Donald Trump and maga Republicans abandoned their message about "affordabability"- guess it had too many letters difficult to spell

 Echo opinion published in New York Magazine Intelligencer by Ed Kilgore: Trump Waging War on His Own Affordability* Strategy #SIASD

(This opinion essays seems prophetic, in my opinion, creates the sense of a looming world wide depression.  #ImpeachTrumpNow❗ #SenatorSusanCollins)

Donald Trump’s “war of choice” against Iran is a big departure from his administration’s alleged determination to focus on improving the domestic economy and addressing concerns about affordability before crucial midterm elections this November. 

But, aside from the Donald Trump's spectacular failure to stay on message, there is a more specific problem with the sudden lurch into a regional war in the Middle East. 

To the extent Trump had an actual affordability agenda (other than calling concerns about living costs “a hoax”), a central pillar was keeping energy prices low by demolishing any obstacles to maximum exploitation of fossil-fuel resources. Aside from the beneficial effect this might have on prices for other goods and services influenced by energy costs, the “drill baby drill” mentality was designed to reduce gasoline pump prices, one of the most visible inflation indicators from the perspective of regular folks.

Suddenly, the United States has produced an energy-price crisis for itself and for the whole world, Reuters reports:

Traffic through the Strait ​of Hormuz was closed for a fourth day after Iran attacked five ships, choking off a key artery accounting for about 20% of global oil and LNG supply. …

The conflict risks triggering a renewed spike in inflation that could choke off economic recovery in Europe and Asia if the war is prolonged in a region that accounts for just under a third of global ​oil production and almost a fifth of natural gas.

Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest producer, on Tuesday said it may be forced to cut production by more than three million barrels per day ​in a few days if oil tankers cannot move freely to loading points, according to two Iraqi oil officials.

While other countries face the most dire immediate economic consequences from a war that Trump is now projecting to last a month or more (“whatever it takes,” to be precise), it’s about to affect Americans too:

American motorists will pay more at the pump amid spiking oil prices due to the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran, with experts predicting gasoline prices could rise sharply this week.

The price of West Texas Intermediate crude, a type of oil primarily produced in the U.S., jumped 6.2% on Monday to $71.19 per barrel, according to data from FactSet. Brent crude, the international benchmark, surged nearly 9% to $79.31 per barrel on Monday, its highest point in more than a year.

Gas prices in the U.S. will move higher, according to GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan, who predicted that some gas stations could be charging as much as 30 cents more per gallon. 

And the indirect effects could be even more severe, as Canadian energy expert Rory Johnston told our own Benjamin Hart:

I think if this lasts a couple more days, we’ll see it reflected at the gas pump in terms of overall gas prices. 

Diesel will be even more acutely affected. I think the big impact will be on freight and shipping rates, and that’s going to hit consumers more on the price of produce, the price of random consumer goods. That’s the type of stuff that diesel will complicate more. So I think you will see an impact at the price of the pumps, but the biggest impact won’t be as visible to consumers immediately. It will take a while to work through the supply chain.

As part of their furious spin about a war that’s already unpopular outside Trump’s Republican base, administration gabbers are arguing that Trump’s expansion of fossil-fuel production is giving him the strategic flexibility to wreck global oil markets without catastrophic consequences, notes the New York Times:

The Trump administration said that it has more leeway to act aggressively in the Middle East because the world is flush with oil and gas, thanks in part to record U.S. production, and has less to fear than it once did from energy price shocks.

The ongoing war in Iran could put that theory to the test.🤥

While it may be comforting to Americans to be told they won’t be paying as much for this war as they might have had Trump not impatiently brushed aside environmental fears about fossil fuels, it doesn’t explain the decision to subordinate economic policy to another Donald Trump (bone spurs❗🦴❗)military adventure. 

Yes, MAGA true believers are buying Trump’s claim that Iran’s nuclear-weapon and missile programs posed an immediate threat to the United States, but other Americans are not persuaded at the moment. So, Donald Trump's reckless decision thrusting in this radical direction sure looks like a conscious choice to subordinate the daily concerns of our American people to a globalist agenda and an alliance with Israel that already troubles a majority of Americans.

Shortly before the 2024, presidential election, I was filling up my car with gas in California, and someone had placed on the pump a little decal of Trump pointing at the per-gallon prices and saying, Biden did this! If pump prices continue to go up in 2026, it will be even easier to show that Trump did this❗ And the price will be paid not just by consumers, but by Republican candidates whose affordability arguments have been blown up by the explosions in Iran.

*Affordability is defined as the state of being cheap enough for people to be able to buy. 

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must end the racism campaign supported by Trumpzi evilism

Ongoing presence of racism led by Donald Trump is evil.

Echo opinion letter published in The Central Oregonian newspaper:

We like to believe that bigotry is a product of ignorance and that if we educate people enough, they will become immune to bigotry.  But bigotry is more often a common code of hate to which no community is immune. Trumpzism and bigotry are evilisms.

Oh my❗ 🤢On the morning of February 6th, I was shown the hideous video meme on Trump’s Truth (Fake ❗) Social, showing the faces of Michelle and Barack Obama imposed on ape bodies. 

I was deeply saddened 😥 to see the racist Donald Trump, president of the U.S. creating such despicable bigotry. 

 “Fruit never falls far from the tree.” Remember Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was arrested in 1927 for participating in a violent KuKluxKlan (KKK) rally in New York City. Remember the 1973, federal lawsuit brought against Donald Trump and his company for racial discrimination at Trump housing developments in New York City. He would not sell or lease properties to people of “color.” Trump is a racist, pure and simple. When I saw Trump’s first evil red MAGA hat, I immediately read: Make America White Again.

Having grown through the civil rights movement of the 1960s, I never imagined that racism would publicly raise its head again in the United States. Remember the firehoses, the attack dogs, the beatings and the murders against people who only wanted to be treated as equals? The only difference was the color of their skin. 

Remember, white supremacists George Wallace and Bull Connor were called “racist pigs.” It appears we still have some “racist pigs” living amongst us.  Remember, Hitler justified the Holocaust by claiming Jews looked different, were inferior and were the cause of the world’s problems. It’s called racism. If you have noticed the faces behind the ICE masks, they are all white. Many of them are recruited from the convicted felon Nazi insurrectionists who stormed the capitol on Jan. 6, whom Trump pardoned. Ninety-five percent of the people detained by ICE have no criminal records 😢and are in our country legally seeking citizenship. Notice their commonality: they have dark skin, and perhaps they speak with an accent. Pure racism.  We have a movement in our country called “White Nationalism.” That sounds similar to “Aryan Nation,” doesn’t it? Much of this is based upon the pseudo-science “Race Science,” which maintains that the “white” race is superior. Adolf Hitler’s Nazis did EXACTLY the same thing❗

From Walt Bolton  in Prineville, Oregon

Donald Trump and maga Republicans violate religious liberty of military make false claims about Armageddon

Military leaders pushing 'Armageddon views' on troops as Iran war begins: complaint pulished in RawStory by Travis Gettys.

A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers Monday that the Iran war was part of God's plan to usher in the End Times and bring about Jesus Christ's second coming, according to a complaint filed with a religious freedom watchdog.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has fielded more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the U.S. military between the war's start on Saturday morning and Monday night, reported journalist Jonathan Larson on his Substack page, and the group told him the complaints came from more than 40 different units stationed in at least 30 military installations.

"These calls have one damn thing in freaking common; our MRFF clients [service members who seek MRFF aid] report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new 'biblically-sanctioned' war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian 'End Times' as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation," said MRFF President and Founder Mikey Weinstein, a veteran of the Air Force and the Reagan White House.

"Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100 percent accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology," Weinstein added.

Weinstein pointed out prohibitions in the U.S. Constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) against inserting religious beliefs into official military instruction or messaging, and a non-commissioned officer who filed a complaint with MRFF said their commander's comments "destroy morale and unit cohesion."

"This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be 'afraid' as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now," that non-commissioned officer said in a complaint filed Monday. "He urged us to tell our troops that this was 'all part of God’s divine plan' and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ."
"He said that 'Donald Trump has been anointed by Jesus🤥  to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,'" the complaint continued. "He had a big grin on his face when he said all of this which made his message seem even more crazy."

"Our commander would probably be described as a 'Christian First' supporter," the complaint added. "He has been this way for a very long time and makes it clear that he desires all of us under him to become just like him as a Christian. But what he did this morning was so toxic and over the line that it shocked many of us in attendance at the ops readiness briefing."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has elevated a Christian nationalism theology that has simmered within the military for decades, Larson wrote, and he attends a weekly White House Bible study session led by right-wing pastor Ralph Drollinger, who preaches support for Israel is required by the Scriptures.

"Some Christians claim biblical prophecy requires Israel to exist for Jesus to return," Larson wrote. "But Hegseth’s Bible study leader, preacher Ralph Drollinger, teaches that the reason to support Israel is that God still blesses Israel’s allies and curses Israel’s enemies, even though Israel killed Jesus (this smear, the historic root of antisemitism, has been rejected by every major religion)."

The non-commissioned officer's complaint states that those views were passed down from their commander to troops deployed in their "ready-support" unit, and that individual said the group was troubled by the apocalyptic religious framing of the military operation.

"I and my fellow troops know that it is completely wrong to have to suffer through what our commander said today," that non-commissioned officer said. "It’s not just the separation of church and state as we discussed Mr. Weinstein. It’s the fact that our commander feels as though he is fully supported and justified by the entire (combat unit’s name withheld) chain of command to inflict his Armageddon views of our attack on Iran on those of us beneath him in the chain of command."

Donald Trump and maga Republicans like Rep. Mike Turner in Ohio must find somebody to read this op-ed to them

Donald Trump’s doomed war in Iran 

Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe by Stephen Kinzer.

America’s interventions in the Middle East never go well.

By attacking Iran, the United States 

launched a war of choice based on false pretenses. 

Iran appears to have neither an active nuclear weapons program nor ballistic missiles that can reach Europe and the United States. Rather than make America safer, this attack further destabilizes the world’s most volatile region and sharpens America’s image as the world’s most aggressive bully.

Violently intervening in the affairs of another country makes sense under some circumstances. If a vital interest of the United States is at stake, if the intervention has a clear goal, if the American people support it, and if there is no way to achieve the desired goal through any other means, bombing could make sense. In the case of this attack on Iran, none of those conditions has been met.

There are no good outcomes to this manufactured crisis — not even for Donald Trump. His base is devoted to the Donald Trump who promised during his campaign to end “forever wars” and be a “peace president.” This war immolates that pretense once and for all. Trump may be hoping for a quick collapse of the Iranian regime and the emergence of a new one subservient to Washington, which might help him at the polls. That, however, is the least likely outcome of this misbegotten war.

Iran is the big country in the heart of the Middle East — four times the size of Iraq with twice the population. Its political system is not based on individual leaders, but on a complex and overlapping matrix of institutions that are deeply rooted in society. 

Even killing the Supreme Leader, every cabinet minister, every member of parliament, and every general would not be enough to bring down the regime. The most likely result of a decapitation campaign would be to propel the Revolutionary Guard to power, which would probably produce a regime more repressive than the mullahs have been — and more willing to develop nuclear weapons. The other possibility is civil war. An Iran in chaos is Iranians’ nightmare scenario. But, it is the dream scenario for Israel, which played a decisive role in pushing Trump to launch this war.

Israel’s influence on Trump is not simply political. It is eminently financial. Supporters of Israel have given huge amounts of money to Trump — $100 million from Miriam Adelson alone. 

Since the Supreme Court removed limits on campaign contributions in its 2010, damaging Citizens United decision, the American political system has descended into a form of legalized bribery. 

That is bad enough when corporations and billionaires use their mountains of cash to shape policies that favor them. It is even worse when campaign contributions lead the United States into war.

Iran’s leaders have calculated that they can survive a war and that they might not survive surrendering to the United States. That is based on resentment of foreign intervention that has been building in Iran since Russia sliced off pieces of its territory two centuries ago. It became especially intense after 1953, when the CIA organized a plot that ended Iran’s promising experiment with democracy.

Iran’s popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalized the country’s oil industry, which until then had been owned by the British. For that sin, the British and American secret services organized a coup to depose him. The United States placed Mohammad Reza Shah back on the Peacock Throne. He ruled with increasing repression until being overthrown in 1979. That produced the mullahs’ regime, which has spent decades working intently and sometimes violently to undermine American interests around the world. No American intervention of the 20th century produced such a powerful boomerang effect. Instead of taking it as a warning, Trump has launched another intervention that is likely to be just as self-defeating.

This war highlights the sobering reality that our political system allows a single person to launch conflicts that can devastate entire regions. America’s founders sought to prevent that by giving Congress the sole power to declare war. Congress, however, has refused to play its assigned role. 

A couple of congressmen tried to push through a resolution asserting that Trump could not bomb Iran without approval from Congress, but it was blocked by congressional leaders.

This war also shows how unable or unwilling the United States is to extract itself from the Middle East. 

Over the last quarter-century, the United States has been constantly at war there. The bombing of Iran could be seen not as a new war, but simply the latest battle in a long campaign that has already devastated Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza. The idea of withdrawing military forces from the region and allowing the countries there to resolve their own problems seems anathema in Washington. We cannot let go of our dream of a Middle East run by leaders who kowtow to Washington. That is, in no small part, why no one born in this century has ever known a time when the Middle East was at peace.

Since bombing is unlikely either to entice Iran’s leaders out of their angry isolation or to produce a less repressive regime, could any other approach work? The best hope would be a negotiated deal like the one President Obama reached in 2015. Trump, however, is pursuing a foreign policy that is largely diplomacy-free. Iranians are its latest victims.

Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

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

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

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

Killing an enemy leader often escalates conflict and chaos.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If the leader actually died, the regime would fracture.

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

But execution was never the core variable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donald Trump violates the Constitution yet again launches illegal war against Iran but Republicans have their fingers up their asses

Donald Trump’s Attack on Iran Is Reckless

Echo editorial published in The New York Times editorial:

In his 2024, presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised voters that he would end wars, not start them. Over the past year, he has instead ordered military strikes in seven nations. His appetite for military intervention grows with the eating.

Now he has ordered a new attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran, in cooperation with Israel, and Trump said it would be much more extensive than the targeted bombing of nuclear facilities in June. Yet, he started this war without explaining to the American people and the world why he was doing so. 

Nor has he involved Congress, which the Constitution grants the sole power to declare war. He instead posted a video at 2:30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, shortly after bombing began, in which he said that Iran presented “imminent threats” and called for the overthrow of its government. His rationale is dubious, and making his case by video in the middle of the night is unacceptable.

Among his justifications is the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program, which is a worthy goal. But Mr. Trump declared that program “obliterated” by the strike in June, a claim belied by both U.S. intelligence and this new attack. The contradiction underscores how little regard he has for his duty to tell the truth when committing American armed forces to battle. It also shows how little faith American citizens should place in his assurances about the goals and results of his growing list of military adventures.

Trump’s approach to Iran is reckless. His goals are ill-defined. Trump failed to line up the international and domestic support that would be necessary to maximize the chances of a successful outcome. He disregarded both domestic and international law for warfare.

The Iranian regime, to be clear, deserves no sympathy. It has wrought misery since its revolution 47 years ago — on its own people, on its neighbors and around the world. It massacred thousands of protesters this year. It imprisons and executes political dissidents. It oppresses women, L.G.B.T.Q. people and religious minorities. Its leaders have impoverished their own citizens while corruptly enriching themselves. They have proclaimed “Death to America” since coming to power and killed hundreds of U.S. service members in the region, as well as bankrolled terrorism that has killed civilians in the Middle East and as far away as Argentina.

Iran’s government presents a distinct threat because it combines this murderous ideology with nuclear ambitions. Iran repeatedly defied international inspectors over the years. Since the June attack, the government has shown signs of restarting its pursuit of nuclear weapons technology. American presidents of both parties have rightly made a commitment to prevent Tehran from getting a bomb.

We recognize that fulfilling this commitment could justify military action at some point. For one thing, the consequences of allowing Iran to follow the path of North Korea — and acquire nuclear weapons after years of exploiting international patience — are too great. For another, the costs of confronting Iran over its nuclear program look less imposing than they once did.

Iran, as David Sanger of The Times recently explained, “is going through a period of remarkable military, economic and political weakness.” Since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Israel has reduced the threats from Hamas and Hezbollah (two of Iran’s terrorist proxies), attacked Iran directly and, with help from allies, mostly repelled its response. The new recognition of Iran’s limitations helped give rebels in Syria the confidence to march on Damascus and oust the horrific Assad regime, a longtime Iranian ally. Iran’s government did almost nothing to intervene. This recent history demonstrates that military action, for all its awful costs, can have positive consequences.

A responsible American president could make a plausible argument for further action against Iran. The core of this argument would need to be a clear explanation about the strategy, as well as the justification for attacking now, even though Iran does not appear close to having a nuclear weapon. This strategy would involve a promise to seek approval from Congress and to collaborate with international allies.

Trump is not even attempting this (professionally responsible) approach. Instead, Trump is telling the American people and the world that he expects their blind trust. He has not earned that trust.

He instead treats allies with disdain. He lies constantly, including about the results of the June attack on Iran. He has failed to live up to his own promises for solving other crises in Ukraine, Gaza and Venezuela. He has fired senior military leaders for failing to show fealty to his political whims. When his appointees make outrageous mistakes — such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 🤢 sharing advanced details of a military attack on the Houthis, an Iranian-backed group, on an unsecured group chat — Trump shields them from accountability. His administration appears to have violated international law by, among other things, disguising a military plane as a civilian plane and shooting two defenseless sailors who survived an initial attack.

A responsible approach would also involve a detailed conversation with the American people about the risks. Iran remains a heavily militarized country. Its medium-range missiles may have failed to do much damage to Israel last year, but it maintains many short-range missiles that could overwhelm any defense system and hit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other nearby countries. Mr. Trump did acknowledge this in his overnight video, saying, “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties.”

He should have had the courage to say so in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, among other settings. When a president asks American troops and diplomats to risk their lives, he should not be coy about it.

Recognizing Trump’s irresponsibility, some members of Congress have taken steps to constrain him on Iran. In the House, Representatives Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, and Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, have proposed a resolution meant to prevent Trump from starting a war without congressional approval. The resolution makes clear that Congress has not authorized an attack on Iran and demands the withdrawal of American troops within 60 days. 

Senator Tim Kaine, 😇Democrat of Virginia, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, are sponsoring a similar measure in their chamber. The start of hostilities should not dissuade legislators from passing these bills. A robust assertion of authority by Congress is the best way to constrain Donald Trump.  #ImpeachTrumpNOW 

Donald Trump obviously directing Department of Justice to cover up the Epstein Trump files- Guilty of Cover Up!

Echo essay published in New York Magazine Intelligencer by 

Elie Honig:

The United States Department of Justice is getting lapped by both Congress and the British authorities on follow-up investigations around the Epstein files. There’s no excuse for either. As British police arrest astonishingly powerful men for their dealings with Jeffrey Epstein and the U.S. House of Representatives tries to force titans of finance and politics to answer tough questions, our Justice Department lags far behind. It’s not even clear the DoJ is doing anything at all.

Over in the United Kingdom., law-enforcement officials have arrested former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson. (Technically, both have been arrested but not yet formally charged, under a wrinkle in British legal procedure.) The putative defendants reportedly face potential charges of “misconduct in public office” for allegedly providing confidential government documents, including sensitive financial information about investment opportunities, to Epstein. (British authorities have accused neither man of participation in Epstein’s child sex-trafficking ring.)

The British case is based in part on emails contained in the U.S. Justice Department’s own Epstein files, which were released less than a month ago. In a matter of weeks, British police investigated and arrested a former prince (Andrew) and a lord (Mandelson); have subjected both men, and others around them, to extensive questioning; and have conducted searches at properties associated with the subjects. 

Meanwhile, the most memorable step taken by our Justice Department since the release of the files was Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s public-service announcement that “the American people need to understand that it isn’t a crime to party with Jeffrey Epstein.”

The contrast extends to the tone at the top. King Charles — an actual monarch who wears a literal crown and carries a scepter to work — has told British investigators (in American parlance) to do what you gotta do. Or, in the proper King’s English: “What now follows is the full, fair and proper process by which this issue is investigated in the appropriate manner and by the appropriate authorities. In this, as I have said before, they have our full and wholehearted support and cooperation. Let me state clearly: The law must take its course.” Other heads of state should follow the king’s hands-off example — in a case against his own brother Andrew, no less.

Donald Trump, however, isn’t quite of the same mind. He has long dismissed the Epstein case as a hoax, though it’s unclear what exactly he claims is fake. And he recently urged the American public to just get over it already. “I think it’s time now for the country to maybe get onto something else, like health care,” Trump responded when asked about the Epstein matter.

The DoJ has dutifully adopted Trump’s recommended approach: myopia blended with dissembling and a pinch of proactive excuse-making. As Blanche explained earlier this month, “There’s a lot of correspondence. There’s a lot of emails. There’s a lot of photographs. But that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.” Not exactly the tenacious prosecutorial posture Blanche and I learned during our concurrent early days at the Southern District of New York. But hey, if our Justice Department isn’t going to make meaningful use of its own Epstein files, at least others will.

And then there’s Congress, which has taken a flawed but aggressive approach to its Epstein investigation.

Although a bipartisan (but mostly Democratic) coalition of lawmakers forced passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee has pressed forward with a series of aggressive subpoenas for testimony.

Yes, the subpoenas are largely for political show, and no, the House has not extracted any damning admissions — but it’s putting powerful people on the spot and making them face meaningful questioning under oath. (Except, not Donald Trump, whose name appears in the Epstein Files too many numerous times to count.)

Last week, billionaire Les Wexner — whose name the DoJ originally redacted from a document listing him as an unindicted “co-conspirator” but then unredacted after Representative Thomas Massie publicly called out the redaction — faced five hours of questioning from the Oversight Committee. 

Wexner, a close associate of Epstein’s, claimed no knowledge of his friend’s criminality. Wexner also denied allegations that he had sexually abused Virginia Giuffre, who testified in 2016, that, as a minor, she had been trafficked to have sex with Wexner multiple times. (She died by suicide in 2025.)

The beauty of being a federal prosecutor is you don’t have to take a blanket denial as the final word, even from an arrogant billionaire. People disclaim wrongdoing all the time. Sometimes they’re telling the truth; other times they aren’t. So ordinarily, given the lead provided by Congress, DoJ prosecutors may take Wexner’s testimony and subject it to rigorous testing — talk to other witnesses, examine emails and texts, check out phone, financial, and travel records. Yet we’ve seen no indication of DoJ doing any such thing.

This week, the Clintons take their turn at the Oversight Committee’s deposition table. After a prolonged back-and-forth during which they played themselves into a strategic corner, the former First Couple relented and agreed to testify under the looming threat of a contempt-of-Congress charge supported by some bipartisan votes.

The Hillary Clinton subpoena was an obvious stretch by a congressional committee seeking to drag in a boldface name. 

Mrs. Clinton had nothing to do with Epstein; the best that Republican committee chair James Comer could do in defense of the subpoena was to note that — brace yourself — Clinton had hired Ghislaine Maxwell’s nephew to work on her 2008, presidential campaign and later at State. Yes, that’s the headliner. Clinton proceeded to tear the committee a new one with her opening statement on Thursday and, predictably, nothing of relevant substance came of her testimony.

But, Bill Clinton will have to squirm when he answers questions. The committee surely will confront the former president — a frequent flier on Epstein’s private jet — with photographs that show him partying with Epstein (not a crime, remember, per the deputy AG); swimming in a pool with Maxwell and a female whose identity has been redacted, and reclining in a hot tub at night, hands behind his head, along with a female whose image has been blacked out.

Meanwhile, we’ve seen no sign that the Justice Department has subpoenaed or otherwise sought to interview Wexner or Clinton or any other powerful Epstein associate — and certainly not the most powerful of all former Epstein pals, Trump himself. (Notably, even the aggressive House Oversight Committee hasn’t sought testimony from the current president.)

The DoJ’s apparent inaction is particularly galling given that prosecutors hold far more potent investigative tools than Congress does. Prosecutors have the vast resources of the Justice Department and FBI at their disposal, while Congress must make do with minimal investigative staff. Prosecutors can obtain search warrants and wiretaps, while Congress can’t. And prosecutorial subpoenas generally can be broader in scope than congressional subpoenas and are enforced more rigorously by the courts.

The Justice Department has been flailing for months now to justify its inactivity. Back in July 2025, top DoJ officials released a memo declaring that, after an exhaustive review of over 300 gigabytes of information, “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

Since then, the Justice Department has offered mixed messages (at best) about its ongoing investigative efforts. And while prosecutors could be moving stealthily behind the scenes, entirely undetectable to the public — I’m dubious, but it’s possible — we’ve seen zero public indication of actual in-the-field enforcement activity: no search warrants, no subpoenas, no interviews with key players, no arrests.

Meanwhile, the British authorities and Congress forge ahead. It’s an embarrassing moment for our Justice Department’s leaership and a telling indictment of its own stubborn — and perhaps purposeful — indifference.

Donald Trump gave a State of Delusion speech to Congress. Nothing was said to help Americans pay for health care!

Opinion letter published in Lancaster OnLine, in Pennsylvania:

The Media’s Failure to Correct the Republicans’ Obscene Trumpcare Lies. Trump seems to be focusing on everything but a health care plan.

For years, Donald Trump talked🤥 🙄about his fantastic health care plan. We are still waiting for that plan, but health care is not as important to him as it is to millions of Americans who face rising costs and loss of coverage. 💢

Trump appears to have too many personal items to address before he can focus on American health care. (Like his name redacted thousands of times in the Epstein Files❗)

It seems the American people will have to wait and suffer until Trump finishes his ballroom, his arch and the renovations to what he wants us to call the Trump Kennedy Center.

In addition, Trump needs funding for detention centers to house immigrants and, conceivably, American citizens who don’t meet his idea of being worthy citizens.

Let’s not forget all the tax money- more than was allocated to the United States Marine Corps❗ - needed to pay for U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (evil ICE❗) agents and federal troops who are sent to U.S. cities.

Let’s also remember that Trump seems obsessed about getting his name onto Washington Dulles International Airport, New York City’s Penn Station, naval battleships and a new NFL football stadium.

Everyone has their priorities. But, Donald Trump should put the welfare of the American people first before his own personal interests and his self-gratification.

Who would have thought that a convicted felon and man who has been found liable in civil court for sexual abuse could be such a narcissist❓

From Douglas Groover in Manor Township, Pennsylvania

Vladimir Putin may have been a formidable spy but proving to be inept as a military strategist- Ukraine Resists!

Maine Wroter: Donald Trump hardly mentioned the Ukraine during his long and boring "State of Delusion" speech to Congress on February 24, 2026. *See my note below.

Maybe a literate person in the White House can read this excellent essay to Donald Trump and also explain who Winston Churchill was.....just sayin'.:😟😧😠  "A Bitter Winter in Ukraine" by Tom Judah published in The New York Review of Books.

In August 2014, I went to see the Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov in Kyiv. Ukraine was emerging from the pro-Europe Maidan Revolution the previous winter; Russia had seized Crimea and was aiding and abetting pro-Russian rebels in the east of the country. Kurkov had just published Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev,
in which he imagined digging up potatoes at his country house in September, “regardless of the military situation,” and asked:

Where will I be❓ Where will my wife and children be in September❓ I want to believe we will be at home in Kiev, going to our country house every weekend like we usually do—grilling shashlik, gathering the harvest, making apple jam and spending the evenings in the summerhouse with a glass of wine, talking about the future.

He added, “It’s funny, but the future we talk about never seems to come.”

On the night of February 23, 2022, Kurkov invited me to dinner with friends at home in Kyiv. “I will cook borscht,” he said. The atmosphere was febrile. We made toasts “to victory” but had no idea of what was about to happen. A few hours later the Russians began their full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

For a while Kurkov set aside fiction. He wrote essays about the war, and last year he published Three Years on Fire: The Destruction of Ukraine, his fourth nonfiction book chronicling the revolution and then the war. The essays in Three Years on Fire accurately reflect the atmosphere of the Ukraine I know and have been reporting from for many years. In one he writes about a soldier who campaigned against the country’s predatory gambling industry—in the last few years gambling addiction has become a serious problem among soldiers who place bets on their phones—until he was killed in battle. In another essay we learn about the owner of the tropical fruit farm close to Kyiv who developed miniature banana trees that Ukrainians have been buying. At the beginning of the war, shelling cut the gas and electricity that kept his greenhouses warm, but he found that the trees were frost-resistant. Kurkov comments, “You could say the astonishing survival of these trees mirrors the unexpected staunchness with which Ukrainians are facing adversity.”

In January I was back in Kyiv. Kurkov and his wife had just returned from their country house. “Does the future still not come❓” I asked. Well, he said, reflecting a common feeling of resignation, “the future is just too far away. We live every day only in reality and we wait for the next morning and then we take that as reality.”

In the first part of the war in 2014–2015, it was easy for people in Kyiv to think of the fighting in the east as very far away, but four years into this second part it is anything but. In 2022 the Russians reached the outskirts of Kyiv before being driven back. 

Now Vladimir Putin and the Russians are trying to freeze Ukrainians into submission by relentlessly attacking the country’s energy grid. For much of the day there is no electricity in Kyiv or most of the rest of the country. Some 60 percent of Ukrainians get their heat and hot water from power stations, which have also been under attack. Kurkov’s radiators were cold, but he said his apartment was still warm because the building was old and took a long time to cool down. However, in many districts radiators are only lukewarm even when they are on.

When Russia began the full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukrainians at first could not believe that it was launching a war to conquer the entire country rather than a more limited operation in the Donbas region in the east. Then came fear, followed by euphoria, as the Russians were driven back that summer and winter. Many in the West admired the Ukrainians’ resilience—so many volunteered to fight that the armed forces had to turn people away, and civilians mobilized in huge numbers to help their soldiers and refugees. Later came admiration for the drone technology Ukrainians have developed, which has transformed warfare. Now things are different again. “People are changing,” said Kurkov. “Attitudes are changing, dreams and hopes are changing.”

In Kyiv it was −17 degrees Celsius (roughly 1 degree Fahrenheit), and the trees, with their bare branches coated in glistening ice, looked as if they had been turned to glass. 

Streetlights were on in some places, but others were completely dark. Kurkov described the mood as “like when you get an overdose of bad news. You stop reacting, you just accept it.” He said he had stopped counting the children of friends who had been killed in the fighting and people he knew who had died after they had stopped seeking care when they were ill, “because they think that doctors should be paying attention to wounded soldiers, not to civilians.” The nation, he said, was living through amassive nervous breakdown because people don’t see the exit from this situation. People don’t understand how it can end. And they can imagine only a very bad ending to this story, because you cannot stop the war. I mean that is not up to Ukraine.

One night, in the southeastern city of Dnipro, I was in bed working on my laptop when I heard explosions. At first I ignored them, and then I sent a WhatsApp message to my Ukrainian colleague Taras Semenyuk: “Did you hear that❓❗” He replied:

Yes- News reporting about Shaheds
It’s a massive attack going on

Shaheds are Iranian-designed drones that are now produced in Russia and are much more sophisticated, powerful, and destructive than earlier models. I checked local Dnipro channels that report where drones are and where they are heading and replied:

Yes, I can see on Telegram.  Strange my air alert did not go off.

And that was it. I went on working. For the first two years of the full-scale war Semenyuk, like many Ukrainians, was extremely anxious and always went to a shelter when there was an attack. That was not surprising. In the first weeks of the war, his apartment in Kyiv had been destroyed by a missile aimed at a nearby heating plant. It was only by chance that he was not there, and his wife and child had already left for Poland. But now, like millions of others, he just shrugs. This is not to say that people are not frightened by major drone, cruise, and ballistic missile attacks but simply that the chance of being killed or injured in one is actually quite small. According to the UN, in government-controlled territory in 2025, 2,395 civilians were killed and 11,751 injured, but 63 percent of all civilian casualties on both sides were in frontline areas. The attacks in Dnipro that night were aimed at energy facilities, and the next day there was no electricity in the city.

Russian drones and missiles are often inaccurate, says the military analyst Ivan Stupak. Between 60 and 80 percent of them are shot down, though falling debris from them also causes damage, as do Ukrainian antiaircraft misfires. For civilians it is often hard to know what hit their building. Stupak says it is possible that 10 percent of attacks target residential blocks in order to strike terror, which has the intended effect. “I don’t want to pretend we are all Rambos❗”

From Dnipro, Semenyuk and I went to Zaporizhzhia, a major industrial city on the Dnieper River. In 2022 the Russians seized roughly 75 percent of Zaporizhzhia province, including its nuclear power plant, which is the largest in Europe. It used to supply about one fifth of Ukraine’s electricity and is now shut down. The Russians failed, however, to take the city of Zaporizhzhia. Many of its people fled, but they were replaced by refugees from occupied areas. Like all big cities it has been subjected to missile and Shahed attacks, and now the Russians are creeping closer from the south. In November a southern district of the city was hit by its first FPV (first-person-view) drone attack. These are short-range drones with a video feed that are controlled by a pilot using a screen or goggles and that can chase and target individuals, unlike Shaheds and other long-range drones whose target is preset.

The telltale sign that you are within range of FPVs is netting, which snarls drones that fly into it. We drove to the village of Balabyne, a few minutes south of the outskirts of Zaporizhzhia, and found that a net tunnel had been erected to protect the entire main street. People were beginning to leave, we were told by Tetiana, who works in a local shop. The drones attack civilians and their cars for no reason, she said. There is a reason, of course: to terrorize. On social media there are endless films from FPV drones released by both Russian and Ukrainian military units that like to show off their prowess. You see the drones carefully maneuvering through windows and buildings and zeroing in on soldiers who see them and run or try to bat them off. The last image is someone’s face a split second before the drone explodes and kills them.

In towns in the east of Ukraine from which I have reported, FPV drones are an increasing menace. In Kramatorsk, which was held by pro-Russian rebels in 2014 for almost three months, people have begun to leave because of them. After Bakhmut fell in 2023 and then Avdiivka nine months later, then Pokrovsk was next. As the Russians crept closer the drones made ordinary life impossible, and now it has all but fallen. Kostyantynivka, another town I have reported from but did not name because the unit I was with did not want me to identify their location, has now become part of the drone-terrorized zone and is gradually being reduced to rubble.

Anti-drone netting protecting the main road from the Kharkiv provincial border to Sloviansk, Ukraine on January 6, 2026.

The center of Izium, southeast of Kharkiv, has also been netted up to protect people. Much of the twenty-eight miles of road from the Kharkiv provincial border southeast to Sloviansk and neighboring Kramatorsk has been turned into a net tunnel.

It is wise to take other precautions as well. Just over a year ago I wrote about traveling with soldiers with a drone detector.
That was the first time I had seen one. Now they are commonplace. The Journalists’ Solidarity Center of Kharkiv, organized by Ukraine’s journalists’ union, loaned us one. It was handheld and the screen fizzed like an old-fashioned television with no reception. If it suddenly came to life with a picture, though, that meant it had locked on to a nearby drone and we could see what its pilot was seeing. It could, of course, be flying somewhere else, but if it was flying toward us, we would have just a minute or two to find cover. At the checkpoint-cum-junction where the net tunnel between Izium and Sloviansk begins, some cars, like ours, drove straight on while others, including delivery trucks, turned off to take a detour out of Russian FPV drone range.

All these towns, except for Izium and Kharkiv, are in the Donbas, which has become a major point of contention in the peace talks among Ukraine, the US, and Russia. Vladimir Putin wants this entire rust belt region, which consists of the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk. In the military campaigns of 2014–2015 and 2022, Russia took 99 percent of Luhansk, and it now occupies about 75 percent of Donetsk. Taking the rest is Putin’s “minimum plan,” said Major Viacheslav Shutenko, the commander of the Legion North drone battalion of Ukraine’s 44th Mechanized Brigade, as he showed me the massive fortifications of razor wire, anti-infantry wire, and anti-tank ditches and berms that snake as far as the eye can see around Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. Putin desperately needs an achievement to show off to Russians, he said. After all, in the time it took the Soviet Union to recover from its initial defeats by the Germans in World War II and its men to raise their flag above the Reichstag in Berlin, Putin’s troops have failed to retake even little Kramatorsk.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has resisted ceding this territory to Russia, and there has been vague talk of turning it into a “free economic zone” and of “demilitarization.” Since the biggest local industries have always been mining and old-fashioned heavy manufacturing, it is hard from here to see why anyone would invest in the Donbas in the future, although clearly things look different from Mar-a-Lago. Yet it is obvious why handing it over to the Russians or demilitarizing it without rock-solid security guarantees is a trap. Major Shutenko and I stood on the crest of a hill from which, beyond this so-called fortress belt, Ukraine is as flat as a pancake for more than six hundred miles, all the way to the Polish border. The Dnieper, which flows from the north down to the Black Sea, divides all of Ukraine, including Kyiv, into two parts and is the only natural barrier after these soft, rolling hills.

No one I have met in Ukraine believes that a cease-fire will come this year or would be anything other than a limited truce, as the one in 2015 was, rather than part of a full peace deal. If Ukraine were forced to accept a truce that included handing over to Russia the last bit of the Donbas that Ukraine controls, which is what the US has been reported to have demanded, it would be akin to Czechoslovakia being forced by France and Britain to hand over the Sudetenland to Germany in 1938, despite the fortifications it had built in those border areas. As a result the Czechoslovaks could not defend themselves when Hitler proceeded to take over the rest of the country a few months later. Yevhen Hlibovytsky, the director of the Frontier Institute, says, “Russia won’t want a deal unless it becomes really vulnerable, and if it does, then Ukraine won’t want one.”

Hlibovytsky may be right, but Ukrainians are struggling to survive the slow erosion of their economic and military capabilities. They lack men, they lack energy, and their economy is being ground down. The Russians are advancing very slowly and tens of thousands of them are dying in the process, but there is no evidence that Putin cares. Apart from the energy grid, says Stupak, the Russians are now choosing high-value targets like ballistic and cruise missile plants rather than trying to take out the hundreds of small drone companies. Although such matters are a tightly guarded secret, it is likely that the Russians have caused significant damage to military production, but thus far he has not heard of any disruption of drone and ammunition deliveries to the front. And the Russians have not broken Ukrainian morale.

At the front both Ukraine and Russia have been making up for flagging numbers by recruiting thousands of foreigners. Ukraine does this because its mobilization system is inefficient, nontransparent, and sometimes corrupt. Clips on social media of men being chased, caught, and bundled into vans by recruitment officers are a boon for Russian propaganda, and grabbing people off the streets who don’t want to fight is a poor way of replenishing the ranks. Putin, meanwhile, does not want to risk unpopularity by drafting people rather than offering recruits huge salaries compared with what they can earn in their often far-flung and poor provincial regions. Today 30 percent of Russian troops captured or surrendering to Ukrainian forces may be Africans and other foreigners, depending on the location. On the Ukrainian side, one of the largest contingents of foreigners fighting for money is from Colombia.

Ugandans and other Africans, who are derided on social media as “disposables” by Russians filming them, are unlikely to change the course of the war, though North Koreans did help eject the Ukrainians from Russia’s Kursk region, which they had briefly occupied in the summer of 2024. In any case, Putin now seems to be counting on the winter to swing things in his favor, just as it helped Russia defeat Hitler and Napoleon before him. But Ukrainians are used to winter combat, so the result may be different this time.

Just before the full-scale invasion started, Ukraine had 33.7 gigawatts of electrical generation capacity; in early January it had only fourteen gigawatts, and if the winter remains as exceptionally cold as it has been, it will need seventeen gigawatts to keep electricity flowing 24/7. Not all the loss of generation capacity can be attributed to destruction. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which has been another point of dispute in the peace talks, used to provide six gigawatts and could again.

In the past Ukraine produced more electricity than it needed and even exported some. Now its surplus capacity has been destroyed, and its energy officials are scouring the rest of Europe and farther afield for replacement equipment. Russia, meanwhile, is changing its tactics. Previously it concentrated its attacks on large power plants that had relatively good air defenses. Now it has switched to targeting some 3,500 smaller substations that are the essential links between the power plants and consumers.

From the news coverage, one might have the impression that all Ukrainians are hapless victims freezing in the dark. In fact, extremely difficult though this winter is proving to be, four years into the war most Ukrainians have made some sort of preparations to help them get through power outages, especially if they have some money. Power companies publish schedules showing when districts will have power, which allows people to plan their days, although in mid-January this system broke down in Kyiv, and on January 20 many in the capital woke up to find that temporarily they had no water either.

Shops have generators, small industries have invested in battery capacity, and larger companies have installed their own electricity production facilities using natural gas. Everyone has power banks, rechargeable lamps are common, and those who can afford them have bought large portable batteries commonly known as EcoFlows, after the best-known brand. In apartment buildings residents have often joined together to buy generators to keep elevators and heat pumps working. Getting stuck on higher floors is a real problem for the elderly and families with small children.

“We are holding on, but people are getting angrier and angrier,” said Valentina, a kindergarten teacher I met, along with her five-year-old daughter, as she was charging her phone and power banks in a well-heated orange tent erected by the emergency services in Rusanivka, a neighborhood of Kyiv. In the next tent I met a couple of cheerful pensioners who told me it was only 13 degrees Celsius (around 55 degrees Fahrenheit) in their apartments. When I asked why there were not many people in the tents trying to keep warm, they said it was not necessary because everyone in the area had gas stoves and if you kept them on then you could at least keep your kitchen warm.

Ukrainians might be resilient, but attacks on the energy system and other targets are harming the economy. According to Andrii Dligach, who heads a coalition of business associations, attacks and power outages shaved 0.6 percent off Ukraine’s GDP in the last quarter of 2025. When sirens sound in the center of Kyiv, for example, McDonald’s loses business, as does the Globus Mall next door, because its scores of shops and cafés close. Many other shops and restaurants stay open, though. The McDonald’s at the Lukianivska metro station opposite the Artem defense complex, which has been targeted several times, has installed shatterproof windows. The plate glass windows of the metro, long since blown out, have just been boarded up. Dmytro, the owner of a chain of shoe shops, said that all his colleagues agree that the last few months have been the hardest since the full-scale invasion began: “When it is cold at home and when you have no power, you are just not in the mood to go shopping.”

Some are also not in the mood to stay in the country. Dmytro said that in the last few weeks two of his shop assistants had decided to leave. One was going because her entire family was already abroad, and another was taking her twenty-two-year-old son out of Ukraine. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion men age eighteen to sixty have not been allowed to travel abroad without an exemption. In August the lower limit was changed to twenty-three. Men can be mobilized at the age of twenty-five. While I was writing this in Lviv, in Ukraine’s west, I was asked to give a talk to journalism students at the city’s Ukrainian Catholic University. Journalism courses have always attracted more girls than boys there, I was told, but among the twenty students in the room, there was not a single boy. The last few had left when the travel age limit changed. Tens of thousands of young men are estimated to have gone since August.

An opinion poll published at the end of January found that 65 percent of Ukrainians were willing “to endure the war” for “as long as it takes.” But Ukraine cannot fight alone. The US is no longer supplying much equipment directly; instead it is selling it to NATO countries, which then pass it on to Ukraine. “The war costs us nothing,” boasted Donald Trump in an interview with The New York Times in early January. “We make money with the war now.” What the US does continue to supply, though, is satellite military intelligence. It is crucial for the guidance of Ukraine’s deep-strike drones, which are inflicting heavy damage on Russia’s oil installations.

Still, Ukraine could become collateral damage from utterly unrelated events. On January 9 Trump provoked the worst crisis in transatlantic relations in our time by insisting that if the US could not acquire Greenland “the easy way,” it would have to get it “the hard way.” On January 21 he said he would not use force, but his demands helped accelerate the loss of the Europeans’ trust in the US as an ally. In the preceding weeks Britain and France thought they had received assurances from Washington that it would participate in security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of a cease-fire, though it would not send troops. Kurkov remarked of Trump that “nobody believes he is willing to do anything” about Ukraine because he was trying to “copycat [Putin] by going into Venezuela and with his desire to take over Greenland.”

After the Greenland crisis erupted, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, (in a not so well veiled threat).... “The European leaders will come around…. What would happen in Ukraine if the US pulled its support out❓ The whole thing would collapse.” 

No. In fact, Ukraine would probably not collapse, but defending it and shoring up its economy, military, and morale would certainly become harder, and anti-Western sentiment there would grow if defeats were ascribed to a stab in the back by the US and weak Europeans.

As the Arctic crisis unfolded, the glee in the Russian press about Trump’s demands and the damage done to NATO could hardly be contained. But Hlibovytsky said that Ukrainians do not have the luxury of worrying about all that: “We accept these things the same way we accept the weather.” Then he cautioned:

There is an error in the calculus of many Western politicians that the alternative to not helping Ukraine is the status quo and that if they don’t help then everything stays the same. No, it doesn’t. If they don’t help Ukraine, the hidden cost that they will have to face is so tremendous that if their societies would be aware of that cost, they would probably wish that the governments of the Western countries did more.

Those hidden costs could include, for example, open Russian attacks on NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) countries such as the Baltics and Poland.

In gas stations across Ukraine you can buy the Ukrainian translation of former British prime minister Boris Johnson’s biography of Winston Churchill. It does not take much imagination to connect the historical dots. After the Czechoslovaks were betrayed in 1938, Churchill famously told Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.” When you stand on a hill in the Donbas it is very easy to see that, as Mark Twain is reputed to have said, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

—February 11, 2026

*Pope Leo XIV sent 80 generators to Ukraine to help citizens battle the freezing temperatures, according to Vatican News. The Pope responded to appeals from several bishops, with temperatures dropping to -15C and some families having to find warmth in heated shelters with the help of generators. Feb 13, 2026