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.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are causing harm to people with disabilities by changing their rights to education

Just a harshly cruel reminder about how the Nazis also targeted people with special needs. 

Echo Letters to the Editor: 'Trump's policies strip disabled Americans of their rights' Los Angeles Times Opinion

It's been said that you measure the degree of civilization of a society by how it treats its most vulnerable members. Using this standard, how will America be judged❓

Donald Trump recently moved the education of disabled Americans from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services ("Trump's actions signal a move toward institutionalizing people with disabilities, advocates warn," July 2). This threatens the rights of the disabled by promoting a "medical model" of disability and reducing government obligations to provide community-based services.*

Moving education of the disabled to a health agency frames disabilities as medical defects to be "cured" or "treated," rather than acknowledging the "social model," in which differences are accommodated and students learn alongside their peers in the least restrictive environment. 

This move would isolate disabled students, separate them from mainstream classrooms and result in less tailored educational goals. Further, a recent Justice Department memo questioned decades of civil rights protections under the Supreme Court's Olmstead vs. L.C. decision, suggesting states are not required to provide the home- and community-based services that keep disabled Americans out of institutions.

Trump's policies strip disabled Americans of their rights. Los Angeles public schools provide excellent education for disabled children and those with special needs in the community. 

Do not let America be judged as a people who stripped the most vulnerable among us of their rights.

From Thomas Keens, in La Cañada Flintridge

*Nazis targeted people with disabilities for forced sterilization and mass murder, deeming them a financial burden and genetic threat. Beginning in 1939 with a secret operation called Aktion T4, at least 250,000 individuals with mental or physical disabilities were murdered in specialized killing centers and asylums using gas chambers and lethal injections

Donald John Trump signed a piece of paper called a Memorandum of Understanding but it is surrender document because his Iran war failed

Letters to the Los Angeles Times Editor: Trump started a deadly, costly war in Iran. Don't point the blame elsewhere (published in Yahoo.com)

Donald John Trump started the war with Iran without congressional approval, as evidenced in the "deeply flawed" memorandum of understanding". Actually, the MOU was fashioned by former Marine Corporal Vice President JD Vance, but signed off on by Donald John Trump. (Let's be clear, JD Vance is a self proclaimed hillbilly who has no negotiation experience.)

The fallback plan for saving face is to blame Trump's staff. Blame Vance, who, as always, is tone-deaf when it comes to the nuances of diplomacy and send this global dumpster fire to the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who stepped back when his counsel was disregarded, to be fixed. 

Donald Trump is totally responsible for this most serious deadly and costly war with Iran- billions of dollars and at least 13 American military lost their lives because the Trump administration did not warn their base about the surprise attack on Iran and they were unprepared to defend themselves.

President Obama and his team developed a carefully thought-out plan that was accepted and held for 10 years, without the deaths of our valiant troops, the bombing deaths of schoolchildren and the promise of 💲300 billion💲 of dollar💲 to Iran. So where were all of Donald John Trump's skills described in "Art of the Deal" ❓ Instead, the MOU leaves, Donald uniquely vulnerable to confusion of means and ends, resulting in making a deal for deal's sake, even a bad one.

From Joy Rockport, Valley Glen, Los Angeles, California

Donald Trump created an ugly mess in Washington DC making his 80th aging birthday and the nation's 250th looks like graffiti on steroids

Los Angeles Times columnist Jackie Calmes nails it (“As we approach July 4, the capital is, fittingly, a mess,” June 4, 2026). 

This piece reminded me of the “Great Gatsby”* party some months ago, where the president entertained guests amid giant martini glasses brimming with scantily clad women. 

But here’s what F. Scott Fitzgerald had to say about these sorts of gatherings and people:

“They were careless people … they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money 💲💰,or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Thanks to your columnist for ringing this 🔔bell.

From David Lester, in Santa Ynez, California

*Donald Trump hosted a lavish "Great Gatsby"-themed Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. It featured scantily-clad women dancing inside giant martini glasses. The event, complete with flappers and showgirls, drew significant media attention and political criticism for its opulent optics.

Sites central to the pilgrimages that millions of Americans make each year to Washington D.C., especially the White House, are a mess. The once-verdant park remains a construction site, with makeshift fencing only partly obscuring the vast scar that was once the East Wing and the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden. Cranes sway in place of the felled trees, to build President Trump’s billion-dollar ballroom despite court orders and overwhelming public opinion against it. The South Lawn has been replaced with a gargantuan circus-tent-like arena for Ultimate Fighting Championship cage matches and a Trump-picked audience of thousands. Yes, cage matches. To mark not the nation’s birthday but the president’s 80th aging on June 14.

Because it’s all about Trump.

Nearby, the Reflecting Pool sweeping from the Lincoln Memorial to the World War II Memorial and Washington Monument remains dry, its water replaced with crews painting the basin “American Flag Blue” — another Trump vanity project that’s millions over budget and behind schedule. Cross over Independence Avenue and the grounds near the Martin Luther King Jr. and Jefferson Memorials are also fenced off, obscuring more construction-related structures for Trump’s unauthorized, possibly illegal “National Garden of American Heroes” for 250 statues of folks as varied as John Adams and Kobe Bryant. Another jarring sight: National Guard troops still needlessly patrol the areas.

At the adjacent Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River, four bronze equestrian statues are getting a $5 million coat of 24-carat gold leaf. But there’s worse: For nearly a century, the bridge has offered one of the most beautiful vantages in Washington, an unbroken scenic stretch from the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington side to Arlington National Cemetery and its historic, hilltop Custis-Lee Mansion on the Virginia side.

Every time I drive the route, I’m awed. Trump, however, sees only a site for narcissistic self-glorification: Work is underway at a small traffic circle in the middle — again, despite pending litigation from veterans and Democrats — for a massive 250-foot triumphal arch dedicated, Trump has said, to “me.”

What triumph justifies such a tribute? Certainly not the war in Iran.

Visitors going up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol see massive banners of Trump hanging from the departments of Labor, Agriculture and, most obscene of all, Justice. They pass the U.S. Mint, charged lately with devising a $250 bill and a $1 coin featuring Trump’s mug.

The banners, the currency and all the rest — it’s hardly the adulatory message appropriate to a people who, by the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago, renounced a king and went on to create a democratic republic.

As usual in springtime Washington, aka school-trip season, this week I’ve seen dozens of buses disgorging students, many in their identical T-shirts advertising farflung hometowns and schools. I’ve felt somewhat sorry for those young people seeing monumental Washington now, for what might be the only visit of their lives.

Still, this semiquincentennial can be a teaching moment, for all Americans.

The capital’s scars are a metaphor for Trump’s selfish, anti-democratic destructiveness. He contrives his projects one after the other, designs them, picks the architects, contractors and even materials, and lets out the opaque, no-bid contracts, all without consulting Congress or honoring its constitutional power of the purse — until he needs more money, like for the ballroom that he’s said wouldn’t require a dime from taxpayers. 

When sued, he all but defies the courts, calling for the impeachment of federal judges who rule against his tributes to himself.

Look on the bright side: But for Trump’s abuses, Americans wouldn’t be giving so much thought on this 250th birthday to the words of the declaration and the Constitution, to the founders’ courage and the framers’ careful balance of powers, and the ways in which those protections need shoring up.

It’s not just Washington that’s suffered Trump’s damaging (ugly) touch. In Philadelphia, where the declaration was drafted and signed at Independence Hall, the nearby site where George Washington lived as president was horribly marred by the teardown of plaques that had described the founders’ enslavement of people at their properties. Trump is in court, fighting to whitewash that bit of history, instead of allowing it to stand as a testimony to America’s long-running struggle to live by the declaration’s aspirational words: “all men are created equal.”

Fifty years ago, the July 4 bicentennial was all the more resonant because it came soon after the Watergate scandal. “The system worked” was the common refrain then. The system hasn’t been working to curb Trump’s lawless reign; Congress and the Supreme Court instead have been enablers. Yet just in time for the semiquincentennial come signs that the system is working, but from the bottom up: Voters are showing a spirit of ’26 against the worst, most monarchical president in U.S. history.

And it’s their local celebrations that give the Fourth its meaning, just as John Adams hoped for in a letter 250 years ago to wife, Abigail. The day, he wrote, should be marked ever after by “Shews, Games, Sport, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.”

Had Trump simply honored Adams’ words, he would have been content to simply be the presider in chief amid the country’s semiquincentennial festivities. And he’d be more popular for it. But that’s not Trump: He’s chosen to play the king in his court of controversy, dividing when unity is wanted.

So it is that seven of nine performers canceled their scheduled appearances at Trump’s planned festivities on the National Mall from June 25 through July 10. That, together with last Friday’s judicial order that he take his name off the Kennedy Center, prompted a 206-word tantrum on social media Saturday night. Trump now threatens to celebrate with a MAGA rally on the Mall instead.

But, he’s not reading the room, or his dismal unpopularity polls.

Donald Trump has no "win-win" options strategy to exit his disastrous and illegal Iran war of choice.

Has Iran surrendered yet❓ Trump has no one to blame but himself.

Has Donald Trump (maybe) thought abut getting Batman involved❓

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Daniel R. DePetris.

Nearly three months after the United States and Israel launched their large-scale bombing campaign against Iran and about six weeks since the April 8 ceasefire took effect, Donald Trump faces an inflection point. Does he return to war❓ Maintain the ceasefire and U.S. blockade on Iranian ports in the hope of cutting a deal on American terms? Or drop his maximalist negotiating stance❓

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an informal foreign policy advisor for the White House, continues to press for more aggressive U.S. military action. Trump’s political advisors would prefer that the war end as soon as possible to minimize political repercussions against the Republican Party in a midterm election year.

Trump seems conflicted. 🙄😕

Despite weeks of U.S. bombardment and an ongoing naval blockade, Tehran is as protective of its nuclear program today as it was before the war began. “For Iran, the Clock⏲️  is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them,” Trump wrote on Truth Social over the weekend. A day later, Trump took to the social media platform again to announce he suspended planned U.S. attacks on Iran to give talks more time.

Unfortunately for Trump, he’s proved to be his own worst enemy on this subject. Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and Tehran’s effective control of the Strait of Hormuz, the regime’s two biggest cards, are a byproduct of Trump’s own policy decisions.

The first is a clear indictment of Trump’s first-term order to withdraw the United States from the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a highly technical accord that put Iran’s nuclear work in a box by restricting the number and quality of centrifuges it could use, capped the amount of enriched uranium it could produce and compelled Tehran to ship 97% of its stockpile out of the country. When the Trump administration scrapped that hard-won deal, Iran responded by enriching more nuclear material at a faster pace and accumulating the very stockpile the Trump administration is now seeking to neutralize.

The Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s second card, would not even be an issue today if the Trump administration had refrained from going to war in the first place. On Feb. 27, the day before the conflict began, more than 150 tankers and vessels traveled through the strait. The international waterway was open for business.

Not so today. On Thursday, a grand total of three crossings were registered in the waterway. This collapse of commerce is a consequence of Iran’s ability to harass civilian tankers so much that shipping companies no longer view the journey as worth the cost. 

As Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday: “The Iranian capability to stop commerce has been dramatically depleted through the strait, but their voice is very loud. And those threats are clearly heard by the merchant industry and insurance industry.”

By virtue of his own actions, Trump is now left with a series of policy options that range from least bad to terrible. None of them are ideal, and all of them carry some risk.

For starters, Trump could resume the war. Any renewed U.S. bombing campaign would probably expand the U.S. military’s original set of targets to include a portion of Iran’s energy infrastructure, which Trump has threatened repeatedly to hit.

A U.S. invasion of Kharg Island, where 90% of Iran’s oil processing takes place, might also be up for discussion. The aim would be to destroy Iran’s remaining military capabilities and further squeeze its oil revenue until Tehran’s strategic calculus on the war shifts to Washington’s liking.

Yet there are no guarantees that doubling down on military force will work. Trump’s entire strategy has relied on a baseline assumption: The more punitive the United States is, the more likely Tehran will be to cave. Yet that simply hasn’t occurred.

If anything, Iran is more dug in now than it was in the opening days of the conflict. For the regime, capitulating to Trump is as dangerous as losing the war. Why would more bombing succeed where previous bombing failed?

The risks of additional U.S. military action are considerable as well. Before the ceasefire, Iran was launching ballistic missiles and attack drones across multiple gulf Arab states, hitting Qatar’s largest natural gas processing facility, Saudi Arabia’s east-west oil pipeline and Dubai’s luxurious high-rises. As the Iranians have stated, such attacks will not only resume if Trump orders a resumption of the war but will expand to new targets, including desalination facilities and nuclear power plants. Such strikes would raise global oil and gas prices to even more absurd levels, adding to the extra $40 billion the American people are already paying for fuel since the war began.

What about continuing the status quo❓ While this contingency would be less costly than another round of bombing or a U.S. ground invasion, it’s unclear whether it would help or hurt negotiations toward a settlement. There’s a possibility that extending the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports could merely reaffirm the regime’s earlier decision to preserve its own shutdown of the strait. Iran is now urging Washington to end its blockade before talks on the nuclear file can be held. And it’s a mystery whether Trump’s blockade is working anyway; the U.S. intelligence community assesses that Iran could withstand this pressure point for three to four more months, which may be too long for Trump to sustain given the oil disruptions that are bound to get worse.

Striking an agreement to end the war, return the strait to open traffic and restrict Iran’s nuclear program would be the most beneficial policy for the United States with the least amount of cost attached — not quite undoing the harm from Trump’s first-term decision to scrap the nuclear deal and his second-term decision to start a war. U.S. and Iranian negotiators are passing proposals back and forth as we speak. But as of now, Trump can’t stomach agreeing to a deal that covers some of Iran’s terms, including but not limited to a shorter suspension of enriched uranium and some kind of Iranian role in the management of the strait. Even if Trump did reassess his position, he would be forced to confront the hawks in his political coalition who would consider anything short of Iran’s total surrender a failure.

In short, Trump is in an unenviable position. He’s got nobody to blame but himself.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are hypocritical to point fingers at Iran when Trumpisn is enabling war crimes

Letters to the Editor: After accusing Iran of extortion, Donald Trump needs to look in the mirror.  Echo opinion letter published in the Los Angeles Times. 

To the editor: Donald Trump, speaking about Iran: “We can’t let a country blackmail or extort the world because that’s what they’re doing” (“Trump says U.S. military has blockaded Iranian ports to pressure Tehran,” April 13).

Trump either won’t admit to or is unable to recognize the blatant hypocrisy of his statement. Since at least the beginning of his second term, Trump has been blackmailing and extorting the world, both allies and adversaries, through his tariffs and other policies, to an extent never before seen from an American president.

As we’ve witnessed, Trump has one set of morals and ethics for everyone else, and a second standard for himself. Trump’s immorality and “decision-making” has been a disaster for the United States and the world.

Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran is just the latest example of his incompetence.

From Ray McKown, in Torrance California

Donald Trump and maga Republicans wrecking America's reputation in Europe anti-American sentiment rising

I just got back from Europe. Anti-American sentiment is on the rise
Opinion essay echo published in the Los Angeles Times by Robin Abcarian.

It was midday just before Easter in Paris. 

My niece and I walked past the city’s famous opera house, where tourists were relaxing on the wide steps. French soldiers armed with assault rifles strolled around, a comforting sight given the warnings about Iran-backed sleeper cells and potential retaliatory attacks. 

A busker with a guitar and a microphone entertained the crowd with a Coldplay cover.

Between songs, he asked, “Anyone here speak English?” Unbelievably, not a single hand went up.

The busker shrugged, turned both thumbs down in the universal gesture of disapproval, and said, “America, eh?” I felt him.

A couple of days after I got home, I saw a social media post that reminded me of that moment. “Honestly,” wrote @_thatambitiousgirl, “I don’t know how anyone could even feel comfortable traveling as an American outside of the U.S. right now.”

Anti-American sentiment is on the rise, and it sucks being from a country whose presidents do things like threaten to end a “whole civilization,” invade Middle Eastern countries based on lies about weapons of mass destruction, or insert themselves into pointless conflicts in faraway lands. 

In college, I had friends who sewed Canadian flags onto their backpacks because they didn’t want to be associated with America’s misadventures in Southeast Asia.

Polls show that half of Europeans view Donald Trump, who has threatened to withdraw from NATO, as an enemy rather than an ally. He has managed the neat trick of telling our allies they are useless while castigating them for not rushing to help with his poorly planned and illegal war on Iran. “This is not our war,” the German defense minister said pointedly last month. “We have not started it.”


Quite simply, with the assent of the Republican Party, Trump is taking a wrecking ball to the world order as we’ve known it in our lifetimes, while also managing to make life harder for Americans at home.

“We’re worse off in every way, and officially a global pariah,” said the New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie on Facebook this week. “Awesome. Love that.”

Anyway, I was glad to see that someone I know, the novelist Erin Zhurkin, responded thoughtfully to @_that ambitiousgirl’s Instagram post.

Donald Trump is a Republican wrecking ball

Been an American abroad for 20 years now,” wrote Zhurkin, whose Russian-born American husband is an executive with Renault. “Six countries so far. People are in general curious and grateful that I can see my country from all sides….I try to represent the heart of the US, which I believe is about being open to all people and finding commonalities rather than differences.”

This, truly, is the heart of the matter.

 In the fall of 1967, my family moved from Northridge to France, where my father had a year-long Fulbright teaching scholarship at the University of Pau. Before we got on the airplane, my mother sat the four of her rambunctious kids down.

“It’s very important that you not be ‘Ugly Americans,’ ” she told us. We were too young to have read the classic 1958 novel she was referring to, but we understood that we were to be curious and respectful and maybe not yell, as we unfortunately did, “Yuck, this is NOT a hot dog,” during our first meal in Paris.

One winter evening in Pau, my parents took us to an anti-war demonstration, as they had done many times in Los Angeles. The locals we marched with were chanting something we couldn’t quite make out. It sounded to our American ears like “Yohn-kee go ohm.” We figured it out pretty quickly, and frankly, it was unsettling.

Zhurkin had a similar experience in Moscow, in the early 1990s, at a kiosk near Red Square. “An older Russian lady looked at me, and in a thick Russian accent said, ‘Yankee, go home,’ ” Zhurkin told me by phone from Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she and her family had moved in September from Seoul. “It opened up this whole feeling inside of me that there is something about my country that may not be as wonderful as it seems. It was a huge, perspective-breaking moment for me.”

Years later, Zhurkin was living in Paris. Trump had just been elected to his first term.

“I could not get into a taxi without someone asking me why I would let this happen, as if it was all me,” Zhurkin said. “They’d say, ‘I can’t believe you Americans are so stupide.’ I was like, ‘Look, I didn’t vote for him.’” Still, she said, “I feel like I am apologizing all the time.”

By the time President Joe Biden was elected in 2020, Zhurkin said, her family had moved to Ireland, where the vibe was much more “Thank God you guys got your act together.”

Maybe in the not-too-distant future, we will again. And then we can start to put this long national hideous nightmare behind us.

Bluesky: @rabcarian
Threads: @rabcarian

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are not telling Americans the truth about how Iranian children were victims of U.S. missile attacks

Unfortunately, we’ve seen this disturbing pattern before.

Echo opinion essay published in the Virginian Pilot and the Los Angeles Times. 

Photos of a number of Iranian children who were victims in the U.S. missile attacks.

A U.S. deadly missile strike. An initial statement emphasizing precision. Then, later, reports that civilians — including many children — were among the dead. In Afghanistan, through the early and mid-2000s, these reports came so often they formed a grim pattern. Each incident is explained as an anomaly, but over time, the pattern itself became the story.

Now, similar reports are emerging from Iran. A new investigation alleges that a Feb. 28, strike by the U.S. hit an elementary school and sports hall in the southern city of Lamerd, with children once again among the dead. U.S. Central Command has since denied carrying out any strike in or near Lamerd that day, calling the reports false.

Independent verification is difficult because Iran shut down its internet, but Americans should nevertheless be concerned, especially after at least 175 people including many children were reported killed in a U.S. strike on a different school in Minab 😢that same day. The cycle is familiar, with allegations of civilian harm followed by official denials, and no independent access to quickly verify the facts.

Sarah Yager says she was a civilian protection adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the first Trump administration. "I worked inside the Pentagon with military professionals who took the issue of civilian harm seriously. They saw avoiding civilian casualties as a matter of military discipline and their own humanity. I know what it looks like when civilian protection works. But, obviously, this isn’t it."

Over more than two decades of armed conflict, U.S. efforts to reduce civilian harm have moved in fits and starts, with periods of progress followed by setbacks and recurring mass casualty events. Pressure often came from civil society, public outrage and negative headlines, but also from within the armed forces. Senior commanders came to see civilian casualties not just as “collateral damage,” but also as operationally counterproductive.

That recognition led to real changes including tighter rules, better intelligence practices and eventually the creation of systems within the Pentagon meant to track, investigate and learn lessons to reduce harm. By the time U.S. troops were withdrawing from Kabul in 2021, those lessons were just beginning to be institutionalized across the armed forces.

What is happening now is undoing that progress. Safeguards built over years are being torn down, and it is unclear whether senior military leaders are willing to push back.

There are warning signs that in this policy environment, the U.S. military will not be led to correct its course. 

Defense Secretary (Wiskey❗) Pete Hegseth publicly dismissed what he calls “stupid rules of engagement” and emphasized making the military “more lethal.” 💢🤢😔

At the same time, Hegseth has weakened or sidelined efforts designed to reduce civilian harm in war.

Before and since the start of the U.S. war on Iran, there has been little sustained public debate and no congressional hearings about the risks of American military action in Iran, including the inevitable civilian casualties that result from using powerful explosive weapons in populated areas. During the war in Afghanistan, each deadly strike on a wedding party or family compound did more than take civilian lives. It fueled anger at the U.S. and magnified skepticism that our military was trying to minimize civilian harm in any way.

Americans are entitled to clear answers about who and what is being targeted, what its military is doing to protect Iranian civilians and how possible violations of the laws of war are being investigated. This is basic public oversight that should accompany the use of military force. When incidents are openly disputed, as in the Lamerd strike, the need for impartial and transparent investigations becomes more, not less, important. If the U.S. military was acting lawfully, it should show it. But, if it wasn’t, the public deserves to know that too.

The United States has long claimed to fight according to international law and to benefit from doing so. 

But, that means little if the rules are mocked and actions don’t match reality. Waiting to recognize these patterns of civilian harm, and to correct them, will once again cost lives.

Sarah Yager is the Washington director of Human Rights Watch and previously served in the Department of Defense. She wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.

Donald Trump and his shadow Pete Hegseth put America's military into danger because the Pentagon lost many experts who could get us out of Trump's failed World War

Echo opinion letter to the Editor published in the Los Angeles Times

Unilaterally taking our nation into an illegal war calls for military expertise. But, Donald Trump fired a lot of that.

Taking our country into a war requires the expert input of experienced generals or others with valuable knowledge about such serious matters in order to see a successful result (“The Strait of Hormuz shows us the biggest flaw in America’s Iran war strategy,” March 23). But, Donald Trump and Defense (or, uh, War❓🙄) Secretary Pete (aka Whiskey Pete) Hegseth have fired or demoted decades of combat experience and intelligence know-how.

Their impossible to understand shakeup targeted several high-ranking officers with deep combat and strategic experience. They include Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown Jr. (who has significant combat command experience), Army Lt. Gen. Joe McGee (director for strategy, plans and policy on the Joint Staff) and Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Mingus.

And just look where stupid Donald Trump's, er, "superior strategic knowledge" got us❓“Foreseeable failure" is right.

From Robert Archerd, in Rancho Palos Verdes, California

Niccolò Machiavelli wrote in “The Prince,” “The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.” By relying solely on military might, Trump has stumbled into a foreseeable trap as Iran leverages its control of the Strait of Hormuz, exposing a lack of strategic thinking from the White House.

From T. Michael Spencer, in Washington state

Donald Trump and maga Republicans killed too many people to count in an illegal war against Iran including dead children

Maine Writer, my husband was stationed in Subic Bay Philippines when our family lived there as US Navy dependents. Our experience included witnessing the mass chaos caused by the defeat of the Americans and the Vietnam army, on April 30, 1975, during the fall of Saigon. After this humanitarian disaster occurred, the unanticipated collateral damage the leadership vacuum caused in South Vietnam led to the rise of the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Killing Fields refer to sites in Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge regime executed and buried over a million people between 1975, and 1979.

In other words, without leadership in Saigon, caused by the collapse of the government, the Cambodians were defenseless when the evil Po Pot became the architect of the heinous Killing Fields.  

Killing an enemy leader often escalates conflict and chaos.

Echo opinion essay published by Robert A. Pape, in the Los Angeles Times

The U.S. and Israel gambled on “decapitation” in Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many others. History shows the danger of this approach in nationalist conflicts: It often works tactically — and fails strategically.

Although the weekend’s “shock and awe” bombing campaign and the U.S.-led regime change remind many of Iraq, it is not the most instructive case. That would be Chechnya.

On April 21, 1996, Russian forces executed one of the most precise assassinations of the modern era.

Dzhokhar Dudayev was the target. He was the leader of Chechnya’s separatist war against Moscow. 

Repeated attempts to locate him had failed. He was mobile and deeply cautious.

President Boris Yeltsin requested talks. Dudayev refused. Only after King Hassan II of Morocco agreed to serve as intermediary — in a mediation effort encouraged by the United States — did Dudayev accept a call. As Dudayev spoke on a handheld satellite phone with the Moroccan monarch, Russian aircraft waited beyond visual range.

Signals intelligence locked onto the phone’s emissions. Two missiles homed in. Dudayev was killed instantly.

By operational standards, it was flawless. The 100% tactical success turned more on James Bond tricks than Tom Clancy technology. Diplomatic choreography created electronic exposure. Precision weapons did the rest. No ground assault. No Russian casualties. No ambiguity.

For airpower theorists shaped by the 1991 Persian Gulf War, this was the embodiment of a powerful idea largely refined in U.S. planning circles: strategic bombing could kill, overthrow or paralyze enemy leaders and compress wars into days. Like the Texas Ranger slogan — “One riot, one Ranger” — the implied promise was “one war, one raid.”

The rationale behind decapitation assumed regimes are hierarchies: Remove the apex, and the structure collapses. In Chechnya, only the first step happened — which was predictable. Nationalism is not stagnant and not hierarchical. It grows after foreign attacks and evolves into more powerful identity coalitions.

When U.S. strikes failed to kill Moammar Kadafi in 1986, or Saddam Hussein numerous times in the 1990s, many airpower advocates concluded near misses were the problem. 

If the leader actually died, the regime would fracture.

Russia — with a critical U.S. assist — proved the execution could be perfected.

But execution was never the core variable.

Leadership (scary ❗😨)assassination in international disputes does not simply remove authority; it redistributes it under emotional mobilization. That is exactly what has begun in Iran, after months of succession planning with the expectation that 86-year-old Khamenei could be assassinated. A top Iranian official said an interim committee would lead the government while a new leader is chosen.

This is the pattern after decapitation: Martyrdom transfers legitimacy. The successor must demonstrate resolve, not flexibility. The political market rewards maximalism. Moderation becomes disloyalty.

Dudayev’s death did not fragment resistance. Rather, it sanctified it.

Power shifted toward commanders less constrained by negotiation and more willing to escalate.

Among them was Shamil Basayev. The center narrowed. The emotional intensity widened.

Although the strike succeeded tactically, it was a strategic catastrophe, triggering greater nationalism and violence that fueled years of bloody war with Russia.

This is the “smart bomb” trap: A discrete strike intended to compress a conflict instead transforms its character.

Once identity is fused by martyrdom, escalation becomes politically easier. Retaliation broadens. Successors have fewer incentives to compromise and greater incentives to demonstrate defiance.

Diplomacy becomes less workable and war far more likely. What began as a precision event evolves into unstable escalation.

The phase shift now that military superpowers can seemingly abduct or kill foreign leaders with precision is not technological. It is political.

Iranian leaders prepared structured succession chains — multiple rungs deep — in anticipation of targeted strikes. Now that Khamenei is dead, there are several plausible possibilities — none necessarily stabilizing: a rapid infusion of nationalist energy within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; a leadership struggle resolved through nationalist hardening; diffusion of authority across semi-autonomous networks; and expanded activation of Iran’s many militant proxies across the region.

Each pathway increases escalation risk. All diminish future U.S. control of the situation.

Iran is not Iraq in 2003. It is roughly six times larger in territory and four times larger in population. It possesses dense partner networks across the Middle East capable not only of missile strikes — which began almost immediately, as Tehran had promised — but also asymmetric retaliation, including targeted operations against leaders allied with the U.S. in the region.

Israeli leaders may be well protected from Iranian nationalist plots. But, are Saudi, Emirati and others who have worked with the Trump administration❓ Decapitation is not a one-sided instrument.

Nor does fragmentation guarantee calm. A fractured Iran of nearly 90 million people could produce competing nationalist centers seeking legitimacy through confrontation. The escalatory options available after a martyrdom event are broader than before the strike.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must respond to Jeffrey Epstein victims like Virgnina Roberts Giuffre

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times:

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince was arrested in England on suspicion of misconduct related to his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 

Immediately, I thought of the late (victim) Virginia Roberts Giuffre (1983-2025 😞😨😥), the brave survivor of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking ring, who’d won a civil settlement from Mountbatten-Windsor after she accused him of rape (and whose memoir I co-wrote).

My next thought was this: So far, only about half of the 6 million documents that comprise the Epstein files have been released, but in the UK their contents are already causing heads to roll. Why isn’t that happening here in America❓ I know at least part of the answer.

Since the January 30th,  release of 3.5 million pages of Department of Justice investigation files, many concerned citizens around the globe have been trying, in earnest, to wade through the muck. 

It’s not an easy job. Part of that must be by design. The documents are not organized to help readers understand their context. Instead, each page is just one fragment of an exploded jigsaw puzzle, and trying to assemble that puzzle without all the pieces (and without knowing what a complete picture should look like) is proving difficult for even the most seasoned experts on evil Epstein’s and Maxwell’s many crimes.

In the avalanche of news stories, boldface names grabbed the spotlight — Epstein helped director Woody Allen’s daughter get into college, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spent time with his family (and nanny) on Epstein’s island, supermodel Naomi Campbell asked to fly on Epstein’s plane. 

But, despite the valiant efforts of so many outspoken survivors, the heart of this vile conspiracy is oddly pushed into the background: the brutal reality of what it felt like to be a girl caught in Epstein’s web.

Imagine❓ You are 14-year-old girl, recruited by an older female, who is being led into an upstairs room in Epstein’s Palm Beach, Fla., mansion. The man you’ve been told to call “Jeff” enters wearing only a towel and tells you to take off your clothes. You are afraid. Trapped. So you eventually strip down to your underwear. He orders you to do things to him. He masturbates. He gives you $300 and tells you to leave your phone number so he can summon you again. 

Imagine that you later get into a fight at school with a classmate who calls you a prostitute. 

Imagine that you are later involuntarily admitted to a juvenile-education facility “because of disciplinary problems that recently escalated.”

I worked for four years with Giuffre on her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” and the scenes I’ve just asked you to imagine are in her book. But Giuffre is not the girl at the center of that story (Giuffre was 16 — two years older — when Maxwell lured her into their den). No, the story above describes the experiences of one of more than 30 underage victims that Florida investigators interviewed in 2005 and 2006, which led to Epstein’s first arrest and, ultimately, his conviction as a sex offender. The girl in that story had her life ruined two decades ago. Imagine.

Now we know that hundreds if not thousands of girls and young women were abused by Epstein and Maxwell and their crony friends. And yet the cruel undoing of these young people keeps falling off the front pages. Is it because it’s too upsetting to imagine? Is it because it’s old news?

I’m a journalist, so I understand news cycles. But I’m still bothered by the way the visceral suffering at the core of this rotten story isn’t consistently claiming its rightful place at the front of our minds. I get it: There is so much to read about Epstein these days. But by letting our attention be drawn toward talent agent Casey Wasserman’s sexting with Maxwell, say, or by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi’s meltdown about the high-flying Dow Jones Industrial Index being what really matters, we risk losing the plot.

This, for the record, is the plot: In 1996, a 14-year-old girl named Annie Farmer was flown to Epstein’s New Mexico ranch, where Maxwell told her to undress and began to massage her breasts; later, Epstein jumped into bed with her, saying he wanted to cuddle. This kind of grooming behavior was experienced by scores of girls and young women, many of whom reported it to the authorities. And this abuse often escalated into rape.

For Giuffre, what followed was being forced to sexually service Epstein and Maxwell’s influential friends. In sworn depositions that have been made public, Giuffre named Mountbatten-Windsor and several others of these men, all of whom issued strong denials. Some of these co-conspirators’ names have popped up in the latest tranche of public files, but Giuffre is no longer here to hold them to account, having died by suicide last April.

Only by holding our focus on what these girls and women endured will Americans have the fortitude to demand that the Trump administration give us our due. Some survivors say they cannot find their interviews in the files that have been released so far, which proves that the Department of Justice has still not met the requirements of the Epstein Transparency Act. 

Therefore, the solution is clear: Release the remaining 2.5 million pages in the Epstein files, with only the survivors’ names redacted. Next, law enforcement must rigorously interrogate the men and women who exchanged chummy emails with Epstein and played in his hideous sandbox. Until these two things occur, basic accountability and justice will remain out of reach.

Just based on what we already know, we should all find that unimaginable.

Amy Wallace is a journalist and author who collaborated with Virginia Roberts Giuffre on her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl.”

Republicans must impeach Donald Trump for violating the Constitution by giving illegal political directives to America's military

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Jackie Calmes

President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden, must speak against Donald Trump.

George Orwell (b, 1903 in India d. 1950 in London)

Where are the statesmen when the state is under siege by the current corrupt head of state❓

I’ve been mulling that question, hardly for the first time, but on three occasions just in the last few days.

On Monday, the federal holiday celebrating George Washington’s birth, former President George W. Bush posted an essay on the first U.S. president as part of a civic project commemorating the nation’s 250th year. Simply by hailing Washington for traits that Donald Trump utterly lacks — humility, integrity, dignity, self-restraint, willingness to forfeit power — the piece was widely read as a sneak attack on the current president. Bush never named Trump. He thus maintained his years-long, stupefying silence about the man who’s trashed him, his family, his party, his legacy PEPFAR program and, most of all, his country.

As Jonathan V. Last wrote for the right-of-center, anti-Trump Bulwark, if Bush’s words were a veiled attack on Trump, “the veil is so powerful that even light can’t escape it.”

Bush’s essay came two days after former President Barack Obama finally responded to Trump’s week-old racist post that caricatured the first Black president and his wife as apes, thereby mainlining into the body politic one of the most toxic tropes against Black Americans. Asked about it in a podcast interview, Obama was, as usual, too cool. He called Trump’s behavior “deeply troubling” and said “there doesn’t seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office.”

But, like Bush, he never named Trump. And, it’s not even clear that Obama was referring to him. Certainly Trump never was one of those who, as Obama put it, “used to feel … some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office.”

Then there was the third trigger for my musings about America’s M.I.A. statesmen.

On Friday, before the weekend ahead of the holiday honoring George Washington, as the first president and military commander established the indispensable tradition of a nonpartisan military — Trump yet again violated Washington’s precedent. 

At Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, he essentially pushed uniformed young troops to violate the military codes enshrining Washington’s legacy of nonpartisanship. Trump treated them like props at a MAGA rally, lauding Republican candidates and officeholders on hand, mocking past presidents and urging the troops to vote Republican in November.

“You have to vote for us,” the commander in chief ordered them.

This is unprecedented, except by Trump himself. In October, he prodded sailors at Norfolk, Va., to boo “Barack Hussein Obama.” 

In September, he told commanders summoned from around the world that the fight is here at home, a “war from within” American cities. In June, also at Ft. Bragg, Trump damned Democrats and sold MAGA merch, over Army objections.

There’s a darn good reason for the wall that Washington built between the military and civilian government. As the Army Field Manual instructs troops: “Nonpartisanship assures the public that our Army will always serve the Constitution and our people loyally and responsively.” Not just Republicans, and not just Trump.

But, as multiple officers told the website Military.com, “holding troops to account when goaded by the president, who is ultimately the boss, would be impossible.” 

Commanders themselves are mute because, after all, Trump is the commander in chief. They’ve watched as one Pentagon purge has followed another, starting with Trump firing the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s top military officer. 

Trump chose, instead, an officer who, he often claims, once donned a MAGA cap and said, “I love you, sir. … I’ll kill for you, sir.”

It’s understandable that active-duty officers don’t make a stand. But, what about America’s roughly 7,500 retired generals and admirals❓ As veteran ML Cavanaugh wrote in the Los Angeles Times after Trump’s Ft. Bragg performance last year, “The military profession’s nonpartisan ethic is at a breaking point.” 

Sure, individuals have spoken out. But, as the military knows better than anyone, there’s strength in numbers.

It’s past time for a large, united front of veteran commanders to challenge Trump. (In fact, a group of National Security professionals are strategically organized to respond to Trumpzism. The group is now focused on support for the the military in Congress, including Captain Kelly, who created a video about the duty to refuse illegal orders.)

Why wait for him to make good on his talk of invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy troops at the polls in this midterm election year, based on trumped-up conspiracies about Democrats’ fraud?

You know who could give the veteran and active commanders some political cover? The former commanders in chief.

Even more conspicuous than the brass by their silence and virtual invisibility in the face of Trump’s assaults — on the rule of law, civil rights, elections, foreign alliances and America’s global reputation — are the nation’s four living former presidents: Democrats Joe Biden, Obama and Bill Clinton, and Republican Bush.

It’s past time for the not-so-fab four to come together to publicly demand that Trump honor the oath of office that each man took, and to school the electorate on the many ways in which he’s dishonoring it — including by continuing to justify his refusal to peacefully transfer power in 2021. But,  each man is so observant of the norm that former presidents should not publicly criticize the incumbent one — again, a precedent from George Washington — that they self-muzzle.

This is Americans’ quandary in these Trump times: Presidents and high-ranking veterans who could speak truth to power are so constrained by their devotion to norms and traditions that they won’t confront a president who’s daily shattering the norms, traditions and laws that form the foundation of this democratic nation.

“This is the master alarm flashing for our democracy,” Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat and veteran, said last week of Trump’s targeting of him and other critics.

That takes us back to my original question: Where are the statesmen to answer that alarm❓

Answer: They are  following ordinary rules despite these extraordinary times. And they must stop. #ImpeachTrumpNOW❗