Nancy's Notes

Have you ever felt like the world was slipping sideways beneath your feet, like we’re right at the edge of the Earth, and the ground we assumed was solid suddenly isn’t? Of course you have as that is now our status quo.

I feel disoriented. I feel the chaos and fear to my core. The rules we thought held us in place are being quietly unbolted. And in the middle of that, I keep coming back to this person. This is Senator Mark Kelly. Naval officer, combat fighter pilot, aeronautical engineer, astronaut and U.S. Senator. Four space shuttle missions. Nearly five million miles traveled in space. One hundred and eighty-six orbits of the Earth. More than 5,000 flight hours in over 50 aircraft. Almost 400 aircraft carrier landings. Married to Gabby Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt and lives every day with its consequences.

And now, he is being called a traitor and that he is seditious. Someone whose rank, pension, and standing are being actively targeted. How American is that?

I didn’t expect that, in the span of a year, we would be talking this seriously about war again, or about the military being dragged into political loyalty tests. I certainly didn’t expect to hear that sanctioning Mark Kelly is no longer just being floated, but is proceeding. When I heard that, I could barely breathe. What makes this even more grotesque is that it was Pete Hegseth himself who once argued that service members have a duty to refuse unlawful orders, because their oath is to the Constitution, not to a person. Let’s just park that hypocrisy for a moment.

Last night, I listened to Congressman Jason Crow (D) speak about the video he recorded with Mark Kelly, reminding service members that they are obligated to follow lawful orders and refuse unlawful ones. Crow told a story that matters deeply right now.

Before deploying to Iraq, he gathered his platoon of paratroopers, young men barely out of high school and showed them the film Platoon. That film includes a recreation of the My Lai massacre, which happened in real life. Crow used it to ask a hard question: how do people lose sight of their humanity under fear, chaos, and pressure? He had that conversation before combat, so that when they were in the fog of war, making split-second life-and-death decisions, they already understood their moral, ethical, and legal obligations.

That is not undermining the chain of command. That is reinforcing it. It also matters to be honest about how military training actually works. Officers who come through military colleges or advanced programs may receive extensive education in the law of armed conflict and military ethics. That is not the reality for most enlisted soldiers. Many are very young. Many are new. Many are asked to make decisions under extraordinary pressure with limited time and incomplete information.

Expecting perfect legal judgment in five seconds, without prior discussion, is not strength. It is abdication of responsibility.

I want to pause here, because many people who follow me have served, are serving, or come from military families. Some of you may disagree with me. This is not a conversation I’ve had broadly across my larger military circle, outside my very small inner one. And that’s okay. You don’t have to agree with me on this. But I stand firm in where I land.

I do not believe Mark Kelly should be treated this way. I do not believe reminding service members of their constitutional obligations is disloyal. And I do not believe we should be punishing people whose entire lives have been defined by service under pressure, simply because they refuse to collapse the Constitution into blind obedience.

We talk endlessly about sedition. We talk endlessly about patriotism. And yet here we are, on January 6, unable even to agree on a plaque honoring the police officers who defended the Capitol while a man like Mark Kelly is penalized for a lifetime of service.

If anyone believes this is about legality, constitutionality, or morality, we should be honest with ourselves. This is being done ‘to’ Mark Kelly. And the real question is whether that distinction matters at all to Donald Trump or to those who serve his cause.

Donald Trump talks endlessly about patriots. You would be hard pressed to find someone who has done more for his country than Mark Kelly. Naval service, combat aviation, space exploration and public service. That doesn’t mean there aren’t others. It means this man is the very definition of patriotism.

Just not patriotic to Trumps cause. And maybe that’s the point.

When the world feels like it’s tilting toward the edge, the people who still believe in rules, restraint, and responsibility are the ones treated as expendable. They are proceeding. And that should alarm all of us. And we’ve seen this before.

Senator John McCain (R) was a prisoner of war. He endured years of torture. He refused early release so others could go home first. He lived a lifetime defined by service and sacrifice. And Donald Trump mocked him. Dismissed him. Reduced his service to a punchline, all from a man who has no lifetime of service of his own, military or otherwise, and no visible legacy of service in his extended ancestry either.

I know what the word seditious means and the people I see fitting the description are running the White House.

January is a difficult month for me. Today would be my father’s 103rd birthday. It is also four years since my brother passed away. Over time, January has become a convergence point of personal loss and memory. Dates that carry weight whether we want them to or not. I have never taken my Christmas tree down before January 6th. Not out of doctrine, but out of respect for carrying light to its proper end. Ritual matters when the world feels unsteady. Turning the lights off too early has always felt like conceding something unnecessary.

Like many people, today marks a return to regular work, routines. and responsibility. The holiday pause ends, and whatever unfolded while much of the world was distracted now has to be faced in real time.

I have never been someone who sees the world through rosecoloured glasses. But I have also never believed that the worst outcome is inevitable. Lately, that balance feels harder to hold, not because I have changed, but because the world has. We no longer move from crisis to recovery. We move from crisis to crisis. And much of that instability now radiates outward from the United States.

That sense of unease is sharpened by the calendar itself. Tomorrow, January 6th, marks five years since the attack on the U.S. Capitol. An insurrection I will continue to call exactly that. It is no longer just a historical marker. It is a reminder of how quickly norms can fracture, and how much damage can be done when power is pursued without restraint.

Congress sits today which means briefings, internal positioning, and the gradual emergence of information that does not always align with the first wave of public messaging following the recess. The important conversations around the economy, health care and Epstein are being sidelined.

In 2012, Donald Trump suggested that Barack Obama might use military action to boost approval ratings if his poll numbers slipped. No such action occurred. But the comment revealed something important about how Trump understands power. He sees public attention, timing, and polling as levers. Pressure in one area can be relieved by escalating activity in another.

Which makes the timing of this moment worth paying attention to. We are just exiting the holiday period, when credible polling simply is not conducted. Neither quantitative nor qualitative data reflecting public reaction to the events of the past several weeks will be available for days, possibly longer. That creates a familiar window. Without data, narrative moves first. Public attention shifts and other controversies cool. By the time polling resumes, people are no longer reacting to events themselves but to the stories that have already formed around them.

I am not claiming certainty about motive. But it is reasonable to note that this window exists, and that Donald Trump has long demonstrated an instinct for using timing to his advantage. When polling does resume, it will not capture raw reaction. It will measure sentiment after attention has already been redirected.

David Frum recently argued that this imbalance consistently advantages Trump. His supporters act immediately, facts optional. His opponents, who tend to care deeply about facts, institutions, and fairness, hesitate. They wait for confirmation, for perfect evidence, for the right words. Frum’s warning is that this hesitation becomes paralysis. Trump thrives in that space.

Many people assume Members of Congress, particularly Republicans, will not act. Fear of Donald Trump has proven powerful. But fear is not static. There may come a point where fear of constituents outweighs fear of one man. At some point, serving the country has to matter more than serving a single political figure.

I have been grounding myself in voices that understand oil economics rather than political theatre. Analysis from oil and gas experts like Matt Randolph writing in Forbes makes one point clear. Venezuelan oil is heavy oil. The closest real comparator is Canada. Canada’s oil sands did not become viable quickly or cheaply. They required decades of political stability and enormous capital investment. That raises a basic question about whether oil companies have made commitments to this investment and are being discussed seriously or rhetorically.

People with direct responsibility for war and peace are speaking plainly. Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis warned this week that language about running Venezuela should alarm anyone who has lived through the forever wars. Military power is zero sum.

To Americans reading this, this is your moment. Please do not assume someone else is calling your congressperson. Democracies do not self correct on autopilot.

To my fellow Canadians, I am watching Prime Minister Mark Carney. I understand the frustration of those who feel he has not said enough yet. That concern is fair. But diplomacy is not endorsement. It is risk management. Unity matters right now.

Canada is a vast country, but our greatest vulnerability is geographic. Nearly ninety percent of our population lives within one hundred and sixty kilometres of the U.S. border. That’s not a long way to travel for American troops. This is not fearmongering. It is a map that you can clearly see.

I do not have conclusions. What I have is a clear sense that timing, geography, history, and civic responsibility all matter. This is one of those moments we cannot afford to simply mark and move past.

I gave myself twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours to sit with this. To calm myself. To see whether time would bring perspective or reassurance. I wanted to believe that stepping back would help me feel less unsettled. It did not!

If anything, I feel more uneasy today than I did yesterday. Not because new information has emerged, but because the ease with which military force is now discussed feels profoundly reckless. As though risk has been abstracted away. As though putting people in harm’s way is no longer treated as the extraordinary act it is.

Clearly this was a successful military operation. The United States military planned it well and it was implemented with precision. That has been true in many operations over the decades, and it is true here. The military did exactly what they were asked to do, professionally and effectively. That is not in question.

What is in question is everything around it. A successful operation is not the same thing as a coherent strategy. Military execution cannot substitute for political planning. The strategic thinking in this entire chain of events cannot fall entirely on the role played by the military and we should be deeply concerned about where this ends.

Based on the president’s own remarks during the press conference, I see a complete absence of a political strategy beyond the initial act. Donald Trump does not operate with policy coherence. He reacts. He lurches from one crisis to the next as he chases attention rather than outcomes.

We know his is not about drugs nor is it about democracy. Donald Trump himself has made that clear. This is about oil, leverage and power. It is about Trump’s view that treats the Western Hemisphere as something to be managed and controlled rather than a collection of sovereign nations.

As a Canadian watching this unfold, I cannot let that framing pass without comment. I will not normalize it and I will not pretend it does not matter. Canada needs to be ‘on guard’ which obviously sounds frightening but behaving otherwise would be very naive.

History matters here. Vietnam became a defining failure. It reshaped not only Southeast Asia, but the United States itself. Iraq saw a regime dismantled swiftly, followed by years of instability and sectarian violence. Afghanistan absorbed twenty years of military presence, only to see the institutions meant to hold the country together collapse almost overnight once that presence ended. In none of these cases did military excellence translate into durable democratic stability. That is a matter of historic record.

Regime change is not a technical exercise. You cannot precision strike legitimacy into existence. You cannot remove a leader and assume a society will reorganize itself neatly around values imposed from the outside. Nation building has repeatedly proven to be something the United States military is not designed to do. And yet that expectation persists. The message now being delivered is that the United States will run the show as they now believe Venezuela cannot run their own country. That power will be centralized, managed, and imposed by the U.S. government. In my opinion, that is exactly how you ensure that whatever follows will not be stable, legitimate, or lasting.

What continues to unsettle me is how casually military force and military cost are discussed. Not just the financial cost but the human cost. The number of troops required in a large jungle country would be extensive should the president follow through on his remarks about boots on the ground.

And then there is the word liberation. It is one of Donald Trump’s favourite words. Liberation through tariffs. Liberation through intervention. Liberation through coercion. Liberation defined by the most powerful actor in the room is not liberation at all. It is control. Something done to people, not with them. Something imposed, not chosen.

I do not waver in my assessment of Nicolás Maduro. He is a dictator presiding over a brutally oppressive and criminal regime. Canada’s position on that is clear. Prime Minister Mark Carney reiterated that one of the first actions taken by Canada’s new government was to impose additional sanctions on Nicolás Maduro’s brutally oppressive and criminal regime. At the same time, he reaffirmed that the Venezuelan people have the sovereign right to decide and build their own future in a peaceful and democratic society, and that international law must be respected. Some have criticized that statement for lacking force. I do not agree. In moments like this, restraint is responsibility.

I am asking something of the citizens of the United States, regardless of political stripe. This is the moment when Congress matters. Because if this continues without restraint, without strategy, and without accountability, then you have lost control of the process entirely. And history tells us what comes after that.

What I hope people will see is what is wrong here. Not the removal of Maduro, but the process. Marco Rubio explicitly told the House Armed Services Committee nothing would happen without their approval. It was not true. The explanation now being offered is fear of leaks. That is a curious justification, given the public leaks in this term have come from the Secretary of Defense himself, not from Congress. Democratic oversight is not a nuisance, it is the check and balance needed in a democracy.

In Donald Trump’s worldview, the Americas are all part of the United States of “America.” He sees oil is prosperity and force as peace. And if he says it loudly enough, he seems to believe it becomes true. But dominance is not strategy. And improvisation is not leadership.

And to my readers in the U.S., if cheaper gas is all it takes to sell you his story, that bargain will feel meaningless when you cannot feed your family or pay for medical care. I remain genuinely gobsmacked that this is being offered as a trade worth making.

There is going to be a lot of mud to wade through.

I was woken in the middle of the night by a notification that the United States had taken military action in Caracas and removed President Maduro and his wife. I followed developments as they unfolded. What remains unclear are the details, and those details will be filtered through the mouth of a serial liar, so I am not anchoring this post on whatever version is being sold today. Except the important piece that the U.S. would be leading Venezuela. What the hell does that mean?

This is a 10,000 foot view. Not a tactical analysis. Not a defence of Maduro, who has been under indictment in the U.S. since 2020, as he is no democratic hero. This is about power, precedent, and what this moment represents. Because it is almost never just about the man being removed.

In any other version of the United States we once recognized, something like this would unfold in the Situation Room. Structured. Constrained. Informed by institutions that understood the weight of military force. Instead, this president is watching events unfold from Mar-a-Lago, like a television show (his words). Standing around him are people like Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller. Not as restraints, not as dissenting voices but as loyal enablers.

There are boots on the ground, and that phrase matters deeply to me. Not just posturing or using sanctions. This is a deliberately planned military operation in the Western Hemisphere. That is not how power has traditionally been exercised in this hemisphere, and we should not pretend otherwise.

When it comes to oil, this is not speculation. Trump himself has said this is not just about regime change. Those are his words. So when we hear, again and again, that U.S. Gulf Coast refineries are retrofitted for heavy crude and therefore the United States must rely on Canada, that argument weakens considerably when another source of heavy crude is suddenly back in play.

There are other realities we cannot ignore. China and Russia are deeply invested in Venezuela. That may not concern Donald Trump but it concerns me. There is an elected opposition figure waiting in the wings. Whether that person can realistically assume power, under what conditions, and whether democracy can actually be restored through military force are all open questions. These are early hours. Nothing about this is settled.

Which raises the harder question that cannot be avoided. Even if democracy is the stated goal, is it the role of the United States to enter another sovereign country and decide the outcome by force. The international reaction so far has been mixed. That matters. There will be time to unpack that. This is not that post.

To Alberta separatists who believe their future aligns more naturally with the United States than with Canada, if that is still your position this morning, then we have nothing in common in our worldview. Disagreement is one thing. Willful alignment with an increasingly unrestrained power is another.

For Canada, this is not academic. I have a son serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. I come from a military family. When I talk about sovereignty, preparedness, and the need to take defence seriously, even when it costs money and makes people uncomfortable, I am not speaking hypothetically. Military actions like this do not remain contained. They ripple outward. They always do.

Which brings me back, once again, to Congress. This is where restraint, accountability, and legitimacy are supposed to live, or not live at all. No matter how this moment is ultimately defined, the response of the United States Congress may be one of the most consequential factors for the entire world. Speaker Mike Johnson and others like him, men who loudly claim Christian values, appear to serve only one master and that master was sitting at Mar-a-Lago, likely rewatching the same spectacle he watched last night.

Congress either asserts authority now, over all decisions, including military ones, or it confirms that it has surrendered that authority entirely. There is no meaningful middle ground left. Congress returns Monday, January 5. To the people of the United States this part is on you. Make your representatives accountable. Demand oversight, restraint, and that institutions function before they are hollowed out beyond repair. The consequences of failure will not stop at your borders.

I said I was not going to watch the press conference, and for the most part I haven’t. I have it on mute. I turned the volume up briefly, and what struck me immediately was not substance, but fatigue. A tired, familiar voice delivering the same well worn lines. I am not going to listen further before posting this, because there is nothing coming that will meaningfully change what matters here. The danger is not in what is said. It is in what is being done, and where accountability is failing.

And one more thing. Do not let this distract you from Epstein. Do not let it disappear from public view. Ask yourself whether creating a global spectacle might serve another purpose entirely. At this point, it would be naïve to assume distraction is not part of the strategy.

One final clarification. Going forward, I am going to stop using the word American to describe the citizens of the United States. Donald Trump treats “American” as if it belongs to him and extends over everything in the Americas, and I am not granting him that authority. We are all Americans in this hemisphere. They are citizens of the United States.

This morning, I looked out at a calm, frosty Alberta landscape. Everything looked unchanged, quiet and familiar. History has taught us that calm is not the same thing as security. Sometimes the world shifts while everything still looks exactly the same. And sometimes, that is when we should be paying the closest attention.