A Government Shutdown, Military Pay, and the Shadow of a Third Term
What’s really at stake when a shutdown exposes government priorities and tests constitutional limits.
In this morning’s newsletter, I discuss Steve Bannon floating a “plan” for the convicted felon’s third term, the Pentagon is accepting millions in private donations to pay troops, tens of millions of Americans missing critical food assistance in November, and elected Democratic officials excusing a Nazi tattoo. The choices being made this week tell you everything about where priorities lie—and what this administration values most.
Additionally, I worked with Buttondown’s support team to sort out the issue with the Upgrade Now button, which was linking to a Pay-What-You-Want page on Stripe. The Solzy Report home page now lists all three paid subscription levels: monthly, yearly, and founding. When subscribers click Upgrade Now, Stripe currently defaults to the monthly and yearly options, ignoring the founding level that existed when the newsletter ran on Substack.
Steve Bannon’s “Plan” for a Third Term
Steve Bannon’s latest interview reads like a dispatch from an alternate reality—one where the 22nd Amendment is a minor inconvenience, divine providence moonlights as a campaign manager, and American democracy is apparently something to “work around.”
In a conversation with The Economist, Bannon said the convicted felon “is gonna get a third term” and insisted there’s a “plan” to make it happen. When pressed about the pesky constitutional clause that limits presidents to two elected terms, Bannon waved it off. “There’s many different alternatives,” he said, promising details “at the appropriate time.”
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Authoritarian movements always test boundaries by pretending they’re theoretical—until suddenly they’re not. First it’s a joke, then it’s a meme, then it’s a policy platform.
The 22nd Amendment isn’t vague. It was written after FDR’s four terms to ensure no one person could hold executive power indefinitely. And yet here we are—one of the convicted felon’s closest allies musing about ‘divine will’ and hinting at ‘mechanisms’ to put him back in office in 2028.
To be clear: there is no constitutional “workaround” for a third term. There is only a choice between respecting the rule of law and breaking it. And when Bannon suggests that the “will of the American people” could override the Constitution, what he’s really describing is not democracy—it’s populism with a messiah complex.
What’s most telling isn’t that Bannon said it—it’s that no one in the convicted felon’s orbit rushed to correct him. That silence is the message.
We’ve heard this song before: “He doesn’t really mean it.” “It’s just rhetoric.” “He can’t actually do that.”
And yet, somehow, every red line that couldn’t possibly be crossed… eventually was.
An Anonymous $130 Million “Gift” to the U.S. Military
The Pentagon confirmed Friday that it’s accepting a $130 million donation from an unnamed “friend” of the convicted felon to help pay military salaries during the ongoing government shutdown. CNN reports the department is invoking its “general gift acceptance authority,” a rarely used statute meant for limited purposes—military schools, hospitals, cemeteries—not subsidizing payroll—symbolically, that’s about $100 per active-duty service member.
Congress has the constitutional power of the purse. Period. That safeguard exists to prevent the executive branch from turning the military into a personal patronage system. Once a president can plug budget holes with private money from anonymous “friends,” we’ve entered oligarch territory.
Legal experts warn this stretches the law: the Antideficiency Act forbids using private funds to cover appropriations shortfalls, yet the administration insists it counts. And while critics—Senator Chris Coons among them—raise alarms about foreign influence, the Pentagon has offered nothing but evasive answers.
The convicted felon, of course, boasted the money came from “a friend of mine” who “doesn’t really want the recognition.” The implication is obvious: private wealth, anonymous and unaccountable, can flow into the government whenever the White House chooses.
This isn’t just testing the law—it’s testing whether we still remember why it exists.
Food Stamps and Shutdowns
Forty-two million Americans—one in eight, myself included—rely on food assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But unless the shutdown ends soon, those benefits could vanish in November. CNN reports the USDA says it won’t use its $6 billion contingency fund to keep SNAP running, claiming it’s “not legally available” for regular benefits.
Advocates say otherwise. They argue the administration is obligated to use that fund when regular appropriations lapse—and note that this White House has never hesitated to find “creative” funding when it suits other priorities. Need an example? The same government that won’t cover SNAP found $20–40 billion to bail out Argentina—while Americans go hungry. As one longtime budget expert put it, the claim that the administration’s hands are tied is “unequivocally false.”
If the government can move money around to pay troops, subsidize foreign governments, or cover political priorities, it can find a way to keep families fed. Choosing not to is still a choice—and one that tells you exactly where this administration’s values lie.
When Did We Start Making Excuses for Nazi Tattoos?
Responding to Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, Senator Chris Murphy called Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner “a human being who made mistakes,” referring to the Totenkopf tattoo on Platner’s chest—the skull insignia of the Nazi S.S.
Murphy acknowledged CNN’s reporting that Platner had discussed the symbol multiple times in recent years, yet said he was “looking forward to sitting down and talking to him about it.” He’s not alone. Other Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, have downplayed it too.
Elected Democratic officials need to stop excusing Platner’s behavior and call it what it is. I don’t care that he covered it up. Don’t tell me he didn’t know what it meant—he did. Have any of them actually looked at his history of misogynistic, racially insensitive, and anti-LGBTQ posts from 2016 to 2021? Or is that dismissed as another “dark period” after military service?
A Nazi tattoo isn’t a mistake—it’s a message. Democrats can believe in redemption, but not without accountability. The minute we start normalizing hate symbols and hateful rhetoric, we lose the moral ground that defines us.
Platner needs to drop out. Full stop.
A new SoCal Strategies Maine Poll out Saturday shows Governor Janet Mills taking the lead in the 2026 Senate race—a reminder that decency still has a constituency in Maine.