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

Editorial opinion published in the The Virginian-Pilot:

Americans deserve honesty from White House about Iran war

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are now enabling the cover up of two ICE murders after shooting two American citizens

Congress must intervene following shooting of  Alex Jeffrey Pretti, R.N., an ICU nurse who was shot and killed by ICE agents on January 24, 2026, in Minneapolis. On January 7, ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good. 

Echo editorial published by The Virginian-Pilot, in Norfolk, VA.

Although several witnesses who saw these two murders also have video taken at the incident, the fact is the Trump administration is preventing the Minneapolis law enforcement to investigate the killings. 

Federal ICE agents fatally shot another American in Minneapolis on Saturday: 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the Minnesota VA hospital. Pretti was observing immigration operations and stepped in when an agent threw a woman to the ground. He was tackled by several U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, who repeatedly struck him before they fired as many as 10 shots, killing him.

Mr. Pretti’s killing follows the shooting death of Renee Good, a poet, wife, mother and Old Dominion University graduate, on January 7. Ms. Good was given conflicting orders by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — who told her to move her car and to stop and exit her vehicle — before she was fatally shot attempting to move her car as ordered.

Bystanders filmed both incidents as they unfolded, providing the public with unvarnished evidence of what transpired from multiple angles. But, after both, Trump administration officials have insisted that agents acted properly and halted efforts to conduct thorough, transparent investigations.

To adopt the administration’s line of defense requires one to ignore their eyes and ears — to dismiss clear and overwhelming evidence of federal agents using excessive force against people who are not a threat to them.

It also requires believing that those killed were “domestic terrorists,” as administration officials such as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have alleged, rather than Americans standing up for their neighbors, exercising their constitutional rights and opposing the increasingly brutal and arbitrary immigration campaign directed by Donald Trump.

Americans have long recognized the value of immigration enforcement, and would probably still support the administration’s efforts to remove dangerous criminals from our streets had this campaign adhered to that goal. But it has not. It has become a quasi NAZI Gestapo style operation targeting Americans. 

Instead the nation has witnessed federal agents act in increasingly unrestrained and dangerous ways — brutalizing suspects, acting aggressively toward protesters, entering homes without warrants, arresting and even killing American citizens — and public support has plummeted. Americans by growing margins want officials to stop the lawlessness — and to do so now❗

The reaction to Pretti’s shooting suggests they will not.

On Saturday January 24, 2026,  Pretti was helping to direct traffic around federal operations when agents initiated a dispute with two observers by aggressively pushing them to the ground. When Pretti intervened, he was swarmed by seven agents who tackled and beat him in the street.

He was a legal, permitted gun owner and video of the scene shows an agent disarmed him as he was restrained. Then, unarmed and no threat to the agents, the ICU nurse who devoted his life to helping the nation’s veterans was shot multiple times and died.

Noem then followed the same playbook as after the Good shooting: smearing the victim as a radical, claiming without evidence that he was intent on shooting agents, and attempting to create the false belief that peaceful protesters are a threat to law and order.

In fact, the greater danger is federal agents violating constitutional rights, laying siege to an American city and putting the public at risk. Anger is growing, as is support for abolishing ICE and building a new immigration enforcement system from the ground up.

Not that this is all about immigration, as the Trump administration admitted over the weekend. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Saturday saying the White House would withdraw ICE and CBP forces if given access to the state’s voter rolls, among other requirements.

Americans cannot accept a federal government that threatens a state with further brutality for its refusal to submit to the president’s demands for voting information. They cannot stand idle as ICE and CBP routinely ignore rights guaranteed by the Constitution. They must not allow those who kill people in the street without cause to go unpunished by the justice system.

Congress repeatedly refused to exert its power to act as a check on the executive branch, but the time for dithering is over. Federal agents killed another American on Saturday January 24, two innocent American citizens in just one month. How many more will it take before lawmakers do their duty❓

Maine Writer post script- #WhereIsSenatorSusanCollins ❓👀

Donald Trump and maga Republicans support fascist military takeover of Washington DC but on January 6 Trump watched TV did nothing

Crime data doesn’t justify Trump’s extreme action in Washington

Echo opinion published in the Virginian-Pilot newspaper Editorial

The District of Columbia depicted on the news in recent days bears little resemblance to the city a few hours up the road from Hampton Roads. To hear Donald Trump and members of his administration describe it, Washington ranks among the most dangerous places in the United States, if not the world.

Nothing could be further from the truth. While the District has its share of big-city problems, violent crime reached a 30-year low in 2024 — progress that should be celebrated, especially by the federal officials who live and work there.

Instead, Trump convinced himself of a fiction, wholly detached from reality, that the city must be brought to heel in the interest of public safety. His move to federalize local police and deploy the National Guard is a solution in search of a problem and another dangerous overreach from this administration.

For someone who has lived five of the last nine years in the nation’s capital, Trump is arguably the District’s most dissatisfied resident. He has repeatedly used the city as a punching bag, portraying it as a crime-infested hellhole rather than the magnificent, if flawed, community that residents and visitors know it to be.

Those attacks accelerated last week after a staffer from the Department of Government Efficiency was the victim of violence in an attempted carjacking Aug. 3. The 19-year-old software engineer was beaten by a group of assailants, prompting Trump to claim Washington “has become one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world.”

In doing so, Trump made a generalization based on personal experience rather than anything grounded in hard data. Incidents of violent crime are tragic and victims deserve sympathy and support, but the simple fact is that D.C. is safer than it has been in years.

Not that Trump cares. Over the weekend, the Department of Justice — which in January trumpeted that violent crime in Washington was the lowest in 30 years — mobilized patrols of FBI agents and other federal law enforcement. And on Monday, Trump put the Metropolitan Police under federal authority and ordered the deployment of 800 National Guard troops to the capital.

This comes only months after the president ordered 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles in the face of mild protests against his inhumane and imprecise immigrant deportation scheme. Those actions have been challenged in federal court, with a three-day trial that began on Monday.

Closer to home, Governor Glenn Youngkin, who presumably has been to the federal district just across the Potomac and can read crime statistics, cheered Trump on. Following Trump's announcement, Virginia’s chief executive posted on social media that “it’s a bad day for criminals in D.C.” and celebrated Trump “taking action to protect people in our nation’s capital.”

Again, Washington is the safest it’s been for years — which is good news for Virginia❗And Youngkin apparently has no reservations about a massive show of federal power under the president’s fictitious guise of necessity.

There was a time for Trump to deploy the National Guard to the federal city: January 6. 2021. As the president’s supporters rampaged through the U.S. Capitol, attacking police officers and threatening to kill members of Congress, Trump sat idly in the White House watching events unfold on his television.

He did not act. He did not decry the brutal assaults against law enforcement. Worse, he pardoned hundreds of those violent rioters once he returned to office. His arguments that Washington now needs his help, years after he turned his back on the lawlessness right in front of him, couldn’t ring more hollow.

If Trump is truly concerned about public safety in Washington DC, he should urge his fellow Republicans in Congress to fix the $1.1 billion hole they blew in the city’s budget with their stopgap spending bill in March. That would make a real difference in Washington. Naturally, Trump couldn’t care less.

New Year 2021 post COVID hope: Restore what we missed and appreciate what we learned- Echo!

Echo Opinion : As the light returns, taking stock of a dark year

And now the light comes back. By Mary Schmich published in The Virginian-Pilot newspaper:

On December 21st,  the winter solstice arrived, marking the moment we begin the slow climb out of the darkness, like weary miners exiting the pit. This year, more than ever, the shift feels psychological as well as astronomical.

Therefore, it’s a good time to take account of the things we’ve missed during this dark time, along with what has provided some light in spite of it all.

In that spirit, here are two lists and encourage you to make your own.

Things I’ve Missed

1. The ability to plan- Before the pandemic, most of us made plans. For trips. Get-togethers. The future. Wise people have always known the precarious nature of the best-laid plans, etc., and people without money tend to know it. But until March, many of us enjoyed the fiction that we could control the time ahead. Now we live in the wobblier world of the day-by-day, which is disorienting but closer to reality.

2. Chitchat- Remember the idle but vital conversation you used to have with people at the coffeehouse or at work or church? Until you’re deprived of chitchat, you don’t notice how much those seemingly small connections and conversations educate and sustain you.

3. Coffeehouses-  Nothing like a chilly December day to make you yearn for that cozy place outside the house where you can think, read or chitchat.

4. Airplanes-  In a movie scene the other night, I saw a man on an airplane and felt an unexpected jolt of nostalgia. Was I really nostalgic for the feel of pulling down the tray table? I was. (Maine Writer, ahhh, me? Not so much!)

5. Travel-  I miss the visits to friends and family. The possibility of exploring new and distant places. The change of view. The sense of movement.

6. Casual touch-  Remember the hello hug, the goodbye hug, the it’ll-be-OK hug? The friendly hand on an elbow? The firm handshake? How long before those seem OK again?

7. Live music and theater- (Yes!)

One day this summer I stopped to listen to a band playing in a neighborhood park. I saw a couple of bystanders with tears in their eyes and felt the same way. Virtual performances are better than nothing, but they simply can’t match the energy of live ones.

8. Wearing dresses-  I love a good, simple dress. But what’s the point in a pandemic?

9. People I love-  We talk, we email, we have dinner across the Zoom screen. That’s better than nothing — “better than nothing” is a mantra for our times — but it’s not the same. And yet, the separation has made me realize how much I love and depend on friends and family. Missing them makes me appreciate them more. Which leads to the second list.

Things I’ve Appreciated More

1. Health care workers. Grocery clerks. Delivery people. Postal carriers. Poll workers. Journalists who go out into the world seeking sense in the chaos. Those are just some of the people the pandemic has taught us to call “essential.” They were essential before, but rarely recognized that way.

Also, newspaper carriers. It’s a good season to tip yours, by the way.

2. Small businesses, and the people who work in them- Local shops and restaurants give life and flavor to our neighborhoods. As they struggle to stay alive in the pandemic, we realize their value more acutely.

3. Birds, bugs and trees- Nothing like being stuck at home to make you notice what lives around you.

4. Reliable Wi-Fi- As we’ve become more dependent on Wi-Fi, we’ve also learned how many people are deprived of it. Access to Wi-Fi is just one of the inequities the pandemic has exposed.

5. White vinegar-  (Maine Writer- haha, this is something I share with the author, for some reason, when I see vinegar in the store isles, it makes me smile, because, it disappears fast! Who knew?!). Staying home has turned many people into maniacal cleaners. I grew up washing windows with vinegar and newspapers, so the miraculous properties of white vinegar aren’t a revelation. But the pandemic has expanded my repertoire. Cut the vinegar with dish soap and water to clean kitchen counters. Mix it with water to wash berries and keep them from spoiling. The opportunities are endless.

6. My neighbors-  The pandemic has forced us outside — to eat, to exercise, to socialize — and, like many people, I’ve gotten to know my neighbors better as a result.

7. Good walking shoes-  I recently wrote about the psychological benefits of walking through the pandemic. Many people replied with a question: What shoes do you wear? I hesitate to recommend shoes because feet are idiosyncratic. But for the past couple of years I’ve sworn by the On Cloud (aka On or OC) basic “Cloud” shoe, made for running and walking. (I saw a photo of Jill Biden in a pair the other day.)

8. Good novels about plagues-  It’s weirdly consoling to read about other plagues in distant times. Those stories put this plague into perspective. A few favorites: “Year of Wonders” by Geraldine Brooks. “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel. “The End of October” by Lawrence Wright. “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell. “The Plague” by Albert Camus. (I own, "Year of Wonders", but must take the time to read it. I highly recommend the Nobel prize winning author Albert Camus, "La Peste"- en francais, or "The Plague", is excellent.

9. Being alive long enough to watch the light return.

Mary Schmich is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Frankenstein elections - Donald Trump is the monster

“Frankenstein’s Monster”: Judge Slams Trump Team’s Efforts to Overturn Election Results

Frankenstein Trump- Conspiracy theories without proof about the false 2020, election fraud.

An echo opinion by Cal Thomas, published in The Virginia-Pilot newspaper, in Norfolk, Virginia. A judge has called the Trumpzi challenge to the legitimate 2020, presidential victory by President Elect Joe Biden, a "Frankenstein monster" case.  This accurate imagery supports an observation I have repeated in the Maine Writer blog about how the entire Trump staff reminds me of a grade B casting call for 1950s style movie monsters, beginning with the remarkable resemblance between the horrible adviser Steve Miller, whose looks could make belief in vampires possible. 

The Virginian-Pilot echo: The Trump legal team’s move to distance itself from attorney Sidney Powell* as it seeks to overturn the Nov. 3 election results is a major blow to the president’s attempt to win a second term.

Powell, whose 2014 book, “Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice,” along with her work as the attorney for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, made her a darling of conservatives. But her assertions that Chinese communists, voting machines once used to flip Venezuelan elections and foreign money were behind Trump’s defeat lack as much credibility as Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s claim in the 1950s that communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department.

Last Saturday, U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann dismissed a lawsuit that attempted to reject some of Pennsylvania’s votes for Joe Biden, calling the effort “a Frankenstein monster.” The lawsuit, as reported by Reuters, had alleged inconsistent treatment by county election officials of mail-in ballots. Some counties notified voters they could fix minor defects such as missing “secrecy envelopes” while others did not.

The president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat: “Today’s decision turns out to help us in our strategy to get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia will be asked to expeditiously review the ruling. Giuliani hopes the Republican-dominated circuit court (it includes four judges named by President Trump) will overturn the lower court ruling.

Powell had said she has kept evidence of voter fraud secret for fear of retaliation against the more than 200 poll workers and poll watchers who she alleges witnessed ballot tampering. She says some of them might have to be placed in witness protection. Along with allegations of communist interference it became too bizarre even for a Trump campaign that has often displayed bizarre behavior.

There have been numerous charges of voter fraud over the years, though none have been substantially proven. It was believed that is how Lyndon Johnson stole a Texas Senate seat in 1948. LBJ had first run for the Senate in 1941. He lost by 1,311 votes and blamed voter fraud for his defeat. In 1948, Johnson ran again. On election night in the Democrat Primary runoff against former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson, it appeared LBJ had lost.

Then, as if out of a magician’s hat, a box of uncounted ballots was “discovered” in the south Texas town of Alice. By the end of that week, LBJ had “won” by 87 votes, earning him the title “Landslide Lyndon.” Each side accused the other of voter fraud.

The 1960, presidential race between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy was another contest in which voter fraud was alleged. Out of 68 million ballots cast (roughly half the number in the Trump-Biden race) Kennedy won by just 112,803 votes. The controversy arose over the Chicago Mafia and the corrupt mayor of the city, Richard J. Daley. They were accused of providing the necessary number of votes for Kennedy to prevail in Cook County and thus the entire state and nation.

Then there was the 2006, Minnesota Senate race between incumbent Norm Coleman and comedian Al Franken, which Franken “won” after numerous ballot recounts that stopped when Franken had acquired enough votes to be declared the winner. Franken’s margin was 312 votes. Once again, voter fraud was alleged.

The most recent election presents a much higher mountain for Donald Trump to climb. His attorneys (continue to) promise to reveal their evidence about voter fraud. (Even Attorney General Barr, aka, the rubber stamp justice, challenges the Trumpzi fake attorneys- like Rudy Guiliani). We’ll soon see if this hyperbole is credible and whether any new judges will be persuaded.

Will the Supreme Court intervene, if asked, as they did in a case involving only a few hundred votes in Florida in the 2000, presidential contest and again decide an election? 

I’m doubtful, but in this strange and unpredictable year anything seems possible.  (Maine Writer- Trump has damaged democracy and his Frankenstein moment was a stupid 46 minute useless Facebook message where he ranted about conspiracy theories.)

Cal Thomas is a columnist for Tribune Content Agency. His new book is “America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers and the Future of the United States.”

*Powell has promoted numerous conspiracy theories. She claimed that former army officer Mike Flynn was framed by a covert "deep state" operation, also promoted personalities and slogans associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Taxpayer Advocates report costs to recover $6.7 mill = whaaa?

The cost for reclaiming $6,7 million owed to the Internal Revenue Service cost the government (middle class tax payers) = $20 million?  ~ Roger Chesley in The Virginian-Pilot

Under the "echo" file labeled "Makes No Sense (MNS) ~

The Internal Revenue Service shouldn’t take the blame for mandates Congress throws its way. A few years ago, lawmakers forced the IRS to outsource collection of some tax debt to private collection agencies. The result has been lousy.

This week’s report by the Taxpayer Advocate, an independent organization within the IRS that assists citizens, showed the private debt collection program in fiscal year 2017 generated $6.7 million in payments. But it cost $20 million to recover.

Worse, the collections targeted some of the nation’s poorest: The returns of 4,100 taxpayers showed 28 percent had incomes below $20,000, and 44 percent had incomes below 250 percent of the federal poverty level. Why didn’t collectors go after richer scofflaws?

Outgoing Gov. Terry McAuliffe told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews he’d deck Donald Trump if the president ever tried to intimidate him, including if he “leaned on me and got in my space.”

(Mane Writer ~So, in other words, McAuliffe will fight back if Donald Trump's IRS collection agency tries to reclaim his back taxes...haha).

Isn’t that threat an invitation to federal agents to drop in on McAuliffe? The guv was wrong in even considering the silly hypothetical. Enough with the false bravado and displays of testosterone! It’s detrimental to political discourse — which is already in a bad place in the country.

By the way, I’m betting Haiti, El Salvador and the whole continent of Africa have some fairly profane descriptions of this president. 

You’ve probably read or heard about Trump’s comments regarding immigrants from those areas, referring to them as “s---hole countries.”

Maine Writer ~ Yes, unfortunately, the entire world has heard Donald Trump's horrific words, in glaringly embarrassing stereo.