When people ask me, “How are you?” I answer, “Dazed, confused, and prone to wandering.” This flippant response is a way to avoid the common but meaningless “Fine” with a similarly unserious but likely humorous rejoinder. Unfortunately, as I read supposedly serious discussions by left-leaning legal scholars, my confusion turns to bewilderment. Today’s case in point is “How the Tide Might Turn: The Inevitable End of Trumpism,” by Neil H. Buchanan.
At its beginning, the title makes the essay seem like a serious thought experiment worthy of consideration. But for a thought experiment to have meaning, it must begin with facts. Anything else is an exercise in magical thinking, perhaps fit for a science fiction or fantasy novel. Buchanan begins with, “There is no escaping the fact that the United States is now being wrenched into a new reality that replaces the rule of law and democratic accountability with a naked version of autocratic rule.” With “facts” like that, who needs logic? Simply declare it to be so, and it will be!
The rule of law requires that there be a law that must be followed. Trump 45 established a pattern. He attempted to do something that made sense to him and his attorneys. Lefty plaintiffs rushed into the nearest Democrat judge (Yes, John Roberts, there are Democrat judges) and got a restraining order. So, Trump appealed or modified his action to answer the complaint. Ultimately, he won virtually every case that went to court. Even his “insurrection,” J6, and Mar-a-Lago indictments ran aground and fell apart when examined closely. We may be confident that the Georgia and three New York cases are similar houses of cards.
Trump 47 has been sued several times already, all based in one way or another on the actions of DOGE. And he has already stated that he will do whatever the courts tell him to do, just as he did in his first term. Trump will almost certainly win all the cases. The key is Article II, § 1, Sentence 1. “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
Put bluntly, while the President is to “take care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (§ 3), he’s the ultimate authority over the Executive Branch. The Treasury is in the Executive Branch, so he’s the boss. If he sends someone to sort out where the money went, that’s his business, and no judge has jurisdiction to tell him “No.”
Congress wrote laws that said that confidential personal information cannot be revealed, but there’s no evidence that any was exposed. Of course, some IRS employee leaked Trump’s tax returns to the New York Slimes, but that had to be “within the rule of law” to use Buchanan’s language.
“…the new lawlessness is turning out in its particulars to be scarier than even my worst fears, especially in the speed with which the federal government is being dismantled,” wrote Buchanan.
One must wonder if Buchanan had looked at the list of things that USAID did. Had he seen the millions of dollars of food relief for Syrian refugees that was actually sent to designated terrorist organizations? I didn’t think so. His bubble can’t be penetrated by the $59 million diverted by FEMA from Hurricane Helene relief to pay for housing illegal aliens in New York.
But the core of the argument revolves around the central law that governs the US. That’s the US Constitution.
In our constitutional structure, the President is ultimately limited by the decisions of the Supreme Court. Of particular interest is the fact that Congress has to authorize federal spending. But Joe Biden (does anyone remember him?) happily forgave student loans with money no one had authorized. The Court slapped him down. Did he stop? No! He kept on in utter defiance.
Biden went full Jacksonian on America. Translating Jackson’s early American English for today, he roughly said, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” Or in the more familiar vernacular, “Make me!” Do we have to ask who was more law-abiding? Didn’t think so.
Before we finish, we must consider a headline in the middle of Buchanan’s screed. “Prospects for Stopping or Slowing the Slide Toward Totalitarianism.”
That last word is important. Roughly translated it means, “Do as I say or you’ll very seriously regret it.” That’s what’s going on under Putin in Russia. Just ask Alexei Navalny or his wife. Oops. They’re dead. They are just two of a long list of opponents who suffered from Arkancide (Russian style).
What has Trump done to deserve such a slander? He has unleashed a group of sleuths who have revealed that up to a third of our federal expenditures (it’s not a budget) have been diverted to support leftist purposes. That massive fraud on the taxpayer is almost certain to lead to a change of address and loss of WiFi for some participants.
On the other hand, leftist prosecutors, FBI higher-ups, and judges kept people who had done nothing more criminal than walk between the velvet ropes in the Capital in prison for four years without trial. Those are acts of totalitarians.
A psychosis is defined by the presence of a major defect in reality testing. Let’s listen to Buchanan to identify whether he is psychotic.
“All of this means that there will be loads and loads of very bad news over the coming weeks, months, and most likely years. Much of the gratuitous harm that Trump will inflict is going to be irreversible, as people die unnecessarily from diseases and disasters that the government will no longer contain (and might even make worse), all while many people’s livelihoods will be ruined…
“Trump’s time on this planet is quite limited (given … his already evident mental decline, and his poor health)…”
We have medication to help with those voices…
Ted Noel is a retired physician who posts on social media as Doctor Ted. His Doctor Ted’s Prescription podcast is available on multiple podcast channels.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.