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

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

The Dead End to Trump’s ‘Perfect’ War

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then what❓” McCaffrey asked. “Stay❓”

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

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

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

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

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

Donald Trump surrendered to Iran because he had no other choice after his personal illegal war failed

Trump's war with Iran will end with a surrender:

New York Times echo report by Nicholas Kristof

Trump declared in March (2026) that a deal to end his war with Iran would require “unconditional surrender,” but that wasn’t quite right. The preliminary agreement he just reached with the Iranian regime was more like a conditional surrender — by the United States. Yes, Trump surrendered but the Iranian world war he started has not opened the Strait of Hormuz.

In the past few days, various Republicans and war hawks have emerged, seemingly bewildered, to criticize the deal. “Trump has surrendered to Iran,” wrote Erick Erickson, a conservative commentator. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas warned, “Giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea.”

The criticisms are correct: Trump's Iran deal is a major setback. It gives immediate relief to Iran, including the prompt unfreezing of billions of dollars of Iranian assets and later a 💲300 ❗ billion fund to help rebuild Iran. And it appears to open the door to Iran gaining at least partial control over the Strait of Hormuz, with the ability, 60 days hence, to charge fees of ships transiting the strait.

“This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades,” 😠😞lamented Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

Nevertheless, these denunciations miss the most important point. Trump’s fundamental mistake was not ending the war but getting into it in the first place.

At this stage, Trump may have been right to retreat and surrender by signing the useless memo, because, otherwise, he had no good options and continuing his war will surely cost more peoples' lives.

In fact, Trump's failed war of choice with Iran has already shattered the global economy and severely diminished the Republicans’ chances for election wins in the 2026, midterms.

The unpalatable truth is that Iran has won the Trump war, and that’s why it won in the negotiation. Trump dawdled as long as he could, because he realized any deal he could hope to reach would be a humiliation — but the failure of the war had left him with no good exit.

The lesson to be learned from this debacle is to avoid starting needless wars, to temper our hubris that everything will work out perfectly and to rely far more on diplomacy to solve global problems.

In this case, the hawks who were most determined to destroy Iran have done the most to strengthen it, and that should be a cautionary tale.

We had a solution — a highly imperfect one — to the Iran nuclear problem back in 2015 with President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. Iran shipped nearly all of its enriched uranium out of the country, limited enrichment and opened itself to rigorous inspections. But Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the hawks denounced it.

Obama’s Iran deal “was so bad,” Trump said in 2018, focusing on money that was returned to Iran as part of the agreement. Last year he said that he would “have never given them back the money” as part of a deal. He added, “I would have won that negotiation.”

Well, perhaps (obviously❗) not.

After Trump tore up the Obama deal eight years ago, Iran’s leaders predictably built up their nuclear program until they created a crisis. Trump probably could have secured a good bargain in February of this year (2026), on the eve of war, but instead he rashly began dropping bombs, without any exit strategy and, apparently, without calculating how he would respond to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

This lesson about avoiding needless wars is not a new one but apparently must be learned afresh by every generation. In the “Iliad,” Achilles lamented “this insane voyage” to wage the Trojan War, “fighting other soldiers to win their wives as prizes.”

Indeed, ever since Homer wrote about the Greeks’ attempted regime change in Troy, we’ve seen that the grander the military ambition, the more wary we should be.

The new (hmmmm....or,  is the old deal made new again❓) Iran deal punts serious questions ❓ (ahhh ya' think❓) about Iran’s nuclear capabilities into a further period of negotiations. 

Also, I fear one result of this Trump war is that Iran will be more likely to pursue nuclear weapons. In fact, my guess is that the 60-day negotiating period will be extended, that Iran will slow-walk nuclear negotiations and that Trump will be reluctant to accept anything that looks like the Obama accord. Then Trump will lose interest in the same way he seems to have forgotten about Gaza. 

There will be almost no appetite in America for another Iran war, and the newly empowered Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps will weigh whether to adopt North Korea’s strategy and try to build a nuclear arsenal to seal its regional primacy.

The cost of this war is a weakened America and thousands of lost lives, mostly Iranian and Lebanese but also those of 13 American service members. Linda Bilmes, a Harvard expert on war financing, tells me that she believes the eventual total bill for this war — including repair of bases, replacement of munitions and years of benefits to injured veterans — is very likely to be $1 trillion. Instead of paying for Medicaid, college, child care or humanitarian aid, vast sums were squandered in the Persian Gulf.

Those whom we have betrayed the most are ordinary Iranians. In January, after the Iranian regime massacred thousands of its own people, Trump said, “Help is on its way.” Instead we have left Iranians to suffer under a more oppressive government — and with less hope for change. As a tribute to American indifference, the Trump administration this month reportedly deported an Iranian woman to the Central African Republic, a war-ravaged country that the State Department advises not to visit “for any reason.”

So, okay, by all means, denounce this failed Iran war surrender MOU agreement. But, the tragedy here is not Trump’s exit from his war, but the Iran war itself. It is a history lesson, that when you see a cast of overconfident hawks promising painless victory, always beware.

Evangelical Christians must pay attention to care for the world's poorest children: Blessed are the merciful

Echo opinion essay published in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristoff.  

A year after some of the world’s richest men and Donald Trump cut aid for the world’s poorest children, they’re trying to roll out a new public relations narrative:
Aid continues! We’re saving lives from AIDS🤥 Anyway, the aid never really worked, so we’re focused on trade! Building opportunities for American companies while saving babies!

As Jeremy Lewin, the acting under secretary of state for foreign assistance, put it: “Contrary to false media narratives, the data shows that Donald Trump’s foreign assistance review maintained and improved frontline lifesaving programs, while reducing NGO bloat and costs.”

“False media narratives” may refer to my reporting from a series of African countries on children dying as a result of the Trump cuts.

Let’s first concede a few points. American humanitarian aid was never great at nurturing economic growth, but it did save one life every 10 seconds until last year. It’s also true that public pressure led the administration and Congress to retain some lifesaving programs, particularly for H.I.V./AIDS, and to its credit the administration has expanded use of a drug called lenacapavir to fight AIDS. 

Finally, the Trump administration is right that trade is crucial, which is why President Bill Clinton started a fine trade program with Africa; unfortunately, it expires this year, and its long-term future under Trump is in doubt.

None of this changes the fact that this glossy new Trump (fake❗🤥😢) narrative is absurd. Trump’s most lethal policy will almost surely be his 71 percent cut in humanitarian aid from 2024 to 2025. 

A Boston University researcher estimated that the aid cuts cost more than 750,000 lives worldwide in their first year. A recently published study in The Lancet, the British medical journal, forecast that at present rates the defunding will cost 9.4 million lives by 2030, including 2.5 million children under the age of 5.

Are these figures correct❓ Exaggerated❓ I can’t be sure, and neither can Trump or anyone else, partly because the administration has cut data collection that might help us assess mortality accurately.

Meanwhile, Trump and his aides continue to take steps that will add to the toll.

The administration is now withholding aid for vaccines for poor countries in ways that may cost the lives of vast numbers of children. Trump slashed funding for an international vaccine alliance called Gavi, and now the administration is also refusing to release 💲600 million for Gavi that Congress has already appropriated and that must be spent by September.

Gavi is one of the most cost-effective aid programs in history. One study found that each dollar spent on vaccines in poor countries brings a return of $54 in reduced health costs and other benefits. I was once hospitalized with a serious case of malaria that I caught in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and I think it’s a miracle that a few doses of a $3 malaria vaccine can now save a Congolese child’s life — and a scandal that administration officials are willing to let such children die because of ideological hostility toward vaccines.

Gavi also pays for HPV vaccines that prevent cervical cancer, which kills more than 900 women every day worldwide. Cervical cancer is an excruciating, humiliating way to die — it is sometimes diagnosed partly by the odor of rotting flesh — yet a 💲4 vaccine can prevent it. Gavi’s vaccinations have already averted almost one million of these horrific deaths from cervical cancer.

Trump’s cuts have created a budget crisis for Gavi and other aid agencies. It has been magnified because European countries followed America’s lead with cuts to their own aid budgets. Gavi estimates that 600,000 lives will be unnecessarily lost by 2030 as a result. Think of your mother, wife, daughter; multiply by 600,000, and you glimpse the cost of Trump’s destruction of just the Gavi element of American aid.

The Trump administration is also exacerbating global poverty with its catastrophic war with Iran, and not just because the war has displaced more than 2.2 million women and girls in Iran and Lebanon. Because of the war, diesel prices have risen 160 percent in Myanmar and 87 percent in Nigeria, while 40 percent of gas stations have closed in Laos, according to the United Nations. Rising fuel prices are increasing costs of transportation and thus food.

The upshot is that if the Gulf crisis doesn’t end by next month, an additional 45 million people worldwide are likely to suffer severe hunger in the latter part of this year, according to Cindy McCain of the U.N World Food Program.

An even bigger impact may come, after a delay, from shortages of fertilizer, often made with oil and gas byproducts from the Persian Gulf. Perhaps one-third of the world’s fertilizer production will be disrupted if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and shortages will most likely mean lower crop yields, higher food prices and more starvation. 

José Andrés of World Central Kitchen has warned that fertilizer shortages could lead to a multiyear famine beginning as early as the end of this year.

Think of it this way: Artificial fertilizers keep roughly half of humans alive. Without them, the earth would be able to produce enough food to support only about 4 billion people.

Even as the Trump administration has created this crisis, it has unraveled some of the global health systems that would normally save lives of starving children. And Trump administration proclamations of “trade over aid” sound empowering until you realize that what they mean in practice is that America is talking about withholding lifesaving medicines from villagers in Zambia unless the Zambian government sells more minerals to American companies.

A new book, “Into the Wood Chipper,” recounts the reckless way in which DOGE officials dismantled the United States Agency for International Development. Written by Nicholas Enrich, a former top health official at the agency, it chronicles the “callousness, dishonesty and ineptitude” of Trump aides who destroyed programs that they didn’t understand.

“I had no idea you did all this,” Enrich quotes one of the newly arrived officials saying. “As a Republican, when I think of what U.S.A.I.D. does in global health, I assumed it was just, you know, abortions.” (In fact, no American aid dollars went to abortions.)

Please excuse my intemperate tone. But in my travels over the last year, I’ve seen children dying because of our aid cuts. This doesn’t feel like policymaking so much as vandalism, accompanied by wasted food, ruined contraceptives and an estimated $6.4 billion spent closing down the United States Agency for International Development (that sum alone could have saved more than one million children’s lives).

Actually, for all my harsh words, Trump is talking about providing emergency financial support for one nation. That’s the United Arab Emirates, which is pinched by the Iran war and may get a lifeline from Washington to support its dirham currency- valued at $0.27 to the U.S. dollar. (Maine Writer- this seems like a fools errand because the U.S. 💲dollar is declining in value.)

So we’re ready to support a country that is roughly as rich as Britain and France and is fueling the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, in Sudan, by arming a militia committing mass murder and mass rape❓ Could one factor be that high-level Emiratis have approved investments of half a billion dollars in a Trump family crypto company❓(aka #TrumpCrimeFamily)

Forget the efforts to dress this show up. The truth is ugly: The world’s richest men are crushing the world’s poorest children.

But Donald Trump is obsessed about building a ballroom.🤢

How did it come to this❓ The cuts in aid break my heart, and I struggle to understand how a country that until recently prided itself on generosity is now slashing aid so that vast numbers of children die. 

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are funding very unpopular and expensive failed military operations

 Opinion echo by Nicholas Kristof published in The New York Times:  The 💲1.3-Million-a-Minute War. And no plan for the undefined expensive military operations❗

Let’s ponder for a moment the vast sums that we’re pouring into the war with Iran.

The Pentagon has requested 💲200 billion (more than $1,400 per American household) to fund the war, but even that understates the total cost.

Linda Bilmes, a Harvard expert on financing war, told me that most of the costs will arrive later. 

For example, any soldier who develops a medical disorder or aggravates an existing one will receive lifelong benefits and medical care. If today’s troops claim such benefits at the same rate as those who participated in the 1990-91 gulf war, that alone would eventually cost at least 💲600 billion, Bilmes said. Not to mention, of course, the human toll of all of this.

All told, she expects this Iran war to cost taxpayers more than 💲1 trillion.

Here are some ideas of what the war money could be used for instead. My calculations are conservative, based on Pentagon reporting that the first six days of the war cost 💲11.3 billion — and even that incomplete tally amounted to more than 💲1.3 million a minute.

• For a bit more than two weeks of this war, we could offer free college education to every American family earning less than 💲125,000 annually, at a cost of around 💲30 billion a year.

• For less than three weeks of war, or 💲35 billion, we could run a nationwide pre-K program for 3- and 4-year-olds.

• For 💲75 million, about an hour’s worth of war, we could provide three books free to every child in America who is living under the poverty line, according to Kyle Zimmer of First Book, a nonprofit that works on early literacy. Research suggests that books like these can help get children reading and improve their outcomes.

• A woman dies in the United States every two hours, on average, from cervical cancer. Screening all uninsured women who need it would cost perhaps 💲1 billion and could save hundreds of lives, according to Dr. Linda Eckert, a cervical cancer expert at the University of Washington. That’s less than 13 hours of the war bill.

• We could get glasses to all 2.3 million low-income schoolchildren in the United States who need them but don’t have them. The base cost would be about 💲300 million, according to Vision to Learn, a nonprofit that does this work. The bill would be what we spend on four hours of this war.

• For about 💲34 billion a year, less than three weeks of war, we could restore health insurance subsidies that the Trump administration let expire last year. One analysis predicted an additional 8,800 preventable American deaths as a result.

The war money would save even more lives if we allocated part of it abroad. Indeed, we spent more on the first three days of war than we spent (💲4 billion) on all humanitarian aid in 2025. Consider what we could achieve internationally:

• For $400 million or less, a bit more than five hours of war, we could deworm all children in need worldwide, according to Evidence Action, a nonprofit that works on deworming. This would result in stronger, healthier children and adults.

• For 💲380 million, less than five hours of war, we could provide vitamin A supplementation for the 190 million children who need it. Helen Keller Intl, a nonprofit engaged in this work, says this would prevent up to 480,000 child deaths each year and virtually eliminate blindness from vitamin A deficiency.

• About one day’s worth of war spending could save more than 350,000 lives from malaria, through a rigorously studied screening and prevention program, according to Esther Duflo, an economist at M.I.T.’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.

• For 💲4.3 billion, less than three days of the war bill, we could largely end the most terrible form of malnutrition, called severe wasting. That would save about 1.5 million children’s lives annually. We would accomplish something historic: For the first time in the history of humanity, large numbers of children would no longer be starving to death.

We have to know that numbers like this are never totally
reliable — but that’s true of military costs as well. George W. Bush’s administration in 2003 put the cost of the Iraq war at 💲40 billion; it ended up costing perhaps 💲3 trillion.

Moreover, my figures are based on only the initial costs of the Iran war. And even the estimate of 💲1 trillion for the full cost doesn’t include the bills for more expensive gasoline we’re now paying and for pricier fertilizer and food that are likely soon.

If we reallocated this war spending to needs at home and abroad, Americans would have access to school from pre-K to college and would have health insurance, and large numbers of children worldwide would not starve to death — and we would still have billions of dollars left over.

We can cough up the cash when there’s political will, such as to drop bombs halfway around the world. But where is the political will to get people health care or education, to build rather than to destroy❓

I’ve chosen my 2026 win-a-trip winner, Brunella Tipismana Urbano, and she’ll join me on a reporting trip this year (possibly to Bangladesh). Tipismana Urbano has had a remarkable journey already: She grew up in Peru, taught herself English and will graduate this year from Yale with almost perfect grades while working as a student journalist, writing for Bloomberg and penning a novel. The runners-up are Kaja Andrić of New York University, Michal Ruprecht of the Wayne State University School of Medicine and Jessica Sachs of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Congratulations to all.

Postscript by the author Nicholas Kristof: In this column, I try to make the point that the military toolbox, while essential, is an exceptionally expensive one (in both dollars and lives alike) — and we shouldn't pour money into wars without pondering how else that money could be used to build rather than destroy. The 💲2 trillion that went to the Iraq War, for example, could have gone to creating nationwide pre-K and child care, or universal health care, or free college. So now, as we pour billions of dollars into the Iran War, where do you dream the money could go instead❓

Maine Writer- And Republicans are completely complicit with this "no way to win" wasteful stratagy.

Donald Trump owns the economic misery his terrible administration is causing - high egg prices symbolic of his failures

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof.

Maine Writer opinion:  I believe the media created the eggs=economy analogy.  Moreover, the myth was emphasized when on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley interviewed a restaurant owner who said she was a Democrat, but would not vote for Kamala Harris for President because of how much she was paying to keep eggs on her business' menu. This fake argument, in my mind as nonsensical as creating an economy like "tulip bulb mania in the 16th century", nevertheless, somehow became as viral as the bird flu. 

But I believe the media created the political egg rational as a reason why Democrats did not prevail during the 2024, election. Now, Nichols Kristof in this opinion essay is backpeddling out of what the media created. In fact, Democrats did not create a counter argument against the "eggs" myth, but now playing political defense about what could have been done. Perhaps, a focus on Trump's serial bankruptcies would have been a good counter argument to the cost of eggs, but Monday morning quarterbacking, just my opinion. 

Kritoff: If there are Martian scholars examining the United States right now, they might be puzzling over the great Trump paradox.

It’s that President Trump is doing immense long-term damage to the United States by undermining democratic norms, vandalizing the federal government and siding with alleged war criminals in the Kremlin, yet if support for him falls, I doubt it will have anything to do with all this. Rather, it may be … egg prices.

American voters have been, to my mind, surprisingly comfortable with a felon who pardons other, violent felons and engages in reckless attacks on our rule of law and the global system that we created in 1945 and that has hugely enriched and empowered us. Trump doubled down on his, er, “cultural revolution” in his speech to Congress a few days ago, and about three-quarters of those who watched the speech approved of it to some degree (largely because those who watched were disproportionately Republican).

Attacks by Democrats on Trump as undemocratic never got much traction among working-class voters; they cared less about issues at 30,000 feet and more about economic and cultural concerns at three feet. So in a strange way, what may impede Trump and preserve American democracy is not popular revulsion at the historic damage that he is doing to America but rather alarm at the myriad banal impacts on our daily lives because of Trumpian mismanagement.

Trump’s tariffs, even if partly delayed, presumably will raise consumer prices and hurt the financial markets and thus our retirement savings; they will create a mess of supply chains for manufacturing goods. 

One gauge of what to expect: The latest estimate from the Atlanta Federal Reserve is an astonishing 2.4 percent decline in American G.D.P. in the first quarter of 2025.

Americans may put up with a president calling journalists enemies of the people, may even accept a president pardoning felons who club police officers while trying to overturn an election. But historically, they’ve not been very forgiving of presidents who preside over recessions.

What’s more, Republicans are now apparently preparing to slash Medicaid to pay for continued tax cuts for the rich. Sure, Trump denies up and down that he will cut Medicaid. Republicans insist that they’re just cutting waste and fat, that they’re simply promoting work requirements and the like, that they’re not cutting Medicaid as such but just the block grants to the states that pay for it.

But the unarguable fact is that the federal government would be providing less money to pay for health care for the roughly 72 million Americans on Medicaid. The essential reality is that the plan appears to cut health care for the poorest Americans so that the richest Americans can get a big tax cut — and this is not just morally outrageous but also politically fraught.

Elon Musk’s critique of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme,”😡👿 accompanied by Trump’s making false claims of widespread fraud in the program, accompanied by talk of selling Social Security offices, seems even more likely to worry voters.

More broadly, while many of us would welcome a savvy review of federal staffing and an effort to prune regulations and the bureaucracy, Trump’s attacks on the federal government are being undertaken with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel. Trump and Musk may think that federal employees pushed out of their jobs are faceless bureaucrats who won’t be noticed, but when they are health workers at a V.A. hospital, patients will notice. When they manage agriculture programs, farmers will notice.

Cuts in the Federal Aviation Administration and in the National Weather Service and NOAA will make flying less safe, James Fallows argues persuasively; at a time when extreme weather events are becoming more common, it’s bizarre to reduce our ability to predict hurricanes, tornadoes and heat waves.

In Western states, we’re already fearful of the ways the Trump cuts will hamstring firefighting during the next fire season. It won’t always be evident whether a plane crash or raging fire can be fairly blamed on Trump. But given that Trump and Musk have been exceedingly careless, mixing up millions and billions, and initially cutting programs for Ebola control and nuclear arms management before rushing to try to rectify those problems, they may not get the benefit of the doubt.

In short, Trump-Musk incompetence and recklessness may — just may — discredit the vandals in Washington and rein them in.

Is it actually reasonable to blame Trump for rising egg prices❓ Perhaps not. That has more to do with long-running avian flu than with tariffs or anything else he has done. 

But, what is true is how Trump has undercut the surveillance system for avian flu and Robert Kennedy Jr.’s skepticism about vaccines will make us more vulnerable to bird flu if we face a pandemic. But Trumpian mismanagement isn’t a major factor in today’s rising egg 🥚 prices. (But, the current unprecedented high cost of eggs is symbolic of his many failures including a series of bankruptcies.)

So would I rather voters rise up in outrage at Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine, his threats to NATO and his campaign to undermine democracy❓ Of course! But I welcome indignation of any kind. Maybe we can be rescued from our nation’s disastrous course by chickens.