Donald Trump and maga Republicans must fire incompetent people on the Trumpzi cabinet and then impeach Donald Trump.

Echo opinion published in the Baltimore Sun newspaper:

If one way to judge the quality of a leader is to look at the caliber of the people who are appointed to important positions, then Donald Trump’s presidency has failed monumentally. 

Kristi Noem, queen of lavishly expensive self-promoting photo ops and leader of a department responsible for fatal overreactions only to call the victims of those overreactions “domestic terrorists,” is now out. Unfortunately, several other key Trump appointees are still there (“Trump fires Homeland Security Secretary Noem after mounting criticism over her leadership,” March 5).

We still have pro-measles, anti-science Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filling his department with extreme anti-vaccine people, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who allowed a reporter to listen in on secret war plans, can barely contain his bloodlust and can’t stop from cheap political attacks as he describes the war with Iran.

There is also Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who claimed he cut off all contact with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in 2005, only to have later admitted he visited Epstein’s island in 2012 and had been found to be in a business arrangement with Epstein until 2018.

And there is also Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose shameful weaponization of the U.S. Department of Justice (with its dismissed indictments of James Comey and Letitia James) is mitigated only because of its incompetence.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio may have committed the worst sin of all, at least in the eyes of Donald Trump. He apparently lapsed into the truth when he said that the U.S. attacked Iran last Saturday because “we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action” that would “precipitate an attack against American forces.”

After hearing Trump say that no, the Israelis probably attacked because we were going to attack, Rubio explained quite clearly the next day that he didn’t say what he had said. Ah.

😕❓

Apparently, being a sycophant is really not what makes for a good servant of the people.

From Steven P. Grossman, in Pikesville, Maryland

#ImpeachDonaldTrumpNOW

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must call for the impeachment of Donald Trump. Senator Susan Collins, where are you?

Where Is the Iran War Headed❓ 

Senator Susan Collins, where are you❓

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are over their heads in illegal wars.

Donald Trump has both called for Iranians to rise up and oust the ruthless theocracy and said that he’s fully prepared to deal with a new religious leader.  Echo article published in The New Yorker Magazine by Robin Wright. 

Since 1979, Iran’s revolutionary regime has been the nemesis of eight American Presidents. None could tame its political furies; its covert operations, which killed more than a thousand Americans in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan; or its expansion, through the creation of like-minded extremist movements, across the Middle East. The Islamic Republic considered its mini-realm a defensive buffer against U.S. and Israeli intervention. The U.S. and Israel viewed Iran as the most persistent threat in the world’s most volatile region. Donald Trump and Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu have now set out to destroy the regime, militarily and politically, in a reckless war of choice with no visible or thoughtful endgame—and, in Trump’s case, no advance approval by Congress or warning to American taxpayers.💢❗

For Operation Epic Fury, the Trump Administration has so far deployed nearly half the United States’ air power and roughly a third of its naval assets. The cost is nearly nine hundred million dollars a day, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated. Much like the initial “shock and awe” campaign during Operation Iraqi Freedom, in 2003, the first week of the war was militarily stunning. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and dozens of senior officials were killed. Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles was seriously depleted and its strategic installations left in rubble. Its navy was devastated; a U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, the first such strike since the Second World War. Pete Hegseth (Whiskey Pete), the Secretary of Defense, boasted, “More and larger waves are coming. We are just getting started.” Iran’s capabilities, he added, are “evaporating.”

Trump, with his usual inconsistency, has called for Iranians to rise up against the ruthless theocracy—last week, he demanded its “unconditional surrender”—but also said that he’s prepared to deal with a new religious leader. Since 2017, millions of Iranians have participated in protests; tens of thousands have been killed. For now, though, an uprising seems unlikely. Iranians will first need to pick up the political and physical pieces of their lives, and although public fury at the government has not diminished, foreign military intervention has ignited a sense of millennia-old nationalism. The prospect of many members of the Iranian security forces—there are more than a million, counting reservists—joining a popular rebellion seems improbable, too.

The Iran war rattled the international order, troubled as it already was. After two disastrous U.S. wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is an ominous sense of how messy and costly and deadly this one will  get, however confident Trump sounds. 

Iran is larger, in size and in population, than Iraq and Afghanistan combined. It is arguably the most important geostrategic country in the three regions it borders—the Arab world; the formerly Soviet “stans” of Central Asia; and Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan, in South Asia. It has vast oil and gas reserves, along with the largest military in the Middle East, and it has had powerful sway in parts of the Muslim world, particularly among Shiites.

Trump said that the biggest surprise to him is the scope of Tehran’s response. Iran was clearly prepared, especially after the Twelve-Day War, last June, when Donald Trump ordered B-2 stealth warplanes to drop bunker-busting bombs on nuclear facilities in Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. This time, it countered with missile and drone strikes on seven oil-rich neighbors allied with the United States, from Iraq to Saudi Arabia and Oman. It targeted international airports, hotels, businesses, ports, and energy facilities. Despite American defensive superiority, Iran hit the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh; the consulate in Dubai; the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, at Al Udeid, in Qatar; and the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, which coördinates U.S. naval operations across the Middle East. Netanyahu said that he has been dreaming for forty years about overthrowing the theocracy, but Iranian missiles penetrated Israel’s Iron Dome defenses. Air sirens repeatedly alerted the residents of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to seek shelter. Dozens of buildings, including a military airbase, were hit. Hezbollah, Iran’s longtime partner, opened a second front with Israel from Lebanon.

In fact, the scale of Iran’s retaliation has led U.S. allies, who had balked at joining a U.S.-led offensive, to reluctantly agree to play a role. France, Germany, and Britain pledged to “take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region,” with Britain deploying warplanes in Qatar. Greece, following a drone strike on Cyprus, sent four fighter jets to the island. Italy promised defense systems to Gulf nations. By the end of the first week of war, seventeen countries were involved. After cutting direct military aid to Ukraine last year, Washington even reached out to Kyiv for its expertise in countering Iranian drones, which Russia uses to attack it.

Beyond the physical damage, Epic Fury has spooked the global economy. Stocks plunged, and the price of oil spiked by fifteen per cent, as Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passes. Saudi Arabia temporarily shut its Ras Tanura oil refinery, one of the world’s largest, after a drone strike. Qatar suspended the production and export of liquefied natural gas.

Iran, then, still has some leverage. Hadi Semati, a former professor of political science at the University of Tehran, who is now in Washington, said, “If Iran comes out of this crisis alive, it has essentially won, albeit with degraded military capability.” And the theocracy may survive. Suzanne Maloney, an expert on Iran at the Brookings Institution, cautioned, “We’re going to be left with some kind of bloodied, battered rump version of the Islamic Republic, led by officials who are now even more determined to try to cling to power, and who are going to be more confident of the fact that they’re able to stay, because they have withstood this terrible crisis.”

Last week, as Iran’s Assembly of Experts met to elect a new Supreme Leader, Trump insisted that he should have the right of approval. He told Axios, “I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodriguez] in Venezuela.” He rejected Khamenei’s hawkish son Mojtaba as “unacceptable.” (Trump, Maloney said, “seems to think that this is an episode of ‘The Apprentice.’ ”) But the Assembly may select a revolutionary hard-liner to signal continuity. 

Meanwhile, Iran’s ninety-two million people are trapped between a bloody war and the bloody regime. ♦

#HasIranSurrenderedYet ❓

Published in the print edition of the March 16, 2026, issue, with the headline “War-Torn.”

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are forcing a vote to suppress election turnout- STOP the SAVE America Act!

 Trump is trying to rig the midterms. You can stop him. HOW❓

The SAVE America Act (the title of this bill is a ruse❗) will burden if not disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans leading up to the midterms. And Trump admitted that it’s all to keep Republicans in power. Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe newspaper by Kimberly Atkins Stohr.

It’s hard to overstate the danger of the voter-suppression legislation Donald Trump is trying to jam down GOP lawmakers’ throats.

The SAVE America Act will burden if not actually disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans leading up to the midterms by requiring proof of citizenship as well as ending voting by mail. 

It’s also probably as unconstitutional as it is antidemocratic. It would sow chaos in state and local elections offices that are already under-resourced due to drastic federal funding cuts.

And Trump admitted that it’s all to keep Republicans in power.

But there is good news: Americans can do something about it. And they already know how, because they’ve done it twice already.

Trump pressured House Republicans at their annual legislation retreat, which was held at his golf club in Doral, Fla., to pass the latest iteration of the law he’s been pushing since returning to office but with an added twist: He wants the legislation to also ban voting by mail for most people. Trump said lawmakers shouldn’t even act on any other bill until the voting measure is passed. “I’m not going to sign anything until this is approved,” he said.

This is no surprise. Trump has been peddling lies 🤥😡about rigged elections since even before his first election win in 2016. 

But, his fervor to declare the 2020, election, which he lost to Joe Biden, as fraudulent has only grown since Trump was elected again in 2024.

Trump conscripted the FBI to pursue the debunked claims about election fraud, leading federal agents to seize 2020, election ballots in Fulton County, Ga., and obtain 2020, voting records in Maricopa County, Ariz. This is despite the Constitution’s clear mandate that elections are to be carried out by state governments, not the feds.

Which is the first of many constitutional problems with Trump’s SAVE America Act. It requires states to turn over their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security in order to verify the citizenship of voters, using a program that is flawed at best and likely to produce bad data. This would lead to voters not only being disenfranchised but also potentially facing federal charges of voter fraud. Even the threat of such a consequence would undoubtedly keep some voters from voting at all for fear of repercussions.

It would also require voters to present proof of citizenship and photo ID, such as a passport or birth certificate, to register or reregister to vote. That might present obstacles for women like me, whose married name differs from their birth certificate. This could also dramatically affect rural voters who may be forced to travel long distances to get such documents; according to the Brennan Center for Justice, more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to such documents. And obtaining them can be time consuming and costly, amounting to an unconstitutional poll tax.

It would particularly burden voters of color. According to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, about half of Black Americans under 30 do not have ID with their current name and address.

According to the legal defense organization the Native American Rights Fund, many people in tribal communities would have to travel more than 100 miles by car or airplane to reach their designated election office to register or reregister under the law. 

And, only tribal IDs that include the holder’s place of birth would satisfy the new law, but most do not include place of birth, all but ensuring the disenfranchisement of countless Indigenous people. This likely violates both the equal protection and due process rights of affected Americans.

It would also impose onerous burdens on local and state election offices that are already struggling after the Trump administration slashed their funding, hampering their ability to keep elections secure and combat interference and dangerous misinformation about elections, according to the nonprofit Voting Rights Lab. 

Dropping new voter registration and other requirements on local election officials will only turn a dire situation into chaos as the midterms approach.

And for what❓ Trump’s claims of election fraud have been debunked in court and even shot down by election officials in red states. But Trump admitted that election security wasn’t at the bottom of his push. It’s meant to rig the game so the GOP can hold power.

Democrats are “doing everything possible” to block the legislation, Trump said, “because they know if we get this, they probably won’t win an election for 50 years … and maybe longer.”

But that is where the American people come in. Two previous iterations of the SAVE America Act passed the House but then died in the Senate, in part because of public blowback. Even after Trump’s threat to put all legislation on ice until the new version of his voter law is passed, Senate Majority Leader John Thune expressed doubt that it had a filibuster-proof path in the upper chamber. He’s right, and not just because of Democratic opposition, but also because mail-in voting is popular even with Republican voters, and dismantling it right before an election will go badly for them.

That is where the American people can once again make their power known: by giving lawmakers from coast to coast an earful about how harmful this bill would be for democracy — and for lawmakers’ own political hides. The midterms are just around the corner, and there is no time to waste. Silence now is not an option.

Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Boston Globe. 

All American with an ethical conscience ask the same political question? How did our nation get to this terrible place?

In "Who Speaks for Us?" (March 2026), Marilynne Robinson argues in The New York Review of Books that true democracy, not "populism," is the essential response to corruption and the abuse of power. She emphasizes the dignity and authority of the people, warning against the degradation caused by arrogance and avarice.

An echo essay published in New York Review of Books:

The political leaders and elected representatives of our two-party system have made it into a weapon that works against the people.

• Core Argument: Robinson contends that modern two-party politics often weaponizes systems against the people.
• The Solution: She advocates for a return to genuine democratic principles and warns that populist movements often merely reflect the "inchoate" - not yet fully developed or in the process of becoming- resentments of a subordinated class.
• Perspective: As a novelist and essayist known for her Christian, Calvinist-influenced perspective (e.g., Gilead), she often critiques contemporary political culture from a moral and intellectual standpoint.
  
  When Donald Trump was first elected to the presidency, a British friend asked me if his authoritarian tendencies were a real threat to America. No, I said, because the country had so many autonomous centers of power to constrain him—the press, the unions and professions, the universities, the courts, the states, and, of course, various types and sources of political opposition. Not all these supposed checks on his power have capitulated absolutely, but enough of them have capitulated to raise fundamental questions about the country we thought we had and the country we have now. It will always be true that we have seen the Constitution effectively brushed aside by a superannuated game show host who galvanizes his base with talk of showerheads and windmills and the demonic nastiness of the other party. All this is so strange that it is hard to imagine how history will take any lessons from it. It would seem grossly improbable that a billionaire—rich from birth and repeatedly bankrupt yet still a billionaire—could lead a movement of angry “populism.” But here we are.
  
  There are too many answers to the question “What went wrong❓I turn to the two-party system because, although it is at present its own worst enemy, there is still hope that it can allow the great public to make decisions about the course of government. It has gone wrong, too, but it can change, almost passively, if it happens to channel the decisions of an impassioned electorate. 

Insofar as it gives voters power, it is imperiled. It can thwart the intentions of very powerful interests and individuals. This is an assertion of democracy, wonderful or regrettable and benighted, but in any case essential if the historical character of the country is to be preserved.

Our elections have been based on there being two great factions that alternate in roles of power without much conflict. The problems of the system have been largely manageable. Three or more parties lead to the rule of a minority able to provide or deny the numbers necessary to produce a ruling plurality. Government by a group few people actually voted for, that can always threaten to withdraw their support if its interests are not looked after, is not an improvement. One-party government is synonymous with dictatorship.

Any free election is, in effect, a referendum. Our binary system can be taken to express either a Yes or a No. More granular interpretations are left to commentators or the opinion polls, or the parties themselves. This leaves the public voice vulnerable to being misread, or to being tendentiously misinterpreted. To the extent that this takes effect, the public has been denied its voice.

Recently there was a Democratic sweep of a series of special elections. What did this mean? In a moment as fraught as this one, it would be good to know what the people are thinking. An issue that supposedly decided these various contests was settled upon immediately—affordability❗

This six syllable word assumes that the problem is not that income has stagnated but that certain grocery items, lettuce and eggs, are too expensive. Higher wages would transform the economy. It would be a redistribution of wealth, however modest. Fiddling around with the price of a few groceries would be cheap and easy. An added, much more significant advantage, it would preempt and dismiss the possibility that the great, sovereign electorate might have anything serious, anything relevant to the well-being of their country, anything generous, on their minds.

• billfold and 
• kitchen table.

These are the two terms used to express the condescension that entraps the voting public, in the way they are addressed by politicians and campaigns, and in the way they and their views are understood and brought to bear on public life. I was instructed by a Democratic candidate for state office on the mesmeric power of the word “affordability,” recently demonstrated so effectively. So the meaningfulness of a solid No to the present regime is reduced to an issue Trump can neuter by waving his (the Treasury Department’s) checkbook.

At one time, the two-party system fit fairly nicely within the structure of our government. The U.S. House and the Senate were deliberative bodies with important constitutional authority, which meant that there were differences within the parties as well as between them. 

Then came Newt Gingrich, a Roman Catholic convert and the creation of GOP party discipline. Republicans discovered the wrongminded power that came with sticking to the party line, however this tactic disempowered individual lawmakers and their constituencies, not to mention the institution of Congress itself. Constitutional obligations lost out to partisan power. Then came the next evil inspiration. They could change the constitutional order by simply playing dead. When they controlled the House, they could refuse to govern, leaving it to the president to fill the void, to do by executive order what should be done by legislation. This strengthens the president, weakens the law by circumvention, and defeats the intentions of the Founders with consequences they insistently predicted. And, it excludes opposition influences and radically minimizes public discussion.

So, now we have a grotesquely 🤢empowered Donald Trump. 

Because of Trump's hubris, great institutions are diminished and humiliated, the House of Representatives being first. 

The No available to the people in our binary system is associated with the Democratic Party, whoever they are. 

The great issues of these days must be confronted by the people. Whatever their (our) shortcomings are, we are figures of shining integrity compared with those who now presume to govern. 

A braver press would educate us better, certainly, but we know enough to be appalled at the grave threats to freedom and justice we see in our streets.

Only consider: Donald Trump claims that many billions of dollars have come in as a result of his tariffs. He speaks of this as a sort of slush fund that he can use as he sees fit, maybe reducing taxes or just mailing out checks to the public, benevolently repairing injuries done by his government to those he thinks will vote for him. But the fact is,  Americans are paying the cost of those tariffs. 

So, it is Americans’ money💲 that is being siphoned into this vast pool, with inevitable consequences for “affordability.” They never voted for tariffs, and in the recent special elections they might well have voted against them. If all this money were collected by taxation, at least the public might have some input into the use of it, especially if they had a functioning House. If Trump extracts $10 billion from his suit against the IRS, where will that money go? This bizarre super-economy of ultra-wealth can create self-protective arrangements neither the laws nor the Founders anticipated, together with a culture of cynicism ready to exploit its worst possibilities.

Money and power corrupt. The proper response to this ancient truth is not “populism,” which expresses the inchoate resentments of a subordinated class, and which has shown itself to be helpless against gross abuses. The one thing needed is democracy. We have seen the people speak and act from a deep awareness of their uniquely legitimate authority. We have seen their humanity, their dignity, and their wisdom. At the same time we have also seen the degradations that follow from arrogance, avarice and impunity. The contrast is as stark and instructive as any moral fable.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans have no plan for the evil and illegal World War in Iran causing Middle East instability

Trump’s war on Iran is already a muddled mess | Echo Editorial published in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Nearly two weeks into the war, Donald Trump’s chaos and confusion have remade the world into a more dangerous place.

Donald Trump has no plan for the World War with Iran and is surrounded by unserious people like Pete Hegseth, the clownish defense secretary.

On the same day Donald Trump said the war in Iran could end “very soon,” the Defense Department declared on social media, “We have Only Just Begun to Fight.” 😟😒

The mixed messaging was in keeping with the president’s circular reasoning for his war of whim. He has cycled through an ever-changing list of reasons for starting the war, including regime change, preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, stopping terrorist proxies, and wiping out its navy.

Out of the confusion this much is clear: Trump has no idea what he is doing, and his word is no good. Nearly two weeks into the war, Trump’s chaos and confusion have remade the world into a more dangerous place.

More unsettling perhaps, it appears Trump was misled into war by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister who faces corruption charges at home and allegations of having committed war crimes abroad. Talk about a role model. 🙄😓

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. entered the war because Israel was prepared to act first. He tried to walk back the comments but the New York Times detailed a timeline of how Netanyahu manipulated Trump.

Netanyahu has already destroyed most of Gaza. Is that the plan for Iran❓


U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) hinted at a different endgame when he said once the Iran regime is toppled, “we’re gonna make a ton of money.” (His claim makes no sense. What is a "ton of money"❓ Meaningless, just a figure of speech expression.)

Send in Trump’s profiteers, son-in-law Jared Kushner and developer Steve Witkoff. Never have two unelected and unqualified men made more money for themselves while accomplishing so little.

If only some of the U.S. firepower used to bomb Iran went to stop Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine, then Trump may have had a legitimate claim to the Nobel Peace Prize.

Instead, when asked about Russia sharing intelligence to help Iran attack U.S. warships, aircraft, and other military interests, Trump called the question “stupid.”

Trump’s continued subservience to Putin is a stunning abdication of his duty to protect and defend the United States.

Likewise, the Republicans in Congress (like Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins) remain uninterested in fulfilling their constitutional duty to act as a check on the president after voting down a resolution to halt the war in Iran.

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, the Democrat from Pennsylvania who frequently represents Mar-a-Lago, joined with the GOP in paving the way for more war. In the House, all the Republicans from Pennsylvania, including Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick from Bucks County, did the same.

No debate and just a blank check from Congress.

So, what exactly have Trump and his enablers gained by attacking Iran❓

Here’s a quick accounting:

• Oil prices surged and the stock market was whipsawed.
• The economic shock could stoke inflation and fuel the faltering job market.
• The war is costing taxpayers almost $1 billion a day.
• Seven U.S. service members died and about 140 have been injured, eight severely.
• More than 1,200 Iranians have been killed, including roughly 175 people, most of them children, at a school struck by a U.S. missile that Trump refuses to own up to.
• Thousands of Americans were left stranded in a war zone.
• Bombing Iran’s oil depots unleashed thick black smoke and a toxic rain that threatened the air quality and the food and water supply.

The inhumanity risks turning the Iranian people further against America, while making the U.S. a pariah state.

The only positive development was the removal of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s ruthless supreme leader.

However, Khamenei, 86, was replaced by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, who is likely to continue Iran’s hard-line theocratic rule.

So, essentially Trump traded an aging ayatollah for a younger version who lost his father, wife, and a son in the attacks.

Don’t expect any olive branches from Tehran, which responded with missile and drone strikes in 10 countries across the Middle East.

The regime may be battered but it remains dangerous.

An unrestrained and vindictive Trump is also dangerous. He has no plan and is surrounded by unserious people like Pete Hegseth, the clownish defense secretary.

The White House social media account celebrated the war with a disgusting juvenile video that wove snippets of Hollywood movies and video games with real footage of the military strikes in Iran.

Goodbye to the greatest generation. The U.S. is now led by a confederacy of dunces.

Trump looked every bit the head fool as he sported a branded white baseball hat with USA emblazoned in gold that he sells for $55 on his merch website while attending the dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base of the first six U.S. soldiers killed in the war.

While the war in Iran drags on, Trump is already talking about toppling Cuba.

Apparently, all the world’s a stage as the president wreaks global chaos and accomplishes little beyond sowing death, destruction, and suffering.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must call the Iran war what it is- World War III in Iran caused by inept Trumpism

Let’s begin by stating the obvious: Trump is at war with Iran.

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Jonah Goldberg.

What is my evidence❓

Turn on your TV. U.S. forces, working with Israel, killed the supreme leader of Iran and many of his top aides. We sunk Iran’s navy and destroyed most of their air force. We bombed thousands of military sites across the region. President Trump, the commander in chief, has demanded “unconditional surrender” from Iran. He routinely refers to this as a “war.” Pete Hegseth, 🤢who calls himself the secretary of war, also describes this as a war daily, such as last week when he said, “We set the terms of this war.”

The truth that we are at war is so simple, only politicians and lawyers could make it seem complicated.

Indeed, a slew of Republican legislators insist we’re not actually at war. House Speaker Mike Johnson: “We’re not at war right now. We’re four days into a very specific, clear mission and operation.” Florida Rep. Brian Mast: “Nobody should classify this as war. It is combat operations.” South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham: “I don’t know if this is technically a war.” Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin: “This isn’t a war. We haven’t declared war.” Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna: “Strategic strikes are not war.”

Pearl Harbor was a strategic strike too.

Then there’s the claim that we’re not at war with Iran but Iran is at war with us. This is half true, insofar as Iran has been committing acts of war against the U.S. since it took our embassy staff hostage in 1979. But waging a war in response doesn’t make it any less of a war.

One is tempted to invoke George Orwell’s “1984,” in which the existence or nonexistence so literary is at play. This is (mostly) legalism run amok.

The main reason congressional Republicans reject the W-word is simple. If it’s merely a “combat operation” or “strategic strike” in response to an “imminent threat,” then the president has the authority to do it without congressional approval. If it’s a war, then it’s arguably illegal and unconstitutional within the framework of the War Powers Resolution or the Constitution itself, because under the Constitution declaring war is the sole responsibility of Congress. And the last thing this Congress wants to do is take responsibility for anything.

This at least partly explains why Trump insists he had a “feeling” Iran was about to attack us. He has even suggested that Iran was just weeks away from having a nuclear weapon and that he prevented an imminent “nuclear war.”

The War Powers Resolution — nominally rejected by every president since it was passed in 1973 — was intended to restrict the president’s ability to use force without Congress’ consent. It backfired. It says the president can respond militarily to threats as he deems necessary, but then must go to Congress within 60 days for approval to continue hostilities. The result: Presidents have a free hand to wage war for roughly two months, unless Congress stops them.

But congressional Republicans don’t want to stop Trump. That’s tactically defensible, if you believe this war was necessary. But the tactic forces Congress to say, in effect, “Don’t believe you’re lying eyes. This isn’t a war.”

For those who only vaguely remember what they learned in high school about the War Powers Resolution — or for that matter, the Constitution — this riot of legalism only fuels confusion.

But, there’s another factor driving the evasion. Trump made the idea of staying out of “forever wars” a central tenet of America First. There’s no textbook definition of “forever war” — always a ludicrous term — so you can understand why some people believed it was code for “Middle East war” or just plain war of any kind. 

Moreover, the irony is that Trump could make a plausible case that this war is allowable under the Authorization to Use Military Force George W. Bush received in 2001. But symbolically, that would mean Trump is continuing Bush’s “forever war.”

Regardless, Republicans aren’t just under a legal clock to get this thing over with, but a political one too. Polling shows that Americans, including many Republicans, have no thirst for a long conflict, which makes sense given that they were not asked to prepare for this war at all. Hence, the insistence that this war will be short and tidy.

The problem is that Iran knows this. Which is why they don’t have to win, they just have to ride out the bombings until the public or Trump loses patience with this very real war.

X: @JonahDispatch

Donald Trump and maga Republican giving cult followers multiple choice fake reasons for the Iran World War

Echo opinion letter published in the Los Angeles Times:

Iran isn’t going to give Trump the unconditional surrender he wants.

Is Donald Trump's World War with Iran a war to end Iran's nuclear capabilities forever, or is it a war to liberate the Iranian people, or is it a religious war meant to finish what the crusades failed to do❓  Multiple choice.

To the editor: Donald Trump is demanding that Iran give up its sovereignty, and surrender unconditionally, to the United States (“Trump demands ‘unconditional surrender,’ role in picking Iran’s next leader,” March 6). 

Unfortunately, that will not be an option for Iranian leadership.

Trump’s war is costing American taxpayers nearly $900 million per day. Donald Trump ordered the attack on Iran while peace talks were ongoing. We attacked Iran before it attacked us. (Maine Writer, IMO, "Peace talks" were a ruse.)

Trump’s unilateral decision to attack Iran was a planned coordinated action, in collaboration with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and was done without notifying the Congress of the United States.

Trump’s unilateral decisions are affecting more than 300 million Americans and the lives of millions of men, women and children in the Middle East. Imagine that: one man having unilateral decision-making power satisfying his ego with the idea that he can attack sovereign nations with impunity, replace their leaders and appoint leaders who will bend the knee, allowing Trump to control that country’s destiny.

Just so Trump knows, if anybody is brave enough to tell him, how Iranians are warriors, and many would die before surrendering. 

Donald Trump has only created a war that our grandchildren and their grandchildren will likely be fighting for years to come.

From Donald Peppars, in Pomona, California

A War Still in Search of a Mission

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are stoking the fires for World War III in Iran and the Middle East without authority to wage war

Eight minutes❗⏲️

Echo opinion published in the New York Times by David French

That’s the length of Donald Trump’s social media video announcing his (World War III) war with Iran. He didn’t go to Congress. He didn’t obtain a U.N. Security Council resolution. Instead, he did perhaps the most monarchical thing he’s done in a monarchical second term: He simply ordered America into war.

I take a back seat to no one in my loathing of the Iranian regime. I am not mourning the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike on Saturday. 

My anger at the Iranian regime is personal. Men I knew and served with during my deployment to Iraq in 2007 and 2008 were killed or gravely injured by Iranian-supplied weapons deployed by Iranian-supported militias.

But my personal feelings don’t override the Constitution, and neither do anyone else’s. As I mentioned in a round-table conversation with my colleagues, I’m worried that all too many people will say: Well, in a perfect world Trump should have gone to Congress, but what’s done is done. That is exactly the wrong way to approach this war.

Here’s the bottom line: Trump should have gotten congressional approval for striking Iran, or he should not have struck at all. And, because he did not obtain congressional approval, he’s diminishing America’s chances for ultimate success and increasing the chances that we make the same mistakes we — and other powerful nations — have made before.

To make that argument is not to sacrifice our national interests on an altar of legal technicalities. Instead, it’s to remind Americans of the very good reasons for our country’s constitutional structure on matters of war and peace.

The fundamental goal of the 1787,  U.S. Constitution was to establish a republican form of government — and that meant disentangling the traditional powers of the monarch and placing them in different branches of government.

When it came to military affairs, the Constitution separated the power to declare war from the power to command the military. The short way of describing the structure is that America should go to war only at Congress’s direction, but when it does, its armies are commanded by the president.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this constitutional structure is that it creates a presumption of peace. Our nation cannot go to war until its leaders persuade a majority of Congress that war is in our national interest.

This framework applies both to direct declarations of war and to their close cousin, authorizations for the use of military force, such as the authorizations for Desert Storm in the first gulf war, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq.

But the constitutional structure, when followed, does much more than that. It also helps to provide accountability. To make the case to Congress, a president doesn’t just outline the reasons for war; he also outlines the objectives of the conflict. This provides an opportunity to investigate the weaknesses of the case for the conflict, along with the possibility of success and the risks of failure.

I’m getting a disturbing sense of déjà vu for example, from the idea that degrading regime forces from the air will give unarmed (or mostly unarmed) civilian protesters exactly the opening they need to topple the Iranian government and effect regime change.

By the end of Desert Storm, the United States had devastated the Iraqi military and inflicted casualties far beyond anything that Israel or the United States has inflicted on Iran over this March 6-7, 2026 weekend. When the Iraqi people rose up, there was a wave of hope that the dictator would be deposed and democracy would prevail. But Saddam Hussein had more than enough firepower — and enough loyalists — to crush the rebellion, retain power for more than a decade and kill tens of thousands of his opponents.

The Iranian regime deserves to fall, but I’m concerned that we’re creating the conditions for more massacres of more civilians, without offering the protesters any reasonable prospect of success.

But, if the regime does crack, there is no guarantee that we will welcome the eventual results. From Iraq to Syria to Libya, we’ve seen how civil war sows chaos, fosters extremism and terrorism and creates waves of destabilizing migration.

In a real public debate before a real Congress, these points could have been addressed. The administration could have prepared people for the various contingencies, including casualties and economic disruption. Instead, near the end of Trump’s cursory speech on Saturday, he said, “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.”

Well, yes, that’s certainly true. But that’s not the full extent of the risk — not even close. The American people needed to hear more. They deserved to hear more.

There was a case for striking Iran.

As my colleague Bret Stephens has argued, the Iranian regime is evil, hostile to the United States and militarily aggressive. It has engaged in a decades-long conflict with the United States. Beginning with the hostage crisis in 1979 — when Iranians seized and held American diplomats and Embassy employees for 444 days — Iran has conducted countless direct and indirect attacks against the United States.

Iranian-backed terrorists are responsible for the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983, that killed 241 Americans. Iranian-backed terrorists killed 19 Americans in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Iran-backed militias killed hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq.

Since the second Iraq war, Iranian-backed militias have continued their attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. In fact, it’s fair to say that Iran’s efforts to attack and kill Americans have been relentless for decades.

Beyond its attacks on Americans, Iran is one of the most aggressive and destabilizing regimes in the world. It has supported Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — three of the world’s most powerful terrorist militias — it has attacked Israel with ballistic missiles, and it has supplied Russia with drones to use in its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Iran is deeply repressive at home. It stifles dissent, deprives women of their most basic human rights and massacres its own people by the thousands when they protest against the regime.

If you’re going to list foreign countries that should not obtain access to nuclear weapons, Iran should be at or close to the very top. Blocking Iran’s ability to develop and deploy nuclear weapons is among our most vital national interests.

But there was also a case against an attack.

As my newsroom colleague Eric Schmitt has reported, General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned Trump that there is a high risk of casualties and a risk that a campaign against Iran could deplete American stockpiles of precision weapons — at the exact moment when we need those weapons to deter any potential Chinese maneuvers against Taiwan.

In addition, Iran may now believe that it should not restrain its response to an American attack but instead prioritize inflicting as many casualties as possible on American forces (and perhaps even on American civilians). Iran has already lashed out at multiple nations in the Gulf. Its attacks haven’t inflicted much damage so far, but it’s too soon to simply presume that Iran won’t be able to hurt the United States or our allies. (Dear Mr. French- "Aaaah....😧what allies❓")

And, if we suffer those losses without eradicating a nuclear program that Trump already claimed to have “obliterated,” without ultimately changing the regime (in spite of the death of the supreme leader), or without even protecting civilian protesters, then for all practical purposes, we will have lost a pointless, deadly war.

Don’t let anyone tell you that modern presidents simply don’t go to Congress, that we’re trying to impose a standard on Trump that we didn’t impose on anyone else. In 2002, the Department of Justice told President George W. Bush that he had “sufficient constitutional and statutory authority to use force against Iraq,” even in the absence of a direct congressional authorization or a new U.N. Security Council resolution. Yet, Mr. Bush pressed for (and obtained) an authorization and a resolution anyway, just as his father did when he went to war with Saddam Hussein, during Operation Desert Storm.

Regardless of any person’s feelings about Operation Iraqi Freedom (I supported it then and still do), when our troops went into combat, they knew they were supported by a majority of the American people. They knew politicians on both sides of the aisle had voted to send them into battle.

Now, many millions of Americans are bewildered by events. There is no national consensus around the decision to deploy Americans into harm’s way. There isn’t even a Republican consensus. There’s only a personal consensus, the personal consensus of a mercurial man so detached from reality that he actually reposted on Truth Social an article with the headline “Iran Tried to Interfere in 2020, 2024 Elections to Stop Trump, and Now Faces Renewed War With U.S.”

Are Trump’s conspiracy theories making him more amenable to war❓

In 1848, at the close of the Mexican-American War, a first-term congressman named Abraham Lincoln wrote:


Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.

Those words were true then, and they’re true now. No matter what he thinks, Trump is not a 👑king. But, by taking America to war all on his own, he is acting like one.

P.S. Senator Susan Collins where are you❓

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth continue to violate the Constitution now using religion to justify the illegal war in Iran

Reprinted from The Other 98 percent social media page site here.
Article is at this site here.

28 Democrats just demanded an investigation into Pete Hegseth (Whiskey Pete) after hundreds of troops reported commanders pushing end-times Christian fascism as justification for the Iran war.
Reps. Jared Huffman, Jamie Raskin, and Chrissy Houlahan led the charge, requesting DoD Inspector General Platte B. Moring III investigate reports of commanders "invoking religious prophecy and apocalyptic theology to justify the United States' military actions in Iran."

Lawmakers want to know whether Hegseth's "extreme religious rhetoric has metastasized into segments of the military chain of command" in ways that violate the Constitution and DoD regulations.

What triggered this? Over 200 service members across 50 installations and every military branch filed complaints with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation reporting that their commanders told them the Iran war is divinely ordained, that Trump was chosen by Jesus to bring about Armageddon.

Seriously❗

Hegseth sponsors a weekly White House Bible study and has enshrined evangelical Christianity at the uppermost levels of the U.S. military. His monthly Pentagon prayer gatherings have featured Doug Wilson, a far-right Christian nationalist who has defended slavery and called for America to become a theocracy.

The Democrats laid out six specific areas for investigation, from whether commanders violated DoD religious neutrality policies to whether whistleblowers faced retaliation. The Pentagon offered no direct response when asked about the complaints.

The Constitution is crystal clear: service members swear an oath to defend a secular republic, not to carry out anyone's end-times fever dream.

If the Secretary of Defense is turning the world's most lethal fighting force into a Christian dominionist project, that's not just a policy failure, it's a national security crisis, potentially even a global one.

Maine Writer Response: This radical religion strategy failed during the Crusades, Hitler invoked this as justification for the “final solution” and he failed, the Spanish Inquisition built a torture campaign around this myth but think about how many thousands of lives were lost to prove this strategy is never going to work❓ 

Meanwhile, the whack-a-mole reason behind this war changes with the ocean tides. Was the purpose regime change❓ Is this the fulfillment of Netanyahu’s long wished for war❓ Is the purpose to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities or is the purpose to bring Christianity to this eons old Iranian civilization❓ Multiple choice! Just my opinion❗

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are sending American young people into war without a purpose

Echo opinion letter published in Bakersfield.com:

egomaniacal old man

On Saturday morning (February 28, 2026) we listened as Donald Trump tell us how our military took out leaders of Iran's military regime. This is from a president who promised no more foreign wars if he was elected. Then came Venezuela. Now Iran. Iran retaliated. Three American servicemen died. Five more were seriously injured. Others were "slightly" injured. The next next thing we hear is the president telling us to expect more U.S. casualties. "People die in wars" were his exact words. (Pentagon now reports six military service people were killed in Kuwait but there have to be more causalities especially in Bahrain, where the Navy Supply depot was attacked by Iran.) The Pentagon identified six U.S. Army Reserve soldiers from Iowa*, from the 103rd Sustainment Command killed by an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait on March 1, 2026. The fallen service members are: Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, Capt. Cody Khork, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, Maj. Jeffrey O'Brien, Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, and Sgt. Declan Coady. These six young people are the victims of preventable deaths caused by Donald Trump's illegal World War III. There was no purpose or plan or warning to help them prepare for the attack that killed them.

How many of our young men and women will be asked to put their lives on the line so that this vain, egomaniacal old man can look powerful? Donald Trump couldn't care less about our national security, our welfare, or peace in our world. He only wants to be feared. He threatens the world and plots revenge against anyone he considers a political enemy (whether they are or not). And, he doesn't care how many of us are going to be asked to sacrifice our children to achieve his psychotic dream.

How long is it going to take Congress and the Senate to grow a backbone and start listening to their constituents? (Senator Susan Collins where are you ❓)


I am just so glad that l and my son are too old to wear a uniform and my grandchildren are still too young.


I ask God to protect all our fine young service people at this critical time. Hopefully someone will come to their senses before this whole debacle comes to an end.

From Michael A. Cariker, in Bakersfield, California

*Six U.S. Army Reserve soldiers killed in a March 1, 2026, drone strike at the Port of Shuaiba in Kuwait were all assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command based in Des Moines, Iowa.