Donald Trump and maga Republicans have not yet explained why the American military must be put in harm's way in Iraq

Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder have become reliable prophets in predicting how Donald Trump continues to pursue the dismantling of American democracy.  Cox Richardson compared Donald Trump's demonic intentions to the actions of Adolf Hitler, as she published in November 2024 in the Milwaukee Independent:  "Adolf Hitler’s, on January 30, 1933, took an oath of office, in which he promised Germans he would uphold the constitution, and in three months he dismantled that constitution. By March, the concentration camp Dachau was open. Its first prisoners were not Jews, but rather Hitler’s prominent political opponents. By April, Jews had been purged from the civil service, and opposition political parties were illegal. By May, labor unions were banned and students were burning banned books. Within the year, public criticism of Hitler and the Nazis was illegal, and denouncing violators paid well for those who did it."

This echo opinion published in The New Yorker describes the evil result of that and other dire predictions about Donald Trump.

The First Casualty of Trump’s War in Iran Was the Truth

(Donald Trump has no idea what the five letter  one syllable word means.)

The cruelest irony is that Donald Trump addresses the Iranian people in the language of liberation and then threatens freedom of the press back home. By David Remnick editor of The New Yorker magazine.

In war, truth is the first casualty.” It’s a line often attributed to Aeschylus, and it has never lost its relevance. Sometimes the culprit is the observer—the propagandizing correspondent, the mythologizing historian. Now, three weeks into a war of choice, the chief offender is the President of the United States.

On February 28th, at two-thirty in the morning, the White House press operation released a prerecorded video of Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago standing at a lectern in dim light. Wearing an oversized U.S.A. ball cap and no tie, the President announced that he had ordered American bombers to commence destroying targets throughout the Islamic Republic of Iran. Trump made a claim of preëmption. He was acting, he said, to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” (This was confusing. Hadn’t Trump declared last June that he had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program? Hadn’t the Omani foreign minister, a mediator between the U.S. and Iran at negotiations in Geneva, just told “Face the Nation” that “a peace deal is within our reach”?) Trump went on to counsel the Iranian people to find refuge somehow—“It’s very dangerous outside, bombs will be dropping everywhere”—but then, at some unspecified moment, they should “take over” their government. “Let’s see how you respond.” And to his American listeners, he admitted, “We may have casualties. That often happens in war.”

For a narcissist obsessed with the projection of strength and grandeur, Trump gave a peculiarly gravity-free performance. The bill of his ball cap obscured his gaze. He raced and rambled through his text. And, rather than hustle back to the White House, he lingered at his country club. He had a fund-raising dinner to attend. It was left to the communications director, Steven Cheung, to provide clear instructions on how to react to the prospect of another American war in the Middle East. “NO PANICANS!” he wrote on X. “TRUST IN TRUMP!”

Donald Trump, together with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, were soon over heard lauding the precision with which they had “decapitated” the Iranian leadership and flattened military, police, and intelligence installations. And yet, as the late Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once blithely said, in the thick of America’s catastrophic misadventure in Iraq, “Stuff happens.” 

(Hmmm, turns out the Rumsfeld decisions cost Americans 2,400 military lives in his failed Afghanistan war and another 4,400 were killed in the Iraq disaster. Donald Rumsfeld died on June 29, 2021 in Taos, New Mexico.) With increasing frequency, Trump berates reporters (particularly female reporters). He sues media outlets for sport. Resolve is in short supply. The owner of the Washington Post, the newspaper of Watergate, has done irreparable violence to his property merely to stay in Trump’s good graces. But, while Donald Trump has little regard for the freedom of the press, he craves its ceaseless attention. 

Donald Trump's need has the quality of addiction. In Washington these days, there is hardly a reporter who does not have the President’s cellphone number. It is said that the best time to call is late at night while he is watching himself on TV and shit-posting in his pajamas. He loves to muse aloud, then watch as those musings register in foreign capitals, and in the markets. Lately, he has been willing to say anything. The war will be over soon. Or maybe not. Whatever. Each pseudo-scoop is as ephemeral as a mayfly. But who can resist? When asked about the possibility of sending his infantry into Iran, he answers in the language of golf: “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground.” At other moments, he simply changes the subject to, say, his taste in interior decoration—“If you look behind me, see the nice gold curtains.” Are you not entertained? 

Donald Trump's cult advisers, of course, know what to do. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, (aka "Whiskey Pete") who has cracked down on actual reporting at the Pentagon and has filled his pressroom with “influencers” and propagandists, spoke in his usual tone of rage recently when he lambasted CNN’s coverage of the war as “fake news.” He would be pleased, he said, when the Trump-friendly Ellison family, which has already swallowed up CBS News, finally takes possession of CNN, too. Brendan Carr, who runs the Federal Communications Commission for Trump, eagerly joined the fray by threatening to revoke the licenses of television networks that are, in his view, “running hoaxes and news distortions.” 

Trump pronounced himself “thrilled” with Carr’s outburst. On Truth Social, he accused “Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations” of airing “LIES.” Perhaps, he wrote, he will prosecute unruly journalists on “Charges for TREASON.” 

Carr’s saber rattling threats to pull network licenses have no legal weight; the more immediate danger is that media owners, who are all too aware of the economic pressures they face, will quietly cut back on critical coverage of the Trump Presidency in general, and the war in particular. They will fear landing outside the boundary of what is deemed patriotic. The historian Garry Wills, in an essay on Phillip Knightley’s 1975, book about wartime journalism, “The First Casualty,” wrote, “A liberal democracy submits to propaganda more readily than a totalitarian state. Self‐censorship is always more effective than bureaucratic censorship.” 

The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of the Iranian security hierarchy, would not survive the first day of bombing; neither would about a hundred and seventy-five innocents in the southern city of Minab, most of them children. When asked about a girls’ school there, which was struck by what was likely an American cruise missile, Trump blamed Iran. “They are very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions,” he said.

Now, as war has engulfed both the region and the global economy, Trump and his sycophantic advisers have taken to improvising on the fly, floating conflicting justifications for war and predictions about its duration. The Iranians were close to developing missiles that could reach the U.S. (They weren’t.) They were weeks away from building a nuclear weapon. (They weren’t.) Israel forced America’s hand. (Marco Rubio.) “No, I might have forced their hand.” (Trump.) It’s all about regime change. (Trump.) It’s not about regime change. (Trump, later.) When confronted with these contradictions and falsehoods, all Donald Trump's cult of men followed his lead: they just blamed the media.

With increasing frequency, Trump berates reporters (particularly female reporters). He sues media outlets for sport. Resolve is in short supply. The owner of the Washington Post, the newspaper of Watergate, has done irreparable violence to his property merely to stay in Trump’s good graces.

But, while Donald Trump has little regard for the freedom of the press, he craves its ceaseless attention. His need has the quality of addiction. In Washington these days, there is hardly a reporter who does not have the President’s cellphone number. It is said that the best time to call is late at night while he is watching himself on TV and shitposting in his pajamas. He loves to muse aloud, then watch as those musings register in foreign capitals, and in the markets. Lately, he has been willing to say anything. The war will be over soon. Or maybe not. Whatever. Each pseudo-scoop is as ephemeral as a mayfly. But who can resist? When asked about the possibility of sending his infantry into Iran, he answers in the language of golf: “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground.” At other moments, he simply changes the subject to, say, his taste in interior decoration—“If you look behind me, see the nice gold curtains.” Are you not entertained?

His advisers, of course, know what to do. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has cracked down on actual reporting at the Pentagon and has filled his pressroom with “influencers” and propagandists, spoke in his usual tone of rage recently when he lambasted CNN’s coverage of the war as “fake news.” He would be pleased, he said, when the Trump-friendly Ellison family, which has already swallowed up CBS News, finally takes possession of CNN, too.

Brendan Carr, who runs the Federal Communications Commission for Trump, eagerly joined the fray by threatening to revoke the licenses of television networks that are, in his view, “running hoaxes and news distortions.” Trump pronounced himself “thrilled” with Carr’s outburst. On Truth Social, he accused “Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations” of airing “LIES.” Perhaps, he wrote, he will prosecute unruly journalists on “Charges for TREASON.”

Carr’s threats to pull network licenses have no legal weight; the more immediate danger is that media owners, who are all too aware of the economic pressures they face, will quietly cut back on critical coverage of the Trump Presidency in general, and the war in particular. They will fear landing outside the boundary of what is deemed patriotic. The historian Garry Wills, in an essay on Phillip Knightley’s 1975 book about wartime journalism, “The First Casualty,” wrote, “A liberal democracy submits to propaganda more readily than a totalitarian state. Self‐censorship is always more effective than bureaucratic censorship.”

The cruelest irony is that Donald Trump, who addresses the Iranian people in the language of liberation, urging them to throw off the yoke of a regime that has brutalized them for decades, is the same man who threatens American journalists with treason charges and tries to strong-arm broadcasters into subservience. 

Having torn up a nuclear agreement in his first term and gone to war with no coherent goal in his second, Trump now directs his fire at the one thing he cannot afford to leave standing: the truth. What’s at stake is democracy’s oldest promise—that the people may call on their government to answer for what it does in their name. ♦








Published in the print edition of the March 30, 2026, issue, with the headline “The First Casualty.”

Donald Trump and maga Republicans intend to destroy the equal protection clause provided in the 14th Amendment

Echo opinion published in the New York Times by Jamelle Bouie 

Stephen Miller’s 🤢Latest Low: Nazism 101: 
"You can’t change the masses. They will always be the same: dumb, gluttonous and forgetful.”― Joseph Goebbels

The latest front in evil 👹Stephen Miller’s personal and political war on the 14th Amendment, which began last January with Donald Trump’s executive order targeting birthright citizenship, centers on the equal protection clause.

In 1982, in Plyler v. Doe, a 5-to-4 majority of the Supreme Court held that it was a violation of the equal protection clause for states to deny to undocumented children the free public education they provide to legal immigrants’ children, who are themselves citizens. As Justice William Brennan wrote in his opinion for the court, “The 14th Amendment to the Constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens.”

Miller, whose crusade against immigration knows no bounds, wants Republican-led states to test the court’s commitment to its precedent. My newsroom colleague Lauren McGaughy has the report:


Stephen Miller raised the idea of ending public education funding for undocumented children in a closed-door meeting with Texas lawmakers in Washington last week, a move that would challenge a decades-old U.S. Supreme Court precedent, according to two people who were in the meeting.

Steven Miller doppelganger: Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) Hitler's Nazi Minister of Propaganda.

Miller, who is Trump’s hard-line immigration terror adviser, and a Joseph Goebbels doppelganger, cited gridlock in Congress as he encouraged the state lawmakers to pass conservative legislation on immigration and other issues that are crucial to Republicans, hoping such action would spur on other red states and federal lawmakers.

The effect of this change, if it were to become law, would be to mark about a million children as members of a subordinate class — a lower caste excluded from mainstream society. Here, again, is Brennan: “By denying these children a basic education, we deny them the ability to live within the structure of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our Nation.”

Miller’s push to weaken the equal protection clause raises an important question: Why is he, and the "maga" right more generally, so intent on whittling down the 14th Amendment to essentially nothing❓

To answer this, we can’t just look at the origins of the amendment — we have to see it in its larger political context. Before the 14th Amendment was a question of law and legal interpretation, it was a political text meant to bring about a particular vision of American society.

It seems obvious to say, but it’s worth emphasizing anyway: The 14th Amendment is tied directly to the 13th. The 13th Amendment states that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” It then adds, in section 2, that “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Today, as a matter of legal interpretation, we read the 13th quite narrowly; it simply ends slavery. But the authors and ratifiers of the 13th Amendment saw it more expansively. To them, it was the foundation for the society they hoped to build. 

Like Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts said in a March 1864, floor speech in support of the amendment:

"Every word spoken, every line written, every act performed, that keeps the breath of life in slavery for a moment, is against the existence of democratic institutions, against the dignity of the toiling millions, against the liberty, the peace, the honor, the renown and the life of the nation. In the lights of to-day that flash upon us from camp and battlefield, the loyal eye, heart, and brain of America sees and feels and realizes that the death of slavery is the life of the nation❗ The loyal voice of patriotism pronounces, in clear accents, that American slavery must die that the American Republic may live❗"​​​​​​​​​​​​​

To that end, the 13th Amendment was meant to outlaw hereditary caste as much as it was meant to end chattel slavery.

The anti-subordination aims of the 13th Amendment are why, almost immediately after ratifying it, Republicans in Congress leveraged their newfound authority under Section 2 to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established birthright citizenship, guaranteed equal rights, nullified the “Black Codes” — laws passed by the former rebel states to reimpose the conditions of slavery — and empowered the federal government to prosecute violations of civil rights.


President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee unionist whose contempt for slaveholders was outweighed only by his hostility to Black Americans, vetoed the bill as both undesirable and beyond the scope of federal power. “In all our history, in all our experience as a people living under Federal and State law, no such system as that contemplated by the details of this bill has ever before been proposed or adopted,” Johnson wrote. “They establish for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government has ever provided for the white race.”

The Republican-led Congress overrode Johnson’s veto. It then began work on a new amendment, meant to embed in the Constitution the provisions and protections of the 1866 law, as well as write its vision of a free and equal society into the Constitution itself.

The resulting 14th Amendment, properly understood, is additive to the 13th. It flows from the vision of Gettysburg and Appomattox, of the Republican Party before, during and after the war: a society of equals, entitled to a broad set of rights and able to pursue their own visions of the good as far as their capabilities would take them.

A straightforward reading of the most important part of the amendment, Section 1, makes this clear. It says, in short: "There will be a national American citizenship. That this citizenship will, except in very select cases, be established by birth. That all such citizens will be entitled to the 'privileges and immunities' of American citizenship, and that — citizen or no — everybody on American soil is to receive the due process of law and the equal protection of the laws."

As Representative John Bingham of Ohio, one of the chief architects of the amendment, would write soon after ratification, Let it be “borne in mind that this is the government of men representing every people and kindred and tongue under the whole heavens, and that in the inception of our national struggle for representative government, in 1776, the declaration of the people was not that all white men are created equal, but that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with the rights of life and liberty.”

The Supreme Court would eventually trim and limit this vision, eventually going, in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, as far as to permit the kind of subordination that the 14th Amendment was explicitly written to forbid. Indeed, this was part of the transformation of this amendment into a merely legal document — of removing its political content and treating it as a bare set of narrow requirements. The court would do the same to both the 13th and 15th Amendments, robbing them of their power to transform the American republic. And it did so as part of a larger political project: to reconcile the white citizens of the United States, to give the white South the power to manage its own “affairs,” and to support a national project of imperial domination. As a promise of equality for all who live under the flag, the 14th Amendment had to be written out of the constitutional order.

Both Miller and the "maga" right are engaged in the same kind of work as their political forebears. It is no wonder, then, that they want to gut the 14th Amendment, which was revitalized by the struggles of Black Americans and other groups throughout the 20th century. Theirs is a project of subordination at home and abroad; of the re-inscription of caste and the recreation of tiered citizenship based on race and nationality. And now, as then, the 14th Amendment stands in the way.

In other words, their project of constitutional change is in the service of a distinct political vision. Opponents should take note. It is not enough, as important as it is, to attack the legal basis of Miller’s efforts or debunk "maga’s" historical arguments. One must also bring a positive political vision to bear against their fantasy of reimposing rigid lines of caste, class and hierarchy.

The good news is that the 14th Amendment, and the larger Reconstruction story, is an important resource about an alternative vision — about an egalitarian society for all who claim this nation as their own.

What I Wrote: In this column,  Jamelle Bouie argued that whether at home or abroad, Donald Trump's pathological narcissism leaves him unable to see that his opponents have agency. As the aphorism goes, the enemy gets a vote, too.

Every presidential administration takes on the character of its principal, and this one is no different. Like Trump, the White House does not in fact seem to understand that other people have agency, too. It sees itself the same way the president sees himself: as the protagonist of the universe, with everyone else acting either as a supporting character or a nonplayable one — extras with no will of their own.

News media are becoming megaphones for Donald Trump evil propaganda. Americans know we are being told lies.

These are questions the media never asks.  Echo opinion letter published in TribLive news.  

Why did Kristi Noem spend 💲220 million on TV commercials❓ Who authorized this? This money could have been used to pay the TSA workers. Why were hard working TSA agents not getting paid❓ Why are our senator💲 getting paid and other workers have not❓

How did Donald Trump figure out that Iran was going to bomb us❓ Does he have insight into the future❓ What happened to “no more wars”❓


When asked about the deadly bombing of an Iranian girls school, 
Donald Trump said he knew nothing about it. Why not❓

Trump has said “we won” the war. So why are we now sending in the Marines❓ This is not an excursion; it is definitely a Donald Trump World War❗

One more question❓: Why did Trump have to wear that stupid cap while saluting our heroic fallen soldiers❓

(Maine Writer's opinion, Donald Trump knew how wearing a cap would likely upstage the tragic solemnity of the moment when the six soldiers remains were transported out of the aircraft. True to his narcassistic pathology, Trump wanted to grab the moment. Donald Trump is an evil selfish bastard.  He cannot even humble himself when faced with six deaths he caused by illegally and unilaterally attacking Iran.  Those innocent military who came home in caskets were caught off]guard by Donald Trump's surprise decision. Sadly, the soilders had no defense and no opportunity to evacuate.)

From Marie Tartamella in Tarentum, Pennsylvania

Names of the six soldiers killed in Kuwait because Donald Trump unilaterally ordered a surprise attack on Iran are:

• Maj. Jeffrey R. O'Brien 
• Sgt. Declan J. Coady 
• Capt. Cody A. Khork 
• Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens
• Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor
• CWO 3 Robert M. Marzan

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 must fire Pete Hegseth he is creating "killing everything" culture a danger to the public

Pete Hegseth (aka "Whiskey Pete") is being mercilessly mocked behind his back in the Pentagon, according to insiders.

Echo report by Erin Keller, published in The Independent, the Daily Beast and Yahoo.com

Staffers reportedly furnished the self-proclaimed “secretary of war” with a brutal new moniker that leans on his insatiable appetite for war and obsession with killing: “Dumb McNamara.”

The businessman turned statesman is often credited with bringing the U.S. into the war, a conflict that killed between 1.4 million and 3.5 million people. He pushed so hard for more U.S. involvement in the conflict that it was eventually dubbed “McNamara’s (Failed) War.”
Current and former U.S. officials have told Zeteo that the former (Fake) Fox and Friends host is being painted as a dumb version of Robert McNamara, the defense secretary who became a symbol of America’s failures in the Vietnam War.

Hegseth, for his part, acted as one of the main cheerleaders of Donald Trump’s war in Iran. In fact, Trump even credited, or blamed, him for promoting it so ardently. “Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. You said, ‘Let’s do it,’” (OMG❗😓) Trump said during an engagement in Tennessee earlier this week.

McNamara, who was defense secretary under both President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968, repeatedly gave glowing assessments about the U.S. military’s performance in Vietnam, despite knowing full well, as declassified papers later revealed, that the conflict had turned into a disaster.

He famously reversed course midway through his tenure in 1967, when he belatedly began to openly advocate against the war.

That year, in 1967, he commissioned what became known as the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret investigation that questioned the wisdom of American involvement in the war.

Hegseth appears to have no such inclination. “We negotiate with bombs,” he said Tuesday. “You have a choice, as we loiter over the top of Tehran.” 

(IOW: George Santayana in 1905, as "Those who cannot remember the past- history- are condemned to repeat it".)

The next day, Hegseth stood at the Pentagon’s first monthly worship service since the Iran war began and prayed not for peace, but for what he called “overwhelming violence” against America’s enemies.

“Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation,” Hegseth said. “Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” (Psalms 25:10- All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth toward those who honor his covenant and decrees.”)

The Hegseth (aka Dumb McNamara) irreverent service comes as a lawsuit challenges religious activities and policies within the Defense Department.

End hardships for working Americans: Donald Trump and maga Republicans must stand in the long airport lines they created to fly our of Washington DC

No breaks for Congress until TSA funded | A Baltimore Sun editorial.

Wait in long TSA security lines at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in the Queens borough of New York, Monday, March 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

Whatever modest (untrained) help is provided by the Trump administration’s decision to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to help reduce long lines at airport security this week, it’s time Congress approves at least a stopgap measure to fund the Transportation Security Administration, if not the entirety of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

And if Democrats and Republicans can’t find common ground on such thorny issues as the masking of ICE agents or when exactly those agents must use judicial warrants❓💢 Negotiators should be locked in a room until they agree to some compromise.

That would be an inconvenience, but it would also be a relatable experience to Americans now so often stuck in outrageously long security lines at BWI Marshall Airport and many of its counterparts across the country.

As for any members of Congress planning to go on break at the end of this week for the Easter holiday, we’re with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who said that won’t happen while the DHS funding issue remains unresolved. 

We would expect House Speaker Mike Johnson to do the same even if the current impasse rests in the other chamber. 

The sooner any compromise produced in the Senate can be approved by the full Congress, the better. All members should be embarrassed by this failure. It’s not a partisan thing; it’s a good government thing.

No doubt senators are hearing plenty of negative feedback from constituents who travel. They’ll hear even more if the long security lines impact Easter travel. And keep in mind, it isn’t really just about having to wait — heavy travel days sometimes force delays, no matter whether TSA agents are getting paid or not — but the sheer stupidity of it all. How ICE conducts enforcement is an important and hotly debated issue, and it’s understandable that neither party is eager to cede ground. Now, can we also agree that the political leverage of a budget bill can only be asserted so far❓

Priorities such as saving political face and boosting chances in the midterms should come after looking out for American voters who are facing punishing lines and missing flights across the country.

We get the performative elements of politics. It’s always been this way. But ,this is also a time when voters have clearly lost patience with all the theatrics coming out of Washington, D.C., and expect their elected officials to behave like adults.

The current crop of D.C. movers and shakers have already demonstrated that they aren’t quite as embarrassed by a government shutdown as they ought to be — last year’s edition lasted a record 43 days. The DHS shutdown is already approaching that historic number.

All those Americans standing in a line right now that did not have to exist are likely asking, when do members of Congress do their own jobs and find a compromise❓ The last thing to do is reward any of these players with a nice holiday vacation. Keep everyone at their posts. It’s the least they can do.

Baltimore Sun editorial writers offer opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must support truth about Pentagon operations and end Pete Hegseth's "Bagdhad Bob" propaganda

Editorial

Editorial Board opinion published in the Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper.

No more fitting tribute exists of Florida's Sunshine Week, the annual tribute to open government, than a judge’s refusal to let Pete Hegseth manipulate the Pentagon press.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the policy he struck down favored journalists “willing to publish only stories that are favorable or spoon-fed” by Department of Defense leaders.

Hegseth’s wrong minded aim was to make the Pentagon press a house organ for the Trump administration. The proof was in what took place after legitimate reporters turned in their passes and left the building last fall rather than fall in line.

In their place, the Pentagon handed press credentials to bizarre right-wing sycophants such as Laura Loomer, the Floridian whose hushed suspicions to Trump try to get people fired; “MyPillow Guy” Mike Lindell, who fabricates stolen election conspiracies; and Matt Gaetz, the ex-Florida congressman, too toxic to be confirmed as attorney general.
Stop the press media suppression❗

“A primary purpose of the First Amendment is to enable the press to publish what it will and the public to read what it chooses, free of any official proscription,” Friedman wrote. “Those who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech. That principle has preserved the nation’s security for almost 250 years. It must not be abandoned now.”

The nation that endures partly because of that principle owes a debt of gratitude to the New York Times, which filed a First Amendment lawsuit in Friedman’s court. The judge also found a violation of the Fifth Amendment, because “any newsgathering and reporting not blessed by the Department” would become “a potential basis for the denial, suspension, or revocation” of journalistic access.

True to form, the Pentagon plans an appeal. But, Friedman should not pause his ruling and no higher court should suspend it while the appeal plays out — especially not now.

“The Court recognizes that national security must be protected, the security of our troops must be protected, and war plans must be protected,” the judge wrote. “But especially in light of the country’s recent illegal incursion into Venezuela and its ongoing Trump World War with Iran, it is more important than ever that the public have access to information from a variety of perspectives about what its government is doing — so that the public can support government policies, if it wants to support them; protest, if it wants to protest; and decide based on full, complete, and open information who they are going to vote for in the next election. As Justice Brandeis correctly observed, ‘sunlight is the most powerful of all disinfectants.’”

Judge Friedman left intact a part of Hegseth’s edict requiring reporters to have escorts near his office and certain other parts of the sprawling Pentagon building.
Few rays of sunshine🌞

The ruling was on the next-to-last day of Sunshine Week, an event coordinated by the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, and supported by more than 100 organizations and publishers.

Rays of sunshine are rare. Trump’s war on the media is relentless. Gov. Ron DeSantis runs the most secretive administration in Florida history.

Records requests filed under Florida’s public records law routinely go unanswered, or meet with exorbitant fee demands. In the just-ended legislative session, the Senate refused to enforce compliance by not considering a House-passed bill (HB 437).💢

Our history abounds with examples of the importance of the First Amendment.

President Kennedy regretted having persuaded the New York Times to withhold what it knew of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which ended disastrously in 1961.

The Pentagon Papers, stamped “Top Secret,” told about how successive administrations led the U.S. deeper into a Vietnam war that tore the nation apart in the 1960s.

Millions of Jeffrey Epstein documents forced open by Congress exposed a staggering story, still not fully told, about the government’s multiyear failure to protect children from a wealthy, well-connected sexual predator.

The bane of every dictator is Freedom of the Press.

In his classic work, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, journalist William L. Shirer described what Hitler did: “Every morning the editors of the Berlin daily newspapers and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the Reich gathered at the Propaganda Ministry to be told by Goebbels or by one of his aides what news to print and suppress, how to write the news and headline it, what campaigns to call off or institute and what editorials were desired for the day. In case of any misunderstanding a daily written directive was furnished along with the oral instructions.”

Pete Hegseth’s directive was not so blatant. But, it was on the same slippery slope.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must end propaganda about Trump's illegal Iran World War- one lie leads to more lies

Michael McFaul @McFaul on X/
"If we already won the war in Iran as Trump claims why are we sending more soldiers to the region❓"
Trump announced that we “militarily” won the war. 🤥
Echo opinion letter published in the Florida Sun Sentinel news.

But, obviously no one told the Iranians, who continue to inflict damage on us, Israel and their Middle East neighbors.

Iran is clearly trouble for the U.S. and for the region, but to eliminate it is a task for a competent administration requiring a well-planned military operation. We are witnessing chaos.

A Sun Sentinel reader suggested that “once the dust settles,” Iran will return to the western democracy that it once was.

Iran had a democratically elected prime minister from 1951, until a CIA-led coup ousted him and reinstalled Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi to power in 1953. So ended Iran’s “western democracy.” 

Iran has no tradition of democracy and does not know how to function as one.

Anti-American sentiment runs deep in Iran, driven by people who have no problem becoming martyrs. Its leaders on any given day know that Americans will not tolerate our young men and women being “boots on the ground,” which would lead to death or injury to our troops.

Come November, Donald Trump will get the regime change he seeks: his own.

From Bob Stein, in Boynton Beach, Florida

Maine Writer:  Donald Trump is full of bullshit.  Senator Susan Collins should be calling for his removal from office.  

Sadly, Senator Collins has no courage, she is worse than the lion character in the Wizard of Oz.  Collins is "Concerned but never corageous".

Donald Trump and maga Republicans causing a brain drain of students who are academic refugees in Europe

Politico: The first American ‘scientific refugees’ arrive in France: Aix-Marseille University is wooing researchers who feel targeted by the Trump administration.

From afar, American students in France feel the shockwaves of Trump By Audrey Parmentier Published in Le Monde.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/campus/article/2026/03/24/from-afar-american-students-in-france-feel-the-shockwaves-of-trump_6751786_11.html

While academic freedom declines in the US, some young people are choosing France to pursue master's and doctoral degrees. 

Yet, between delayed scholarships, intrusive questions and stereotypes, their experience remains shaken by the latest developments in their country.

Sitting on the banks of the Saône, phone in hand, Luke, age 20, scrolled through the nonstop flow of news. At the University of Oregon, where he is studying for a degree in history and political science, some of his classmates had been arrested. "They were protesting against Donald Trump's immigration policy. I wish I could have been with them." He himself had demonstrated, in 2025, against the war in Gaza.

Since January, the Boston native – who did not give his last name, like all people cited by their first name in this article – has been taking part in an exchange program at Sciences Po Lyon. From afar, he has watched his country tip into turmoil: aggressive raids by immigration police, calls to boycott the media, military strikes in Iran. "I am worried about the new war in the Middle East, it wasn't necessary," he said quietly. These events have only strengthened his desire to one day enter politics in the United States. Until he returns, scheduled for June, he does not miss a single article on the cultural heritage of the European Union in The New York Times, reading between classes.

In 2024-2025, France welcomed 6,381 American students, according to Campus France (the French government agency promoting higher education abroad), representing a 5% drop compared to 2022. Meanwhile, their presence elsewhere in Europe increased by 6.2% over the same period. "Since 2020, the number of Americans at our university has clearly decreased, and French is being taught less and less in American universities," lamented Lucie De Carvalho, coordinator of the International Student Exchange Program (ISEP) in Lille, France.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans dug themselves into a shithole war and they cannot get out unless they lie about it

Echo opinion letter to the letter of the Columbian news:

Trump digs a hole for U.S.❗

Donald Trump buried himself in a big hole at the behest of the Israelis and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Now, the Republicans are spinning that the military Marines on Kharg Island, located off the coast of Iran, are not “boots on the ground.” ❓A dangerous typical Republican lie 🤥😔❗ .

Trump is whining loudly that “nobody will help me❗” Those he insulted in Europe told him it’s “his war.” I love that!

Yesterday, I paid 💲67 to fill my Subaru — 💲5.20 a gallon 💲❗at Shell. Republicans also state that doesn’t matter. ❓ 

Midterm elections this year will surely stick it to Republicans. (Maine Writer- if voters will be allowed to get to our polling places....❗❗) For the GOP, the only hope is to rig the election, cheat in other words. Cheating is a one-way street with Trump and Republicans —😟 only they get to do it. 

From Bill Kelley in Yacolt, Washington State, published in the Columbian