Donald Trump has no bottom to his disdain for law or the people who he decides to trample on in his campaign angry screeds

Echo opinion letter published in the Reading-Eagle a Pennsylvania newspaper:

Donald Trump relies on a malignant combination: dismantling our Constitution and vital institutions, creating a culture of fear, uncertainty, anxiety and polarization.

Trump believes the Constitution, laws, courts, and moral human decencies do not apply to him; comes across as a narcissist, compulsive liar and bigot and is corrupt and vindictive. 

Donald Trump mocked the disabled and Senator John McCain’s torture, called immigrants vermin and garbage and Black people “low IQ.” He has been found guilty or liable for fraud, sexual abuse and defamation. He called January 6, 2001, a “day of love” and pardoned those responsible for the insurrection.

We have a system in which the president is the military commander-in-chief, can pardon those who break the law on his behalf and is protected by an ineffectual impeachment process. Supreme Court decisions expanded presidential powers and immunity to an uncontainable point. Federal and state lawmakers and other government officials are betraying their constitutional oaths.

Trump executes his authoritarian agenda via denial, hypocrisy, ignorance, fear, hate and chaos; fomenting violence; denying constitutional and human rights; manufacturing enemies, scapegoats, crises and conspiracy theories; attacking the media; spreading disinformation; suppressing dissent and truth; rewriting history; denying science; undermining and attacking free elections; using blackmail; and the cooperation of the Cabinet, Congress and officials in his administration.

Abraham Lincoln said, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” We must hold Trump and his minions legally and morally accountable for their illegal actions.

From: Ward Becker in Maxatawny Township,  Pennsylvania

Does anybody in the White House have the courage to read the New York Times editorial board to stupid illiterate Donald Trump? IDTS

Trump has encouraged voters to pretend he is on the ballot for the November 3, midterm elections, and this time we can agree with his political advice. 😝

Echo❗ New York Times must read Editorial Board❗

Americans should be thinking about the corrupt Trump administration when they vote for members of Congress and state officials.

Voters should keep in mind Trump’s failure to keep his campaign promises, his attempts to undermine American democracy and his flagrant corruption. 

Voters should be thinking of the Republican Party’s acquiescence to this abuse of power, and they should hold Republicans accountable. Today’s Democratic Party has plenty of flaws, including a disappointing failure to present a coherent agenda of its own. 

Nevertheless, the Democrats offer the only alternative this year to the damage that Mr. Trump and his party have inflicted on the nation. A vote for a Democratic candidate is the best way for Americans to repudiate the Trump administration’s performance over the past two years.

If Democrats retake both houses of Congress, and more state governments than they now control, it will tell the world that Mr. Trump does not represent most Americans. It will demonstrate that a country that starts to slide toward autocracy can move back to normalcy, as happened in Hungary this spring. Most important, it will create a desperately needed check on Trump during his final two years in office.

Take a moment to imagine how Washington could change if Democrats win control of the House of Representatives.

Trump’s legislative ambitions will be largely ended; he will not be able to pass more tax cuts that worsen the national debt. Democrats can instead use must-pass spending bills to restore money that was improperly cut from Medicaid, schools, scientific research and disease prevention. And Congress will finally have committee chairs who seek to exercise their constitutional duty to hold the president and his appointees responsible for their actions, through the use of hearings, subpoenas and more. 

Even if Trump and his aides illegally defy subpoenas, the House can summon corporate executives and others who have enabled him.

If Democrats take the Senate, they will be able to do more. As the body that confirms nominees for top administration jobs and the judiciary, the Senate can stop Trump from appointing unqualified cabinet members like Todd Blanche, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and ideologues like Russ Vought. 

Senators can insist on federal judges who, while surely conservative, will uphold the law. Many judges appointed by previous Republican presidents have honorably done so in recent years, but some Trump appointees have failed to meet this basic standard. The Senate’s confirmation role will be particularly important if any Supreme Court vacancies arise in the next two years.

Regardless, Trump will almost certainly continue to do damage in office. He will issue executive orders and conduct foreign policy, and he may defy congressional authority in ways that violate tradition or the law. Yet the difference between a government completely run by a political party in thrall to him and a government with an empowered opposition is profound. Americans now have an opportunity to register their displeasure with his conduct, and they should seize it.

It is worth taking a moment to review the records of both Trump and congressional Republicans since he returned to office in January 2025.

In a 21-month span, he has done more harm to democracy and the rule of law than any other president in the modern era ❗💥and perhaps longer than that. He has broken his oath to defend the Constitution by trying to rewrite it on his own. 

Trump has refused to honor Congress’s power of the purse and misused national security laws for political ends. He has defied federal court orders on Medicaid funding, deportation orders and more. He has dismantled the Justice Department’s legacy as an impartial enforcer of federal law, turning it into an instrument of retribution against his adversaries while canceling investigations into his allies. He appointed inept sycophants to oversee crucial government functions, including law enforcement, national defense and public health. He sought to disenfranchise large numbers of voters, claiming fraud that cannot be found, and championed an extreme new approach to partisan gerrymandering. He has physically besmirched the White House by demolishing the East Wing and financing a garish renovation with donations from wealthy allies.

In foreign affairs, Trump has wasted lives and military resources on a miscalculated and illegal war with Iran, a strategic blunder that has forced a global retreat of American power. He left the United States less prepared for future conflicts. He has left the United States isolated and vulnerable, by alienating longtime allies. He has weakened Ukraine in its heroic fight against Russia and cozied up to evil President Vladimir Putin.

On the economy, his policies have raised the cost of living, contributing to a decline in real wages. Interest rates are up. Economic growth and job growth are down. He has handed out billions to the wealthy and large corporations, leaving the rest of us with the tab, through a national debt that now exceeds 💲40 trillion.(By the way, that's 12 zeros❗)

Trump created a culture of corruption and avarice with no precedent. He pardoned political cronies, violent felons among them. He used the levers of power, including regulatory oversight and diplomacy, to bring in billions of dollars of profit for his family business and his closest supporters. In 2025, alone, Trump's business empire earned 💲2.24 billion, nearly two-thirds of it from cryptocurrency, which Mr. Trump’s executive branch is supposed to be regulating.

What has the Republican-controlled Congress done to rein in these abuses❓ Virtually nothing. With only a few exceptions, the Senate has approved inept cabinet members and agency heads and then stood by as they rounded up legal immigrants, brought ludicrous criminal charges against political opponents, depleted the military of top talent and spurned the scientific consensus on the need for vaccines.

No congressional committee has demanded an accounting for the destruction of the United States Agency for International Development, which is leading to needless misery and death in other countries. Nor has Congress fought back against the shrinking of other federal agencies that it created and that the Trump White House unilaterally defunded. No committee has investigated the Trump family’s enrichment and self-dealing, though it is vastly worse than Hunter Biden’s schemes of familial exploitation, which Republicans rightly denounced.

A determined Congress could have tried to prevent the two presidential decisions most responsible for the inflation that has imperiled Republican political prospects: starting a war against Iran and imposing tariffs on global imports. Republican leaders didn’t even try. A handful of Republican legislators joined Democrats in passing resolutions against the war, but party leaders opposed the efforts and made sure they remained toothless.

Republican majorities in the House and Senate do not even seem to care when Trump casts aside laws that they passed themselves. In September, Congress passed a bill enabling tighter sanctions on Russia’s energy exports, and the president signed it. When he later changed his position and said he would not enforce the sanctions, only a small number of Republicans objected, none of them in leadership.

The current Congress is the second least productive on record, passing fewer bills than any other save its immediate predecessor, the 118th Congress, in 2023, and 2024, when Republicans also controlled the House. The most significant piece of legislation that the 119th Congress passed is the law that Trump insisted be called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In truth, it is mostly a handout to the wealthy, which worsens both the national debt and economic inequality.

The Republican congressional candidates on the ballot this year deserve to pay a price for both the damage their party has done and the damage it has failed to stop. In the face of a power-grabbing president, they have mostly shown cowardice. The Constitution envisions the legislative branch as the first among equals in the government’s power-sharing system; James Madison said that it “necessarily predominates.”

This Congress enthusiastically ceded its power. It is Congress that has the power of the purse, the power to declare war, the power to determine who enters the country, the power to levy duties and tariffs. Its current leaders have instead become bystanders to Trump’s assertions of executive supremacy. Having signed on to Trump’s cult of personality, a vast majority of congressional Republicans are now loath to break with it, fearing the president will destroy their political careers and subject them to harassment, as he has done to others in the party.

Trump has become so unpopular that this year’s elections appear likely to be competitive across much of the country, including traditionally red Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio and Texas. But even Americans who live in reliably blue or red areas should feel motivated to vote.

Beyond Congress, governors and state legislatures can also play an important role in constraining Trump’s authoritarian impulses. They can block his calls for extreme partisan gerrymandering, his efforts to restrict mail voting and his election meddling. Local officials can push back against the abuses of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They can go to court to block his illegal funding cuts and usurpations of state authority. They can act in the interest of the people even as Trump pursues his own interests at public expense.

If any Republican officials on your ballot have consistently stood up to Trump on these matters, you should consider rewarding their political courage. In most state and local races, though, constraining his overreach will require voting Democratic. There are now 23 states where Republicans control both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s seat; several of those “trifectas” are at risk, including those in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and New Hampshire.

When a democracy begins to slide toward autocracy, legislative elections offer the most significant potential turning point. If voters endorse the new regime — or the party in power manages to subvert the popular will — the slide can accelerate. If voters successfully reject the regime, democracy can begin to recover. The United States will be stronger if the 2026, midterms are such a turning point.

Even if Trump’s party loses badly, the country will face enormous challenges. Our political system, with its gerrymandered districts and unrepresentative Senate and Electoral College, was insufficiently democratic even before he weakened it. Our economy is grossly unequal. The planet is warming. China and Russia are newly aggressive. Artificial intelligence presents a threat that may define this century. Still, the best hope for addressing these challenges is a functioning government, rather than one befouled by corruption, incompetence and abuse of power.

Only voters can provide a counterweight. They have a chance to demonstrate next Tuesday that dereliction of constitutional duty can likewise end a politician’s career.

Trump has dominated American politics for more than a decade, and the Republican Party has been his eager accomplice in degrading the nation’s ideals. The American people have a chance over the next week to speak in a clear voice. If they do, they can allow the nation to glimpse the end of the Trump era and the start of something brighter.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must accept the 2026 mid-term election results as a message to stop Trump's betrayals

Trump looks to plunge us deeper into a misconceived Iran war after the midterms.  Echo opinion published in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Trudy Rubin. 

The Iran war will not end Tehran's nuclear program, but may push hard-liners to sprint for a bomb.
Donald Trump famously declared in his 2024, election victory speech that he was “not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars.” 

Trump constantly denounced the “forever wars” started by past presidents.

“We had no wars,” he proclaimed about his first term during an October 2024, campaign rally at State College, Pa. “We had peace through strength. I will not send [your kids] to fight and die in a foolish never-ending foreign war.”

The biggest irony of the 2026, midterms, then, is that the GOP’s prospects are being hammered by the impact of Trump’s war with Iran, which has dragged on for eight months with no end in sight.

Yet the real story of this misconceived conflict is even bigger than the economic damage it has done to energy prices around the globe and to the overall American cost of living. 

Trump’s illegal war of choice has exposed — with the clarity of the screen dropping in front of the Wizard of Oz — a president with no clue how to make peace through strength.

The Iran war is one of impulse, started with no apparent forethought about strategic consequences, on the false premise it would end quickly. And the president has no coherent Plan B to extricate himself from his self-made mess.

Before U.S. voters go to the polls, they should take a good look at what Trump has already wrought in the Middle East region. Unless a new Congress can rein him in, he appears set to attack Iran again in a strike that will only add to America’s military and economic problems.

Let me say here that I believe the murderous regime in Tehran is a blight on its people, and the region and should not have nuclear weapons. But the issue is how to prevent that without making the situation worse.

Embroiled in battle:  Disdaining expertise, Trump made a quick decision to illegally go to war with Iran early this year after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured him that the regime could be changed quickly and a malleable leader put in place.

The backstory, which there is no space to detail here, was so crazy that anyone with a modicum of Iran knowledge would have recognized it as a no go.

But, of course, Trump relies on his own smarts.

The surprise February illegal attack took place while U.S.-Iran negotiations were ongoing, which negotiator Oman thought were making substantial progress.

But Trump, entranced by the quick extraction of Nicolás Maduro from Caracas in January, confused Iran with Venezuela. 

Instead of his (and Netanyahu’s) fantasy of a U.S.-friendly government in Tehran, hard-line military commanders have taken over Iranian leadership from assassinated ayatollahs.

“The lesson they’ve taken from the last year,” the excellent Iran analyst Karim Sadjadpour told a Carnegie Endowment webinar this week “is that you don’t win concessions from Donald Trump by compromising and taking a step back.”

The U.S.-Iran war is not focused now on eliminating Iran’s nuclear program — no matter what Trump says — but on ending the fighting over the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran can still strike international oil tankers.

Tehran never blocked the strait before the war, but since the war began has realized it can keep passage through the Persian Gulf so risky that insurance and tanker costs remain sky high. So does the price of gas and oil. Add to that, when the U.S. bombs Iran, Tehran takes out its reprisals against the energy facilities of America’s oil-rich allies in the Gulf, guaranteeing energy prices don’t fall far.

This is why Trump’s apparent plan to bomb Iran again, after the midterms, is so dangerous — and so foolish.

Bombing from the air won’t unearth the hidden enriched uranium. Moreover, the president’s threat to use a “bunker buster” bomb rings hollow because that weapon can’t penetrate deeply enough to destroy Iran’s nuclear site under Pickaxe Mountain.

More bomb strikes would lead to Iranian reprisals against Gulf oil nations and against U.S. bases that still aren’t sufficiently protected against Iranian drones.

Trump’s search for the quick fix, with no backup plan or coherent strategy is a self-defeating way to wage a war.

“I don’t see any possibility of what President Trump is looking for, which is like a knockout punch, a military strike that will essentially force the Iranians into a compromise or capitulation,” Sadjadpour said.

Instead, a post-midterms strike is more likely to increase Mideast and energy-market chaos, unless a new Congress and an angry public can finally check Trump.

Easy obsession: What’s crazy making is that Trump had the means to keep Iran’s nuclear plan under control without plunging into a new forever war. 

Instead, the new hard-line rulers are more likely to sprint for a bomb.

America’s satellite eyes in the sky could have monitored Tehran’s nuclear sites, which had been damaged b U.S. and Israeli bombs in 2025. Precise strikes could have checked any efforts to dig out the enriched uranium. With those under control, the president could have pursued tighter sanctions on Iran’s oil sales, and, eventually, restarted nuclear negotiations as the squeeze on that country’s economy worsened.

But Trump’s obsession with the easy win makes him prefer the military option. His delusions about his own brilliance put our military and our economy at risk for serious harm❗

These same delusions about the quick fix are obvious whenever he brags about achieving “peace through strength.” He constantly insists that he has ended eight wars — which fact checks quickly show is nonsense.

Two of the eight conflicts on his list weren’t wars; five (including the Gaza war) have stalemated; and his role in one — a border ceasefire between India and Pakistan — is disputed by the Indian government.

Perhaps his ugliest delusion is to believe he can end the war between aggressor Russia and Ukraine by selling out Kyiv to Vladimir Putin. He has ghoulishly claimed that “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine”🤥 ❗🙄at the same time Moscow was bombing women and children, including a baby in a stroller 😢.

Trump’s chief “peace” negotiator, Steve Witkoff, slavishly praised Putin Wednesday as a “humanitarian” — at the same time as Russia was bombing apartment buildings in Kyiv. The Soviet phrase for starry eyed Westerners who blindly swallowed Kremlin propaganda was “useful idiot.” It seems brutally appropriate here.

Meanwhile, Trump and Elon Musk continue to trade blame for downgrading Ukraine’s critical Starshield internet coverage, which still had not been fully restored as of Saturday. Meantime, the Pentagon still refuses to let European nations transfer Patriot missiles to Ukraine that the Europeans already paid for. Officials from Trump to Secretary of State Marco Rubio lie about condemning Ukrainians to preventable death.

Of course, seeking “peace through strength” is exactly what Kyiv is doing in its brave struggle to hold off Russian aggression. If Trump understood the phrase he would be helping Ukraine, and he could gain the credit for truly standing by his slogan.

“But my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff,” Trump famously told MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

That is why we should be very afraid if the next elected Congress is unable to restrain Trump from plunging further into this unnecessary war.

Republicans must put an end to Donald Trump's illegal activities and support our nation's election laws: accept the outcomes

Tech threats during campaign events.

Echo opinion published in the Philadelphia Inquirer: 

In raising the possibility of a Donald Trump-led coup if Democrats gain control of one or both chambers of Congress, Inquirer columnist Will Bunch asks whether Americans would come together to stop such an unthinkable act.

I wonder if we could, given how much we’ve come to depend on digital technology for both information and communication.

Meta’s deactivation of the No Kings Coalition’s Instagram account on Oct. 17 should scare anyone who wants to protect democracy and the free flow of information. Regardless of whether this incident was a mistake, as Meta maintains, it shows what Big Tech can do if it allows itself to become one of the Trump regime’s most useful tools.

Of course, I also worry about the harm Congress would continue to rubber-stamp if it remains in GOP hands. And I long for the days when elections were routine matters, not something to fear regardless of the outcome.

From: Lisa Von Ahn, in Pottsville, Pennsylvania

Donald Trump’s illegal actions:

•  undermining our voting system, 
• attacking the judiciary and the press 
• weaponizing the Justice Department, etc. — to the 
• potential creation of a totalitarian state 
• Trump’s imperialistic ambitions, which we see in his attack on Venezuela to seize the country’s oil 
• decrease in our critical support for Ukraine
• inhumane strangulation of Cuba 
• ongoing conflict with Canada 
• the quest to control Greenland

Added to these ominous signs, is the fact that those around Trump are involved in initiating, participating in, or approving these actions, including the GOP-controlled Congress. It brings to mind a goal of an attempt to divide up the world among dictators: Russia gets Europe, China gets Asia, and the U.S. gets North, Latin, and South America. Horror of all horrors. 

We Americans must recognize that the threats to our democracy and the world order are obvious. The coming elections will be critical. We desperately need leaders who will break the growing misdirection of our country.

From:  Luis W. Morales, Paoli

Donald Trump continues to illegally threaten mid term 2026 election integrity

Echo New York Times opinion by Nicholas Kristof

America’s midterm 2026, elections will probably be determined primarily by issues like affordability. But what is at stake goes far beyond the quotidian concerns that many voters are focused on.

The principles and strategies that over multiple generations have made the United States the world’s leading nation in effect are on the ballot, and these midterms mark a potential turning point.

Let’s focus on three pillars that explain the rise, strength and resilience of our nation.

First is education: The United States pioneered mass education in the 19th century and today operates great universities and research institutions that are among the nation’s crown jewels. These have given us an edge in the global economic competition. Yet President Trump, with the acquiescence of congressional Republicans, is vandalizing education, from Head Start for 4-year-olds living in poverty to elite universities researching new treatments for cancer.

Trump is trying to dismantle the Department of Education, cut student aid and slash support for the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. His war on America’s leading universities is particularly alarming, for he has variously attempted to defund them, cancel their tax-exempt status and make it harder for foreign students to enroll.

“The U.S. is committing suicide,” Yasheng Huang, a professor at M.I.T., told me, referring to the Trumpian campaign to demonize higher education and hobble cutting-edge research.

Another source of American greatness that Trump is throttling is immigration. The United States gained immensely from successive waves of newcomers from around the world, often arriving destitute and without English (like my father in 1952) but lifting their families up over a generation or two. One reason we’re a global leader in science and technology is that we’ve been able to recruit the brightest minds and hardest workers from across the globe.

When I lived in China decades ago, I was an interviewer of applicants to Harvard, and one of the students I told the university it would be lucky to have was a brilliant young woman named Sofie Qiao. She was admitted and went on to earn a Ph.D. and become an American. Today she is a serial biotechnology entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, helping develop treatments for breast and prostate cancers and for mesothelioma. She is now helping save the lives of other Americans.

Under Trump, fewer of today’s "Sofies" are coming to America. The number of international students arriving in August 2025, for the fall semester dropped by almost one-fifth, and the number in August 2026 fell by another 12 percent.

A third pillar that has made America the world’s leading country is the bundle of norms that govern our politics, economics and society.

Until Trump came along, I believed it was laws and the Constitution that were the country’s primary guardrails, but as I’ve seen how Trump has bullied his way past Congress and the courts, I’ve come to think that norms are just as important in underpinning democracy and economic strength. I’m thinking of simple traditions — such as that presidents will honor election results, won’t persecute rivals and will refrain from starting reckless trade wars with, well, everyone.

Norms of self-restraint historically made the system work. 

Presidents did not try to crush law firms or universities, nor did their administrations mislead federal courts or send armed officers into cities, where they shot people. Presidents quarreled with allies but didn’t threaten to invade Greenland.

Trump has tried to pulverize those norms by vilifying immigrants, denigrating women and threatening to “annihilate” Iran. Just this month, he called a female federal judge a “crazed lunatic.”

“The vitriol is toxic,” says David Beasley, the former Republican governor of South Carolina, “and it is undeniably feeding into the hearts, minds and souls of Americans.”

Trump is attempting to establish what feels to me like a personality cult, putting his name on the Kennedy Center and his photo on national park passes and some passports; I’m reminded of Bangladesh under its last dictator, who had herself named “mother of humanity” and put her picture and her father’s everywhere. Other presidents redecorated; but, Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House. Worse, he is building a ballroom and aims to construct a so-called Arc de Trump.

Then there’s the greed, on a new level altogether. Trump reaped at least 💲2.2 billion last year, in his first year back in the White House, much of it from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses, a Times analysis found. That’s more than 💲6 million per day. When Amazon reportedly paid 💲40 million to acquire the Melania Trump documentary, I recalled covering corruption in Indonesia in the 1990s, when the wife of the president, Madame Tien, was nicknamed Madame Tien Percent.

The mix of grandiosity, authoritarianism and sleaze dribbling out of the White House is polluting government, civil society and the economy. Having spent much of my journalistic career reporting in two-bit dictatorships, I see so much that is familiar; it’s heartbreaking to see this unfold in my own country.

Trump has worked to undermine the entire international system the United States created after World War II — for our benefit and the world’s — to promote peace, trade, prosperity and health. Ebola, poverty and Vladimir Putin are beneficiaries. Imagine if in 1943 President Franklin Roosevelt had abandoned Britain and switched to back the Third Reich; that is a bit like Trump’s seeming pivot from Ukraine to Russia.

We may not have reached bottom. A particularly dangerous step would be for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and dispatch troops to crush protests or seize ballot boxes. 💢❗Asked about the Insurrection Act, Trump told Time magazine: “I could use it. A lot of people think I should use it sometimes.”

None of this is normal. We are betraying other countries but also our own history and culture. I always wondered what citizens of ancient Rome, a proud and sophisticated empire, thought when one of their crazy emperors came to power; now I have a glimmer of understanding.

“This is the greatest heist in the history of the world: stealing America,” the singer Bono said of what has unfolded. “Everything we love is on the line,” he told me.

So those are the stakes in this election: Will we accept the loss❓ Or will we try to get our nation back❓

Donald Trump must have congressional guard rails because he has driven America "off the rails" he must become a lame duck

Neither political party has the best answer for our political system: President Biden didn’t on border control and Donald Trump is now off the rails.  Opinion letter published in TribLive.com

Trump wanted to give the 1,240 January 6 convicts 💲1.76 billion for the attempted assassination of Vice President Mike Pence, injuring police officers and trashing the houses of Congress. Our congressman Guy Reschenthaler has no spine and gave Trump a green light on inflation, multiple military and trade wars, mismanagement of ICE, major corruption, and now sleeping with dictators like Putin, Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping.

Elect Democrats who have experiences grounded in service to our country and who support the U.S. military. Trump must have guardrails imposed during the next two years. 

Democrats will put America on the right track towards democracy again.  

From: Dale Dix in Hempfield Pennsylvania

Vote Blue:  Let's make sure Donald Trump is a lame🦆 duck❕

Donald Trump has eroded American influence in Europe and prevents him from garnering support to end Russian aggression in Ukraine

Trump Is Still Chasing His Yalta. Here’s What He Doesn’t Get.

By Michael Kimmage, a historian of the Cold War, is an expert on U.S.-Russian relations.

In February 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met at the Crimean city of Yalta to lay out the shape of postwar Europe. Yalta is typically used as a metaphor for appeasement or cynical realpolitik, and it is both. But it is also a metaphor for consequential diplomacy. The agreements made presaged a Europe separated into different zones, a state of affairs that lasted until the Central and Eastern European revolutions of 1989.

Donald Trump has been searching for his Yalta in the war in Ukraine since the start of his second term. It’s easy to see why: It could be an appealingly simple, Trumpian transaction, in which the leaders of great powers sit down and determine a course, while minor powers must take what they are given. Like F.D.R., Trump is willing to compromise on behalf of others. F.D.R. did not insist on full autonomy for Poland and the Baltic republics in 1945, and Trump has made it clear that he would accept truncated Ukrainian autonomy.

Though at times Trump’s nonlinear foreign policy has favored Ukraine, when it comes to negotiating an end to the war, Mr. Trump has done almost nothing to empower or include Ukraine and its European partners. His efforts to lay out the shape of postwar Europe are always directed toward President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who, in Trump’s reading of the world, is understood as the leader of a country with the entitlements of a great power. 

After almost two years of this, Trump has succeeded not in resolving the conflict, but rather in making the United States a sideshow to the actual process of peace.

We are in the throes of another such attempt. Trump has called for a change of presidents in Ukraine.🙄❗💢

According to Kyiv, the White House has also curbed Ukraine’s access to Starlink satellite internet and delayed the delivery of Patriot interceptor missiles. U.S. officials deny any disruptions. Simultaneously, Trump has been upgrading relations with Russia, with a deal to purchase Russian diesel and exempting it from new sanctions. Reports of a great-power conference between the United States, Russia and China on the sidelines of a larger summit scheduled for next month conjure a 21st-century Yalta, with China substituted for Britain.

Any such framework for peace in Ukraine is destined for irrelevance. Russia is not basking in the kind of overwhelming victory that gave the Soviet Union its leverage in 1945; it has experienced something much closer to defeat in Ukraine. Mr. Putin is trying to transform an unwon war into diplomatic concessions that the United States has no authority to give — and no ability to deliver.

Eight decades ago, the United States commanded two assets in Europe. One was an immense military presence augmented by the fact that the United States was about to become the world’s sole nuclear power. Having helped to liberate most of Europe from fascism, the United States also enjoyed widespread trust and moral prestige. 

But, Trump has devastated America’s reputation in Europe. He has imposed aggressive tariffs and made territorial threats to Greenland and plans to significantly decrease the U.S. military presence. In Europe, the United States is a fading power, not an ascendant one.

Then there is America’s role in the war itself. Trump started withholding U.S. military aid to Ukraine almost as soon as he returned to office. He has cut financial support to Ukraine to almost zero and brokered a deal with European countries to purchase matériel for Ukraine from the United States. He has weakened NATO’s Article 5 commitment. He has diminished Europe’s general capacity to deter Russia and, by adding friction to the trans-Atlantic relationship, has made it harder for Ukraine to defend itself.

The subsequent changes in Europe have been gradual, but dramatic. On one level, the transition is to Mr. Trump’s liking. Germany has led the way in expanding European defense budgets, and with its wealth and technological sophistication Europe is on its way to becoming a defense-industrial powerhouse. But this, in turn, is making Europe less deferential to Washington. Europe and Ukraine have an abundance of agency and no desire to be chess pieces on a board. Mr. Trump has done so much to make this war Europe’s war. Now that it is, the most important question is whether Europe — deeply invested in the precedents that the war will set in Ukraine and elsewhere — can maintain a united front. The United States can be a partner, a nullity or an obstacle, but it cannot undo the evolution that it has provoked.

If it chooses to, the United States could further degrade its relations with Europe and Ukraine. It could terminate all support for Ukraine. It could end targeting and intelligence sharing. Mr. Trump might decide to do this after the midterm elections, when he no longer has to face the American electorate, perhaps out of a personal dislike for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or the potential profit in normalizing relations with Russia. But this would probably not be the cause of Ukraine’s defeat.

Trump can hurt Ukraine, and to a degree he can isolate it diplomatically. He alone cannot decide its future.

Michael Kimmage is the director of the Kennan Institute, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author, most recently, of “Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability.”.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans circulate lies about America's tumbling economy caused by Trump's failed decisions

Echo opinion letter published in the Duluth News-Tribune:

Trump-supporting Republicans should be ashamed

Minnesotans — from truck drivers to farmers to small-business owners to single moms trying to feed their families — are having to endure economic hardship with no end in sight.

Recently, in my mailbox, I found a flyer supporting a Republican candidate and suggesting Democrats were responsible for the record-high gas and diesel prices. 

Apparently, Republicans believe American voters are chumps, because it could not be clearer that the pain we feel at the gas pumps is the direct result of the foolhardy Republican-supported Middle-East quagmire that President Donald Trump waded into. And no Minnesota Republicans — at the state or local level — have had the courage to speak up loudly enough to say we must reverse course. It’s disgusting.

Minnesotans — from truck drivers to farmers to small-business owners to single moms trying to feed their families — are having to endure economic hardship with no end in sight. Prices continue to rise, interest rates climb, and local businesses struggle to stay open. Meanwhile, Republicans in office continue to stand by and support Trump and his gang of self-dealing billionaires. Through the disastrous Iran war, ridiculous tariffs, and decimation of the U.S. labor force, Trump and his friends enrich themselves while ordinary folks here in the Arrowhead are forced to look to food pantry shelves to make ends meet.

Minnesota Republicans deserve to be condemned for their complicity with the corrupt Trump administration. They should be ashamed of themselves❗ We should not support anyone, Democrat or Republican, who is unwilling to call out the lies, self-dealing, and destructive policies of the current Trump administration. Cowards do not deserve our support.

From Charles Hathaway in Grand Marais, Minnesota

Donald Trump and maga Republicans like Senator Susan Collins are harming Americans who cannot access health care

Employers Shift Rising Health Care Costs Onto Millions of Workers
Echo report published in The New York Times by Reed Abelson.

New surveys show that increases in premiums and deductibles are forcing people to forgo treatments or doctor’s visits while budgets are strained by higher food and gas prices.

Working families are paying

💲 💰much more for health insurance this year, with many postponing doctor’s visits, treatments or filling prescriptions. The number of uninsured Americans is rising as more people wrestle with unpaid medical bills.

This is the stark picture emerging from two surveys released Thursday that show how millions of people in the United States are struggling to keep up with sharply climbing medical costs in recent years.

As the midterm elections approach, Americans are ranking health care near or at the top of their financial concerns, according to a recent poll from KFF, a nonprofit health research group.

Roughly six in 10 adults reported they were very or somewhat worried about affording care.

The majority of Americans — about 157 million — get insurance through their employer. But as costs for coverage have spiked, with increases in the high single digits, businesses have been shifting much more of the additional expenses onto their workforces.

Employees are paying more for coverage, especially if they work for a small business, according to KFF, which released its an annual survey of employers about their health benefits.

Many people are also paying thousands of dollars in medical expenses when they get sick, because companies have increased the plans’ deductibles to offset increases in premiums.

The yearly price, on average, for employees to cover their family is now

💲7,471 a year, up 9 percent from 2025. The total cost for a family plan, including the amount the employer contributes to the annual premiums, has reached 💲28,303.

Overall, the average deductible for U.S. workers is approaching 💲2,000 before insurance kicks in, according to the survey.

“People tell us in polls that their health care costs are their top cost-of-living concern, tied with gas prices. The fact that workers’ share of premiums went up almost three times faster than inflation in 2026, helps explain why,” said Drew Altman, the president and chief executive of KFF, in an email.

Harder hit are employees of small companies, defined as those with fewer than 200 workers, whose paychecks have been shrinking as premiums increase, according to the KFF survey. On average, they are paying 💲9,687 a year for coverage.

More than a third of people working at a small employer have annual deductibles of 💲3,000 or more.

Companies are also erecting new hurdles for workers to get care, like cumbersome approval processes for expensive drugs or treatments, the KFF survey found. Another way that businesses are trying to lower costs has been to restrict employees’ choices of doctors or hospitals.

“Employers are paying the equivalent of buying an economy car for each employee who has family health insurance coverage, and in 2026 they offloaded more of that cost to workers,” Mr. Altman said. KFF surveyed more than 1,900 employers with at least 10 workers.

For their part, employers attribute higher costs to several factors, including hospital care, expensive new cancer therapies and expanding coverage of GLP-1 medications for obesity and diabetes.
The rollbacks in government programs like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act have also left more people without health coverage, according to a separate survey from the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research foundation that analyzes Americans’ experience with insurance every other year. The fund has been a longtime supporter of the A.C.A. and other efforts to expand coverage.

The share of working-age adults who are uninsured rose to 11.2 percent in 2026 from 8.9 percent in 2024, the Commonwealth study showed. Conducted from early May through mid-July, the study has provided one of the first indications of whether people no longer enrolled in Medicaid and Obamacare found other sources of insurance.

The increase in the uninsured rate over the last two years “was really notable,” said Sara R. Collins, a senior scholar at the fund who led the Commonwealth research.

After Obamacare was enacted in 2010, the number of working-age adults and children without insurance fell from around 46 million to a low of about 25 million three years ago. The government changes and soaring medical costs across the broader health sector have fueled a backslide in coverage, bringing the estimated number this year to 30 million uninsured, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The Trump administration is expected to release official figures on the number of uninsured Americans next year.

The recent increase is statistically significant, Ms. Collins said, and the previous Commonwealth estimates of the uninsured rate have been lower than the official government figures and generally tracked in the same direction.

The Commonwealth survey also noted that about 12 percent of working-age adults reported a gap or lapse in their insurance, the same share as in 2022.

The increase in the uninsured rate was not unexpected, with some estimates showing that nearly five million people dropped their individual coverage. Many were no longer able to afford their Obamacare insurance after President Trump and Republican lawmakers declined to extend pandemic-era subsidies that had helped defray the cost of a typical plan.

Enrollment in Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor, has also been declining, although the bulk of the cuts to that program as part of Mr. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act do not take place until next year. Over the last four years, the share of working-age adults enrolled in Medicaid dropped from 15.5 percent to 13 percent, according to Commonwealth.

But the Commonwealth survey, which was based on telephone and online interviews among a sample of 9,360 adults, also underscored how financially insecure people have become about their ability to pay for medical care. The number of people who said they had delayed or skipped care altogether because of the expense increased to 50 percent this year from 46 percent in 2022, according to the survey.

“These reports show the reason why health care costs are at the top of voter concern and outrage,” said Anthony Wright, the executive director of Families USA, a left-leaning consumer advocacy group.

The deepening strains on household budgets are also evident as the rate of medical debt or unpaid bills keeps rising, affecting even those who are insured. About a third of adults with individual policies and those with coverage from an employer reported they were paying off medical bills or medical debt they had already incurred, according to the Commonwealth Fund.

People without insurance tend to have lower levels of medical debt, Ms. Collins of Commonwealth said. “You just use less care if you don’t have insurance coverage.”

The survey found that most Americans believed the federal government had a responsibility to ensure that people had coverage, although Democrats and independents expressed that belief more strongly than Republicans.

“They are mad at hospitals and drug companies and insurers for charging so much,” said Mr. Wright of Families USA. “They are furious at Congress for not reining them in.”

Employers and insurers “have never addressed, not in a significant way, the drivers of health care costs,” Ms. Collins said. “Health care costs are the thing that drives premiums and deductibles.”

Reed Abelson covers the business of health care, focusing on how financial incentives are affecting the delivery of care, from the costs to consumers to the profits to providers.

P.S. But Senator Susan Collins voted for Donald Trump's "big beautiful bill" and the result is causing harm to people who cannot afford health care because the tax cuts for the rich included in the ugly bill is paid from by cuts to insurance premiums and Medicaid. 

Riots in France are not what they appear to be in the media. What is really going on in France?

The radical network driving the disorder in France.

Published in The Free Press by Nora Bussigny

What began as a high school protest movement spiraled into a violent uprising, organized by Islamists, antifascists, and radical environmentalists who wish to see the French Republic toppled.

In the immediate wake of the violent protests in France over the weekend, the overriding reaction was shock. 

And understandably so: Shopkeepers saw their livelihoods destroyed overnight; innocent bystanders were threatened by protesters; iconic symbols of the French Republic were toppled and burned with impunity; and one of the great nations of the West seemed, all at once, to teeter on the brink of collapse.

But amid all the destruction, one question has gone largely unanswered: Who really organized these protests❓

If you believe it was simply high school students fed up with teacher shortages and poor classrooms, you would be sorely mistaken. Rather, “the protests of October 17—and the ones planned for this coming weekend,” writes French investigative journalist Nora Bussigny, “were meticulously prepared, organized, and justified by a concerted coalition of Islamists, antifascists, and radical environmentalists.”

Nora spent more than a year undercover in France’s anti-Israel movement, and today, she walks us through the messages, posts, and funding streams that reveal the radical network behind the protests—a red-green alliance that’s become increasingly familiar across the West in recent years. “What we are seeing in France is only a symptom of a much larger problem,” she writes. And if we hope to stop its spread, “it must be identified and called out for what it is.”

Chaos took hold of France this past weekend, as rioters stormed the streets, smashed buildings, set cars and a city hall in Limoges on fire, and looted stores across the country. It was the violent explosion of a protest movement that began in late September, with high school students angry about poor school conditions and a teacher shortage, and ended on the morning of October 18, with the streets covered in charred cars and broken glass.

You might think that Saturday’s chaos was orchestrated by the same students who started the protests. But, you would be wrong. The October 17 protests—and the ones planned for this coming weekend—were meticulously prepared, organized, and justified by a concerted coalition of Islamists, antifascists, and radical environmentalists. They share a precise project: the rejection of France’s democratic institutions, and a desire to destabilize those institutions and cause the Republic to topple.

This coalition may sound familiar to readers across the West. The red-green alliance—the convergence of radical leftists with political Islamists, brought together by their shared opposition to Western values and institutions—has become increasingly difficult to ignore, rearing its head from England to Germany to college campuses across the U.S. 

In other words, what we are seeing in France is only a symptom of a much larger problem. It must be identified and called out for what it is.

To do that, we need only trace the messages and images these French groups have posted publicly over the past few weeks. For example: The day before October 17, the radical-left news site Contre Attaque published the precise addresses of several French newsrooms, which it then circulated to its more than 400,000 Instagram followers. Included on the list were right-wing outlets as well as public broadcasting sources. “On October 17, what if the channels of enemy propaganda were unplugged?” the activist news site suggested. It even offered advice: “In the capital, it’s extremely simple: The headquarters of almost all media outlets are concentrated in a few streets in the same neighborhood; they are accessible, and vulnerable.” At 7 a.m. on October 17, the order took effect: Around a hundred people—“hooded,” according to police—stormed the headquarters of CNews, one of the outlets on the list.

Radical-left groups were involved even at the very beginnings of the high school protest movement in late September. They include the Jeune Garde Antifasciste (Antifascist Young Guard), which was dissolved in 2025, due to its incitement of violent confrontation, but is still operating underground, and Génération Espoir Dignité Résistance—which is facing dissolution by the French government for its ties to the Jeune Garde Antifasciste. Génération Espoir Dignité Résistance was founded by the leaders of the Jeune Garde as well as those of three other activist organizations: the radical-left political collective RED Jeunes, the high school student union Union Syndicale Lycéenne, and Étudiants Musulmans de France (Muslim Students of France). Étudiants Musulmans de France is the youth wing of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in France, as confirmed by a 2025 government report on the extent of the Muslim Brotherhood’s presence in France.

For several years, Étudiants Musulmans de France has been setting up chapters in universities across France. These chapters decided to join the high school movement, with the aim of inserting the fight against “Islamophobia” into the middle of demands about the shortage of teachers and the dilapidated state of schools. They encouraged the protesters to rise up against laïcité, France’s principle of secularism. In their sights are the 2004, law banning religious symbols (including the hijab) in schools, and former prime minister Gabriel Attal’s 2023 ban on wearing the abaya in state schools.

One of the main faces of the movement is Soumaya Sarré, a Muslim activist student with RED Jeunes and a supporter of the far-left party, La France Insoumise. Sarré has been a leader of the high school protests, posting videos to her Instagram encouraging students to get organized: “The more of us there are, the more united we are, the less they’ll be able to bring us down.” On September 29, Sarré fumed against French president Emmanuel Macron, explicitly connecting the protests to the French government’s ban on the hijab and abaya in public schools: “Yo Macron, you’re out of line. You get to school, they tell you to take off your veil, we didn’t say a word. You wear a long dress, they say it’s an abaya, they send you home, we didn’t say a word. Now you ask for a teacher in front of you, a decent classroom to have class in, and they send the police when you mobilize! So when it’s about imposing a way of dressing on you, the state is quick to act, but when it’s about having normal conditions for education, there’s nobody there anymore.”

On October 1, the Belfort chapter of Étudiants Musulmans de France campaigned alongside the high schoolers, and posted an image of the gathering to its Instagram story. In the following days, calls to converge the protests into a grand uprising on October 17 followed one after another, as the Muslim Brotherhood–linked organization’s Instagram page attests.

The high school protests that paved the way for the October 17 attacks were also helped by extremely well-organized pro-Palestinian collectives. I know these groups well, having spent more than a year undercover in France’s anti-Israel movement.

First, Urgence Palestine. This radical-left collective, which marches with flags of the Iranian regime, is in the process of being dissolved by the French government. Its two figureheads are the preacher Elias d’Imzalène and the violent activist Omar Alsoumi. 

After the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, both spoke at protests, calling for the violence to continue. D’Imzalène called to “start an intifada in Paris,” was convicted of incitement to hatred, and has since appealed the ruling. Alsoumi called to spread “an Al-Aqsa Flood,” and will stand trial in December.

Very early in the high school protests, Urgence Palestine called for its followers to join the students at the sites where their schools were being blockaded. Leading up to October 17, it posted a message calling people to rally together to fight “against police violence, against colonial violence, against France’s complicity in the genocide in Palestine.”

On October 14, Urgence Palestine posted a video of Sarré speaking at a rally. “From Gaza to France’s high schools, youth rises up and refuses to be silenced,” read the caption. “We’ve seen it, the high school mobilizations are making a lot of noise,” Sarré says in the video. “And at every protest, if you’ve been paying attention, you can see Palestinian flags, you can see keffiyehs wrapped around the heads of these young high schoolers. For me, that’s already a sign of resistance that isn’t weakening. Quite the opposite!”

Urgence Palestine is also closely tied to Samidoun—the two publicly support each other and frequently collaborate on protests and advocacy—which has been designated a terrorist organization in several countries, including the United States, for serving as the charitable front of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Samidoun has chosen to use the same victim narrative to speak about Palestinian terrorists held in Israel as it does about French protesters. On October 12, the organization published a lengthy statement on its Telegram channel and relayed it on its website, in which it revisits the real or alleged police violence against young protesters, then draws the link: “This repression is, moreover, not unrelated to the brutality exercised by the Zionist colonial entity toward the Palestinian population, which illustrates the colonial continuum at work.” It then calls, in turn, for support for “the resistance of youth,” for “Generation Gaza,” and above all for “the student intifada that loudly refuses to witness a genocide on livestream.”

On the ground alongside them is Palestine Action, designated as a terrorist organization in the United Kingdom. Palestine Action France actively relayed calls to protest on October 17 on its Instagram story—specifically celebrating a demonstration that same day in Marseille against “Eurolinks,” an arms factory accused of “complicity with Israel.”

The coalition behind the protests includes another reliable ally: radical environmentalists. On October 13, activist Greta Thunberg traveled to Saint-Denis, the stronghold of the high school mobilization in the suburbs, to support the students. Right afterward, in a video while wearing a keffiyeh (scarf), she called for people to join the October 17 mobilizations, urging them to show solidarity with the students and connecting the protests to efforts against climate change and social injustice.

The radical environmentalist collectives answered the call. Extinction Rebellion, for example—a group in the crosshairs of the French and British governments for actions promoting “civil disobedience”—put a yellow vest on the statue of Marianne at Place de la République during the October 17 protests. The vest bore the words “The police are maiming high schoolers.”

The radical environmentalist network Les Soulèvements de la Terre also took part in the protest, and is now already calling for round two. “After a month of the high school movement’s rising power,” the message decrees, “the October 17 day of action against the high cost of living was a historic moment of convergence and uprising. Let us support those charged after October 17. . . let us continue the ongoing revolt.”  

These organizations can count on a group of influencers to amplify their messages and keep their online followers angry. 

One notable example is Shahin Hazamy, a radical-left activist who was convicted last September of glorifying terrorism over October 7—a charge he has appealed. At his trial, the prosecutors revealed that he has repeatedly posted and circulated messages from the Islamic Republic to his 200,000 followers. Hazamy also holds an Iranian press card and presents himself as a journalist. He has never hidden his ties to the regime from his followers, nor his trips back and forth to the country.