims about crime in Washington, DC

Trump claimed that after his takeover of law enforcement and deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC, last summer, the capital is “now one of the safest cities in the country.” That’s not true. Nor is his claim that the capital has “almost no crime anymore,” as a cursory glance at public data or police press releases shows; more than 1,300 crimes were reported in the last month.

Asher told CNN in a February email: “DC crime fell substantially in 2025 but it was not anywhere near the safest city in America.”

Of the 50 largest cities tracked by Asher’s Real-Time Crime Index, he said, “DC had the 9th highest murder rate and 12th highest violent crime rate in 2025 of the 50 largest cities in the Real-Time Crime Index.” Trump’s intervention happened in August; in the period running from August through December 2025, Asher said, “DC had the 18th highest murder rate and 17th highest violent crime rate.”

“Even in the post-intervention period, DC’s murder rate was more than 5 times higher than San Diego and San Jose and roughly 3 times higher than cities like San Francisco, New York, and Seattle,” he said. And he added that crime in the capital was “falling considerably” prior to Trump’s Guard deployment, and continued to fall after the deployment, “in a way that is hard to determine the impact of the deployment itself.”

Trump could have accurately said the capital has had some prolonged recent stretches without a murder; the Washington Post reported that it began the year with a highly unusual three-week period with no homicides. But that stretch ended January 21.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s unproven claim on fraud in Minnesota

Trump repeated his claim that Somali residents of Minnesota have committed $19 billion in fraud, saying: “There’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer. We have all the information, and in actuality, the number is much higher than that.”

It’s possible this “$19 billion” figure will be proven true, but nothing close to that figure has been proven to date.

In December, a federal prosecutor, Joseph Thompson, claimed that “half or more” of $18 billion in federal funds billed by 14 Medicaid services in Minnesota deemed at high risk for fraud – and now under a third-party audit ordered by Gov. Tim Walz – might be fraudulent.

But $9 billion is not $19 billion, Thompson didn’t say all of the possible fraud was committed by Somali residents, and Walz’s administration challenged Thompson’s claim.

One Walz administration official said in December that they had “evidence of tens of millions of dollars in fraud to this point,” not $9 billion; Walz himself said, “You should be equally outraged about $1 or whatever that number is, but they’re using that number without the proof behind it.” And Thompson – who resigned in January amid tension with the Trump administration over its handling of an ICE officer fatally shooting Renée Good – made clear at the time that the “half or more” comment was an early estimate rather than a firm number.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

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Sports: Billikens Rising; Tigers Muddling; Baseball Starting, etc.

Posted on February 24, 2026 by bpriddy

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

We’re a little frustrated today so we’re going to lead off with a basketball team that’s consistently exciting and consistently able to win. They’re ranked and the Missouri Tigers are continuing to play themselves into the NIT

(BILLIKENS)—The top-20 St. Louis Billikens sit atop the Atlantic 10 Conference roaring back from a 14-point halftime deficit to outscore second-place Virginia Commonwealth 55-22 in the second half and claiming an 88-72 win that featured a brawl in the last minute. The Billikens are now 25-2 and undefeated in seventeen games at home.

The Bills were sparked by 6-6 guard Kellen Thames, who had 16 points and five steals. Longtime Missouri fans will ask if Kellen is the son of Kelly Thames, who was a four-year starter at Mizzou whose greater prominence was limited by a knee injury. Yes, he is. Dad was his coach at Pattonville High. Kellen was the key in a 21-2 surge in the second half when he scored seven straight points, giving the Billikens an eleven point lead with seven minutes left. They never let VCU closer than seven points after that.

SLU guard Quentin Jones, his team 19 points ahead, was dribbling out the clock when VCU’s Nyk Lewis grabbed the ball and after a few steps launched a half-court shot just before St. Louis’ Bobby Avila shoved him out of bounds. VCU’s Barry Evans shoved Avila and the benches emptied. At the end, a bunch of players got excused from the court, enough that Virginia had only four players on the court when Evens hit all three free throws and the clock ran out.

(MIZZ)—Missouri played the 19 and 20 teams in the country last week and split—and they were lucky to get that.

Missouri led by 21 with nine minutes to play before 19^th ranked Vanderbilt turned the game inside out. Only by the Tigers making five free throws down the stretch and the rim-out of a Vanderbilt Hail Mary shot as the clock reached zero did Missouri post a skin-of-the-teeth with.

Saturday night, Missouri was on the road against 20^th ranked Arkansas. The Razorbacks made nine of their last ten shots to take a six-point halftime lead. Missouri, as has often happened this year, could not get a stop when they needed one, and Arkansas went on runs of 8-2 and 13-4 to win 96-84.

Missouri drops to 18-9 and 8-6 in the conference. They play Tennessee tonight in Columbia. Tennessee comes in 10-4, and 20-7, one of three teams in second place behind Alabama. Missouri is one of four teams tied for fourth. They finish the season at home against Mississippi State 5=9. 13-14), at Oklahoma (3-11, 13-14) and at home against Arkansas.

(CARDINALS)—St. Louis opened it spring training games with a weekend split, a 5-2 loss to Washington and a 6-5 win against Houston.

Matthew Liberatore and Dustin May seem to be headed toward being 1-2 in the starting rotation. Spring training will determine 3-5. Kyle Leahy had a strong start against Houston—18 of 29 pitches in the strike zone—three Ks, two groundouts and a popout. Leahy has been a reliever most of his career but the Cardinals want to stretch him into a starter during spring training.

Newly-signed Ramon Urias is in camp, a 2022 gold glover, likely to play second and third as backup for rookie second baseman J.J. Wetherhold and Nolan Gorman, who is tabbed to be the starting third baseman. Urias is returning to the Cardinals system. He made it to Triple-A before he was DFA’s in 2020. He was with the Orioles and the Astros last year, hit .241 with 11 home runs and 44 RBIs. He has a one-year contract with an option.

(Royals)—The Kansas City Royals seem to have their pitching rotation pretty well set as they start play in the Cactus league—Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha, and Kris Bubic seems to have the first four slots tied down with Noah Cameron a contender for the final slot. Sunday’s outing by Bailey Falter, who came to KC from Pittsburgh last year was a sold one, indicating Kansas City could be headed into the regular season with a solid long reliever for them.

Falter started, went two innings, gave up one hit but no runs. Falter made 24 starts for Pittsburgh and Kansas city last year—two starts and two relief jobs for KC.

The Royals took two of three to open spring training in Arizona. The Cardinals split their first two games in the Grapefruit League.

(CHIEFS)—-The Kansas City Chiefs have created some more salary cap space by cutting loose defensive end Mike Dana, who has two Super Bowl rings. Dana was drafted by the Chiefs in 2020 and would have made about nine million dollars this year, his final contract season.

The Chiefs have been working hard to create more cash heading into the free agent signing season in about two weeks. A few days ago, the team restructured Patrick Mahomes’ contract to lower the amount that applied to the salary cap by about $43.6 million dollars.

Dana was credited with 21.5 sacks in his six years with the team, along with six pass defenses and a half-dozen forced fumbles.

The Chiefs are expected to shed some other veteran players in coming weeks to increase their salary cap space.

This week, Chiefs coaches are in Indianapolis for the “meat market,” the scouting combine workouts that might help decide who to draft out of college.

(HAWKS)—The St. Louis Battlehawks’ UFL season starts in a month—March 28^th to be exact, when they play the DC Defenders in the dome. St. Louis Public Radio reports the co-owner of the league, Mike Repole, has suggested the Hawks abandon the dome and play its games in Energized Park, the home of the St. Louis pro soccer team.

Repole thinks UFL games in a big stadium don’t look good on TV because crowds aren’t big enough. St. Louis averaged a league-leading 30,000 fans last year, more than double the crowds at the second most popular team. The soccer park, however, holds only 22,000 fans. He says talks with the soccer club about using its stadium are only preliminary.

Six of the eight UFL teams will play at soccer parks this year.

Repole needs to do a selling job on Battlehawks coach Ricky Proehl, one of the stars of the St. Louis Rams, who says he understands how Repole wants to see full stadiums. But he hopes to grow crowds in the Dome to 40,000 this year with the tailgating atmosphere that would still be available at the Dome continuing to build the team’s culture.

The Dome at America’s center was spiffed up two years ago with new turf and lighting upgrades.

Now—people to whom 100 mph isn’t anything special.

(NASCAR)—Aerodynamics are important to NASCAR competitors, especially on super speedways with their high banks. Cars that are damaged by bumping and grinding or by track crashes are supposed to lose their competitive edge.

—which is why Tyler Reddick’s win at Atlanta Sunday was something of a surprise. Look at his car:

Reddick was part of a nine-car crash 36 laps from the scheduled end. He dropped two laps back while in the pits for repairs but charged back to 27^th place for a win in two overtimes that he pronounced as “crazy.” He’s the first driver to win the first two races of the season since Matt Kenseth did it in 2009. It has happened only four other times.

The 260 lap race saw a record 57 lead changes among fourteen drivers. More than one-fourth of the race laps were run under caution because of numerous crashes.

(INDYCAR)—The people who don’t use fenders are speeding closer to the beginning of their season with road course and oval testing, the latter on the Phoenix oval.

The winner of the 2016 Indianapolis 500, Alexander Rossi had the hot laps in both the morning and the afternoon sessions, topping out at 174.542 on the one-mile oval. Rossi, who hasn’t been in victory lane since August, eight years ago, is driving for Ed Carpenter Racing now with teammate Christian Rasmussen, whose third place finish at Worldwide Technology Raceway was his first IndyCar podium finish, followed by his first win later at Milwaukee.

The test drew all 25 drivers expected to start the season next Sunday on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida. They’ll be back at Phoenix for a race on the following Saturday, March 7. The race will mark an IndyCar return to Phoenix. The series last raced there in 2018.

Other highlights of the test: Penske’s Josef Newgarden was second-fastest overall with new teammate David Malukas close behind.

The tests were important to former F1 driver Mick Schumacher, who was the top rookie on the speed charts. He ran seven miles an hour faster on day two, topping out at just under 172.

The most active driver was Will Power, who drove 259 of the total 4,853 laps turned in by all drivers. He’s getting comfortable with his new ride for Andretti Global.

(Photo credits: Thames–St. Louis University; Dana—Kansas City Chiefs; Reddick—Dirk Bizub, Racing America on SI; Rossi—Bob Priddy at WWTR 2025)

Olympian Words

Posted on February 23, 2026 by bpriddy

Those whose undies quickly got into a knot when some of our Olympic athletes questioned their nation’s course seem to live by the motto, “My country right or wrong.”

They aren’t right—correction—they aren’t correct.

Those young people know what their country is experiencing and that knowledge will bode well for this country as their generation grows in experience and influence. National polls indicate a significant part of the citizenry agree with them.

The erroneous interpretation of that famous comment spiced up the first days of the Olympic games and led to some pretty tasteless retorts to the concerns expressed by those Olympians about the direction of our country.

Let’s begin by setting the record straight on this famous quotation. Should it be the guiding principle of our patriotism/ Or is it, as one source has put it, “a jingoistic war cry?”

There are various versions of this statement.

This is the original statement, from Commodore Stephen Decatur, a hero of the War of 1812, who reportedly offered a toast: “My Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong.”

Leaving out the words that precede the six words at the end short-changes the total message.

In 1871, one of Missouri’s U. S. Senators, Carl Schurz, got into a debate with fellow Senator Matthew Carpenter of Wisconsin, a power in Reconstruction America, who had quoted Decatur in one of his fiery orations. Schurz told Carpenter the sentiment should be, “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” Reports indicate his interpretation led to thunderous applause from the Senate gallery.

Olympic freestyle skier Hunter Hess told reporters, “It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now. I think it’s a little hard. There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”

Figure skater Amber Glenn referred to Trump policies against the LGBTQ community and said, “I hope I can use my voice and this platform to help people stay strong in these hard times.”

Snowboarder Chloe Kim, the daughter of immigrants, told interviewers, “I think in moments like these, it is really important for us to unite and kind of stand up for one another for all that’s going on and I think that I’m really proud to represent the United States.”

They represent the best that American can be body.

Our President, of course, couldn’t stand it when the athletes exercised their free speech rights. He went on Untruth Social to call Hess “a real loser” and said it was “very hard to root for someone like this.”

Vice-President Vance added, ”You’re not here to pop off about politics. So when Olympic athletes enter the political arena, they should expect some pushback.”

I guess Vance is saying it would be just fine if these athletes “popped off’ at home although their comments would not be any less irritating to the constantly irritable—and irritation-producing—administration.

Republican Senator Jim Jordan, a Trumpian, called the remarks “ridiculous,” and said, “It’s an honor to get to represent the greatest country in history in the Olympic Games. That makes no sense to me. I haven’t seen some of the things they’ve said, but if they’re disparaging the country while representing it, that makes no sense.”

Sorry, Senator, It does make sense. The freedom to question power is inbred in the American character. It’s how we became an independent nation 250 years ago. Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware understands that. “There is nothing more patriotic than questioning your own country when its leadership makes decisions that are so sharply out of line with our values and traditions,” he said.

As far as “disparaging the country while representing it,” perhaps Jordan should consider the degrading things his President has said. They are far worse. John Stewart created a montage for his Daily Show to examine the hypocrisy of Jordan, Vance, and other defenders. In the montage, President Trump proclaims, “Our country is now a cesspool.”

“We are a nation in decline.”

We’re in a failing country; we’re in a country that’s being laughed at.”

“We’re a dumping ground. We’re like a garbage can.”

“Our country is going to Hell.”

“We have blood, death, and suffering on a scale once untenable.”

“…a third world hell hole ruled by censors, perverts, criminals and thugs.”

I guess we could give him credit for speaking the truth (to himself although he doesn’t recognize it) on some of these points. His crude words and actions validate what our athletes voiced.

What our Olympians were saying is more closely attuned to something the great English statesman William Burke said in 1790: To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”

A book written in 1958 that became a best seller was called “The Ugly American.” It’ still in print. The title has more than some relevance today. And there has been no reason for these Olympians to say so because—-

—-a lot of the rest of the world has the same impression of what our country has become—and our President seems to be the epitome of that book’s title.

They show us grace on the ice, courage on the ski jump and on the bobsled run, subtlety on the curling floor, and daring as they skate at frightening speeds on a small track. They are in deeds as well as in words representatives not of the United States that unfortunately is, but of what the United States can be—and will be as their generation, having witnessed these times, become shapers of better times to come.

(photo credit: NPR)

George

Posted on February 20, 2026 by bpriddy

I’ve written about George Will before in these entries, a conservative columnist I admired for his thinking in a time when many on both sides don’t, for his eloquence at a time when many merely shout and curse, his insight when many prefer not looking below an ugly surface. Earlier this week, he used something odd from FOX News as the springboard for a powerful essay about an obviously deteriorating, clearly fearful, increasingly worried about how he will be remembered and his efforts to erase history, particularly history of black people. George Will turns 85 on May 4 and unlike our President, he is very much still all there.

If you are a dyed in the wool Trump fan, you won’t make it to the end. If you are a Republican who still believes in service to the country rather than a country serving a President, you might find yourself surprised by how much you agree. If you are a Democrat, you’ll think George nailed it.

From our hilltop, we will not argue with him. Even when we have disagreed with him, we would not want to debate him. Here’s George with our Friday bonus: (1800) 1 Minute Ago: Trump Falls Apart Staff Handling Him Legacy Panic & Black History Erasure |George Will – YouTube

(We just checked a few minutes ago and saw that the video has been taken down. However, Cockatoo has provided a transcript. The video ran about 23 minutes. We’ve adjusted some of the time cues in the interest of complete sentences.)

Something very unusual happened this week. Donald Trump held a cabinet meeting, the kind of organized event where he sits at a very long table, surrounded by people who just agree with everything he says. But this time, things went differently. In the middle of his unclear remarks about trade deals and made up economic wins, Fox News did something they almost never do. They stopped showing it. They just cut away, went to a commercial break, and came back talking about something else entirely.

0:38

When your own supportive news channel, the one that spent years defending everything you said, explaining away every mistake and cleaning up every power grab, decides they can no longer show you to their viewers. That tells you everything you need to know. This wasn’t Fox News protecting Trump. This was Fox News protecting their audience from Trump.

1:02

Because what they saw in that cabinet room was a man clearly falling apart mentally and physically. Even they knew there was no way to put a positive spin on what everyone could plainly see. Let’s look at what actually happened in that meeting, because the clips that got out are truly disturbing. Trump tried to explain recent economic numbers, and I say tried very generously. What he really did was throw out random figures, confuse countries with companies, and at one point completely forgot what he was saying in the middle of a sentence. He said, and these are his exact words, we’re bringing back $400 billion, maybe $500 billion, some say $600 billion from China, from Canada, from the European Union, which is basically Germany if you think about it. And nobody has ever seen numbers like this, the biggest numbers in history.

1:59

None of that means anything. Those aren’t policy ideas. That’s not even a twisted version of the truth. That’s a man reaching for numbers he thinks sound impressive while having no clue what he’s actually talking about. But it’s not just what he said. Look at how he looked physically. The way he gripped the table. The way he leaned forward like he needed the furniture to hold himself up, the way his staff, Carolyn Levitt, Stephen Miller, whoever was there, watched him, the way nurses watch a patient ready to jump in if something went wrong. And afterward, he didn’t take any questions. He didn’t walk over to the reporters. His team rushed him out of there as fast as his weakening body could go. Because they know. Every single one of them knows. Here’s what has become completely obvious.

2:58

Donald Trump’s staff isn’t serving him anymore. They’re handling him. There’s a big difference. Compare how much he appears in public now to his first term. Back then, whether you liked him or not, the man was everywhere. Daily press briefings, hour-long unplanned rants. He would stand in front of his helicopter and just talk.

3:22

It was stream of consciousness, sure, but he was alert and present. Now he barely shows up. When he does, everything is carefully planned. He uses a teleprompter for remarks that he would have made off the top of his head in 2017. Only pre-approved questions are allowed. Media access is limited. And the moment anything goes off script, they pull him away.

3:50

Why? Because the people around him, Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, JD Vance, are no longer working to advance Donald Trump’s goals. They’re pushing their own. While he falls apart in front of everyone.

4:06

There were recent reports that Miller runs a separate private communication line with Trump, feeding him information all day long, basically creating an unofficial power structure that goes around the official White House chain of command. That’s not loyal staff work. That’s a power grab. That’s someone making themselves the real decision-maker, while the president, in name only, gets worse and worse. Elon Musk has openly disagreed with Trump’s own policy statements.

4:44

J.D. Vance is already doing his own interviews, presenting himself as the calm, reliable leader of the administration. These people aren’t serving Trump. They’re using him. They’re getting rich, pushing their own plans, playing the stock market with inside information, and just waiting for the unavoidable moment when he’s too far gone to stop them. Donald Trump has become a figurehead in his own White House, and everyone around him knows it. But here’s where it gets really telling. Here’s where Trump’s mental state becomes impossible to look away from.

5:20 You may have heard about this already. Donald Trump is currently holding up federal infrastructure money, specifically funding for the Gateway Project, which is vital transportation infrastructure for the Northeast, unless he gets his name put on Dallas Airport and Penn Station in New York. Read that one more time. The President of the United States is using blackmail against a sitting senator, Chuck Schumer, to get public buildings renamed after himself. On the surface, this is just sad. It’s the behavior of a deeply insecure narcissist who never got enough attention growing up.

5:43

But it goes deeper than that. Because when you look at the pattern of what Trump has been doing over the past few months, a clear picture forms. And that picture is of a man in total panic about how he’ll be remembered. He renamed the Kennedy Center to include his own name, making it the John F. Kennedy and Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts. He couldn’t even let JFK have that one thing to himself. He’s ordered the construction of a huge arch in Washington DC, a literal monument to himself that historians have compared to the kind of ego-driven projects built by Saddam Hussein and Stalin in their final years. He’s trying to rename military bases, government buildings, any structure that has federal money attached to it. Why?

Why this sudden obsession with monuments? Because history shows us that when dictators sense the end is near, whether that’s political, physical, or both, they speed up their monument building. Saddam Hussein’s palace construction went into overdrive in the late 1990s when international sanctions had him isolated. Stalin’s worship of his own image grew stronger as his paranoia and health got worse in his last years. It’s a pattern. When authoritarian leaders know their time is running out, they try to lock themselves into stone because they understand something basic.

They’ve lost control of their own story. And Trump knows he’s lost control. You can see it in his social media posts. You can hear it in the way he’s been talking lately. He started this week, and I’m not making this up, talking about whether he’s going to get into heaven. He just posted it out of nowhere. He wrote something like, the nasty fake news keeps reporting that I said I’m not going to heaven. It was a joke, but they reported seriously because they’re terrible people who want to make me look bad. First of all, nobody was reporting that. He brought it up on his own. He’s the one who can’t stop thinking about it.

8:13

Second, Donald Trump, a man who never talked about God except to win over religious voters, who couldn’t name a single Bible verse when asked, who famously said he’s never asked God for forgiveness, is now fixated on whether God will judge him. That’s not politics. That’s psychology. That’s a man facing the reality of his own death and realizing that no amount of spin can change what’s coming. There are reports from inside Mar-a-Lago that he’s been having conversations about his funeral, about how people will remember him, about what will be said about him after he’s gone. He’s trying to negotiate with history in real time, and he’s losing that negotiation.

You want to know the most perfect symbol of Trump’s panic about his legacy? The Kennedy Center situation. After Trump forced his name onto the building, after he held a big renaming ceremony, after he stood there smiling like he’d done something meaningful, the Kennedy Center shut down. Just closed, with no set date to reopen.

Officially, they said it was for renovations and reorganization. But let’s be honest about what really happened. Donald Trump couldn’t stand the idea that his name would be next to the legacy of a real president. A president remembered for his vision, his way with words, and his sacrifice. So rather than let that comparison exist, rather than risk the building not getting the worship he demanded, he just closed it. He took his ball and went home. And here’s my prediction. Write it down and come back to it.

In 10 years, every monument Trump is building right now will be a source of embarrassment. Hotels will remove the Trump name to avoid being boycotted and some already have. Buildings will be given new names. The arch will be torn down or turned into something else. His own children will try to distance themselves from the brand and some already are. The monuments he’s so desperately trying to build won’t protect his legacy.

10:27

They’ll become places people visit to laugh. People will go see Trump’s folly, the way they visit Confederate monuments, not to honor them, but to remember what we got past. Donald Trump senses this. He knows this, and it’s destroying him inside.

10:46

But here’s the thing. This isn’t just about one aging man’s vanity. This obsession with monuments, this panic about his legacy, it’s connected to something much more dangerous. It’s connected to what his administration is trying to cover up. Because at the exact same time Trump is trying to build monuments to himself, his administration is systematically wiping out other people’s history, specifically black history.

11:17

It started right away, from day one of this administration. The rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The removal of materials from the Smithsonian. The changes to school curriculum, forcing schools to take out discussions of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the civil rights movement from American history classes. Remember the Enola Gay situation? They ran a computer search for the word gay in federal museum records and just started deleting things. They removed an entire exhibit about the plane that dropped the atomic bomb because the word gay appeared in its name. That’s the level of foolishness we’re dealing with. But it’s foolishness in service of a very specific goal, which is erasing history.

12:11

Now a lot of people rightly said, of course Trump wants to erase black history. He’s a racist. His administration is full of white supremacists. They don’t want those stories to be told. That’s true. But it’s not the whole truth. Because the reason they’re erasing black history isn’t just hatred.

12:32

It’s a deliberate strategy. Fascism needs people to forget history. Authoritarian rule cannot survive if people remember how it works, what it looks like, who it targets, and how it has been fought before. There was a podcast conversation recently between Andrew Schultz and Charlemagne the God that captured this perfectly. Schultz, who, let’s remember, defended Trump, made excuses for Trump, told people they were overreacting about Trump, was now expressing shock at what he was seeing. I never thought I’d see this in America, he said. People being shot in the streets by federal agents, families being ripped apart, armed thugs with badges hunting people down for no reason. And Charlemagne said something so simple, so obvious, and so powerful in response. He said, you never thought it would happen to white people. Because here’s the reality. This is American history. This has always been American history. Where do you think policing in America came from? Slave patrols. That’s it.

13:46

That’s the origin. Armed men given power by the government to hunt down black people, return them to slavery, and terrorize communities into obedience. That’s where American policing started.

14:01

The ICE raids happening right now—agents breaking into homes without warrants, tearing families apart, making people disappear into detention centers. That’s not new. That’s a copy of the Fugitive Slave Laws, where federal agents were given the power to hunt human beings across state lines and drag them back into bondage. The heavily armed police beating protesters in the streets, the government surveillance tracking activists, The criminalization of people helping each other. Black Americans have been living through this for 400 years. Indigenous Americans wrote the book on it with their own blood. What’s happening now isn’t Trump inventing American authoritarianism.

14:48

It’s American authoritarianism finally reaching everyone. And that’s exactly why they need to erase black history. Because if Americans knew that history, if they truly understood it, they would immediately recognize what’s happening right now. If we knew Frederick Douglass, we would know how to speak truth to power. If we knew Harriet Tubman, we would know how to build secret networks of resistance. If we knew Ida B. Wells, we would know how to document terrible acts and force the country to face them. If we knew Fannie Lou Hamer, we would know how to document terrible acts and force the country to face them. If we knew Fannie Lou Hamer, we would know how to organize at the local level and fight corrupt systems. If we knew about the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program, we would know how to build community support networks that make us less dependent on a government that wants us helpless.

15:44

If we knew about the labor movements led by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, we would know how to shut down the economy when those in power refuse to listen. They’re not erasing history because they hate the past. They’re erasing it because they’re afraid of a well-informed future. They’re terrified that if you knew how black Americans resisted slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration, you would know exactly how to resist them. That’s why Trump’s monument-building and history-erasing are two sides of the same authoritarian coin. Build monuments to the regime. Erase monuments to resistance. Control the past. Control the future. Except it’s not going to work. Because here’s what Donald Trump can’t seem to grasp. His legacy is already written. It’s done. It’s finished. No amount of marble or fancy stone or renamed airports is going to change it.

16:56

January 6^th will be studies for centuries, not as a patriotic uprising, not as a protest that got out of hand, but as a fascist attempt to overthrow the government by a president who refused to accept that he lost an election. His face will be next to the word insurrection in history textbooks forever. His COVID response, telling people to inject bleach, holding packed rallies while hundreds of thousands of people died, tearing apart pandemic preparedness systems because Obama built them. That’s his legacy. His family separation policy, children locked in cages, toddlers forced to represent themselves in immigration court, thousands of families permanently broken apart. That’s his legacy.

17:46

His two impeachments, his 34 felony convictions, his being found liable for sexual assault, his fraud convictions, his theft of classified documents. That’s his legacy. Future generations aren’t going to ask, was Trump a great president? They’re going to ask, how on earth did Americans fall for this twice? His name isn’t going to stand for greatness.

18:14

It’s going to stand for American decline, the weakening of democracy, and the conman who nearly destroyed the republic. Every monument he builds is one more thing to tear down. Every name he puts on a building is one more name to scrub off. Every arch he orders is one more structure future generations will demolish. That’s his real legacy, and he can’t change it. But you wanna know what the real monument to this era will be? It’s not going to be his arch. It’s not going to be his renamed airport. It’s going to be the resistance. The millions of women who marched the day after his inauguration and kept marching. The sanctuary cities that refused to become part of his deportation machine, the election workers who protected democracy while he sent a mob after them, the journalists he called enemies of the people who kept reporting the truth anyway, the lawyers who filed lawsuit after lawsuit to block his worst actions, the mutual aid networks that fed people when his government shut down. The young people organizing climate protests while he gutted environmental protections.

19:35

The families torn apart by ice who are fighting to be brought back together. The trans kids he tried to erase who refused to disappear. That’s the monument. That’s what will be taught. Not his buildings, not his speeches, but the fact that millions of Americans looked at his authoritarianism and said, no, not here, not us, not ever. The monument to this era is every person who resisted.

20:06

And that monument is being built right now, in real time, by all of us. Which brings me back to Chuck Schumer and that airport naming deal. Senator Schumer, you have one job right now, one very simple job. Do not negotiate with someone using threats. Do not build monuments to tyrants. Do not give this man one more piece of legacy preservation while he’s actively tearing apart American democracy. The answer to Trump’s blackmail should be simple. No. Build the Gateway Project because it’s critical infrastructure and name it after the workers who built it, not the would-be dictator who held it hostage.

20:55

This is a test not just for Schumer, but for every Democrat who claims to be part of the opposition. Are you actually going to push back? Or are you going to make deals with fascism because it’s the easier path?

21:11

But more than that, this is a test for all of us, because Trump’s team is counting on us being worn out. They’re counting on us forgetting. They’re counting on us not remembering how we got here and who showed us the way out. So here’s what we do.

21:27

We write down everything. Every abuse, every lie, every crime. We create the record they’re trying to destroy. We learn the history they’re trying to hide. Read Frederick Douglass, read James Baldwin, read Ida B. Wells, read the scholars they’re removing from universities.

21:48

Learn the strategies of resistance they don’t want you to know about. And we build the other side of the story right now while they’re still in power, so that when this era ends, and it will end, the history that gets taught is the true one. Not Trump’s fantasy, not his monuments, but the real story of what happened and how we made it through. They want us to forget. Our job is to remember everything. If you’ve read this far, you’re part of the resistance. You’re part of that counter-monument we’re building, and I hope you’ll keep building it with me.

Chuck Schumer, do the right thing. No airports, no monuments, no deals with autocrats. And to everyone else, keep fighting. Keep writing things down. Keep learning the history they’re trying to erase. Keep learning the history they’re trying to erase. They’re counting on your silence. Don’t give it to them.

The Great Religious President

Posted on February 18, 2026 by bpriddy

President Trump spoke at one of the two national prayer breakfasts held in Washington a few days ago and showed once again what a great Christian he is.

Except for the great Christian trait of modesty. He’s never been very good about that. “I’ve done more for religion than any other President,” he proclaimed.

I agree. Wholeheartedly.

No other President has been able to have as many people shout the name of The Savior with more exclamation points than Donald Trump has.

No other President has said or done things that have had more people say, “Oh, My God!

No other President has ever had so many people praying. For our country.

He displayed his high regard for prayer by telling of Speaker Mike Johnson saying when they’re having lunch, “Sir, may we pray?” to which our reverent President reported his answer was, “Excuse me? We’re having lunch.”

In his speech he showed Christian respect for others by calling a Congressman “a moron” and pondered how Christians could vote for Democrats. The answer, as he might learn this fall, is: “very easily.”

He remarked that 2025 was a record year for Bible sales although he modestly didn’t proclaim that sales of the Trump Bible made anything more than a tiny drop in the sales bucket. The remark, however, was a rare stroke of truth in his long verbal ramble.*

This is the great Christian who told a group of religious leaders ten years ago or so, “I think if I do something wrong, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”

At least at the prayer breakfast he didn’t repeat something the man who worships the putter on Sunday mornings told at an earlier Turning Point USA meeting, “I love you Christians.”

Is he categorizing Christians the same way he has categorized immigrants in a 2024 speech: “The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans, they’re animals.”

This is the same guy who washed his hands of any responsibility for the weekend portrayal on social media of the Obamas as apes. The buck never stops at HIS desk. He blamed a White House staff member and professed ignorance of the portrayal. He didn’t say if the staff member still has a job.

He spoke for 75 or 85 minutes, depending on who was holding the clock. He made no references to any inspiring words from his “favorite book” and in fact has dodged citing any favorite verses—because he doesn’t know one that fits his religion (I differentiate religion from faith and as you’ve seen previously in this space have remarked that “nothing screws up faith more than religion.”)*

I wonder if he can pronounce “Beatitudes.” The fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew says Jesus pronounced certain people as “blessed. Let’s see how many blessings our president qualifies for.

“Poor in spirit,” as in humble. Can’t check that one.

“they who mourn, for they will be comforted.” He’s done a lot of thoughting and praying but that probably isn’t what Jesus was talking about.

“the meek.” Meek, he is not.

“those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.’ His hungers and his thirsts have nothing to do with righteousness as far as we can tell.

“the merciful.” Ask the people in Minneapolis about that one.

“clean in heart.” Don’t get me started on that one.

“the peacemakers.” I’ll stand with the Nobel Committee.

“those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.” Again, the people of Minneapolis in particular among all of the occupied cities and cities to come most likely have a far different view of who is persecuted and who is righteous. But not Donald Trump.

Even if we give him the last one that makes him only one for eight. Somebody who does one for eight doesn’t last long in the major leagues of baseball, football, basketball or carpentry, where hitting the nail on the head once in eight tries won’t build much.

You remember, don’t you, who was a carpenter? The one whose name Donald Trump prompts so many to say with such emphasis.

*To impress you with how important the Bible is to Donald Trump, go to the official Trump merchandise page where you will find, among other things, about sixteen versions of the Trump Bible. “The Day that God Intervened July 13, 2024” edition is sold out but there’s one on eBay for $129.99). Other editions range from $64.99 to $99.99 although one with a hand-signed (no autopen for him, remember?) for a thousand dollars. Don’t forget to read “Two Corinthians,” his favorite book.

(picture credit: Trump merch store)

Sports: Just When You Thought the Tigers…..; Mikolas Understands; Catching up on Kobe and Others; The Daytona Survivor

Posted on February 17, 2026 by bpriddy

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(MIZBB)—Just when many thought the Missouri Tigers had turned an important corner and were playing consistent, intense basketball they are badly outplayed by a team that played their game better than they did.

Missouri, a team that feasts on the inside game with outside sharpshooters to provide balance, was badly outplayed on the inside in the Texas game and suffered another big-point loss at a crucial time. Texas ran away in the second half to win 85-68. Texas outscored Missouri 40-28 in the paint and out-rebounded the Tigers 36-26/

The Tigers shot only ten three-pointers and hit four of them. They drew fouls on the inside but continued their mediocre (at best) free throw shooting, going 26-38. Texas missed only two of its 23 free throws. It was only the fifth time in the last eleven years that Missouri has tried ten or fewer shots from outside the arc.

Missouri sent into the game as the last team in the NCAA tournament according to one survey, and as high as 57^th in another. It’s back on the outside again.

The Tigers play Vanderbilt tomorrow night. It’s a big test. Vanderbilt comes in at 21-4, has won three in a row, and is third in the conference standings.

(THE BILLS)—-The St. Louis University Billikens continued their roll with an 86-59 drubbing of Chicago Loyola to run their record to 24-1. This week’s coaches poll has them 19^th. Sportswriters have them 18^th.

(KOBE)—Former Tiger Kobe Brown has moved from the Los Angeles Clippers to the Indiana Pacers in the last week or so. This is his fifth season in the NBA. He’s been a bench player throughout his career—getting only a couple of starts and averaging about three points a game.

But he was impressive in his first two games with the Pacers. In 19 minutes against the Knicks, he got a half dozen rebounds and eight points. When he was on the court, Indiana outscored the Knicks by 13. He followed up that game with four points, seven rebounds and three assists in 28 minutes against the Brooklyn Nets.

How ‘bout some other former Tigers:

Tamar Bates, who signed a two-way contract with the Denver Broncos after going undrafted last year, recovering from a December surgical procedure to repair a broken left foot. A two-way contract lets a player in the NBA’s G League move back and forth to the parent club while developing NBA skills.

Caleb Grill is playing for the Windy City Bulls, the G League affiliate of the Chicago Bulls. He’s averaging about 11 ppg in 27 games.

Jordan Clarkson is averaging about nine points a game for the Knicks. He’s an 11 year veteran of then NBA now.

Michael Porter is in his first year with the Brooklyn Nets. He’s averaging 25 points, 7 rebounds and three assists.

Dru Smith is averaging six points a game for the Miami Heat. He went undrafted in 2021 but played for Brooklyn before moving to Miami in the off season.

Sean East is averaging 17.5 ppg for the Salt Lake City Stars, the G League affiliate of the Utah Jazz. He has earned his way into the NBA Rising Stars game.

D’Moi Hodge played internationally last year before joining the G League playing for the Texas Legends, the affiliate of the Dallas Mavericks. In 32 games he’s averaging 8.5 points per game.

Jeremiah Tilmon also is on a G league team, the Wisconsin Herd, an affiliate of the Milwaukee Bucks after playing time in Europe.

How about some baseball?

(CARDINALS)—Workhorse pitcher Miles Mikolas has found a new home with the Washington Nationals but he has no hard feelings about being cut loose from the Cardinals. It boils down to just baseball business. He tells Sports Illustrated online’s Patrick McEvoy:

“The Cardinals, you know, they were kind of in between the teardown and the rebuild but you know, sometimes, you have to wipe the board clean, you have to grab a new sheet of paper before you can paint that next masterpiece. They got a new front office and they’re going for it with that. I’m sure you know that’s a really good, smart group of guys there. They’re going to make the moves that obviously they think are best. It is definitely different. It was loaded with veterans my first couple of years there and I was a little bit younger. …

“We caught some bad breaks the last couple of seasons. We lose some guys. Guys had some down years. I’m going to regret forever not pitching my last couple of years in a Cardinals uniform. But that’s the way that baseball is. You have good years and you have bad years. Bounce back. Comeback seasons and stuff like that. Wish all of my best to all of my buddies over there. I hope they do great except for the games that we’re playing them.”

He’s known as an innings-burner, one of four pitchers to start at least 30 games in a season in the last four years—130 of them, which ties him with Dylan Cease for second behind Logan Webb’s 132. He also is one of a dozen pitchers to make at least 200 starts each year in the last eight seasons, despite missing all of 2020 and part of 2021 with an arm injury. He’s 37.

-0-

(CARDINALS)—-The first spring training game for the Cardinals is Sunday against the Washington Nationals at “home.”

(ROYALS)—Kansas City’s first spring training game will be Friday against the Texas Rangers.

(CHIEFS)—-The Chiefs have picked up another coach with significant opportunities—DeMarco Murray, a former NFL Offensive Player of the year who is the new running backs coach. He spent the last six years on the staff of the Oklahoma Sooners.

The Chiefs have one running back under contract—Brashard Smith. Dameon Pierce, Isiah Pacheco and Kareem Hunt will become free agents soon.

Murray was with the Dallas Cowboys for four years, leading the league 1845 yards rushing one year. He also played for the Eagles and the Titans.

Circle time—well, more like a tri-oval time.

(DAYTONA)—-Right place, right time—-once again, the Daytona 500 ends with a mad scramble in the last 500 hundred yards and this year’s survivor is Tyler Reddick who emerged from the last lap madness to beat Ricky Stenhouse Jr., across the line. Third-place finisher Joey Logan crossed the line sideways by Brad Keselowski (still recovering from a December broken leg) and Chase Elliott crashing into his side. Logano was awarded third place and Elliott, fourth.

The race featured 65 lead changes with a record 25 drivers crossing the finish line leading at least one lap. Bubba Wallace led 40 of them and came home tenth.

A year ago, Reddick and his teammates at 23XI Racing were uncertain they’d have rides this year as 23XI and its co-owners Denny Hamlin and NBA star Michael Jordan were involved in a heated anti-trust lawsuit about NASCAR’s charter system that guarantees starting positions and funding for teams. The suit was settled during the off-season with 23XI getting its charter.

The win is the first for Reddick since 2024. “Just speechless. I didn’t know if I’d ever win this race. It’s surreal, honestly. The best part is my son asked before this race, ‘Are you finally going to win this race?’ Something about today just felt right,” he told an interviewer in winner’s circle.

(SEVENTIME)—Jimmie Johnson is going to quit messing around in the cockpit of a NASCAR car a year from now. He announced before the Daytona 500 that next year’s race will be his last one behind the wheel. He’s been competing occasionally in select races for the last six years, but says it’s time to devote all of his time to his team, Legacy Motor Club—which bought up Petty Racing a couple of years ago. Johnson will be 51 in September. He ran with the contenders for part of the race but finished 29^th.

Waiting For Names

Posted on February 16, 2026 by bpriddy

It is early on a Friday morning. No longer dark and not quite light and I have been driven to my keyboard by a brief conversation with an unidentified friend that came to my mind in that strange time between sleep and wakefulness.

The cats have been fed to keep them at bay while I sit here in pajamas and robe to write this before it fades away into the day’s life.

I have told Nancy from time to time that writers sometimes must write when the muse demands no matter when it is.

A friend (I’m sure it was a friend although I recall no face, just a voice) in that in-between time this morning asked me a question and I am motivated to answer it here.

“I want to name my son Jesus,” he said. “What do you think?”

He pronounced it with the “J.”

I answered, “Sure, go ahead. But think about pronouncing it “Hay-soos.”

And a few seconds later, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be interesting to give him the middle name of Nguyen?”

I am fascinated by names and what they say about our national culture. As I was talking to myself, or maybe with my dream friend, I began to wonder how many babies might be born to White families like mine (where the children have good white names such as Robert and Elizabeth) in Minneapolis this year with first names such as Abdi, Bashir, Dahir, or Wasame—-popular Somali surnames meaning, in order, servant or worshiper, bringer of good news, light or sun, and glad tidings.

It is not uncommon for names to be tied to events or to challenging times that highlight parts of our cultural stew.

(I prefer “stew” to a reference to our cultural soup that suggests we all blend together into a single entity. Stews are made of different elements that retrain their identities —carrots, potatoes, meat, and sometimes little bitty onions and peas—to provide a tasty flavor.)

Jesus Nguyen Jones. Lara Solis Smith (Mexican surnames for a place of laurel trees and sunny).

Names of African-Americans such as James Washington that stem from the slave era, are giving way to some wonderful and fascinating new names—-just look at the wide variety of names on the back of some sports uniforms for examples.

I am waiting for the first white athlete named Jamar.

What is happening seems to this observer to be a quiet but growing form of new cultural recognition that in time will create a nutritious national stew. The elements are becoming more self-identified. But with time, we will see the Jesus Nguyens and the Lara Solises, and the Robert Jamals and Elizabeth Githinjis (Kenyan for “one who is blessed or fortunate”).

A century from now, the face and faces of America are most likely to be much different from today’s American culture and, we hope, the irrational fears of “others” will be relegated to history. We do not fear that time for it speaks of a recognition that all are children of a creator known by different names in different places within a single world.

(Picture Credit: The Golden Rule, Norman Rockwell Museum)

The Air We Breathe

Posted on February 11, 2026 by bpriddy

I’d reading Sam Kean’s Caesar’s Last Breath, a book with the subtitle of “Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us.” I’m not far into it. I’m reading about the creation of the world and with it the creation of the atmosphere that sustains our life.

Kean hooks the reader with a question— the death of Julius Caeser and his dying question, “You too, Brutus?” Imagine, he says, the air escaping your body as you breath. “How much do you really know about this air? Feel your lungs deflate and sag inside your chest (as you breathe YOUR last breath). What’s really going on inside there?”

“Imagine you can feel the individual molecules of gas pinging your fingertips, impossibly tine dumbbells caroming off into the air around you? How many are there, and where do these molecules go?”

Our molecules, he says, blend in with the molecules of everyone on earth and all of us are re-breathing the molecules of others. And they do not disappear. Kean maintains that “our breaths entangle us with the historical past….Is it possible that your next breath…might include some of the same air that Julius Caesar exhaled when he died?” We won’t know it, of course but it’s possible because most of the air we breathe is in a ten-mile thick belt of atmosphere all around the world and the air we breathe is air someone else, somewhere else, some other time breathed.

Ten miles. That’s a lot of air. It means you and I in our lives likely breathed some of Caser’s last breath, or the breath Moses used to announce the Ten Commandments, and—if you believe they actually existed—some of the Molecules of Adam and Eve’s breath.

We breathe the same air of Thomas Jefferson, of Jesse James, of Adolf Hitler, of long-dead friends and relatives—molecules of their breaths. For some it is sobering and for others it is exhilarating to know that we are breathing some of President Trump’s breath.

It’s an intriguing suggestion. It reminds us of something Maine Senator Ed Muskie say at a 1972 Jackson Day dinner in Springfield in 1972, four years after he had been Hubert Humphrey’s running mate for the presidency. His remarks at the end of his speech were so profound that I listened back to my tape and typed them. I don’t know what happened to that recording. I wish very much that I had it so I could hear again that great voice talking about “the nature of the balance that must be struck between man and man’s environment.”

He told the audience that balance had been “put most eloquently recently in a book translated from the Swedish by the University of Alabama Press.

“This point was made: that every human being carries within him 100,000 genes. These genes have given him his entire inheritance from the past; his personality, his character, intelligence, talents and skills.

“If all the genes of the two and one-half billion human beings on this planet were backed together, they would form a ball, a small ball, one millimeter in diameter. That small ball is all that holds us together, as a species.

“It is all we own, as human beings.

“And what sustains its life?

“A thin crust which so far as we know is the only place in the whole part of the whole cosmos which can sustain this kind of life. In order to portray on a desk size globe the portion of its diameter which will sustain organic life including the atmosphere, there is not a lacquer thin enough to indicate the proportions.

“All inside that coat of lacquer is the black death of the inner planet, while all outside it is the black death of outer space. We’ve not yet discovered anything duplicating this coat of lacquer anywhere within range of the technology we have developed to date.

“If it exists anywhere, it exists outside the range of anyone, any human being within his lifetime, using the most advanced technology of which we’re capable.

“This then is the dimension of our existence in this universe. The numbers of people cannot expect to endlessly exploit that think coat of lacquer and survive.

“And it is poisoned today not only by the insults we make upon our physical resources, but by the poisons which divide us against each other. We cannot survive unless we deal with both.

“I think the genius of our political system is that notwithstanding all of the evidence to the contrary today, we have demonstrated that a free people can rise to such a challenge, and I choose to believe that we were destined to develop our capacity to do so. And whether or not we will must still be the result of our own deliberate intent, and intelligence, and work.

“That is the nature of the challenge.”

The remarks have something of a contemporary ring to them and they underline some simple questions for which humans struggle to answer.

If we breathe the same air as our ancestors breathed all the way back to the beginning of humanity and before, and we live in a large but common atmosphere, why do we insist that some are more privileged to exist than others do? Why do we spend so much effort trying to prove that some of us are better than others and deserve more for ourselves at a time when we all share those molecules 17,000-29,000 in a day? We do not separate the molecules of our lives according to our differences?

Why do we waste so much of our time ignoring these basic similarities that unite us as a species?

What good does it do?

The breaths of Adam and Eve, if you believe in that origin story, or the breaths of the first protohumans are yet in our lungs. Why do we waste so many of those breaths trying to define our differences?

As I live and breathe (as my grandmother used to exclaim), I don’t know.

Sports: Two clutch wins; a boost from Minnesota; Super Bowl Rings and baseball is back.

Posted on February 9, 2026 by bpriddy

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(SUPERMO)—Several football players from Missouri were in the Super Bowl Sunday and some will be wearing the big rings. The starting center for Seattle was Jalen Sundell, a Maryville native who played collegiately at North Dakota State.

Running back Jacardia Wright played three of his five years of collegiate football at Missouri State, where he rushed for more than 3500 yards and scored 33 touchdowns. He joined the Seahawks as an undrafted free agent. He carried the ball five times for 20 yards in the ‘Hawks win over New Orleans in week three but was injured and finished the season in injured reserve.

Drew Lock is the clipboard quarterback behind Sam Darnold for the second year. He got into five games this year and threw three passes.

Mason Richman was a Blue Valley High School grad who went to Iowa for college. He’s a lineman who got into two games this year for Seattle.

Yasir Durant, an offensive tackle from Mizzou, was with the Chiefs and the Patriots before becoming a Seahawk. He was on injured reserve all season.

The Patriots had Mizzou’s Marcus Bryant as their number two right tackle/ Bryant, a seventh round draft pick, was in a dozen games for New England this season.

(MIZZBB)—Every game is a “must” for Missouri from here on out as they come off of two important victories, one on the road. They remain on the NCAA tournament bubble as we head into the final weeks of the season. Missouri’s win against South Carolina ups their conference record to 6-4 and their overall record to 16-7 with eleven regular season games to go.

Next up is Texas A&M, the top team in the conference at 7-1. The Aggies’ overall record is only slightly better than Missouri’s at 17-5. A&M was 25^th in the coaches poll last week but is off the list this week.

(MIZZMIN)—Minnesota has helped Missouri in its run to the tournament. The Tigers beat Minnesota 73-60 early in the season. Minnesota gained stature by beating 10^th ranked Michigan last week, and the elevation of Minnesota brings Missouri along with it. We could try to explain it, but to be honest, we don’t quite grasp the Quad thing.

(MIZZBAMA)—-If the Alabama Crimson Tide meets Missouri in the SEC tournament, the Tide will be without Charles Bediako, the 7-foot center who was allowed to play after spending time with an NBA G League. An Alabama circuit judge denied Bediako’s motion for a preliminary injunction that would let him keep playing. Bediako scored 14 points in ‘Bama’s 90-74 win last month.

(Bills)—The St. Louis Billikens have cracked the top 20 in the AP sportswriters poll. The Bills, 23-1, are 18^th among sportswriters and 19^th among coaches. Mizzou got zero votes in both polls. They’re in the top 20 for the first time since they reached as high as tenth in 2013-14. Their sixteen straight wins are the longest streak since the 2013-14 team reeled off 19 straight. The scoring margin of plus 23.3 is the best in the country. They’re fifth in scoring average—91.3. Their seven games ato100 or more is tied for the national league. They have an NCAA-best 31.2 defensive rebounds per game. Six players have double-figure scoring averages, one of three teams in the NCAA Division 1.

(BASEBALL)—Spring training is starting with Royals pitchers and catchers reporting tomorrow and the Cardinals pitchers and catchers due incamp on Thursday. Position players are due in camp Monday.

Fast Stuff—-

(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s biggest race will kick off the season Sunday afternoon at Daytona, weather permitting. Forty-five drivers/teams are entered but four will not be in the starting field. Qualifying to set the first two starting positions will be tomorrow with two short races Thursday that will set positions for the rest of the starting field. The green flag drops on the season at 1:30 our time Sunday.

Brad Keselowski’s broken leg, injured in a December 18 skiing incident, has healed enough that he’ll be able to start the race. His only win at Daytona was in the July race in 2016. He was NASCAR’s champion in 2012.

Five days out, the weather is iffy—41% chance of rain during the race’s scheduled time.

(INDYCAR)—–Mick Shumacher has finished his first test on an oval and says “one of the weird parts” was keeping his foot down when approaching a corner. The test was done at Homestead-Miami Speedway, a former racing site in the series.

Schumacher is the son of 7-time Formula One champion Michael Schumacher, who won five F1 races on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. He drives for the team owned by Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal and television personality David Letterman.

Pre-season testing for most of the other teams started yesterday on the Sebring road course with 23 IndyCar drivers turning laps. Marcus Armstrong had the fastest lap by a whisker over Scott McLaughlin. Alex Palou had the fastest lap of the day, running the course in a morning session.

The season starts March 1 with a race through the streets of St. Petersburg. Florida.

(photo credit—Rahal Letterman Lanigan racing).

Three Celebration

Posted on February 9, 2026 by bpriddy

A few days ago we had a joint celebration at Lincoln University, the school on the hill at Lafayette and Dunklin Streets in Jefferson City. The combination Black History Month observance, the celebration of the school’s 160^th birthday, and the observance of our nation’s 250^th birth anniversary also created a unique moment for local author Michelle Brooks.

Michelle has become a prolific author of nine books about Jefferson City’s history, including he one that debuted that evening, February 5 (another anniversary: the 115^th of the burning of the Capitol that led to the construction of the magnificent building we have today). First to Freedom; Cole County U.S. Colored Troops, is a tribute to several of the Jefferson City black soldiers who were in the 62^nd and 65^th Colored Infancy of the Union Army whose financial contributions led to the creation of Lincoln.

One of the officers of the 62^nd noted in his farewell speech that 99 of the 4312 men had learned to “read, write and cipher.” In all, he noted “200 read and write understandingly, 284 can read, 377 can spell in words of two syllables and are learning to read.”

Jefferson City offered a ramshackle school building for the new institution. Classes began in the fall of 1866, nineteen year after Missouri passed a law making it illegal for black people to be taught to read and write.

I was asked to emcee the event that included an Abraham Lincoln reenactor reading the “Proposition 95—Regrading the status of slaves in states engaged in rebellion against the United States.” Most people speak of it as the Emancipation Proclamation—which I believe should be pronounced with emphasis on the first word: EMANCIPATION proclamation—and another reenactor portraying Robert Foster, the founding officer. Missouri became the first slave state to have its own EMANCIPATION Proclamation. By the end of the war, one-in-ten Union soldiers was black—179-thousand in the army and another 19-thousand in the Navy.

Part of my remarks between presentations and to end the evening said:

“We have many great statues and bronze tableaus in and at our Capitol, but I think the finest, and most inspirational one in Jefferson City is just up the hill, the “Soldier’s Memorial Plaza” tableau. It recalls the sacrifices made by members of the 62^nd and 65^th United States Colored Infantries, men who knew full well a way of life they fought to leave behind.

“They are symbolized in bronze now. But they were symbols FOR millions of people in their time and remain in bronze as symbols of hope for all of us today and tomorrow—-life and freedom are only a hand-grasp away, and they are a reminder that an open hand is always better than a closed fist in maintaining the nation whose 250^th birth anniversary we celebrate this year.

“The first slaves were brought to Missouri to help mine lead in the 1720s.

“When Lewis and Clark went upstream past the bluff that is now the site of our city, a black man named York was part of the group, the slave of William Clark. When they came back from the Pacific Ocean in 1806, a black man was part of the explorers. His name was York. York was William Clark’s slave. He endured with them all of the dangerous times, saw all of the glories of the great mountains, and was the equal of all on that perilous trip. He believed he would become a free man on the return and could not adjust to being nothing more than a slave again. Eventually Clark shipped him off to Louisville Kentucky where he was reunited with his enslaved wife.

“If York and his wife had children, they would have been part of the freedom movement after the Civil War. We don’t know what happened to him. History seems to have obscured him. But the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13^th Amendment gave his descendants the freedom he dreamed of.

“When the first black member of the legislature, Representative Walthall Moore of St. Louis took office in 1921, almost sixty years after the proclamation, he had to room in Jefferson City with a black family, had to eat at a black restaurant, travel in black-owned taxis, and drink from water fountains for the colored.

“But it was Moore who got the half-million dollar appropriation that transformed Lincoln Institute into Lincoln University. .

“Forty-seven years later, I watched as the Jefferson City council, in 1968, passed an ordinance that said black legislators no loner had to stay in Lincoln University dormitory rooms and private homes, and that black people could live anywhere in the city where they could afford to live.

“One-hundred-and-sixty years after the founding of Lincoln University, many people of color still struggle to be considered “people” and there are those who judge some to be unequal only because of their color, their faith, their identities—-and the country where they were born.

“In this year when we celebrate the 250^th anniversary of a document that proclaimed that all men are created equal, we again find ourselves wondering meaning the meaning of those words. Some interpreters believe Jefferson meant that all of us are BORN equal in nature. It is in nurture that divisions are made, distrust develops, and hate can take hold.

“We learn these lessons through the honest study of history and if we are free to learn that history, we can be the ones who bend the arc of the moral universe a little more toward justice.

“Let us go forth from this good evening in the hope that history gives us for peace.”

The event concluded with a fine prayer from Rev. Dr. Adrian Hendricks II of the Joshua House Church in Jefferson City.

Heavenly Father: Tonight as we take a moment and pause to celebrate the history of African Americans, we pause to celebrate American history, giving you thanks and praise, O God, for this nation; giving you thanks and praise or i’s foundation and for its forefathers and for its Declaration to uphold the high ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And yet In this hour, even as this nation struggles to uphold its identity, we give you thanks and praise for its potential, a potential that still has the opportunity to demonstrate love for our fellow man, a potential that still has the opportunity to pick up the poor and stabilize the impoverished, a potential that still has the opportunity to right historical wrongs, heal historical wounds, and to be the first global power that’s unafraid to let freedom ring!

Lord, go before us, as WE navigate a new pathway. Stand beside us, as we rediscover our moral compass and move within us as we continue to define what it means to be an American.

It’s in your mighty and matchless name that we pray,

Hallelujah & AMEN!

Amen, in deed.

(Photo credits: Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau; Lincoln University)

Bob Priddy

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