the Rubicon

Julius Caesar had become Rome’s first dictator after 49 B.C., when the republic was faltering, after leading soldiers who’d become loyal to Caesar while abroad, returned to Italy by crossing the Rubicon River, thus prompting a civil war by defying the republic’s ban on posting Roman troops domestically.

For Trump, his Julius Cesar complex is anchored in ownership, from the days in which he ‘owned’ the Miss Universe Pageant, to the days in which he owned the right-wing media, to the days in which he finally crossed the Rubicon and owned the presidency.

Much of the search focused on the Rubicon trail, a 22-mile route in the Sierra Nevada, west of Lake Tahoe.

“Once we get to that point, that is certainly, we would have crossed the Rubicon. Is that a red line? Almost certainly it's going to be a red line.”

If Moscow is allowing North Korea to use Russian banks or is releasing frozen assets, the government will have “crossed the Rubicon of willingness to deal with North Korea and to be a financial and commercial rogue,” said Juan C. Zarate, a former assistant Treasury secretary and expert on financial crimes.