Donald Trump launched an illegal attack on Iran without any consideration about political collateral damage or the enormous financial cost

Military conflict with Iran launched by the U.S. and Israel on February 28, 2026, resulted in severe retaliatory strikes against U.S. regional bases, allied nations, and shipping lanes, sparking intense debate over whether the human and economic costs were fully weighed.

Dear Donald Trump- Echo letter published InForum in North Dakota:

Did it ever occur to you to count the cost before you committed our nation to war with Iran❓

Did it ever occur to you that Iran would return fire and attack American bases and allies in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East

Did you look at worst-case scenarios like the closing of the Strait of Hormuz before any of our ships sailed to the Persian Gulf❓

Did you consult with our allies in Canada, Europe, Asia and Latin America, and use diplomacy to garner their support❓

Did you imagine that this war would last not weeks, but months or even years?

Did you and your team ever think about the rise of gas and diesel prices, and what impact that would have on ordinary families and businesses❓

Did you consider telling Mr. Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, “No❓”

Did you think how threatening to end the Persian six thousand yeas of civilization would violate international law❓

Did you ever think that the oppressed Iranian populace would suffer more when civilian infrastructure like bridges, water desalinization plants, power plants, etc. were bombed❓

In just five months through this war of choice, the United States of America has violated international laws, the Geneva Convention, and the moral teachings of Jesus Christ “to love your neighbor as yourself.”

Yes, the Iranian regime has blood on its hands and has made threats against our nation, but those words and even support of terrorists hardly justify the military mess you and your administration have gotten our nation into by resorting to bombs, missiles and malice, instead of using diplomacy and building an international coalition.

Stop and think, Donald Trump. Americans will be paying💲 for your personal decision to go to war with Iran for many generations to come.

Pastor Marty Toepke-Floyd is a retired ordained elder of the United Methodist Church in Jamestown, North Dakota.

Donald Trump is completely incompetent but Senator Susan Collins will not challenge him

An echo opinion letter published in The Times Tribune in Scranton Pennsylvania

Editor: A recent study by the Pew Research Center was published this month regarding our American country’s image in the world. Over 42,000 adults in 36 countries were asked to measure the United States and China results are staggering.  in the following categories: favorability, confidence in the country’s leader, reliability and respect for freedom.

seResults are staggering❗. Twenty-five of the 36 countries had more people favoring China over the United States in these categories. The sad thing is that I’m not really surprised. Donald Trump’s actions and behavior have made this country the laughingstock of the free world.

Most of us would never act like Donald Trump does to our friends and neighbors. Most of us still believe in right versus wrong, telling the truth, respecting people who are different from us and helping someone in need.

My hope is that, through the actions of most Americans, we can show the world that Donald Trump in no way represents who we are. 

My hope is also that through a resounding message at the polls in November, we send a loud message for the world to hear.

From Gary Williams, in Shavertown in Pennsylvania

P.S. Maine Senator Susan Collins knows Donald Trump is an idiot. She was mentored by the family of George Herbert Walker Bush.

What happened to her?  In my opinion, Senator Collins has become corrupted by power and greed.

Donald Trump and his stupid anti-science actions are discriminating against progress

They admitted what was true. It’s not like the Trump administration was hiding what it was doing. 

Los Angeles Times opinion "Trump replaces Science with Stupidity", by Michael Hiltzik

Partisan political filters and the search for “DEI” have resulted in billions of dollars in canceled scientific research grants,

A few days ago, the Trump administration issued a 123-page report heralding a “new golden age” for U.S. science.

The key, said the report, published in the name of Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, was to ensure that the approval of federal research grants “rests purely on merit, not the political fashions of the day.”

There isn’t much to say about this goal, other than that the White House has some nerve. For years, dating back to the first Trump administration, I have been documenting all the steps Trump and his minions have taken to undermine American science.

Thanks to a group of University of California researchers who have gone to court to fight Trump’s cancellation of their research grants, we now have the most explicit confessions by six federal agencies about how slipshod and partisan their actions have been.

They’re the departments of Defense, Energy and Transportation, and the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

All were required by court order to stipulate how they came to their decisions. Those stipulations were filed in federal court in San Francisco on July 15. Taken together, the government admitted that it used nonscientific considerations, AI screens and illegal or unconstitutional consideration to terminate billions of dollars in grants.

It may be unusual for such forthright admissions of wrongdoing to come from an administration not known for scrupulous rectitude. In this case and others like it, however, the government’s lawyers were under the gun of court orders to come clean.

“They admitted what was true,” Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Berkeley’s law school and lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the researchers’ lawsuit, told me. In any event, he added, “It’s not like the Trump administration was hiding what it was doing.”

The White House assault on scientific grants is an integral part of its general blitzkrieg on U.S. science. In a one-year retrospective on the current Trump term published in January, Nature counted 5,844 grants canceled or suspended by the National Institutes of Health, and 1,996 by the National Science Foundation.

The cancellations were disproportionately aimed at projects concerned with “misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, infectious diseases and research on people from under-represented ethnic and gender groups.”

Both the NIH and the NSF reduced the number of new grants it issued by about 25%, Nature found — strangling the pipeline of basic research that is crucial for seeding research and development by industry. The Environmental Protection Agency and NASA, both of which have been heavily involved in research on global warming, lost more than 20% of their staff during Trump’s first year.

Deep cuts also were imposed on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, perhaps accounting for the inability of America’s public health infrastructure to counteract the surge in measles cases and the eruption of cyclospora infections this year.

That brings us back to the stipulations the federal agencies filed in the UC researchers’ lawsuit. The researchers scored an early victory in the case in June 2025, when federal Judge Rita F. Lin granted them a preliminary injunction reinstating the terminated grants. Lin has scheduled a hearing for Oct. 20 on whether to make her injunction permanent and grant the researchers summary judgment against the government.

The agencies’ stipulations are part of the record Lin will consider then; they all include spreadsheets listing the terminated grants and the rationales for their terminations. In sum, they open a window into the administration’s ideological (obsessive) preoccupations.

The longest list — nearly 370 (❗)spreadsheet pages — was filed by the NIH, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services. The agency fingered grants for termination by searching for keywords and phrases in their applications such as “workforce diversity,” “equity, diversity, inclusion,” “sexual orientation,” “scientific evidence,” and “health equity.”

Some grants, the NIH confessed, appeared on a list provided by DOGE, the purported budget-cutting department headed by Elon Musk. In general, the goal was to “terminate grants presumed to express viewpoints ... that HHS-NIH no longer wished to subsidize.”

The National Science Foundation acknowledged that it relied in part on a three-page list of disfavored keywords and phrases provided by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), such as “advocacy,” “climate action,” “racism” and “gender preference.” The National Endowment for the Humanities searched for terms such as “transgenderism,” “green new deal social engineering policies” and “environmental justice.”

The most notable and explicit confession, though perhaps the least surprising, came from the Department of Energy.

Referring to a list of grant terminations announced in October 2025, the agency admitted that it terminated or canceled 283 grants “solely” based on whether their recipients were in states that had cast its electoral college votes for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and had two Democratic senators. Meanwhile, 340 other grants from states that voted for Trump were left in place.

The agency said it didn’t rely on “programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factors.” In other words, grants from blue states were cut simply because they originated in blue states.

The confession is unsurprising because the Department of Energy had made almost identical confessions in two previous federal lawsuits. In a case brought last year by the city of St. Paul, Minn., Energy Secretary Christ Wright acknowledged that seven grants were terminated based primarily on “whether the grantee was located in a ‘Blue State.’” Similar grants for red states were unaffected, he said. In January, federal Judge Amit P. Mehta of the District of Columbia ordered the grants reinstated.

The agency repeated the stipulation in a lawsuit brought this year by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers over 11 canceled grants. In June, Mehta ordered those grants reinstated.

Despite these confessions, department spokesman Ben Dietderich told me that “none of the termination decisions were based on political considerations.” He said that Wright had “explained this numerous times in briefings on Capitol Hill.”

In fact, Wright didn’t explain things so much as conduct a master class in weaseling. ❗ In an April 17, exchange with Rep. Mike Levin (D-San Juan Capistrano), for example, he said that the blue state versus red state discrepancy was “a timing question, not a decision question. ... The selection of the decisions to be announced, not the decisions. ... The decisions were nonpolitical.”

But of course the decisions, not the timing, were the subject of the stipulations.

What’s perplexing is why major U.S. institutions have been reluctant to take the battle to the administration themselves.

As I reported last year, the UC faculty won a significant victory over Trump when Lin ordered the restoration of some $600 million in funding cuts and blocked a $1.2-billion fine the White House proposed to levy on UCLA for purported civil rights violations. (The White House abandoned its appeal of Lin’s order in February.)

But UC as an institution played no direct part in that case or any of the others brought to challenge Trump’s assault on the university.

“The University regularly evaluates its legal strategy, including in light of last week’s disclosures, and takes action when it is in the best interests of UC, our community, and our state,” the office of UC President James B. Milliken told me by email.

It’s true that the university has signed on as a co-plaintiff in several lawsuits brought jointly by the Assn. of American Universities and two other associations representing big universities. In each case, however, it was nestled within a cloud of about a dozen other big institutions. The cases are really being run by the associations.

Among educational institutions, Chemerinsky points out, only Harvard has stood up for itself in court — and it has been successful, thus far. Meanwhile Columbia, Penn, Brown and others have made settlement deals.

“It’s very disappointing that universities have settled with the Trump administration rather than going to court — and I think they would have won,” he told me.

The same goes for other institutions that should have been expected to carry the fight: Nine major law firms targeted by Trump capitulated with settlements, but four firms have fought Trump and prevailed.

When the history of the Trump era is written, the institutional cowardice will deserve a chapter, and the courage of those that fought a chapter of their own.

Canadians holding firm against Donald Trump and TACO tariffs but American Republicans like Senator Susan Collins do nothing to stop the tax

Who’s Afraid of Tariffs Anymore❓

Echo report published in MacLeans by David Coletto:  Tariff Fatigue Is Real
Trump is threatening new tariffs. This time Canadians aren’t worried.

In early 2025, when Donald Trump announced his first round of tariffs on Canadian goods, I went into full-on panic mode. I stayed up until three in the morning, doom scrolling on my phone, imagining the tsunami of economic havoc these duties would wreak. But Trump didn’t count on the law of diminishing returns. 

With every new threat, tantrum and tariff, ❗my fear dissipated. He became the president who cried wolf. The world didn’t end, and the economy didn’t collapse. 

Mark Carney’s trade networking and nation-building campaign made me feel patriotic and optimistic. 

In the meantime, Trump’s real wars became scarier than his trade war. Last week, when he threatened yet another swath of tariffs, I barely blinked.

Turns out this tariff fatigue is a real and widespread phenomenon. David Coletto, the founder of the polling firm Abacus Data, takes the psychological temperature of Canadians every two weeks. 

One of his questions: What issue or news story have you seen recently that’s most likely to keep you up at night❓

During the first months of the trade war, tariffs accounted for a quarter of all responses. Now, it’s only 1.3 per cent. The specter of war, meanwhile, factored into more than 20 per cent of all answers.

Obviously, the threat hasn’t shrunk—if anything, it’s escalated. This week, Donald Trump announced new 50 per cent tariffs on a range of Canadian goods, including products that were previously exempt under CUSMA. They’re supposed to take effect in 30 days. So why has our anxiety dissipated❓

It’s partly because we’re used to it. For over a year, Canadians have lived through Trump’s threats, deadlines, insults, reversals and negotiations. Each announcement is a little less impactful and leaves us a little more numb. Psychologists call this habituation: as a stimulus becomes familiar, our response to it weakens.

And while the headlines dominate the news cycle, the consequences haven’t concretely manifested for the average Canadian. For one, Trump doesn’t follow through. His threats are so empty that we’ve coined a pejorative acronym to describe his wishy-washy economic strategy: TACO, or Trump always chickens out.

Even when threats do become policy, Canadians have now lived through a year of tariffs without much change to their day-to-day lives. The predicted collapse did not reach their households. Unemployment did not spike. It rose half a point, then returned to 6.5 per cent. The layoff rate didn’t move off its pre-pandemic average. Inflation for 2025, was 2.1 per cent, the lowest it’s been since 2020.

If you brace for something that never arrives, the reasonable response is to stop bracing. A large enough shock may rattle us again, but that would require real evidence that tariffs will touch our lives. An announcement from Washington—or post on Donald Trump's Truth (Fake❗) Social—isn’t enough.

So, the second explanation for the decline in tariff anxiety is that something else took its place: international conflict, specifically, the war in Iran. Fourteen months ago, war accounted for 11 per cent of Canadian worries. Today, that number has nearly doubled, with Iran alone at 13 per cent. War now occupies almost exactly the share of the Canadian psyche that tariffs did in May of 2025.

It’s not like we’ve stopped paying attention to tariffs—our latest polling on trade relations with the United States makes that clear. Almost three-quarters of Canadians say they’re still following the trade negotiations closely, while six in 10 Canadians believe reaching a new agreement is urgent. But 69 per cent want Canada to hold firm even if negotiations take longer. Only 20 per cent want compromises to get a deal sooner. And 55 per cent say Canada’s top trade priority over the next decade should be reducing our reliance on the United States. This is a public that has reached a conclusion: Canadians want an agreement, but in the meantime, we’re willing to live with uncertainty if the alternative is greater vulnerability to American coercion.

That uncertainty feels more tolerable under the guiding hand of Mark Carney. He has become a kind of shock absorber, a foil to Trump’s mania. Half of our respondents have a positive impression of Carney, and among Canadians who identify Trump as a top concern, 63 per cent say the Liberals are best able to manage the issue, compared with only 15 per cent who choose the Conservatives. With Carney in charge, bedlam in Washington does not automatically translate to a crisis of confidence in Ottawa. In fact, it strengthens our faith in him. Carney’s political value is that he makes a volatile situation feel manageable.

announcement as another stage in the negotiation.

Second, more Canadians have to feel the consequences. A 50 per cent tariff sounds enormous, but it remains abstract until it manifests in tangible, wide-scale effects. As long as tariffs are mainly understood as threats to Canada, Carney benefits from the perception that he’s the person best able to manage them. If tariffs cause mass layoffs or higher household costs, the issue could move onto less favorable ground for the government.

The Conservatives currently lead among voters who prioritize the economy and job security. Economic pain could stoke more anger with Trump and strengthen support for standing firm. But it could also test how much uncertainty Canadians are prepared to endure and how much they trust the current administration to protect them from the cost.

But a thicker skin is not immunity. I think two things would have to happen for tariff anxiety to rise again. 

First, Trump has to follow through. The latest batch have been announced, but they’re not yet in effect. Canadians have watched deadlines move and threats become bargaining positions. Until a broad range of tariffs actually go into effect, many will treat the announcement as another stage in the negotiation.

Second, more Canadians have to feel the consequences. A 50 per cent tariff sounds enormous, but it remains abstract until it manifests in tangible, wide-scale effects. As long as tariffs are mainly understood as threats to Canada, Carney benefits from the perception that he’s the person best able to manage them. If tariffs cause mass layoffs or higher household costs, the issue could move onto less favorable ground for the government.

The Conservatives currently lead among voters who prioritize the economy and job security. Economic pain could stoke more anger with Trump and strengthen support for standing firm. 

But it could also test how much uncertainty Canadians are prepared to endure and how much they trust the current administration to protect them from the cost.

Fourteen months ago, Canadians were frightened by what Trump might do. Today, most have learned to live with the threat. 

If these new tariffs take effect, the question is not whether they’ll induce another round of sleepless nights. It’s whether Canadians will have to absorb lost jobs, cancelled hires and price hikes they can trace directly back to Washington.

David Coletto is the founder and CEO of polling firm Abacus Data.

Donald Trump continues looking for a scapegoat to prosecute about his failed ugly botched reflecting pool

Team Algae Trolls Trump’s Botched Paint Project At The Reflecting Pool

First they came for the algae.

Echo opinion published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel by Pat Beall

Then they came for the pink inflatable frog holding the sign that said First They Came for the Algae.

Donald Trump and his minions are grimly contorting themselves into pretzels to find the culprits behind the greening of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. 

Science has a name for it: Scenedesmus, a genus of algae fondly referred to by lab scientists as “Skinny Dead Mouse.”

Make that Skinny Dead Mouse with a knife.

Somebody had to slash a 250-, or 300-, or was it a 350-foot gash, in the pool sealant. There’s no way it could possibly be the construction; nothing ever breaks in construction, not when it’s perfect, the best, the hottest.

Grown men walk up to the edge of the pool lining with tears in their eyes, saying, Thank You, Sir, Thank You, and then even more tears, because they touched the water and now they are in jail.
Off with their heads❗ said Trump of reporter Jonathan Karl of ABC News, who dipped his hand into the public water at the public’s pool, and of a bicyclist who was so baffled by the sight of a floating chunk of blue that he stopped and touched it.

I exaggerate. Of course Trump didn’t really call for a guillotine. He demanded decade-long prison terms.

There are pictures! he thundered.

Do you see these pictures right now, Mr. President❓

“At the right time, you will see it,” he told White House reporters. “You’ll see it in court, but all you have to do is call the parks department, call Deptartment of Interior, and I don’t know if their lawyers will allow you to speak to them, because you know you write fake news.”

I, for one, look forward to blurry photos of shiv-wielding mice in masks.😼

There’s a saying in Palm Beach County, and it goes like this: Everything weird comes to Palm
Beach County.

We are a jack-in-the-box of eldritch oddballs, charming felons, generic hucksters and the truly, filthy rich, as well as the other kind.

So don’t be surprised that Trump’s Reflecting Pool Guy — the one whose company did the water purifying — recently got approval for a new, bright blue pool at his Palm Beach estate. 

Don’t be surprised that John Cafaro’s company secured that no-bid contract to fix up the reflecting pool after throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars into Trump’s campaigns.

Perhaps be just a wee bit surprised that he once tried to bribe a congressman, and illegally hid a donation to his own daughter’s political campaign. And even I was surprised to learn he wants to build his new splash pool on the beach.

Yes. A swimming pool on the beach. It’s actually on a tiny spit of soil between a retaining wall and the waves, but still: The hot-tub-on-top-of-bathtub-vibe is strong in this one.

It would be easy to dismiss all this as an amuse bouche, a good snort-laugh before refocusing on the war we’re not in, or what SpaceX shares losing 23% of their value in three days bodes for the stock market.

Indeed, the Reflecting Pool is so much more. When Trump pledged to go after his enemies, supporters shrugged. After all, they weren’t James Comey or Hillary Clinton. But now, the enemy is anyone Trump says it is.

That’s how putting your hand in the water becomes a crime against the state. It’s how a cyclist becomes an enemy of the people.

The cyclist was not just arrested. Police were handcuffing him before telling him what he did wrong, he said. 

No one allowed him to make a phone call for hour, and no one read him his constitutional rights.

This pool is not murky at all. It perfectly reflects Trump’s spiteful, spiraling mental deterioration, complete with delusions of dark conspiracies. Because if Trump’s misfiring synapses can order someone arrested for something as small as this, he can order anyone arrested for anything at all — or for nothing at all.

Pat Beall is a Sun Sentinel columnist and editorial writer. 

Susan Collins "it is time for you to go". Shame on you. After 30 years in the Senate you have become Donald Trump's rubber stamp

Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe by Abdallah Fayyed

Senator Susan Collins is still in trouble in Maine.

Graham Platner’s downfall hasn’t dampened Maine voters’ hopes of sending new blood to the Senate.

My reporting in Maine started in downtown Portland. Camden Jipson and Raiden Dionne, both 20, were waiting for their bus. I asked them how they’re feeling about the Senate race. Jipson doesn’t like Senator Susan Collins at all. Dionne agreed. What bothers him most, he said, is what’s been happening with immigration enforcement — specifically the crackdowns by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. When I asked if they would ever consider voting for Collins in November, they laughed and, without hesitation, said no. Their bus arrived and we quickly parted ways.

There are plenty of Maine voters who feel the same way. That much has been clear since the oyster farmer Graham Platner catapulted out of nowhere to handily win the Democratic nomination for Senate last month. Platner’s campaign fell apart after he was accused of sexual assault and dropped out of the race.

For a moment, it seemed the Democrats were doomed. Of all races in these midterms, Collins’s seat is one of the most important for the party to flip if it wants to regain control of the Senate. The election in Maine is shaping up to be one of the closest in the country. How were Democrats going to select a new nominee without making voters feel like there was a last-minute bait-and-switch?

But after the party held a televised and somewhat awkward debate between eight candidates, and at least 17,000 registered Democrats participated in county caucuses to help pick Platner’s replacement, Troy Jackson quickly emerged as the front-runner. On Saturday, the Maine Democratic Party held a convention that formally named Jackson, a former president of the Maine Senate who ran unsuccessfully for governor last year, as the official Democratic nominee for Senate.

You might expect that kind of 11th-hour drama to dampen the energy in Maine. But many voters are still fired up by the prospect of finally unseating Collins, who was first elected to the Senate in 1996, and is now running for her sixth term. And crucially for Democrats, Jackson is a progressive with policy positions very similar to Platner’s. The party’s hope, it seems, is that Jackson’s politics are similar enough to Platner’s for primary voters to feel their message was heard, even if they didn’t have a direct say in naming the nominee.

Courtney Walton, 41, is a firefighter who considers himself an independent voter. “We need a change,” he said.

Earlier this month, an ICE officer shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian immigrant in Biddeford, Maine. Guerrero was married and had a 3-year-old daughter, and his family says that he was legally authorized to work in the United States. The killing struck a nerve across Maine, and protests erupted outside Collins’s office in Biddeford, where demonstrators chanted, “Vote her out!”

“I don’t like how she’s supporting ICE and expanding their funding,” Walton said of Collins. “It’s not what we need right now.” When I asked him if he thinks Collins bears any responsibility for the shooting, he said, “Absolutely. If she supported ICE and voted to increase their funding, then it is absolutely on any of those politicians who vote that way.” Walton, a union member, voted for Jackson in the gubernatorial primary earlier this year, in part because of Jackson’s support for unions. He plans to vote for Jackson again in November, this time for Senate.

Collins has survived controversy before, most notably after casting the deciding vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018. She ended up cruising to reelection in 2020. Since then, Kavanaugh sided with the majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, upending abortion rights in the United States. Voters may have finally had enough. Earlier in the race, most polls showed Collins underperforming Platner, and a recent University of New Hampshire poll had her trailing Jackson by three points.

Ashley, 38, a small-business owner in Portland, is a registered Democrat but has voted for Collins in the past. The senator’s vote for Kavanaugh was the beginning of a turning point for Ashley. “She claims to be a moderate, but I don’t feel like she votes like one,” she said. Ashley asked me to use her first name only because she doesn’t want her political views to affect her business.

This year, Ashley voted for Platner in the primary and said she was “very excited” about him because he bucked the establishment, though she ultimately wasn’t surprised by the scandals that sank his candidacy. “People my age now are really confused by the Democratic Party, and you sort of wonder whose interests they have in mind sometimes,” she said. “I feel like [Platner] represented real people in Maine and he kind of felt like a sort of beacon of hope — that maybe some things could change.”

The whole process of selecting a new nominee to replace Platner reminded her of the 2024, presidential election. “At this point, I don’t feel like I have a choice,” she said. “Honestly, this feels a little bit like the Kamala Harris situation — it’s just that’s who the pick is.” Still, she said she likes Jackson and will definitely vote for him in the fall.

That it’s time for Collins to go seems to be a growing sentiment since her last reelection campaign. At a McDonald’s in Brunswick, I met another former Collins voter. Leo Gagnon, 92, has lived in Maine his entire life. He spent more than three decades at a paper mill and another 10 years working for the state — plowing snow and doing maintenance jobs. He voted for Collins in 2020, but plans to vote for the Democratic nominee in November. “Social Security isn’t even keeping up with the cost of living,” he said. “When I was a kid, they always told me, ‘Republicans are for the rich, Democrats are for the poor.’ It’s still that way.”

Collins, he says, has done some good for Maine, but she’s gone too far in President Trump’s direction for his liking.

To be sure, Jackson still has a lot of work to do to build a successful campaign in a short timeframe — and to make sure that the enthusiasm from the primaries doesn’t slowly evaporate. But perhaps the best thing he has going for him is the seemingly lackluster enthusiasm for his opponent.

It’s time for change, Gagnon told me. “We need new blood.”

Donald Trump is in a mental health crisis and his physician Dr. Sean Barbabella must call a psychiatrist!

Call a psychiatrist STAT❗

Donald Trump went on a bizarre digital spree on Truth Social, filling his feed with AI-generated images, mock posters, and attacks on critics. The posts featured simulated conflicts with Iran, 2028, election imagery, and edited photos of public figures.

BREAKING: Trump is having a mental health episode on social media right now. Shared on Occupy Democrats social media. 

Trump is in a mental health crisis meltdown, he has been posting insane nonsense, nonstop, all day:

11:16 AM - AI photo of Kaitlan Collins as Dylan Mulvaney
11:43 AM - AI image attacking Bruce Springsteen
3:22 PM - An AI art installation of Trump throwing a ‘Trump 2028’ hat
3:23 PM - Photo of him standing next to a TV with Biden’s final Oval Office address playing
3:23 PM - AI art of him giving his speech at the WHCD
3:23 PM - AI photo of Chris Christie fighting Democrat Rep. Jerry Nadler
3:23 PM - AI image attacking Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert
3:24 PM - Trump 2028 poster that says “give the enemy nightmares.” Nobody is scared of him
3:24 PM - AI image attacking Rosie O’Donnell
3:25 PM - Fake movie poster of him in Star Trek
3:25 PM - Another Trump 2028 poster
3:31 PM - AI poster of the U.S. attacking Kharg Island in Iran
3:31 PM - AI image of him taking over an Iranian oil tanker
3:32 PM - AI image of him taking over an Iranian oil tanker x2
3:33 PM - AI image of him taking over an Iranian oil tanker x3
3:47 PM - Posts an AI image of an Iranian ship being blown up
4:36 PM - AI image of him taking over an Iranian oil tanker x4
4:36 PM - AI image of him taking over an Iranian oil tanker x5
4:37 PM - AI image of him taking over an Iranian oil tanker x6
4:39 PM - AI image of him cosplaying as a Navy Commander
4:39 PM - AI image of him smoking a cigar wearing a Trump 2028 hat
4:40 PM - AI poster of him with founding fathers
4:41 PM - Poster of himself saying “the man who saved America” which couldn’t be further from the truth
4:41 PM - Weird photo of him standing behind a pillar
4:45 PM - AI image of himself saying “Guardians of the world”
4:47 PM - AI image of American jets saying “Guardian Angels of the world”
4:48 PM - Another AI photo of an Iranian ship being blown up
4:49 PM - AI image of himself saying “Guardians of the world” x2
4:52 PM - AI photo of lightning over the Capitol building saying “panic in DC”
4:53 PM - A photo of himself saying “plan trusted”
4:54 PM - AI image of an eagle and a jet saying “America is back” which certainly isn’t true
4:54 PM - AI photo of a beach saying “Trump’s America” which is ironic given that the image is fake lol
4:55 PM - Photo of him giving a speech
4:56 PM - Photo of himself pointing at members of his cabinet
4:57 PM - AI photo of himself and JFK
4:58 PM - Fake photo of himself wearing a pink Trump 2028 hat
4:59 PM - AI photo of a Trump 2028, mug surrounded by crying people
4:59 PM - Photo of him putting on his Trump 2028 hat at the WHCD
5:00 PM - Posts graph downplaying American casualties in Iran
5:01 PM - AI photo of an air filter between the United States and Canada
5:04 PM - Attacks Republican Senator John Thune
5:04 PM - AI image of him as a doctor
5:16 PM - Fake movie poster of him and George Washington in a time travel movie
He’s insane. 25th Amendment NOW.

Donald Trump failed illegal Iran war is expanding with no end in sight

“We won,” 😒😕😏😩 Trump announced on March 11, less than two weeks into his Iran war. “In the first hour, it was over.”

The Dead End to Trump’s ‘Perfect’ War

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof

On March 24, in the Oval Office, he reiterated, “This war has been won.”  On April 6, he asserted, “They are militarily defeated.”

On April 11, Trump posted on Truth Social, “The United States has completely destroyed Iran’s Military.”

“The war in Iran is going along swimmingly,” Trump said on April 16. “It’s perfect.” (Maine Writer- What the hell does "swimmingly" mean❓ This word sounds like a psychological neologism, meaning, it makes absolutely no sense.😒😖)

The perfection of Trump’s war has confused his supporters. “I don’t understand how it’s possible that Iran has the capabilities to fight this way and continue to try to lash out at Gulf countries and U.S. military bases,” Maria Bartiromo of Fox (FAKE❗) News said on air recently. “Because the U.S. has obliterated Iran’s military, and the president continues to reiterate that.”

Yet Trump’s far from perfect war has flaws, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and, in the past few days, the partial closure of passage through the Red Sea as well. 

So Trump is escalating attacks in what looks like a doubling down on a failed strategy. (But the attacks have cause the military to become low on ammunition and, therefore, at risk for being in a dangerous defensive position when Iran launches a massive drone attack against U.S. ships.)

Also, in an updated, a missile exploded a mine in the Strait of Hormuz so now nothing is getting thru the blocked section. 

A reported explosion involving an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz has intensified concerns over security in one of the world's most important maritime chokepoints. According to Iran's Tasnim News Agency, the tanker allegedly struck a naval mine after deviating from a navigation route announced by Tehran. Iranian officials have previously warned that vessels leaving designated routes would bear responsibility for any consequences. The incident comes amid heightened tensions in the Gulf, where military activity and disruptions to commercial shipping have increased.

But the problem now is not Trump’s terrible miscalculation in illegally starting the war on February 28, in ways that weakened America, depleted munition supplies, reduced our capacity to deter China in Asia and strengthened Iranian hard-liners. 

Rather, the issue at the moment is the way he is disastrously escalating the war.

Trump has lately been striking sites across Iran each day, and he warned that the United States would hit a power plant or bridge for each ship that Iran struck. Putting aside the question of war crimes, there’s also the problem that Iran responds in kind.

“Iran still retains multiple escalation options,” noted Danny Citrinowicz, a retired Israel Defense Intelligence expert on Iran. Citrinowicz noted that Iran could attack Persian Gulf states, cut undersea cables or harness the Houthis in Yemen to attack shipping in the Red Sea.

Both sides have already struck water and desalination plants, which could be disastrous for Gulf countries if this continues. Iran is not heavily dependent on desalination, but Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates rely on desalination for almost all of their drinking water. Cities could become pretty much uninhabitable if power plants and desalination plants are destroyed.

Likewise, if the United States attacks Iranian oil and gas sites, Iran is likely to do the same in Gulf countries, reducing oil flows for months or years. The Houthis have announced that they have joined the conflict, targeting Saudi maritime traffic in the Red Sea and thus diminishing global oil supplies even more. The Houthis had stayed out of the war until now, and I wonder if this means they see Iran as the effective victor.

Trump is threatening to strike the Houthis. But he should remember that he and Joe Biden before him spent some $7 billion bombing the Houthis for a bit more than two years and achieved nothing obvious. Trump extricated himself from the bombing campaign in May 2025 with a standard diplomatic magic trick: Both sides declared victory, and the bombing ended.

What is Trump trying to achieve by ramping up attacks? What’s the intent❓

“Any realistic strategy should begin with one core assumption: Iran is unlikely to capitulate,” Citrinowicz said.

In other words, increased airstrikes seem a fiery dead end. 

I hope Trump isn’t considering invading with ground troops, for that would be even more disastrous. 

Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired general, estimates that it would take a year and 600,000 American troops to subdue Iran, taking casualties along the way.

“Then what❓” McCaffrey asked. “Stay❓”

I do see one military escalation that could be useful to squeeze Iran: Help the United Arab Emirates recover the disputed islands of Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa, if the Emirates are willing to do this with their troops rather than ours. 

Iran forcibly seized the islands in 1971, but the Emirates have a plausible claim, and the islands are strategically located by the Strait of Hormuz and could help control it.

Indeed, I’m increasingly fearful that the most dismal legacy of this catastrophic war may be that a decade or two from now both Saudi Arabia and Iran will have nuclear weapons. Two unstable, misogynist Middle Eastern autocracies with nuclear weapons — what could go wrong?

Beyond that, there’s really no alternative but negotiation, recognizing that any negotiated outcome will be unpalatable — though not as unpalatable as escalating a war to nowhere. Perhaps the most important aim of negotiation should be keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but Trump’s foolish new nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, if it goes forward, will make that even harder. 

If the Saudis are enriching nuclear fuel, the Iranians will insist on doing so as well, and the upshot may be a nuclear competition between them.

Donald Trump's failed leadership is the best reflection in the Washington DC "reflecting pool" fiasco

Reflecting Pool fiasco sums up Trump’s entire failed presidency

Echo opinion letter published in the San Jose California Mercury News 

I’ve become enchanted with all the stories I see about the Reflecting Pool. It’s become so emblematic of our bungler-in-chief that I no longer need to pummel myself with his more reprehensible misadventures.

The once upon a time Reflecting Pool, now a fiasco, has it all: incompetence, ignorance, arrogance, cronyism, demagoguery, paranoia, malicious prosecution, scapegoating, unfounded accusations. In short, the Washington Swamp is no longer a figure of speech. It came to life in 2,000 feet of blooming green algae and peeling blue paint running from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument.

From James Wolpman in Walnut Creek, California

Donald Trump's high unpopularity is sustaining Canadian Prime Minister Carney's popularity in spite of economic challenges

Toronto Sun Editorial:  

PM Carney’s best weapon is Trump

Popular❗ From Wicked.

"Elbows up" means "to protect yourself or fight back." And it's no shocker Canadians are using it, because the phrase originates from hockey.

Trump made so many threats that many Canadians simply shrug them off. 😒😜😧😵🙄

It is the ultimate irony that Donald Trump helped to elect Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney and is his not-so-secret weapon in keeping his approval numbers high.

Every time doubts begin to emerge about Carney’s leadership — from his misleading comments on the financing of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, to condo bailouts in British Columbia, to deficits higher than Justin Trudeau’s — Trump says something outrageous and Carney’s popularity soars.

(Maine Writer- In other words, Prime Minister Carney is the popular "anti-Trump")

Trump’s latest threat to impose a 50% tariff on an estimated $28 billion worth of Canadian goods, intended to put pressure on Carney to make concessions in trade talks with the U.S., along with his renewed comments that Canada can’t survive without the U.S., is likely to do it again.

A recent poll by Abacus Data taken before Trump’s latest tariff announcement on Monday found 69% of Canadians surveyed said, “Canada should hold firm on its positions, even if negotiations (on the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement- CUSMA on trade) take longer.”

Only 20% said the government “should make concessions, simply to conclude negotiations more quickly.”

Trump has made so many threats regarding tariffs that many Canadians today simply shrug them off.

While only a minority of Americans approve of Trump’s performance — around 36% to 40% according to the latest polls — a majority of Canadians — in the range of 55% to 66% — approve of Carney’s performance.

It seems clear that while most Americans hold Trump responsible for issues such as their high cost of living, the same is true of most Canadians, who blame Trump as opposed to Carney.

Meanwhile, the open public knife fight among Conservatives over the leadership of Pierre Poilievre has convinced many Canadians that a party that can’t govern itself can’t govern the country.😂

This further bolsters Carney’s popularity, even though most of his major policies came from the Conservative leader.

But Carney has yet to fulfill his claims that with his background in international banking he was best equipped to negotiate with Trump, nor that his deal will be better than the current one under CUSMA.

Indeed, indications are that even if Carney succeeds in reaching a deal, it will be worse than what we have, while the continuing uncertainty in the absence of a deal weakens our economy.

Reader John Day responds, "Hard to make a deal with a man baby. We're just a diversion from the Trump Iran war and the Trump Epstien files."

Donald Trump and incompetent RFKjr are enabling anti-vax propaganda and now preventable measles is spreading

Echo reported published in The New York Times by Teddy Ronsenbluth:

Measles Cases Hit New Record in U.S., as Vaccination Rates Wane

More measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000, through 2024 combined.

A patient with measles symptoms was assessed in South Carolina, where an outbreak sickened nearly 1,000 people in 2025 and 2026.

Frankly, the opening paragraph in this New York Times article should set your brain on fire.🔥💢

Measles Cases Hit New Record in U.S., as Vaccination Rates Wane
More measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000 through 2024 combined.

The United States has now recorded more cases of measles in 2026 than in any other year since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000, a grim sign that the country may be headed toward a new era in which the disease regularly sickens thousands every year.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that there have been 2,318 confirmed cases of measles so far this year.

In fact, the case count toppled the record set last year, when measles infected more than 2,200 Americans and killed two unvaccinated children. More measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000 through 2024 combined.

Reversing course on measles would require a nationwide push to improve vaccination rates, a prospect that experts said seemed unlikely under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Instead, the incompetent RFKjr halted funding for vaccine hesitancy research, downplayed the risks of measles and spearheaded a hunt for evidence that vaccines are unsafe.

In November, (right around election time❗) a panel of international experts will meet to determine whether the United States has lost its elimination status, which has long been viewed as one of the country’s crowning public health achievements.

“This is just going to keep happening,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “It’s going to mean living in a perpetual state of vulnerability and risk until we get vaccination levels up.”

Many of the cases reported this year were tied to a large outbreak in South Carolina that took root last October in a close-knit, evangelical Slavic community and quickly became the largest outbreak in the United States since 2000. The outbreak, which ultimately sickened nearly 1,000 people, was declared over by state health officials in April.

Still, the virus is far from contained. Utah is fighting an outbreak that began along its border with Arizona last summer and has led to more than 700 cases, spread across every jurisdiction in the state. Virginia health officials have reported more than 170 cases from an outbreak that began in mid-May. Pennsylvania is grappling with an outbreak that has sickened more than 100 people this year.

In total, the C.D.C. has reported 35 new measles outbreaks this year. A vast majority of cases have been in people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccine status was unknown.

The string of outbreaks is no surprise to public health experts, who have watched vaccination rates tick down in recent years. Nationally, the measles vaccination rate fell during the Covid-19 pandemic and has not rebounded to the 95 percent required to stem the spread of the measles virus in a community. While the latest national data shows that about 93 percent of kindergartners have received the measles, mumps and rubella shot, that protection is uneven: Some communities have vaccination rates approaching 100 percent, while others have rates below 80 percent.

Measles, one of the most contagious diseases, is exceptionally good at exploiting those pockets with weak immunity.

“It’s going to find people who aren’t immune,” said Dr. David Kimberlin, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “It’s like a heat-seeking missile.”

Children have borne the brunt of the infections, making up more than 70 percent of confirmed cases. More than 80 children and adolescents have been hospitalized this year for complications like pneumonia, which leaves patients gasping for air, and brain swelling, which can cause lasting damage, including blindness, deafness and intellectual disabilities. (There are no treatments for measles, though researchers are trying to develop them.)

While many of the children who became ill were vulnerable to the virus because their parents opted them out of the measles vaccine, local health departments have also reported several cases in babies too young for the shot and people with health conditions that make them ineligible for the vaccine.

The outbreaks have taken a steep economic toll, as state and local public health departments strained to track down everyone exposed to the virus, start vaccination campaigns and analyze tests. Researchers have estimated that in 2025, each measles case cost the United States more than $100,000, when factoring in health care spending and the days of missed work for sick people or caretakers.

Of course, the United States is not the only country grappling with a measles resurgence. Canada, which lost its elimination status last year, has reported more than a thousand cases this year. Health officials in Bangladesh confirmed more than 8,000 infections since March.

Still, several experts said the Trump administration’s response — which has not included any national push to increase vaccination rates — has done the United States no favors.

Courtney Spencer, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the department has mounted an “aggressive outbreak response,” and pointed to the $8.5 million it has given states to help contain outbreaks and the technical assistance that the C.D.C. has provided to those areas.

She added that the department has said, referring to the vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella, that “M.M.R. vaccination remains the best protection against measles.”

Dr. Jonathan Temte, a former chairman of the C.D.C.’s vaccine advisory committee, said: “We have seen virtually no national messaging. We’ve seen no ad campaigns.” He added, “I think that really tells us something about their priorities.”

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are not telling Americans the truth about the failed war in Iran

Editorial opinion published in the The Virginian-Pilot:

Americans deserve honesty from White House about Iran war

It’s called the fog of war — the uncertainty and confusion that can proliferate during the physical and emotional demands of combat operations. Orders and directions can be muddled, communication can break down, and those in the thick of it can struggle to find their footing.

For the Trump administration, though, events in Iran are more akin to a fog machine of war — from the shifting justifications for attacking in February, to the moving goalposts of what it hopes to achieve, to the deliberate obfuscation of the number of service members harmed.

Americans don’t need access to classified intelligence or after-action reports to better understand what’s happening in this conflict, certainly not anything that could put members of our military at greater risk. But the nation does deserve frank, honest talk from its leaders in order to properly assess the purpose, status and cost of a war it is being asked to support and to fund.

The United States, in partnership with Israel, launched a war against Iran on February 28. Donald Trump, speaking the morning of the initial strikes, called on the Iranian people to take control of the government and urged the armed forces to surrender, saying that “America is with you.”

What Donald Trump promised would be a limited campaign has subsequently proved to be way more complicated than he expected, reflecting why his predecessors never launched such a massive undertaking. His rationale has shifted in the weeks and months since, from halting Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, to removing its leadership and, lately, keeping the Strait of Hormuz open to international shipping.

Trump asked Americans to follow this scattered logic and to trust in his handling of the war. But most aren’t buying into his arguments; polling this month by The Washington Post-Ipsos found 68% said the Iran war was not “worth fighting,” while just 28% said it was. The conflict is more unpopular than the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan were at any point.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified before Congress that the Pentagon needs $67 billion in emergency funding to pay for operations, despite also claiming that Iran’s military was decimated. NBC News, citing internal DOD numbers, reports the cost of the war is already between $80 billion and $100 billion. Taxpayers will foot that bill, in addition to paying higher costs for gasoline, fertilizer and other goods due to disrupted trade in the Middle East.

And then there are the casualty numbers. This White House isn’t the first to obscure the number of service members killed and wounded in combat operations, but Trump and his allies painted the Afghanistan withdrawal — which Trump negotiated — as a colossal failure when an attack amid that chaotic exit claimed the lives of 13 Americans.

That was unquestionably a tragedy, so how can administration officials square their outrage with this action in Iran, where at least 18 service members have died, including four in the last week❓😔😡😢

One extricated our nation from a decades-long conflict while this campaign seems to be dragging the U.S. further into one.

The Pentagon finally admitted Monday that more than 100 troops were injured in recent attacks, but only when pressed by journalists to release that information to the public. 

A Defense Department spokesperson told The New York Times that “the ‘vast majority’ of … casualties since July 7 involved ‘mild concussions,’ and 96% of those service members have returned to duty.”

That is, indeed, welcome news. But Hampton Roads needs no reminder of the long-term consequences of injuries sustained in battle and the cost of caring for wounded service members, having endured those challenges for decades due to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Americans need a clear-eyed view of Donald Trump's illegal war, as do lawmakers making decisions about how — or whether — to pay for ongoing operations. That responsibility rests with the president, who should turn off the fog machine and level with the public about his war of choice.

American military: Eighteen young military killed in the Trump illegal Iran war named with unit identification

TIME magazine report by Chantelle Lee:

Eighteen American service members have died in the war in Iran in the months since the U.S. and Israel launched the initial military strikes on Feb. 28.

From left: Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas; Sgt. Angel Rampersad, 28, of Ozone Park, New York; and 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, were killed in an Iranian attack in Jordan

About ❓447 more U.S. service members have been wounded in the conflict, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System, which was last updated on July 21. Nearly 100 service members have been injured since July 7—of those, 96% have since returned to duty, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell. He added that the “vast majority” of those injuries were “minor concussions.”

Among the wounded was the U.S. airman at the center of a rescue effort behind enemy lines just over a month into the war. On April 3, an American fighter jet was shot down in Iran, causing the pilot and the weapons systems officer to eject from the aircraft. The former was rescued soon after the crash, but the latter went missing for more than 24 hours behind enemy lines. 

On April 5, Donald Trump announced that the service member had been rescued, and, while he had been wounded, “he will be just fine.” (But, these two service members were never identified.)

The war, which has quickly expanded in the Middle East, has killed thousands of people across the region.

The Pentagon released the identities of six American service members who were killed in the conflict in early March, and shared the name of the seventh on March 9. On March 13, U.S. Central Command said that six more service members had died. The following day, the Pentagon released the names of those service members, all of whom were crew members who died after the U.S. aircraft they were aboard, a KC-135, crashed in western Iraq.

On July 7, the U.S. Navy released the identity of a commanding officer who was on board a helicopter that went down in the Arabian Sea six days earlier and is presumed to be dead following days of searching. The other service members who were part of the helicopter crew have been rescued.

Later the same month, U.S. Central Command said on July 18 that two American service members were killed in action in Jordan amid an Iranian attack, and that another service member was missing. The next day, Central Command said that “after a thorough search, U.S. military personnel found unidentified remains” and that the process to verify the identity of the individual was ongoing.

Central Command also said on July 19, that, in a separate incident, an American service member in northern Iraq had been killed in action the day before “during a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone.” On July 21, the Department of Defense (DoD) identified that soldier. (Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, was killed in action during a controlled detonation of a downed One-Way Unmanned Aerial System on July 19, 2026, at Erbil Air Base, Iraq. The incident is under investigation.)

Here’s what to know about the seventeen service members who have died in the conflict.

Michael Emmanuel Swinton:  Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton was 30 years old and was from Fayetteville, North Carolina, the DoD said on July 21. He was “killed in action during a controlled detonation of a downed One-Way Unmanned Aerial System” two days earlier, at Erbil Air Base in Iraq, and the incident is “under investigation,” according to the department.

Swinton was assigned to D Battery, 2nd Battalion, 55th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the DoD said.

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina paid his respects to Swinton in a social media post on July 21.  “We extend our heartfelt condolences to … his wife and family in Spring Lake, his extended family in Fayetteville, and the Fort Bragg community,” Tillis said. “We are grateful for his service and will always remember his sacrifice.”

Tyler James Feehan:  1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan was 25 years old, the DoD said on July 20. He was from Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and was killed in action on July 18 after “an enemy attack” the day before at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The department said “the incident is under investigation.”  Feehan was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 55th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 32nd Army Air Missile Defense Command in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii paid her respects to Feehan in a post on X on July 20.

“Today, my thoughts and aloha are with 1st Lt Feehan’s family, and the families of all the brave servicemembers killed and injured in this war,” she said. “As we honor their service and sacrifice, I remain committed to doing everything in my power to bring an end to this war.”

Isabella Gonzales:  Pvt. Isabella Gonzales was 19 years old and lived in Carrollton, Texas, according to the DoD. She was killed in action in the same attack as Feehan, but died on July 17.

Private Gonzales was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 52nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 10th Army Air Missile Defense Command in Ansbach, Germany.

In a social media post on July 20, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he and his wife were praying for Gonzales’s family, as well as Feehan’s family. Abbott said that “our nation is forever indebted to” both service members.  “Texas mourns the loss of Army Pvt. Isabella Gonzales of Carrollton, killed in action serving our nation in Jordan. She was just 19 years old. Her courage and sacrifice represent the very best of Texas,” he said.

Commander Gabriel Edwards, 42 years old:  On July 1, a helicopter went down in the Arabian Sea after what the U.S. Navy said was an “emergency landing.” Three members of the four-person crew were rescued, and the fourth was declared missing. After more than 100 hours of search and rescue operations, the Navy ended the efforts on July 5. On July 7, the Navy identified Cmdr. Gabriel Edwards as the missing crew member. He is presumed to be dead.

Commander Edwards, originally from Oakland, Oregon, is survived by his wife and two children, in addition to his “large extended family,” the Navy said. He graduated from Norfolk State University in 2006 with a Bachelor’s degree in physics, and commissioned through the Naval ROTC.  “Gabe has dedicated his life to serving his country with honor, courage, and commitment. He led with humility, integrity, and compassion, always putting his people before himself,” his wife, Rebecca Edwards, said in a statement. “To those who served alongside him, he was a respected leader and mentor. To our family, he is the love of my life, an extraordinary father to his children, and the foundation of our home. His greatest joy was always his family.”

John Klinner:  Maj. John A. Klinner, 33, was a resident of Auburn, Alabama, according to the Pentagon. He graduated from Auburn University in 2016 with a mechanical engineering degree, according to the school. He participated in the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps at Auburn University, per the MacDill Air Force Base, and in 2017 he joined the Air Force.  He was the chief of squadron standardizations and evaluations at the 99th Air Refueling Squadron, which is stationed at the Sumpter Smith Joint National Guard Base. The squadron “functions administratively” under the 6th Air Refueling Wing at the MacDill Air Force Base, according to the MacDill Air Force Base. Klinner died on March 12, along with five other service members, after the U.S. aircraft they were on crashed in Iraq.  He is survived by his wife and three children, The Associated Press reported. His wife, Libby Klinner, said in an Instagram post that she was devastated for her children, according to the AP.
“They won’t get to see firsthand the way he would jump up to help in any way he could,” she said in the post. “They won’t see how goofy and funny he was. They won’t witness his selflessness, the way he thought about everyone else before himself. They won’t get to feel the deep love he had for them.”

Ariana Savino:  Capt. Ariana Savino, 31, was a resident of Covington, Washington, according to the Pentagon. She was also a member of the 99th Air Refueling Squadron, serving as the chief of current operations pilot, according to the MacDill Air Force Base. She was part of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps at Central Washington University, and earned her active duty commission in 2017. Savino died on March 12, in the same crash that killed Klinner and four other service members.  U.S. Air Force Col. Ed Szczepanik, 6th Air Refueling Wing Commander, mourned the loss of Klinner, Savino, and their fellow squadron member, Tech. Sgt. Ashley Pruitt, in a press release.

Ashley Pruitt

Tech. Sgt. Ashley Pruitt, 34, resided in Bardstown, Kentucky, according to the Pentagon. She was also a member of the 99th Air Refueling Squadron, serving as an assistant flight chief of operations and KC-135 instructor boom operator, according to the MacDill Air Force Base. She joined the Air Force in 2017. Pruitt died in the March 12 crash in Iraq. Sgt. Pruitt was married, and had a daughter and a stepson, her father told the New York Times. He told the news outlet that Pruitt had dreamed of serving her country by entering the Air Force ever since she was young. “She knew that this would be her path,” her father told the Times. “She passed doing what she loved—that’s fighting for this country.”

Seth Koval:  Capt. Seth Koval, 38, lived in Stoutsville, Ohio, and was an aircraft commander assigned to the 121st Air Refueling Wing at Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base in Columbus, Ohio, according to the Ohio National Guard. In 2006, he enlisted into the Air Force, according to his Air Force biography. He graduated from Purdue University five years later with a degree in aviation operations. In 2017, he transferred to the Ohio Air National Guard.

“To lose a member of the Air Force family is excruciatingly painful, especially to those who know them as son, daughter, brother, sister, spouse, mom, or dad. To lose them at the same time is unimaginable,” Szczepanik said. “Our communities feel this loss deeply and Team MacDill will ensure their sacrifices and service to our nation are never forgotten. We will honor them each and every day as we continue to answer our nation’s call.” He died in the March 12, crash in Iraq.  His wife, Heather Koval, shared a statement on Facebook, in which she said that Koval “grew up dreaming about becoming a pilot and to stand beside him as he made his dreams come true was an honor.”  “He was truly the most amazing husband, father, son, brother, friend, and Airman. He loved what he did, and he was proud to put his uniform on and serve others,” she said. “He always put others before himself—until the very end. I will see him in the smile of our son and carry him with me in every moment.”

Curtis Angst:  Capt. Curtis Angst, 30, was a resident of Columbus, Ohio, and was also part of the 121st Air Refueling Wing, serving as a KC-135 pilot, according to the Ohio National Guard. He had 10 years of service; he enlisted in the Ohio Air National Guard in 2015, according to his Air Force biography. Before commissioning, he graduated from the University of Cincinnati with an aerospace engineering degree. He died with the five other service members in the March 12 crash. Mary Angst, Angst’s wife, told the New York Times in a statement that their family was “beyond grateful for the outpouring of love and support surrounding us during this unimaginable time.”  “Curtis was incredibly proud to serve our country, and we are committed to honoring his life and legacy,” she said.

Tyler Simmons:  Tech. Sgt. Tyler Simmons, 28, lived in Columbus, Ohio and was a boom operator assigned to the 121st Air Refueling Wing, according to the Ohio National Guard. He joined the Air Force in 2017, according to his Air Force biography.  Simmons died in the March 12 crash in Iraq.  His father told the New York Times that Simmons had been deployed to the region for another assignment, but he had volunteered to join the crew on the plane that ended up crashing.  “He didn’t have to be on that flight, that’s just the kind of person he was,” his father said.

Benjamin Pennington:  Sgt. Benjamin Pennington, 26, was a resident of Glendale, Kentucky, according to the Pentagon. He joined the Army in 2017, at first working as a unit supply specialist, according to U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (USASMDC). Last summer, he was assigned to the Space Battalion as a part of the 1st Space Brigade in Fort Carson, Colorado. He received several accolades for his service, including the Army Achievement Medal. Pennington died on March 8, after sustaining injuries “during an enemy attack” seven days earlier at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon said on March 9. The department said that the incident is under investigation. USASMDC said Pennington would posthumously be promoted to staff sergeant.

“Sgt. Pennington was a dedicated and experienced noncommissioned officer who led with strength, professionalism and sense of duty,” 1st Space Brigade commander Col. Michael F. Dyer said in a statement.

Jeffrey O’Brien:  Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien was 45 and a resident of Waukee, Iowa, according to the Army Reserve. He commissioned in the Army Reserve in 2012, serving first as a signal corps officer. In 2019, he was deployed to Kuwait. He was awarded the Army Achievement Medal, as well as the Meritorious Unit Commendation, among other accolades. O’Brien died on March 1 “during an unmanned aircraft system attack” in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, that killed five other service members, the Pentagon said on March 4. The department said that the incident is under investigation.
In a statement shared by Des Moines television station KCCI, O’Brien’s parents and brothers remembered him as “a son, grandson, the oldest of 3 brothers, a nephew and compassionate young man raised on a farm near Monti, IA.”  “It was instilled in him to recognize that when people need help or a job needs done, you do it because it is the right thing to do,” his family continued. “Growing up, whether it was waking up early to help his Grandfather to tend livestock, baling straw on the family farm, or raising flags for his local parish on Memorial Day and July 4th, Jeff would always put others ahead of himself.”

Robert Marzan:  Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, 54, lived in Sacramento, California, according to the Pentagon. In a Facebook post, Marzan’s niece said he was “just two months away from coming back home” from his last deployment after more than three decades in the Army at the time of his death.

He was at the site of the March 1, attack in Kuwait that killed O’Brien and four other service members, and the Pentagon said on March 4, that it believed he also died in the attack. The Pentagon said that a medical examiner will confirm this. Marzan is survived by his wife and daughter, the LA Times reported. “He would do anything for you, and family and friends meant the most to him,” Marzan’s childhood friend told KCRA. “He was an amazing husband, father, brother, nephew, uncle, and friend. You always knew he cared deeply about the people in his life.”  “While the entire world now knows your name uncle, you have always been my loving and fun uncle, grandma’s baby, a devoted husband, protective and loving father, baby brother, cousin and best friend to many,” Marzan’s niece wrote on Facebook. “You’re our Hero with a servant’s heart, you lead with love and bravery, you gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country, an honorable soldier, and I believe God welcomed you Home with open arms saying ‘Well done, my son, well done'.” 

Nicole Amor:  Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor was 39 and resided in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. She enlisted in the National Guard in 2005, working as an automated logistics specialist, according to the Army Reserve. In 2006, she transferred to the Army Reserve. She was deployed to Kuwait and Iraq in 2019. Amor had two children: a son in his senior year of high school and a daughter in fourth grade, the AP reported. She liked gardening, rollerblading, and bicycling.
She died on March 1 in the attack in Kuwait, according to the Pentagon.  Her husband told the AP that Amor had been set to return home soon before her death. “She was almost home,” her husband told the news outlet. “You don’t go to Kuwait thinking something’s going to happen, and for her to be one of the first—it hurts.”
Amor was awarded several accolades for her service, including the Army Commendation Medal and National Defense Service Medal, according to the Army Reserve.

Declan Coady:  Sgt. Declan Coady was 20 and lived in Des Moines, Iowa, according to the Army Reserve. Coady, who was a student at Drake University, joined the Army Reserve in 2023, working as an Army information technology specialist. He received several accolades for his service, including the Army Service Ribbon, National Defense Service Ribbon, and the Overseas Service Ribbon. Coady had been attending classes virtually while stationed in Kuwait, the AP reported. He died on March 1 in the attack in Kuwait, the Pentagon said. Coady was promoted from specialist to sergeant posthumously, according to the Army Reserve.  “I still don’t fully think it’s real,” his sister told the AP. “I just remember all of our conversations about what he was going to do when he came back.”

Cody Khork:  Capt. Cody Khork, 35, lived in Winter Haven, Florida, according to the Army Reserve. He enlisted in the National Guard in 2009, serving as a multiple launch rocket system/fire direction specialist. Five years later, he began working as a military police officer in the Army Reserve. He was later deployed to Saudi Arabia, Guantanamo Bay, and Poland.  He received a number of awards for his service, including the Meritorious Service Medal and Army Commendation Medal, according to the Army Reserve.  Khork was killed in the March 1 attack in Kuwait, according to the Pentagon. His family told news outlets in a statement that Khork “felt a calling to serve his country.”  “He was deeply patriotic and took great pride in serving something greater than himself,” his family said. “He lived with purpose, loved deeply, and served honorably. His legacy will endure in the lives he touched, the example he set, and the love of country and family that defined him.”

Noah Tietjens:  Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42, resided in Bellevue, Nebraska, according to the Pentagon. He came from a military family, the New York Times reported. He enlisted in the Army Reserve in 2006, serving as a wheeled vehicle mechanic, according to the Army Reserve. He had previously been deployed to Kuwait in 2009 and in 2019. He received several decorations for his service, including the Meritorious Service Medal and Army Commendation Medal. Tietjens died in the attack on March 1 in Kuwait, the Pentagon said. He is survived by his wife and a teenage son, the Times reported. The family had trained in martial arts together. Tietjens had wanted to start his own martial arts studio someday, according to the Times.

Sgt. Angel Rampersad, 28, of Ozone Park, (Queens) New York. Her death in Jordan was reported on July 22 nd. She is a third American service member believed to have been killed by an Iranian attack on an air base in Jordan has been identified by the United States military as Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad of New York.

Connor Greene contributed reporting.