L.E. Modesitt, Jr. – The Official Website

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Like most authors, I want my readers to have as much background information as possible, particularly about recently released books, and books that will be published in the months ahead. But it’s equally important for new readers to learn about the books already out there. Those are some of the purposes of this site.

Another reason for the site is to acquaint you all with the range of my books. Just because you liked one of my fantasies doesn’t mean, unfortunately, that you will like one of my “hard” SF novels. I’d hope that you would, but another point of this site is to give you more information so that you know more about what I’m writing and what I have written.

Thanks again for reading my work, for supporting me, and for keeping the written word alive and well!

—L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

Sleight of Hand
February 17, 2025

While Trump is “carrying out his promises” with a vengeance, what he’s doing is also carefully orchestrated political sleight of hand, spearheaded by Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The majority of Americans (and particularly the far right and Trump supporters) has always been skeptical of foreign aid and federal intrusion into state and local schools (in the south especially). So how does Trump begin his second term?

By trying to abolish USAID and the Department of Education, of course, whose combined annual operating budgets are roughly $110 billion. Last year, from what I can determine, total federal outlays were $7 trillion, and the deficit was $711 billion. But eliminating USAID and the Department of Education won’t save $110 billion, because, for example, one of the Department of Education’s primary tasks is dealing with the $1.7 trillion student-loan portfolio and 40 million student-loan borrowers. So those administrative costs have to go somewhere else.

Most of the Department of Education’s budget funds federal student aid for higher education, subsidies for elementary and secondary schools with large shares of students from low-income families, and special education programs for children with special needs. States set broad rules that schools have to follow in return for those funds, but individual districts implement them, and they set the curriculum. The Department of Education is not controlling education. It is providing supplemental funds and requiring compliance with civil rights laws for using those funds. But eliminating the Department of Education would not “return” education to the states and would reduce the overall funding of primary and secondary education by an average of twenty percent, the greatest funding losses coming from schools in the poorest communities.

Other programs DOGE has marked for elimination are medical care for veterans, housing-assistance vouchers for low-income renters, college Pell Grants, the National Institutes of Health, the FBI, and NASA’s major initiatives.

In the meantime,last Friday, Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, resigned after Justice Department leadership instructed her to drop the criminal corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, in order to obtain Adams’s “cooperation” with Trump immigration policies. In short, the Trump-controlled DOJ wants to offer Adams a literal get-out-of-jail card for doing what Trump wants on immigration in New York City. Legal bribery, in effect, that Sassoon refused to be any part of, despite being a Trump appointee and a member of the extremely conservative Federalist Society. Within days, at least six more senior career DOJ officials resigned in protest. The mass resignation appears to be the largest in DOJ since Watergate. The mass resignation appears to be the largest in DOJ since Watergate.

The latest DOGE target is the Federal Aviation Administration, where apparently all recently hired employees working to maintain the hardware and computer systems dealing with aviation safety have been informed that they will be fired. The FAA operates an antiquated system that needs desperately to be updated, but Congress has refused to fund such modernization. Instead, Trump and Musk, in a single stroke, are making it even harder for the Air Traffic Control system to operate safely.

DOGE is now also trying to gain access to the IRS data on all American taxpayers, while reducing personnel and making it even more difficult to track down tax evaders.

What we’re already seeing isn’t a real attempt to reduce inefficiency and waste, but the beginning of an all-out attack on every aspect of government Donald Trump and Elon Musk dislike, and especially on any aspect of government that might hold them accountable.

The Meritocracy Problem
February 13, 2025

Over recent years and even decades, idealists have been holding up the idea of the meritocracy as the most ideal way to get to a “fairer” and more egalitarian U.S. society. They point out that everyone should be judged on their abilities and that will take care of the problem.

The problem with this idea is that we’re fairly close to that right now (that is, in the sense that in hiring for more and more jobs most people are judged on their credentials), and the current semi-meritocracy hasn’t created a fair and more egalitarian workplace, and that won’t happen so long as the system remains as it’s presently structured or as long as such concepts as “personal freedom,” self-determination, and market economy are part of the legal/social framework (and I’m definitely opposed to removing any of those).

One of the problems with the current “meritocracy” is that poorer or disadvantaged children of equal raw talent/native intelligence to those more advantaged (and thus better credentialed) don’t have anywhere near equal opportunity to refine their raw ability into usable and valuable skills that will allow them to benefit from higher education or advanced technical training.

In addition, the students able to benefit the most from college education are those individuals with the most resources, whose families can provide better nutrition, better economic and educational support (such as college and post-graduate degrees, as well as housing and living expenses) so that they enter the workforce with extensive credentials (since we are a society where success requires credentials for most people), with more developed contacts, and without debt. Unless society is going to strip away all income inequality (effectively destroying freedom), offspring of the well-off will always have an advantage in showing “merit.”.

The upper middle class can provide a certain amount of support for their offspring, but many of them will leave higher education with a certain amount of debt and sometimes a great deal more, without any certainty that they’ll be able to pay it off. And for the vast majority of offspring of less affluent or poor families, higher education means crippling debt, if they can even get into higher education.

Then, too, like it or not, studies show that standardized tests measure fairly accurately a student’s ability to handle college level work. The problem is that they don’t measure as well the ability to handle many post-education jobs, because too many college curricula don’t teach students to think or to persevere, and that’s yet another area where the children of the well-off have an advantage because more of them are taught the social codes of the elite and to think by their families.

So… unless one either destroys the elites and the upper middle class, which means total loss of freedom and rigid socialism, or provides more aid for the children of the working poor, we’ll remain an unequal semi-meritocracy

Phase II
February 10, 2025

From what I can tell, Phase I of the second Trump presidency is where Trump issues executive orders on every campaign promise Trump made, whether or not those promises can legally be accomplished through executive orders. Some, such as eliminating cabinet-level departments, legally require action by Congress, although Trump will certainly attempt to accomplish as much as he can without Congressional authorization, and the Republicans in Congress would prefer that, for the most part, because it absolves them of responsibility.

Trump has now begun the process of impounding funds, i.e., refusing to spend money on programs he doesn’t like, even though Congress has authorized and appropriated the funds. Richard Nixon tried this in the early 1970s, which resulted in Congress passing the Impoundment and Control Act (ICA), and the U.S. Supreme Court telling the President that he couldn’t withhold funds already authorized and appropriated. Trump is apparently ignoring both the law and the Supreme Court ruling, and it’s likely that even the present Supreme Court will rule against him – but that process will take time, and in the interim, federal employees and programs will be hurt and disrupted. This could prove deadly this summer, if another hot, dry, and windy summer engulfs the western U.S., because more than 15,000 federal firefighters are seasonally employed.

Trump is also proposing firing rank-and-file federal employees in large numbers from long-established federal departments without Congressional approval, something equally against the law, although some “flexibility” is not beyond the realm of possibility, given the makeup of the current Supreme Court.

But if the legal restraints on Trump largely hold, what happens in Phase II? Will Trump continue the barrage of executive orders, attempting to overwhelm the legal system? Will he be able to pressure Congress as a whole to enact what he wants? Or will he attack and or pressure key Republicans and vulnerable Democrats?

If all that fails, will he then attempt to corrode/corrupt the legal system further in order to obtain what he wants? Or will he claim victory? [While that’s possible, in my opinion it’s more likely that he’ll attempt to destroy anything that thwarts his imperial desires.]

How effective will he be when wide-scale price increases begin to erode personal income and family budgets? Will people be smart enough to see that his token tax cuts for working and middle class earners don’t compensate for the increasing consumer prices? Or that getting rid of air traffic controllers, VA doctors and support staff, Forest Service firefighters, and other “excess” federal employees only makes life harder for Americans who aren’t billionaires?

Or will they cheer on Dictator/Emperor Trump?