What Changed After Almost Four Months of War❓ Analysts Say Not Much.
A painting of Iran’s first two supreme leaders in Tehran, this month. The second, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed at the start of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran this year. Credit...Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times
Neither the war nor the agreement terminated the main threats emanating from Iran, many analysts said.
In igniting a war against Iran on February 28, 2016, Donald Trump billed the U.S. campaign as an unprecedented step toward transforming the Middle East and terminating the threat from what he called a “wicked, radical dictatorship.”
Roughly 100 days later, as the United States and Iran have reached a somewhat vague memorandum of understanding (MOU) - a.k.a. "surrender", to end the war, skeptics are expressing bafflement over what exactly was transformed.
Neither the war nor the agreement ended what U.S. and Israeli officials regard as the main threats emanating from Iran.
Although Iran's nuclear program was apparently heavily damaged, it was not eliminated — its fate punted 🏈🦶 to future negotiation. Moreover, the same goes for Iran's ballistic missiles, which the deal does not address. Iran’s authoritarian regime endured, albeit with new leaders. Its proxies remain a threat to the region. Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, persisted in attacking each other.
By Saturday, even the most significant immediate result of the deal — Iran’s reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which Trump had identified as essential — seemed at risk.
Iran’s military said it was closing the waterway again, because the United States had failed to stop the fighting in Lebanon. The U.S. military contested that, saying the strait remained open as the agreement stipulated.
“This is not a document the United States agreed to because the war demonstrated a new U.S. military superiority,” said Caitlin Talmadge, a professor at M.I.T. who specializes in Persian Gulf security issues. “I think it’s a document that has resulted from the fact that the United States bit off more than it could chew and doesn’t want to escalate.”
That’s a worthy goal, she said. “But it really raises the question of what was achieved here, especially in comparison to the original Iran nuclear deal, negotiated by President Barack Obama.”
For its part, the Islamic Republic is set to receive potentially substantial financial rewards. (HELLO? Like 💲300 billion❗) That is one substantive change, although certainly not one in the United States’ favor. (Ugh....ya'think❓😕😒)
For Tehran, weathering the blistering assaults from the United States and Israel, and demonstrating the ability to retaliate and inflict damage, constituted a victory for them.
Indeed, aside from the Trump administration, the people crowing most about what transpired were core members of Iran’s regime.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and a lead negotiator, hailed a revelation that Iran had taken from the war: that it could exert leverage by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial transit point for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.
“This was a potential capacity that had never been activated,” Mr. Ghalibaf said in an interview Wednesday with IRIB, the Iran state broadcaster. “But our enemies — God created them fools🃏 🤡— turned that potential into reality.”
Although the memorandum allows for free passage of ships for two months, Tehran has threatened to implement transit fees for services, a system that did not exist before the war.
The heart of the memorandum is that Iran will abandon hostility toward the United States and its regional allies, a pillar of the revolution, in exchange for sweeping, if sometimes gradual, economic benefits. They include the lifting of the American naval blockade, a 💲300 billion❗ reconstruction fund to be created by the Gulf Arab states (as if...🙄 duh...like, believe it when we 👀see it), the release of billions of dollar💲 in frozen assets and an end to all American sanctions.
The deal’s ambition, as Vice President JD Vance portrayed it to reporters, went so far as the transformation of Iran’s hostile relations with the United States and much of the region since its 1979, revolution.
“People say the Iranians will never change their behavior. Well, maybe that’s true and if so, they don’t get any of the benefits of the bargain,” said Vance. “But, isn’t it worth trying❓”
Experts on the region are skeptical. Middle Eastern wars tend to breed more radicalization, not less, said Karim Haggag, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “The reality is that the region in the aftermath of this conflict will be much more insecure,” he said.
Here is a look at how the memorandum left various countries:
The United States
Vance said the agreement maintained U.S. leverage over Iran and that it could turn financial rewards on and off like a spigot. Many experts were doubtful.
It’s true that Trump broke the American taboo against invading Iran, but in doing so analysts said that he squandered the most powerful tool that Washington had maintained since the Islamic Revolution: the threat of force. The United States used it, and didn’t achieve its goals — a lesson Iran is sure to internalize, analysts said.
In the initial, 12-day war last June, for example, the U.S. military managed to cast a shadow over the long-term viability of Iran’s nuclear program by dispatching long-range bombers to bury nuclear facilities under a mountain of rubble, said Ms. Talmadge of M.I.T.
The more recent war had the opposite effect, she added, since Trump backed off further escalation. “I think the U.S. in some ways undermined the leverage that it had,” Ms. Talmadge said.
At the same time, Iranian attacks on U.S. military bases in the region caused extensive damage, undermining another facet of American leverage, she said, by puncturing the sense that they were inviolable.
And the memorandum has a further stipulation: that unspecified American forces should withdraw from the “proximity” of Iran within 30 days.
“When did we ever negotiate with the Iranians about our force deployments going forward❓” asked Robert S. Ford, a former American ambassador in the region.
Iran
The war wrought widespread devastation, with a reported death toll of 1,700 civilians. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed along with dozens of senior military commanders, and its air defenses proved porous. Reconstructing military and industrial infrastructure will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Inflation is skyrocketing, and high unemployment could fuel public unrest.
But, the government’s tenacity served to “reinvigorate Iran’s perception of its own security,” said Afshon Ostovar, author of “Wars of Ambition: The United States, Iran, and the Struggle for the Middle East.”
The idea that it will trade its hostility toward the United States and its allies for improved prosperity is a gamble, since it had almost always chosen confrontation previously, analysts said.
Israel
Israel entered the war convinced that it would defang Iran for at least a generation.
Instead, Isreal found itself sidelined by its ally, the United States, in an agreement that ignored its goals, and worse, limited its freedom to attack in Lebanon. Trump has also repeatedly disparaged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, revealing rare disunity in American-Israeli relations at a fraught moment, with Israeli elections approaching.
From an Israeli standpoint, the memorandum is a catastrophe. “It is a collapse of all the strategy that we had regarding Iran,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a retired Israeli intelligence officer who specializes in Iran.
Lebanon
Lebanon is considered by analysts to be the soft underbelly of the memorandum. Hezbollah*alienated many of its mostly Shiite Muslim supporters by dragging the country into two devastating wars — one in support of Hamas in Gaza and the other when Israel attacked Iran. The violence has left thousands of people dead, including almost 4,000 civilians this year, according to the health ministry.
Lack of financial support from Iran for reconstruction augmented public anger. But Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is working assiduously to restore Hezbollah’s military capacity,💥😔😟 analysts said, and some of the money💰 promised to Tehran for reconstruction could flow to the militia. That gives Hezbollah incentive to respect the agreement.
Both Trump and Vance acknowledged that some violence in Lebanon is likely to continue, but it is not clear how much it would take to trigger a strong American intervention.
The Gulf
The six Arab Gulf states hoped in vain to remain bystanders in the longstanding duel between Israel and Iran. Instead, Iran’s closure of the strait and attacks on their oil infrastructure brought economic turmoil.
Although American interceptors prevented the worst damage, the war has forced Gulf states to rethink their dependence on the United States for security.
Now, there is talk of a “golden bridge” to Iran: mutual investments that were impossible under sanctions. “We can benefit from one another, intertwine interests, to make the cost of returning to war higher,” said Bader Al-Saif, a historian at Kuwait University. “If I have an Iranian plant in Kuwait City, they’re going to think twice before hitting us, right❓”
Overall, though, the memorandum itself was widely seen as encompassing minimal concrete change.
“I’m skeptical that much progress will be made on the nuclear issue now that the U.S. has removed the main leverage that it has,” said Paul Salem, a Middle East analyst, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “So in a way, this deal is a bit of a nothing burger at the end of this very long and devastating war.”
Shirin Hakim contributed reporting.
Neil MacFarquhar has been a New York Times reporter since 1995, writing about a range of topics from war to politics to the arts, both internationally and in the United States.
Maine Writer post script opinion about Hezbollah- this home grown terrorist organization will never go away and Israel is the organization's perennial enemy. Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party with an active paramilitary wing. It has been banned by the Lebanese government since March 2026, amid Israel's war on Lebanon. Nevertheless, Iran continues to support the group's ongoing military campaign against Israel. Hezbollah fights Israel primarily to advance its foundational ideology to destroy the Israeli state.
Why is my Jewish deli a battleground for foreign policy❓✡️ My establishment has been the target of malicious sticker campaigns since 2023. By Steven Peljovich Updated May 15, 2026.
Anisemitism accomplishes nothing!
On May 3, 2026, I showed up to work around 6 a.m. and found an all-too-familiar message on my shop’s front door: Covering a picture of my family was a sticker that said, “End the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.”
I am the owner of Michael’s Deli in Brookline, and since Oct. 7, 2023, the day more than 1,200 people were killed by the terrorist group Hamas, unleashing the war in Gaza, my storefront has been a designated landing spot for more than 40 stickers.
Their messages range from political rhetoric (“End the occupation,” “Free Palestine”) to straight-out Jew hatred (“Boycott Jews,” “Death to Israel,” and worse), and I am the recipient because I am proudly Jewish.
For the past two and a half years, I have removed the stickers and gone on with my day, but this time I had had enough. I decided to express my frustration on the shop’s Instagram account. The post has been viewed nearly 40,000 times and my deli has landed front and center in the battle against unchecked antisemitism and hate.
Over the past week, I was visited by elected officials from Washington, D.C., the Massachusetts State House, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and members of the Brookline Select Board, as well as law enforcement, all in a show of support.
Although I appreciate their support, it all feels a bit surreal. I am just a guy trying to create food that makes people happy and brings people together. We have no ties to governments or political parties; we have no influence over foreign policy; we are just a restaurant. The only thing we profess is pride in our heritage, our traditions, and in the food we serve.
There’s a reason these messages feel targeted. My business is in Coolidge Corner, and every time I have found hate stickers on my door or on my window, I look around to see if other businesses have been targeted. They have not. Just mine.
If these stickers had been placed all over the neighborhood, I would not be so upset. But they are placed on the shop owned by the guy with a “Proudly Jewish” sign in the window. I also have Israeli and Cuban flags on my counter. The Israeli flag is how I show pride in my Judaism. The Cuban flag is for my parents, who were born there after their parents fled Eastern Europe to avoid being persecuted for being Jewish. They then fled the oppression of the Castro regime.
Several other Jewish-owned businesses and synagogues in Brookline have been targets of antisemitic crimes over the past year. In fact, my neighbor up the street, The Butcherie, a kosher grocery store, had a brick with “Free Palestine” written on it thrown through its window last year.
The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) Audit of Antisemitic Incidents that came out last week reports there were 17 antisemitic incidents per day in the United States in 2025 — and that’s only the ones that were reported. Up until last week, I had never reported what happened at my deli. I just took the stickers down and went on with running my business. Nevertheless, the day after this incident, Brookline Select Board member Paul Warren came in after reading my Instagram post and told me that it was important that I report the incident to the Brookline police. And so I did.
All I can figure is that the folks who are targeting my business and others like mine see us as representatives for a country, or a government or a policy that they don’t agree with.
And it makes me wonder: If my business was an all-American hot dog stand and I had an American flag inside my store, would people harass me if they were upset with America’s government or policies❓ I don’t think they would. And that’s antisemitism.
Folks once had actual conversations about issues that were divisive. Now, we retreat into our corners, wrap ourselves in our bubbles, and use the anonymity of social media to express opinions and spew hate.
These stickers, always placed at night, are an extension of that. It is easy and cowardly to slap a sticker on a door or window of an establishment and just walk away. It also accomplishes nothing.
Ultimately, supporting and promoting something you strongly believe in is a constitutional right. But, at the end of the day, I am just a guy who is proud of his heritage and whose goal is to make great food for all of my guests to enjoy. It would be nice if I can just continue to show up to my store everyday and focus on that, rather than finding hate at my door.😔😔😔😟😥
Donald Trump and maga Republicans were overconfident about U.S. military power while cheap drones and A.I. are advancing war strategies
Echo opinion published in The New York Timesby Thomas L. Friedman: Trump Is the One Without the Cards at the Poker Table
Donald Trump often falls back on poker metaphors.
He told President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that he had “no cards” when it came to standing up to Russia.
Trump told Iran’s leaders that they had “no cards” when it came to standing up to him.
Would somebody please tell me when it’s poker night at the Trump White House, because I’d really like a seat at that table❓🃏
Trump is betting that by blockading Iran to prevent it from exporting its oil he can force Tehran to negotiate on his terms. But some experts think Iran has enough income and can store enough oil to hold out for at least several months.
Meanwhile, Iran is betting that by choking off the Strait of Hormuz — and driving up gasoline and food prices for Americans and all their allies — Trump will eventually act in accord with his TACO label: Trump Always Chickens Out.
This is painful to watch. Trump and Tehran are each saying: “I will hold my breath until you turn blue.” We’ll see who gasps first.
The real question is: How in the world has Iran’s regime lasted this long — two months — against the combined military might of Israel and America? The answer: Trump does not understand how much asymmetric warfare has reshaped geopolitics in just the last few years.
Let's cut to reality. I don’t want to be too hard on Trump. Afterall, he is not alone. Iran is to Trump what Ukraine is to Vladimir Putin, what Hamas and Hezbollah have been to Benjamin Netanyahu and — wait for it — what the next generation of cyberhackers will be to China and America and every other nation-state.
Think about it: Last June, Ukraine smuggled 117 cheap drones into Russia hidden inside trucks and destroyed or damaged about 20 of Russia’s strategic aircraft, including multimillion-dollar long-range, nuclear-capable strategic bombers.
This year, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps used $35,000 Shahed-136 drones to strike two Amazon Web Services data centers, costing tens of millions of dollars, in the United Arab Emirates (a third Amazon data center, in Bahrain, was damaged in a nearby strike), knocking them offline and disrupting banking and other services across the Persian Gulf region.
Previously, Hamas commanders said that they fashioned small rockets from piping from abandoned Israeli settlements, unexploded Israeli bombs and other munitions and even parts from a sunken British World War I warship off the Gaza coast. Israel was forced to use Patriot missiles costing $4 million each to intercept them.
In other words, we’re already in a new era in which small powers and small groups can leverage information-age tools — guided by GPS and digitally controlled — to gain asymmetric advantages.
“We have always thought of power in terms of the ability to create mass destruction,” John Arquilla, a former professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School and the author of the forthcoming “Troubled American Way of War,” told me in an interview. In an interdependent world, “the many and the small now have the ability to create ‘mass disruption’ in the physical or the virtual world” — from the Strait of Hormuz to cyberspace. Trump recklessly started this war without allies, without any scenario planning and, obviously, without any real understanding of Iran’s assets in asymmetric warfare. Nevertheless, it would be a disaster for the region and the world if Iran’s malign regime emerges from this war intact and unreformed, because an even more powerful asymmetric tool kit for bad guys is just arriving.
Here’s what’s truly new and disturbing: We are rapidly moving from the age of asymmetric warfare based on “information-age tools” that can wreak mass disruption to what my technology tutor, Craig Mundie, a former head of research and strategy at Microsoft, calls an age of asymmetric warfare based on “intelligence-age tools” that can cheaply wreak disruption at a much larger scale anywhere on demand.
My translation: You’ve read a lot about how Iran has used cheap $35,000 drones to close the Strait of Hormuz. Wait until you see how it can leverage large language models and their A.I. agents at a very low cost.
How will Iran gain access❓ Just recall the story that broke a few weeks ago: The A.I. giant Anthropic announced that its newest artificial intelligence model, Mythos, was simply too good at finding vulnerabilities in the operating systems and other software programs that so many companies and utilities run on. Days later, OpenAI made a similar announcement about its own cybersecurity-focused model, GPT-5.4-Cyber.
As Bloomberg reported, the flaws Mythos has discovered are the kind that “often represent a gold mine for hackers because they offer a window of free rein inside vulnerable systems.”
Anthropic and OpenAI both elected to restrict the release of these A.I. systems to only the most critical and responsible software generators so they could find and patch their vulnerabilities before these tools might one day be released more widely. But guess what happened❓ Unauthorized users got hold of Mythos anyway.
Bloomberg reported last week that a few outsiders gained access but that Anthropic said it had no evidence that the access impacted any of its systems. The group of unauthorized users “is interested in playing around with new models, not wreaking havoc with them,” Bloomberg reported, based on information from an unidentified source.
It is hard to exaggerate how destabilizing these rapid advances in A.I. sophistication could become, and it is why Mundie and I have been arguing for a while now that the two A.I. superpowers — the United States and China — need to figure out how they can (and surely will) continue to compete strategically while also cooperating to neutralize these new asymmetric intelligence-age threats — not unlike the United States and the U.S.S.R. did to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Cold War.
Otherwise, neither of them will be safe. Nor will anyone else be.
DOGE hollows out government, Medicaid. Aid for food and medicine is slashed and FEMA’s (emergency management) future effectiveness is questioned.
Masked ICE agents arrest migrants, targeting Latinos, who are denied due process while others are raided and shackled.
The National Guard patrols in Washington D.C., with Donald Trump planning the same (illegal terror❗💥) for other cities.
Trump’s tariff war has created friction and raised prices on imported goods, making everything less affordable while the rich get huge tax cuts.
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) chaos sows confusion over covid-19, immunizations and Tylenol, as pseudoscience takes over.
Ukraine, hammered by Russia, sees Trump being played by Vladimir Putin, while Trump’s promised end is nowhere in sight.
Starvation haunts Gaza; we see emaciated children while we continue supplying Israel with weapons — making us also culpable.
The Epstein saga continues while Trump seems to be attempting to distract us from who really visited Jeffery Epstein’s brothels.
While Trump enriches himself in office (aka "delusional"), he fantasizes over Greenland, Canada and making Gaza a seaside resort, initiates vindictive political retribution by directing government to target his enemies, orders election meddling through state gerrymandering, uses hateful speech to demonize his opposition, and assaults our rights of free speech and press.
This is Trump’s “American Carnage”, where disorder, confusion and disarray abound.
From Ron Slabe in Oakmont, a borough in Pennsylvania
“All the feels!” my friend Elizabeth texted me the other day. Elizabeth is a writer and a wisdom teacher, and her words always make me pause and think.
Currier and Ives
The hope, the horror, all the feels. That’s how life feels these days, isn’t it? That’s how so many of us feel right now. Scared and hopeful and everything in between.
Everyone is feeling the highs, the lows, and 😔😞disbelief.
Fear has invaded our homes, our schools, our workplaces, and our hearts and minds. Our government has shut down. Our leaders have retreated into their corners. And meanwhile, salaries are stagnant, health care feels impossible to navigate, and parents are afraid to drop off their kids at school. Places of worship also feel unsafe.
It feels like everyone is searching for someone—anyone—to tell them it’s going to be okay.
When I was a child, I would often ask my mother, “Is it going to be okay?” Back then, I knew therewere adults in the room—my parents, our political leaders—to reassure me. They were the ones who stepped forward to speak to the nation as one. They knew it was their duty to instill hope, minimize fear, and steady us. It was their job.
Where are those people today❓
This week, a flight attendant leaned down and asked me, “Who is our voice these days❓ Who can be our voice❓”
Here is my answer: You are. I am. We are. Together.
Years ago, as I sat in the ICU with my mother, a nurse stopped and asked me, “Do you need anything😇❓💙🙏”
Trained by my mother never to need for anything and never to complain, I quickly said, “Oh no, please. Help someone else who has it worse.”
The nurse looked into my tired eyes and said: “There’s no competition here. Everyone in the ICU is having a hard time. Everyone here needs help.”
That truth has stayed with me. That’s what things feel like now.
Life isn’t a competition. It’s not about who has it worse. We all need tending to. We all need help for all our feels.
I know it might sound naïve to speak of hope while we mark the anniversary of October 7, while images from Gaza flood our screens, while young men blow up churches and assassinate leaders, while families struggle with jobs, health care, and rent. But I am betting on the goodness of humanity, even in the face of horror.
I’m choosing to listen to leaders who remind us of empathy, forgiveness, respect, and our moral obligations to one another. Leaders like Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, who asked her congregation what happens when we stop caring.
Like Pope Leo, who reminded us that no one owns the whole truth and urged greater respect for one another.
Like Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and New Mexico Gov. Lujan Grisham—leaders from different parties—who modeled how to disagree without contempt or violence.
And leaders like Texas Rep. James Talarico, who this week spoke out after the government shutdown to remind us that the national budget is a “moral document” and that leaders have a moral obligation to care for Americans. The fight over health care isn’t just about premiums, he said. It’s about people’s access to medicines, treatments, and their ability to live well, heal, and survive.
I’m also choosing to see light in a golfer like Rory McIlroy, who turned heckling into a teaching moment. Golf, he said, is supposed to unite people and be a sport of respect, not abuse, ridicule, or shame. But American fans didn’t treat him and his wife with respect at the Ryder Cup last week. The behavior they endured was appalling, and yet still, Mcllroy urged golf fans to be the hope they want to see in this world, not the horror. He reminded them they could be better.
As for me, I’m choosing to notice when people raise money not only for victims of violence but also for the family of the shooter—because that, too, is modeling another way forward. I’m choosing to listen to teachers, nuns, priests, rabbis—and my brother Timothy, with his dignity movement—who remind me to ask: How can I walk and talk better in this world right now? Because I know I can do better, and I want to try. I really, really do.
In fact, it was with that intention that I engaged in a conversation this past week with someone who is the political opposite of me.
My friend was vulnerable enough to share that he had fallen victim to his social media algorithm, that it had riled him up even more than usual, and that he was struggling to understand “the left” at all.
In the past, I would have engaged, gotten into a debate, and gotten heated. This time I just listened and asked him to tell me more. The more we spoke, the calmer he got. He ended by telling me he was deleting his social media for a while.
I get it. So many people tell me they’ve turned off the news and turned away from listening for their own mental health and peace of mind. I understand. I’ve wanted to look away, too. I’m exhausted by it. I loathe the algorithm.
This new poll on political polarization should trouble us all, but it also shows us there is an opportunity waiting in plain sight. For if we all turn away, if we all stop caring, then we risk losingmore than our politics. We risk losing our very hearts and our nation as we know it.
And as historian Heather Cox Richardson so wisely reminded us this week, this is not a time for partisanship. This is a moment for “We the People” to stand up together if we want to save our democracy.
The other day, someone on my spiritual team advised me that now is the time to “speak in quiet tones.” “No one is listening to one another,” they said. “No one is hearing one another. So allow for silence in between your words. Hold your dignity. Work toward being a pillar. Use your tools. No one is using their tools. If you want to be a vessel in the world—which is what the world needs—you need tools for this moment in time.”
So let us use this moment to model a different way. Let’s look for the tools to lead differently. This is the moment not to join the revenge tour, but instead to listen to those offering a different model, a different tone. It’s the moment to assemble our spiritual support team—a circle of voices who remind us of our better angels. This is the moment to practice empathy, even when it’s hardest.
So the next time you’re tempted to turn away, remember: we are all in the ICU. We are all feeling all the feels. See yourself like that nurse who saw me. Calmly ask the person before you—whether friend, stranger, or someone you disagree with—Do you need anything❓🙏
Then pause. Listen. Wait. Wait for the story. Wait for the light.🌞 ⛅☀️ Because the light will come. It always does.
Pope Leo XIV has had me thinking ever since I attended his inaugural mass last Sunday. I haven’t been able to shake him since I got home.
There were no shortage of other stories competing for my attention this week. Some of them provoked outrage (like the news of the young Jewish couple shot outside the Israeli embassy or that people continue to starve in Gaza). Other stories stirred disbelief (like the president’s commercialization of the office to advance his personal wealth, or his confrontational meeting this week with the South African president)...
But thankfully, Pope Leo helped me rise above the noise and heartbreak of the week. My experience seeing him in Rome didn’t just stay in my head. It settled in my heart. I saw his gentle gaze and smiling eyes up close. I watched him look down at his papal ring and stare for just a moment too long, as if to fully grapple with the enormity of his new role. I could tell he was moved and, at the same time, totally comfortable in his own skin.
Since attending his inaugural mass, I’ve been listening, learning, and absorbing. I listened to his thoughts on the need for critical thinking skills in today’s world. I loved that. I listened to his teachings about building bridges through dialogue and connection, joining together as one people, united in peace. I listened to him express his fears about becoming pope, which I found refreshing. And I took note when he announced that, under his direction, the Vatican would host peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
The bridge builder—this man of peace—is off to a remarkable start.
On this Memorial Day, a day to honor those who gave their lives serving in wars for our country, I am grateful to Pope Leo for stressing the importance of peace. So many have died fighting for our freedom, and so many are still losing their lives due to war. I’m hopeful that peace can be achieved in all places where war still rages. I’m grateful for the pope’s words on this subject and for his behind-the-scenes maneuvering with those who attended his inaugural mass or watched from beyond.
All of us need someone who has spent their life preparing for this kind of moment. Someone who has prepared in every way to stand strongly in this moment.
When I look at Pope Leo and reflect on all he went through to get to this place, I’m reminded of the value of preparation.
Here is a man who has been preparing his whole life for this moment.
A man who thinks deeply, reflects daily, and prays constantly. He’s well-read, well-educated, and well-traveled. He seems to have emotional intelligence in addition to intellectual intelligence. Those are all important qualities for leadership, especially in times like these.
Our world is complicated. The issues we face are complex. There are no easy answers to the problems that sit on any leader’s table.
I imagine your kitchen table might hold its own complex issues—financial challenges, family and caregiving concerns, mental health struggles, demands on time, and other wants, needs, and desires. No doubt that each of us has had to think and discern about how to juggle both the ordinary and complex. I know I have—and that I still do.
Times such as this require calm. They require centered, confident responses to the issues that come up every minute of every day.
When I think ahead, at times the future can feel daunting. I find myself thinking about things today that I never thought about as a young girl or as a young mother. I listen to my adult children discuss their fears about climate change, about artificial intelligence, and about bringing kids into such a fragile world. Their view of politics and politicians is ugly, divisive, and uninspired. That breaks my heart.
There were no shortage of other stories competing for my attention this week. Some of them provoked outrage (like the news of the young Jewish couple shot outside the Israeli embassy or that people continue to starve in Gaza). Other stories stirred disbelief (like the president’s commercialization of the office to advance his personal wealth, or his confrontational meeting this week with the South African president)...
But thankfully, Pope Leo helped me rise above the noise and heartbreak of the week. My experience seeing him in Rome didn’t just stay in my head. It settled in my heart.
I saw his gentle gaze and smiling eyes up close. I watched him look down at his papal ring and stare for just a moment too long, as if to fully grapple with the enormity of his new role. I could tell he was moved and, at the same time, totally comfortable in his own skin.
Since attending his inaugural mass, I’ve been listening, learning, andabsorbing. I listened to his thoughts on the need for critical thinking skills in today’s world. I loved that. I listened to his teachings about building bridges through dialogue and connection, joining together as one people, united in peace. I listened to him express his fears about becoming pope, which I found refreshing. And I took note when he announced that, under his direction, the Vatican would host peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
The bridge builder—this man of peace—is off to a remarkable start.
On this Memorial Day, a day to honor those who gave their lives serving in wars for our country, I am grateful to Pope Leo for stressing the importance of peace. So many have died fighting for our freedom, and so many are still losing their lives due to war. I’m hopeful that peace can be achieved in all places where war still rages. I’m grateful for the pope’s words on this subject and for his behind-the-scenes maneuvering with those who attended his inaugural mass or watched from beyond.
All of us need someone who has spent their life preparing for this kind of moment. Someone who has prepared in every way to stand strongly in this moment. When I look at Pope Leo and reflect on all he went through to get to this place, I’m reminded of the value of preparation.
Here is a man who has been preparing his whole life for this moment. A man who thinks deeply, reflects daily, and prays constantly. He’s well-read, well-educated, and well-traveled. He seems to have emotional intelligence in addition to intellectual intelligence. Those are all important qualities for leadership, especially in times like these.
Our world is complicated. The issues we face are complex. There are no easy answers to the problems that sit on any leader’s table.
I imagine your kitchen table might hold its own complex issues—financial challenges, family and caregiving concerns, mental health struggles, demands on time, and other wants, needs, and desires.
No doubt that each of us has had to think and discern about how to juggle both the ordinary and complex. I know I have—and that I still do.
Times such as this require calm. They require centered, confident responses to the issues that come up every minute of every day.
When I think ahead, at times the future can feel daunting. I find myself thinking about things today that I never thought about as a young girl or as a young mother. I listen to my adult children discuss their fears about climate change, about artificial intelligence, and about bringing kids into such a fragile world. Their view of politics and politicians is ugly, divisive, and uninspired. That breaks my heart.
It’s so different from the image I had growing up. Back then, politics was where people went to work if they wanted to change the world.
The political leaders of my time were well-educated and inspiring.
They had served their country. They were well-respected and well-mannered. Sure, they disagreed, but they did so with respect. They gave you hope. They gave you a sense that it wasn’t their first rodeo, and that they understood the country, the American people, and the world at large. To me, as a young girl, they seemed prepared for the job at hand.
I’ve thought a lot over the years about the importance of preparation and working your way up the ladder, so that when your moment comes, you’re ready. Of course, none of us ever feels fully ready when stepping into a new leadership role—whether it’s as a mother, a father, a caregiver, or a boss.
I remember when I was thrust into the role of First Lady of California.
Every day, I thanked God for the experience I had in journalism and politics—for the fact that I understood the push and pull of the job before I ever set foot in the Capitol. The same was true when I became an anchorwoman. I was terrified, but grateful I had spent years in the field—writing, producing, reporting. I had years under my belt, so to speak. I say all this to honor the years of preparation so many put in across various professions. Before they operate on someone. Before they lead a state. Before they assume a high-level job—or a complex one that, as the pope said, requires critical thinking, reflection, and discernment.
It’s so different from the image I had growing up. Back then, politics was where people went to work if they wanted to change the world.
The political leaders of my time were well-educated and inspiring.
They had served their country. They were well-respected and well-mannered. Sure, they disagreed, but they did so with respect. They gave you hope. They gave you a sense that it wasn’t their first rodeo, and that they understood the country, the American people, and the world at large. To me, as a young girl, they seemed prepared for the job at hand.
I’ve thought a lot over the years about the importance of preparation and working your way up the ladder so that when your moment comes, you’re ready. Of course, none of us ever feels fully ready when stepping into a new leadership role—whether it’s as a mother, a father, a caregiver, or a boss.
I remember when I was thrust into the role of First Lady of California.
Every day, I thanked God for the experience I had in journalism and politics—for the fact that I understood the push and pull of the job before I ever set foot in the Capitol.
In fact, the same was true when I became an anchorwoman. I was terrified, but grateful I had spent years in the field—writing, producing, reporting. I had years under my belt, so to speak.
I say all this to honor the years of preparation so many put in across various professions. Before they operate on someone. Before they lead a state. Before they assume a high-level job—or a complex one that, as the pope said, requires critical thinking, reflection, and discernment.
Memorial Day. ⭐ It’s also the unofficial start of summer—traditionally a time when some take amomentary step off the hamster wheel. Some get married. Some travel. Some take breaks to rest or to visit with family. As for me, this weekend I find myself in a place of deep contemplation and exploration.
My book tour is now behind me. It was a busy several weeks, but it was an inspiring, moving, and thought-provoking experience. It was as if I’d been preparing for this moment my whole life.
And speaking of preparation, I wish you all could have been at the WAM Forum with me this past week.
To be in the room with people who have dedicated their lives to curing disease—to solving the health challenges that plague millions, especially those of us who are aging—was awe-inspiring.
They are thinking deeply about Alzheimer’s, about aging, about women’s health, about caregiving, science, research, and how to support the most vulnerable among us. You would have left feeling hopeful. I know I did.
So as I head into this holiday weekend, I’m prepared to spend some time thinking about my “yeses.” As I wrote last week, I’m prepared to think about what it means to be a bridge builder and a uniter like Pope Leo. We can’t leave that job to one person. We all have roles to play.
I also want to reflect on the role of this publication, in particular. I want to ask myself where it’s going, if it’s serving a purpose, and if it’s necessary in a time like this. I want it to be, so I have to drill down and ask whether it’s helping people build their meaning lives and whether it’s bringing hope and meaning to those who need it. I’m well aware that there are now thousands of publications vying for your time, attention, and resources. That’s why one has to be excellent and necessary and prepared to meet the moment at hand.
I’m also prepared to think about the unimaginable. What haven’t I thought about? What might surface if I give my mind the freedom to roam? It’s a good time to put it all on the table and ask: Do I still want what’s here? Is what’s on my table serving me? Is it serving others—those I care about and love?
It’s as good a time as any to think about your one meaningful life—how precious it is, how fragile it is.
Reading about the hopes of the young Jewish couple struck down this week in Washington DC simply because they were Jewish should send a chill down all of our spines. They were planning to be engaged, now their families are planning funerals. We are all vulnerable in this moment. Therefore, shouldn’t we all want to come together in this moment to protect one another, care for one another, support one another, build bridges towards one another?
I hope so because the alternative leaves us all alone, unprotected, unsafe. We can come together and we must.
Happy Memorial Day, my friends. I hope you smile this weekend.
I hope you laugh. I hope you talk to someone who inspires you. And I hope you take a moment to think about your own role in bringing about peace—for yourself, your family, and the world.
OK, 100 days into the horror of the Trumpzi administration so, let’s take a look at some numbers for Trump’s “accomplishments,” shall we? • 39% approval rating – lowest of any new president ... ever.$6,400 expected increase in new car prices (tariffs). • 60% rise in egg prices. • $5.9B expected losses (annually!) in soybean farmers’ sales (tariffs)❗
• $81.65 billion in first-term farm bailouts. This will be worse! • 200 “trade deals” he claims he has made- without any proof. • Zero trade deals actually confirmed by any evidence. • Zero plans to actually lower grocery prices. • 121,000 fired dedicated federal workers – including 70,000 VA employees. • $500B of lost tax revenue due to fired IRS workers, especially those who were working on the richest tax cheats (imagine that, huh!).
$500 million funneled into Trump’s pockets from crypto schemes (Forbes). 24 days spent golfing (25% of his first 100 days!) costing the taxpayers $26 million.
• $6 billion cut from NIH medical research grants for cancer, Alzheimer’s, etc.
• $12 billion cut from state health services. • $90 billion loss in tourism this year (Goldman Sachs estimate). Montana expected to be the No. 1 biggest loser. • At least 288 people trafficked to El Salvador without due process, in defiance of court orders (and the Constitution!). • 1,600 pardons for violent January 6th criminals, plus convicted fraudsters (hey, birds of a feather, right?). • 21 Faux News personalities and six billionaires in his administration. • 293 times Trump has with cruelty complained about Joe Biden (more than times a day!). • Four threatened annexations of other countries: Greenland, Gaza, Panama, and ... Canada?! • One commercial for Tesla on the White House lawn.
Well done, Trump MAGA cult Republican voters!
Are you “tired of winning” yet❓
Enjoy your increased prices on pretty much everything, income losses, and maybe even your farms and tourism businesses.
Unfortunately, the rest of us will also suffer for your voting folly.
Donald Trump: How to destroy democracy in 100 days! Republican cult followers are enabling incompetence
Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Ben Rhodes:100 Days❗ That’s All It Took to Sever America From the World.
In 1941, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt marshaled support for the fight against fascism, his chief antagonists were isolationists at home. “What I seek to convey,” he said at the beginning of an address to Congress, “is the historic truth that the United States as a nation has at all times maintained clear, definite opposition to any attempt to lock us in behind an ancient Chinese wall while the procession of civilization went past.” Roosevelt prevailed, and that victory expanded America’s relationship with the world in ways that remade both.
Eighty-four years later, Donald Trump is systematically severing America from the globe. This is not simply a shift in foreign policy. It is a divorce so comprehensive that it makes Britain’s exit from the European Union look modest by comparison.
Consider the breadth of this effort. Allies have been treated like adversaries. The United States has withdrawn from international agreements on fundamental issues like health and climate change. A “nation of immigrants” now deports people without due process, bans refugees and is trying to end birthright citizenship. Trump’s tariffs have upended the system of international trade, throwing up new barriers to doing business with every country on Earth.
Sadly, foreign assistance has largely been terminated. So has support for democracy abroad. Research cuts have rolled back global scientific research and cooperation. The State Department is downsizing. Exchange programs are on the chopping block. Global research institutions like the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Wilson Center have been effectively shut down. And, of course, the United States is building a wall along its southern border. (Pope Frances: Build bridges not walls")
Other countries are under no obligation to help a 78-year-old American president fulfill a fanciful vision of making America great again. Already a Gaza cease-fire has unraveled, Russia continues its war on Ukraine, Europe is turning away from America, Canadians are boycotting our goods and a Chinese Communist Party that endured the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution seems prepared to weather a few years of tariffs. Travel to the United States is down 12 percent compared with last March, as tourists recoil from America’s authoritarian turn.
The ideologues driving Trump’s agenda defend their actions by pointing to the excesses of American foreign policy, globalization and migration. There is, of course, much to lament there.
Yet, Trump’s ability to campaign on these problems doesn’t solve them in government. Indeed, his remedies will do far more harm to the people he claims to represent than to the global elites that his MAGA movement attacks. Start with the 💲economic impact. If the current reduction in travel to the United States continues, it could cost up to $90 billion this year alone, along with tens of thousands of jobs.
Tariffs will drive up prices and productivity will slow if mass deportations come for the farm workers who pick our food, the construction workers who build our homes and the care workers who look after children and the elderly. International students pay to attend American universities; their demonization and dehumanization could imperil the $44 billion they put into our economy each year and threaten a sector with a greater trade surplus than our civilian aircraft sector.
Moreover, the economic outlook gets worse with time. Why would other countries choose to invest in a country where the president roils global markets through social media posts, profits from crypto schemes that fleece ordinary people and undermines the rule of law upon which commerce depends❓ It’s far more likely that nations will make trade deals and forge supply
chains without the United States while China and its growing list of partners accelerate a movement away from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
In the short term, treating international relations like a protection racket could yield some bilateral transactions. Yet, something more fundamental is being lost: trust. An America that, for all its mistakes abroad, guaranteed the security of its allies. An America that, for all its nativism, took in refugees and educated countless world leaders through its universities and exchange programs.
An America that, for all its hubris, responded to humanitarian crises and showcased an appealing cultural openness. An America that people around the world liked more than its government.
Frankly, the destruction of that trust will hurt us more than the rest of the world. This was certainly the case with Brexit, a project animated by the same blend of nationalism and nostalgia that has propelled Trump. Nearly a decade after voting to divorce Europe, Britain finds itself wrestling with a predictable incapacity to generate growth, a diminished position in its own region and a growing factionalism in its politics. Less than a third of Britons now believe they made the right decision.
We are following that course on a global scale. After 250 years of growing more diverse and more connected to the world, Trump and his cohort are imposing the staid (sedate 🥱😌😒) insularity of self-imposed decline. The draining of democratic values from our national identity will leave America defined by its size, power and quixotic lust for profit: a place, not an idea.
Roosevelt left us the inheritance of believing we were the good guys. But, Trump is eviscerating that pretense as cuts to U.S.A.I.D. have almost certainly caused more civilian deaths than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
So, here is at least some good news: A nation’s relationship with the world is not defined solely by its government, particularly one as big and multifaceted as the United States.
In the first Trump term, state and local governments remained committed to combating climate change, welcoming immigrants, protecting higher education and sustaining global ties. All those efforts will be harder in our new Trumpzi reality, but that only makes them more important.
As the Republicans often remind us, we live in a federal republic, and communities that maintain connections to the world will be better positioned to succeed than those that choose to follow Trump down the rabbit hole of isolationism.
Our institutions also have a choice. Part of what has shocked the world about their capitulation to the Trump administration is the failure to grasp that the moral choice is the best path to self-preservation. Law firms can choose to care more about the law than whether a callous competitor will pick up some of their business. Universities can build credibility within an interconnected world instead of validating the lie that a few students chanting “Free Palestine” is more dangerous than afar-right takeover of academic freedom. The entertainment sector can tell compelling stories about a consequential era instead of algorithmically designed superhero junk. Billionaires can spend money on STEM education for girls instead of financing celebrity trips into a higher part of the atmosphere.
At a more individual level, Americans can demonstrate that they don’t want to be defined by Mr. Trump’s xenophobia. There are international students who fear for their safety; defend their right to be here. There are colleagues and customers around the world; American businesses should engage them in new ways.
There are enormous shortfalls in humanitarian assistance; American philanthropy should fill as much as it can. There are Republican members of Congress whose constituents will be devastated by Trump’s policies; make them more afraid of losing their voters than the threats of a lame-duck president. (Uhg😟😰.....Maine Writer: Impeach Trump NOW❗)
But, he wrong way to respond to our current emergency is to promise, as President Joe Biden did, that America will be “back.” That ignores the enormous mistakes elites made over the last three decades and the political context that allowed Trump to return to power with the mind-set of an arsonist. We’re not coming back, and that’s OK. Indeed, it’s an opportunity.
Instead, our intention should be to return to the world as a different country. That requires something that Americans have not always done well: listening. We have much to learn. And ironically, we now have more in common with people in other countries living under corruption, autocracy and oligarchy.
Perhaps this chapter in our national experience can be a moment when we find a new kind of solidarity with others who have been through versions of what we are now experiencing.
Indeed, the United States will never be a normal country, if there is such aa thing. Like China and Russia, it is too big, too shaped by a revolutionary and imperial past, too rived by traumas that it has inflicted and absorbed.
What Roosevelt understood is that America’s peculiarities could stir us to a more enlightened form of self-interest. As a multiracial nation connected to the world and committed to a set of freedoms core to our identity, we could never afford to follow the foolish path of America First — a slogan that amounted to capitulation to fascism.
America’s strength has always been connected to the fact that it comprises people from everywhere who chose not to be defined by a ruler or to fear the future.
At a time when power in the world is becoming more diffuse, our shifting demographics should be seen as a strength — not something to be feared or suppressed through a reactionary politics that shuts out the world. If we continue down that path, the procession of civilization will leave us behind, in a fearful, diminished and impoverished place. If we recover our sense of agency, we can re-engage the world as a part of it — neither hegemon (i.e., "leader") nor hostile.
Ben Rhodes is a contributing Opinion writer and the author, most recently, of “After the Fall: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We’ve Made.”
Evidence about Donald Trump being infected with hallucinations and delusions
Echo letter to the editor published in the Pen Bay Pilot Talk section, a Rockland and Camden Maine Midcost newspaper.
Donald Trump's utter disconnect from reality
Mon, 03/03/2025 - 7:25pm Jim Matlack
In the wake of Donald Trump's repeated delusional assertions that the U.S. will "take over Gaza" after some two million Palestinians are summarily evicted (also known as genocide!) so that he can carry out his biggest real estate and renovation deal a remarkable AI video appeared on Trump's Truth Social site in support of this cruel genocidal fantasy.
It provides a vivid illustration of Trump's utter disconnect from reality (also known as "crazy) and the scale of his self-imagined projection into grandiose worldly success.
In place of near-total destruction in Gaza the Trump video portrays a massive makeover into a successful tourist mecca with high-rise buildings, a large Trump Gaza Casino, and a photo-shop image of Trump and Netanyahu sun-bathing on the beach together.
Gone are the Palestinians! But they never will or should relinquish their claims to their lands in Gaza, despite brutal conditions imposed by Israeli attacks and cut-offs of humanitarian supplies. Trump will never transform this killing field into a vacation playground.
The most extreme illustration of Trump's self-indulgence and ego enhancement is embodied in an image featured in the AI video--a giant statue of businessman Trump flanked by palm trees and tall buildings (also known as hallucinations!). Against a glowing sky an immense replica of a resolute Trump stands at least 50 feet high and is covered in gold (or solid gold?). There could be no better example of his self-worship to offset his actual psychological insecurity.
In the Biblical story of Exodus, the Children of Israel make their way out of Egypt and into the area of present-day Gaza, where they betray their spiritual heritage by worshiping a golden calf.
"thou shall not have false gods before me" is found in Exodus 20:3, and is often referred to as the first commandment
The MAGA followers of today should learn from their Scriptural example. (MAGA followers who are Bible Thumpers seem to skip over the place where God directs the Isrealites not to worship strange gods).
In igniting a war against Iran on February 28, 2016, Donald Trump billed the U.S. campaign as an unprecedented step toward transforming the Middle East and terminating the threat from what he called a “wicked, radical dictatorship.”
