Donald Trump is a danger to the entire world order he must be removed from office- Senator Susan Collins where are you?

Echo opinion letter published in Lancaster OnLine in Pennsylvania

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Trump’s threats of more violence set dangerous ⚠️example for the world [letter]

I am rarely shocked by Donald Trump, but he did say something extraordinarily shocking earlier this month that was barely covered.

On Fox (Fake❗) News, as Vice President JD Vance was in negotiations with Iranian representatives, Trump warned Iran over potentially reclosing the Strait of Hormuz, saying, “You close it and you won’t have a country. You won’t even make it back to your (strong expletive) country.”

Ignore the F-bomb that exemplifies Trump’s inability to regulate his emotions, ignore his now-commonplace threat to destroy the entirety of Iran, and focus on what’s left. The United States and Iran sent envoys to discuss the ceasefire and potential peace plan, and in a moment of belligerent petulance, Trump threatened to murder Iran’s envoys, who subsequently walked out.
Want to talk about Trump’s penchant for breaking norms❓ Threatening envoys has been perhaps the No. 1 diplomatic taboo, dating back more than 2,400 years to the Peloponnesian War. No matter how opposed you are to your enemy, you do not threaten envoys. It guarantees a continuation of violence.

Trump also broke the memorandum of understanding (I.O.W. the useless MOU) requiring both parties to refrain from the threats of force, but who has ever accused Trump of understanding the barest of diplomatic principles❓💢

For centuries, bedrock moral philosophy has rested on the principle that we should act only in ways we would want everyone else to act. Do we want other countries threatening our envoys, ignoring all diplomatic principles and forever escalating the threat of violence❓ If not, we should not do it ourselves.

It’s extraordinary that in our technological society, in which it becomes easier to destroy all of humanity with each passing day, we have even managed to make it to the year 2026. Great leaders of the past, by definition, have set a moral example we can all follow.

With Trump as our failed leader — and, in many respects, the de facto leader of the world — if everyone followed his example of violence, lies and escalation, I can’t imagine humanity would last another decade.

I believe that it’s time to remove Trump from office and roll the dice with (former Marine Corporal) JD Vance.

From Ben Kreider in Lancaster Township, Pennsylvania

Maine Writer P.S. Senator Susan Collins where are you❓

Donald Trump signed a useless piece of paper called a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran but there is no strategic value to his surrender

An interesting point of view. In summary, the MOU Donald Trump signed is a useless piece of paper.  If Iran can outlast the Trumpzi crumbling administration, the MOU will be as useless as used toilet paper.  Published in Al Jazeera by Adolfo Franco
Opinion|US-Israel war on Iran

The US-Iran MoU: A mirage of an agreement

Both Washington and Tehran know that current deal will not lead to lasting peace. It is merely a strategic pause.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) the United States and Iran signed is not a peace treaty. It is not even a credible framework for one. A vocal chorus of critics has rushed to portray it as a humiliation – evidence that Donald Trump was manoeuvred into negotiations and extracted a poor deal from a regime that outplayed him.

That reading mistakes a mirage for reality. The Trump administration entered these talks with a precise understanding of what the Iranian regime is, what it wants and what any agreement with it is actually worth. No one in that negotiating team harbors the illusion that Tehran intends to honor commitments that constrain its core ambitions. The MоU is not a peace settlement. It is a mutually understood pause – a tactical intermission chosen by both sides for reasons that have nothing to do with trust and everything to do with time.

The new MoU does not signal that Iran has changed. Its calculus remains what it has always been – survival and expansion, pursued through whatever tactical posture the moment requires. When pressure mounts, Iran negotiates. When pressure eases, Iran advances. Its negotiators are, by all available evidence, prepared to offer assurances they have no intention of keeping. This is not a failure of diplomatic craftsmanship. This is simply the nature of any negotiation with a regime like Iran’s.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Iranian nuclear program. As a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has repeatedly committed to transparent cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. It has repeatedly broken those commitments, blocking inspections, constructing clandestine enrichment facilities, destroying evidence and systematically deceiving the international community. The pattern is not one of occasional noncompliance. It is deliberate, sustained deception in pursuit of a single unwavering objective: the acquisition of a nuclear weapon (although Iran denies this accusation).

A state genuinely committed to civilian nuclear energy has no need for a vast and enormously expensive domestic enrichment program. Nuclear fuel can be purchased – from Russia, among others – at a fraction of the cost and without the international confrontation such a program inevitably provokes.

Iran has chosen the far more costly and dangerous path for one reason: Enrichment is not a means to an end, but the end itself. Its rulers are committed to a nuclear weapon, and that commitment has survived changes in personnel, shifts in rhetoric and decades of pressure.

What this MoU represents is a mutually understood strategic pause, a breathing space both parties have chosen, for entirely different reasons, over immediate confrontation. Iran needs economic relief. A regime facing internal decay and a depleted treasury has strong incentives to buy time, replenish its resources and wait out what it calculates to be a finite window.

Tehran is acutely aware that Trump has roughly two and a half years remaining in office. From its perspective, survival through that period is itself a form of victory.

Washington’s calculus is different in kind. Keeping the Strait of Hormuz open is an immediate, non-negotiable goal – a choked strait means an energy price shock with global consequences. Beyond that, the US has its own repositioning to accomplish. Military inventories drawn down through recent operations are being restocked. Strategic options are being preserved and expanded.

A pause that enables that rebuilding, while avoiding a premature confrontation on unfavorable terms, is not a concession. It is preparation.

The question for Tehran is not whether American resolve exists but whether it can be outlasted. That is a wager the Iranian regime has made before and lost.

The international community will, as usual, observe from a careful distance. Many nations will urge Iran to be stopped while taking few steps to stop it, criticizing US action and inaction with equal facility.

Trump understands this dynamic. It is the foundation of his approach to alliances – the insistence that partners bear proportionate burdens rather than simply drawing on American resolve while contributing little of their own.

The MoU will not resolve the Iranian problem. It was not designed to. When its terms expire or when Iran decides it has served its purpose, the nuclear program will resume its advance, the proxies will be better resourced, and the Strait of Hormuz will once again become a flashpoint.

That outcome is not a possibility. Given Iran’s record, it is a near-certainty. 

Progressive voters finally being heard because we are enraged by Donald John Trump's draconian policies

Of the three New York City congressional candidates endorsed by Zohran Mamdani in Tuesday’s primary, Darializa Avila Chevalier was the weakest.

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Michelle Goldberg: Democrats Are Done With Caution

A sociology Ph.D. student and doctrinaire leftist who has never held elected office, she was running against Adriano Espaillat, head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He’d built an uptown political machine known as the “squadriano” in New York’s 13th District, which includes Washington Heights, Harlem and parts of the Bronx. Many of the area’s neighborhoods are reliably progressive but not known for their radicalism. After all, in the last presidential election, Donald Trump improved his margin in the Bronx by double digits, one of the largest swings in the country, in part because of voter angst about crime and migration.

Last week, in an interview with the New York Editorial Board, a group of veteran journalists who question local political and civic leaders, Avila Chevalier said she opposed all deportations, even those of violent criminals. A prison abolitionist, she either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer repeated questions about whether murderers should be incarcerated. Both she and Espaillat are Dominican, and on the morning of the election, she walked off a popular Spanish-language radio show after she was asked about old tweets, including some that seemed to disdain Dominican nationalism. (In other since-deleted tweets, Avila Chevalier cursed at Kamala Harris, called Joe Biden a “rapist” and derided his support for Ukraine as “bullying Russia.”) Her name was notably absent from a get-out-the-vote message that Bernie Sanders posted for other progressives on Tuesday.

But in the end, Avila Chevalier won, carried to a narrow victory by the left-wing tsunami that created landslides for the other congressional candidates Mamdani endorsed, Brad Lander and Claire Valdez. She will almost certainly become the most left-wing member of Congress, and Republicans are sure to try to make her the face of the Democratic Party.

New York’s primary demonstrated the astonishing political power of the mayor and of the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization that he, Avila Chevalier and Valdez are all members of. It suggests that Democratic voters have been radicalized by the horrors of Donald Trump’s second presidency and infuriated ❗by their leaders’ failure to contain him. And, it’s a sign that after the savagery of the war on Gaza, support for Israel has become toxic among large parts of the party’s base. 

Avila Chevalier was an organizer of the anti-Israel protest encampments at Columbia, whereas the American Israel Public Affairs Committee poured money into a super PAC supporting Espaillat.

The city, of course, is not particularly representative of the rest of the country. New York’s electorate is more progressive, and Mamdani, who has brought a joyful, dynamic energy to the city’s governance, has a unique clout. The same night that his slate dominated in New York, AIPAC’s preferred candidate, Adrian Boafo, won a congressional primary in Maryland.

Still, progressive outsider candidates are surging in many parts of America. There’s now a democratic socialist mayor in Seattle, and a democratic socialist just won the primary to become mayor of Washington. 

In Maine, Graham Platner — who, like Avila Chevalier, had a vituperative social media history — easily defeated the state’s governor, Janet Mills, for the Senate nomination. Voters in Maine’s rural Second District, which Trump won by nine points, chose a progressive, Matt Dunlap, to run for the House seat of an outgoing moderate Democrat, Jared Golden, defeating Joe Baldacci, the candidate endorsed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

This leftist momentum is a bullish sign for progressives in other Democratic primaries, like Abdul El-Sayed, running for Senate in Michigan, and Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, running for governor in Wisconsin. Both are either ahead or competitive in recent polls.

That means the 2026, midterms could end up being a giant national experiment that tests the populist left’s theory of victory. 

For years, it has argued that Democrats have failed because, in thrall to corporate interests, they let themselves become the party of the status quo. Unable or unwilling to galvanize voters with an economically progressive alternative to the right, they’ve offered only timid, business-friendly incrementalism. Usamah Andrabi, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, the organization that recruited Avila Chevalier to run for Congress, told me that too often, the Democratic Party “tries to stymie big and bold ideas” in favor of technocratic pragmatism. “I think what voters have really made clear, particularly this past year, is that they are desperate for bold, visionary leadership,” he said.

This spring, I met Hong, a member of the Wisconsin Assembly from Madison, when she was visiting New York. She argued that winning the general election would require motivating voters who feel “disenfranchised or angry at the Democratic Party” with an anti-establishment, working-class campaign. 

Electability, said Hong, is subjective. “We have to take a step back and look at the current political moment and where voters are at and what they care about,” she said. “Who is the candidate that actually responds with a solution that they believe Who is the candidate that presents a vision that they will see themselves in❓”

Hong is right that many voters can’t be mapped onto a neat left-right spectrum. They judge candidates on a whole range of axes — whether they seem like normal people or career politicians, insiders or outsiders, populists or elitists. That’s why there are voters who went from Sanders to Trump, or Trump to Mamdani.

Still, as someone who desperately wants to see Republicans beaten, I’ll admit I’m anxious watching Democrats stake so much on a strategy of left-wing audacity. After all, progressive overreach has backfired in the past.

The D.S.A., remember, also surged during Trump’s first presidency. In 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a D.S.A. member recruited by Justice Democrats, stunned the political world with her upset victory over the longtime Democratic congressman Joseph Crowley, and was joined in the House by a fellow D.S.A. member, Rashida Tlaib, and the like-minded progressive Ilhan Omar. Other D.S.A. members won local offices nationwide.

Mainstream Democrats rushed to ally themselves with the left’s insurgent energy. Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker signed onto Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill. 

When the Black Lives Matter protests exploded in the summer of 2020, Harris sent out a fund-raising appeal to bail out people who were arrested protesting in Minnesota. Though Joe Biden beat out Sanders for the presidential nomination, once elected, he worked closely with progressives, adopting ambitious climate policies, expanding the safety net and welcoming migrants. Before the war in Gaza made him a villain to many on the left, he was hailed as the most progressive president in a generation.

All that gives the left a renewed opportunity to wield power. The question is what lessons leftists have learned from the past dismal decade. As both candidate and mayor, Mamdani has usually embodied a practical, optimistic sort of left politics — a sewer socialism — laser focused on New Yorkers’ material concerns. Avila Chevalier represents something different, an academic leftism rigid in its refusal to accept trade-offs or make concessions to ordinary people’s moral intuitions. One approach is a recipe for building, the other for backlash. The danger is that a movement flush with success may think it doesn’t have to choose.

Then came collapse. During the Biden administration, the D.S.A. hemorrhaged members amid sectarian infighting, especially over Palestine. In 2021, some factions tried to expel the recently elected representative Jamaal Bowman for being insufficiently anti-Israel, and the national D.S.A. unendorsed Ocasio-Cortez.

At the same time, centrists swung against a left that had indulged its purist tendencies. Bowman would go on to lose a primary fight to a more moderate challenger, as would Representative Cori Bush, the former Black Lives Matter activist who’d been endorsed by the D.S.A. In the 2024, election, the vast majority of American counties shifted right.

Andrabi attributes Democratic failure to Harris’s uninspiring centrism, and there were certainly people who declined to vote for her out of disgust with Biden’s unstinting support for Israel. But as Blueprint Research has found, swing voters who backed Trump overwhelmingly saw Harris as soft on crime and the border, and “too focused on identity politics.” She was weighed down in part by positions she took amid the frothy left-wing ascendance of 2020.

Maybe this time will be different. The electorate is furious, and now it’s the right that represents a hated status quo. 

Much of the Democratic establishment has proved itself feckless; a candidate as flawed as Avila Chevalier could win only against a complacent political machine that’s lost touch with the people it’s supposed to represent. Calls to abolish ICE were once seen as fringe, but since Trump has turned the agency into something akin to a personal militia, in most recent surveys, a plurality of voters want to scrap it. (Maine Writer- Does Senator Susan Collins know this❓)

All that gives the left a renewed opportunity to wield power. The question is what lessons leftists have learned from the past dismal decade. As both candidate and mayor, Mamdani has usually embodied a practical, optimistic sort of left politics — a sewer socialism — laser focused on New Yorkers’ material concerns. Avila Chevalier represents something different, an academic leftism rigid in its refusal to accept trade-offs or make concessions to ordinary people’s moral intuitions. One approach is a recipe for building, the other for backlash. The danger is that a movement flush with success may think it doesn’t have to choose.

Donald John Trump signed a piece of paper called a Memorandum of Understanding but it is surrender document because his Iran war failed

Letters to the Los Angeles Times Editor: Trump started a deadly, costly war in Iran. Don't point the blame elsewhere (published in Yahoo.com)

Donald John Trump started the war with Iran without congressional approval, as evidenced in the "deeply flawed" memorandum of understanding". Actually, the MOU was fashioned by former Marine Corporal Vice President JD Vance, but signed off on by Donald John Trump. (Let's be clear, JD Vance is a self proclaimed hillbilly who has no negotiation experience.)

The fallback plan for saving face is to blame Trump's staff. Blame Vance, who, as always, is tone-deaf when it comes to the nuances of diplomacy and send this global dumpster fire to the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who stepped back when his counsel was disregarded, to be fixed. 

Donald Trump is totally responsible for this most serious deadly and costly war with Iran- billions of dollars and at least 13 American military lost their lives because the Trump administration did not warn their base about the surprise attack on Iran and they were unprepared to defend themselves.

President Obama and his team developed a carefully thought-out plan that was accepted and held for 10 years, without the deaths of our valiant troops, the bombing deaths of schoolchildren and the promise of 💲300 billion💲 of dollar💲 to Iran. So where were all of Donald John Trump's skills described in "Art of the Deal" ❓ Instead, the MOU leaves, Donald uniquely vulnerable to confusion of means and ends, resulting in making a deal for deal's sake, even a bad one.

From Joy Rockport, Valley Glen, Los Angeles, California

Donald Trump and maga cult are determined to upset the American elections; Where is Senator Susan Collins?

The most dangerous weapon for a democracy to put in control of an aspiring dictator is not necessarily the police or the military.

Echo editorial board opinion published in the Sun Sentinel, a South Florida newspaper.

It’s control over the ballot box, the source of power over everything else.

Our vulnerability is never more obvious than in President Trump’s insistence on dictating how states conduct elections and who can vote. His feverish obsession is a frontal assault on democracy. Nothing could be more important than for Congress and the courts to thwart him.

Trump is so desperate to suppress voting in the midterms that he’s blocking enactment of a critical national security bill, and he refuses to sign overwhelmingly popular bipartisan housing legislation until Congress acts on his voter suppression bill.

Denying women the right to vote

The deceptively named SAVE America Act would impose a proof of citizenship provision that would disenfranchise millions of women whose married names don’t match their birth certificates. It would also largely eliminate voting by mail — the method used by a third of all participating voters in Florida in the last statewide election.

He called off signing the housing bill as sponsors gathered to celebrate it and before a scheduled closed-door luncheon with Senate Republicans — blindsiding members of his own party. Trump is playing the foulest sort of politics with security and with the shelter needs of millions of Americans.

It takes a tyrant with an empty soul to do that.
Asserting election jurisdiction that neither the Constitution nor the Congress gives him, Trump has also signed a breathtaking executive order. Two federal judges have now pronounced it unconstitutional, the latest Thursday (Trump will appeal).

A federal voter dossier

Trump’s order also contemplates the federal government compiling its own state-by state lists of eligible voters. The database Trump would employ is error-prone and so afoul of federal privacy laws that a judge blocked its use.

It should never be the federal government’s business to manage elections, even if a trustworthy president were in office.

The original Constitution (Artcle I, Section 4) left it to states to determine how to elect federal officers. It also authorized the Congress, but not the president, “to make or alter such regulations.”

The Postal Service ploy is deservedly under attack in the courts, where Trump is zero for 10 in lawsuits demanding state voter rolls.

As for the dangeros SAVE Act, Senate Republican leaders don’t have even a majority of votes to pass it, let alone the 60 to break a filibuster.

The Senate should also pass a clean foreign intelligence bill and dare him to veto it. Either he vetoes the housing law or it becomes law in a week or so, without his signature, but the clock doesn’t start until the House sends him the bill. 

Speaker Mike Johnson could show leadership by sending it now.
The voters are watching🗳️👀

The “voter fraud” Trump harps upon exists only in his mind, and only when he or his party loses. If Democrats are so good at cheating, then why did they let Trump narrowly win crucial swing states in 2016, and 2024❓

Making it harder to vote by mail is meant to hurt Democratic candidates because their voters are more likely to cast their ballots that way.

Trump has deluded many Republicans into distrusting our elections, especially mail voting — even though he has voted by mail in Palm Beach County, as recently as March.

By denigrating the foundation of our democracy, Trump is willfully- purposefully- eroding it. Serious inquiries have turned up only vanishingly rare cases of ineligible people voting or of someone voting twice in any election.

What is a legitimate concern are the complaints, hardly from Trump alone, about seemingly interminable vote counts in some states. Prolonged uncertainty feeds conspiracy theories. That’s notably true of California, but the problem is simply that it allows up to 30 days for vote canvassing.

The appropriate remedy is to shorten that, not to make election day the deadline for returning mail ballots. That would put too much trust and power into the hands of a postal service whose legal independence Trump does not respect.

A reasonable compromise on ballots that arrive after the election would be to count them if they were postmarked in advance of election day rather than on election day itself. But that choice belongs to the states — not Trump, whose only interest is in rigging the rules for his party’s benefit.

Trump complains incessantly that if voters elect a Democratic Congress in November, it would begin investigating his administration’s mounting heap of misdeeds, blunders and corruption — as well it should.

Maine Writer P.S.- Maine Senator Susan Collins has 28 years seniority to call for impeachement of Donald John Trump because he is trampling our Constitution, but she does nothing.  

Donald John Trump is destroying American democracy. Senator Susan Collins has the seniority to do something but does nothing to stop the tyranny

To the editor of the Yakima Herald Republic newspaper in Washington State— Donald John Trump is a man ignoring the Constitution and the law. Imposing tariffs, making war with nations without the consent of Congress and alienating allies. People who are here legally are being harassed and imprisoned by Trump's ICE police.

• There's an attempt to eliminate habeas corpus (right of due process) because he claims there's an "invasion." 
• Ignoring voting rights because he would have us believe there is unproven voter fraud. 
• Hiring incompetent sycophants and firing experienced government workers and senior military leaders. 
• Gutting the USAID foreign assistance to aid in poverty and  relief from deadly infectious diseases like Ebola.

Trump wants to use taxpayers' 💲money for people who have attacked the Capitol and police and have been convicted of crimes. Over 10,000 of the best attorneys of both parties who observe their oaths have left government positions. The DOJ has become Trump's personal retribution squad. There are 22 people who are competent public servants but "enemies" of the president who he's trying to prosecute.

"Pay to Play" is compromising the government in deal after deal to benefit Trump. Building expensive ballrooms, needless arches and reflecting pools.

It will take decades to deal with the damage done to our country by Trump and his extremists. Psychiatrists and professors of law will use him as an example of incompetent leadership and a time of lawlessness in America. It is imperative to teach the younger generation — THIS IS NOT NORMAL❗

From ANNE ANNA in Yakima, Washington State

Maine Writer P.S. Where is Senator Susan Collins❓

Donald Trump and maga cult followers mush face reality: Watching Trump's dangerous detachment from reality

Echo opinion letter published in TribLive on line:

Evidence points out how Trump is detached from reality❓

As one witnesses Donald John Trump’s actions going from outrageous to complete detachment from reality, I wonder when his supporters will ever face the fact this man is beyond satisfying. I’m thankful a few federal judges are stopping or at least slowing some of the stupidity he has instigated.

One last thing: As I recall, he gutted some of the National Park System funding, although the parks have made more money annually than what was allocated. Recently, while researching a park visit, I found the administration imposed new fees.

Visitors from foreign countries must pay a 💲100 entry fee per person, plus ➕ ❗ 😡have a national park pass (💲15 to 💲35 per car for seven days), at 11 of the most popular national parks. 

Also, upon entry, if a foreigner is in the car all occupants must show proof of citizenship.

This is just one example of the loss of our liberty. Where does the blatant stupidity end? There is so much more to recognize here, but you all know the failures. Wake up,⏰ America❗ 

We can stop this on Nov. 3. Vote Blue❗

From Leonard Mucci in Derry Township, Pennsylvania

Donald Trump caused the reflecting pool to become toxic and the Strait of Hormuz to close: IOW Donald John Trump is a failure

New York Times review about the Trump failed Washington DC reflecting pool environmental crises, by Maxine Joselow and Donald A. Fahrenthold. 

Maine Writer preface: Let me get this❓On February 27, 2026, the Strait of Hormuz connecting the Persian Gulf (to the west) with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea (to the southeast) was open and free for international shipping.  

After Trump's illegally launched war against Iran, the shipping was shut down by Iran and the U.S. blockaded Iranian access to the Strait of Hormuz in another Trump act of war Naval Blockade.  

In other words, the attack against Iran is a complete failure and Donald Trump had to sign a surrender Memorandum of Understanding at Versailles, France for the purpose of getting Iran to negotiate about a peace deal and open the Strait of Hormuz, that had been open before his interference.  Now, Donald Trump's ego project to recreate the Washington DC reflecting pool has become a tax payer funded fiasco because too many "no bid" contractors cut corners and did not employ best practices to make the reflecting pool "USA blue". Now, the pool is half green and efforts to kill destructive algae are not working properly. In other words, the reflecting pool was beautiful, and functioning in the Washington D.C. climate and environment before Donald Trump ruined it. Meanwhile, tax payers 💲are stuck funding the failed Iranian war and for the toxic clean up in the Washington D.C. reflecting pool. 

Trump says the peeling blue coating and algae blooms that mar his $16.4 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are the fault of vandals working with “knives” in the “dark of night.”

But government documents obtained by The New York Times show that while National Park Service workers found two cuts in sections of foam between the pool’s expansion joints, those were not directly related to the “American flag blue” coating that is now peeling, or to the algae that has turned the pool a bright shade of green.

Even as the documents show workers were attempting to address deteriorating conditions, Trump administration officials were insisting publicly that the pool was pristine.

The cause of the cuts was unclear. While a June 9 report by the U.S. Park Police described the cuts as “razor blade slashes” made along a 20-foot-long stretch of the foam, the administration has yet to present evidence supporting that assertion. The documents reviewed by The Times described them as two 171-foot blade cuts but did not address how they were made.

By June 16, workers had noticed that chunks of blue sealant that covered the pool’s bottom were peeling and floating to the surface, the documents show. That sealant was separate from the foam in the pool’s expansion joints, which allow its concrete slabs to expand and contract.

The workers had also discovered that some devices installed to kill algae were not working as intended, according to the documents. And enormous algae blooms had turned portions of the pool bright green instead of dark blue.

But on June 15,  Trump was still declaring the renovation a success, telling reporters that “I’m very good at building things and constructing things.”

The Reflecting Pool is a centerpiece of Trump’s attempts to remake the capital in honor of the nation’s 250th birthday. The pool has been plagued by leaks and algae for decades; Trump boasted that he had repaired it quickly and affordably, but both problems have returned in force.

In fact the pool was drained, resealed and then refilled by June 5. Four days later, National Park Service workers discovered holes, cracks and peeling caulking in parts of the pool, along with cuts in sections of the foam, according to the documents.

Work to fix the problems may not be finished until after July 4 — a setback for Trump, who wanted the renovation to be completed before then.

On Saturday, Trump acknowledged the pool would have to be at least partially drained for more work. Then, on Tuesday, Trump said on social media that six people had been arrested, and seven others had been cited, for slashing the pool’s sealant with a “sharp knife or razors.”

“It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night,” he wrote.

Trump also told reporters on Monday, without offering evidence, that vandals had poured fertilizer into the pool to feed the algae.

Neither the Interior Department nor the White House would provide charging documents, citations or the names of anyone arrested. They did share the Park Police incident report, which said any suspect or suspects were unknown. The report also did not mention any damage to the pool’s blue sealant, nor did it describe any vandals dumping fertilizer.

Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, did not answer specific questions about the government documents but said in an email on Tuesday that the pool was “clear” and “reflecting beautifully.”

“While Trump was restoring a crown jewel of our nation’s capital, which is supported by Americans across the country, vandals were attempting to destroy, impede and delay the ongoing work,” she said.

On Tuesday, portions of the pool appeared dark blue and reflected the Washington Monument and the overcast sky. But an enormous clump of green algae remained visible in the center.

A few curiosity seekers braved the rain to stroll around the site, which has become a sightseeing draw. They were outnumbered by throngs of law enforcement officers and other personnel, including from the National Guard, Park Police and U.S. Marshals Service. The National Guard troops were stationed around the pool’s perimeter, with some huddling under trees to stay☔🌧️ dry.

The administration is setting up fencing around the site before the July 4 fireworks display for safety reasons, Ms. Martin said. But it’s going up earlier than originally planned because of what she called an “increase in vandalism by🙄 🤥leftist activists.”

The Trump administration awarded two no-bid contracts for the Reflecting Pool renovations, bypassing the legally required process of seeking competitive bids because of what it called an urgent need to complete the project for events around the nation’s 250th birthday.

The first 💲14.7 million contract went to a Virginia-based company called Atlantic Industrial Coatings to spread the sealant in the “American flag blue” shade across the pool’s concrete slabs. The second 💲1.7 million contract went to Ohio-based Greenwater Services to install devices called nanobubblers, which infuse the water with ozone to kill algae and bacteria.

On June 15, workers discovered that one or two of the four temporary nanobubblers weren’t working at any given time because of problems with generators, and that the water was turning green. By the next day, officials had noticed blue coating peeling, as well.

Representatives for Atlantic Industrial Coatings and Greenwater Services, also known as Green Water Solutions, did not respond to requests for comment.

Though Trump claimed vandals dumped fertilizer in the pool, his administration refilled it with D.C. municipal water, which is treated with phosphate to keep lead from leaching out of old pipes. But phosphate also provides nutrients for algae, as do droppings from ducks swimming in the pool.

In a post on its website on Sunday, Atlantic Industrial Coatings said that “a very small part of the massive 7-acre project” would require repairs. The company added that it would do the work under warranty.

Anthony Flett, the chief executive of U.S. Coating Specialists, a Florida-based company that specializes in waterproofing coatings, reviewed the documents at the request of The Times. He wouldn’t dismiss vandalism, but said it appeared that the sealant may be peeling off because not enough material was applied.

“I don’t want to totally blame the vandalism,” he said. “If they put more material down, maybe none of this would be an issue.”

“There’s people in the pool industry whose whole life is polyurea, and they should have been called in,” Mr. Flett said. “They should have been there to watch over the project to make sure that these failures weren’t prevalent. I think it was just done too hastily.”

The coating was made by a California-based company called Rhino Linings. Pierre Gagnon, the president and chief executive of Rhino Linings, said in an email that the peeling appeared to be “limited to isolated areas” of the pool.

Algae has bloomed frequently in the pool for decades. Its shallow, stagnant water becomes a petri dish for the aquatic organisms in the summer sun.

Experts said the algae didn’t threaten public health because the water is not intended for swimming or drinking. But, they cautioned, if left unchecked, the blooms could give rise to cyanobacteria, which could be highly toxic to any ducks, dogs or other animals that drink the water.

“Just because it’s green algae this week doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to be cyanobacteria tomorrow,” said Ashley Bair, a senior research developer at Usalco, a company that makes coagulants and other water-treatment chemicals.

Ms. Bair, who spoke to The Times from a gathering of water-treatment experts in Washington, added that the Reflecting Pool was the talk of the conference.

Donald John Trump surrendered to Iran and maga cult knows he is incompetent including Senator Susan Collins

Trump’s Iran deal looks like surrender

Echo editorial board published in the Boston Globe

Donald John Trump's new (former President Obama) agreement with Iran bears striking similarities to the Obama-era accord he famously abandoned.

The reviews of Donald John Trump’s MOU surrender deal with Iran are in, and they aren’t pretty.

On the right, the National Review said Doanld Trump committed the United States to “humiliations,” while The Wall Street Journal editorial board called the deal a “retreat.” 

On the left, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser under former president Joe Biden, said the deal indicated that “the United States basically lost this war.”

From the center right, Andrew Sullivan called it “surrender.” 

And this from the center left, economics blogger Noah Smith described the deal as a Katrina moment when even many of Trump’s defenders “will be forced to admit, in private if not in public, that the man and his administration are grossly, pathetically incompetent.”

If very few across the political spectrum can see value in the deal, the reason should be patently clear: It is a hollow promise, a deal to make a deal that is sounding suspiciously like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA), the Iran nuclear pact negotiated by then-President Barack Obama in 2015, that Trump tore up in 2018.

The new surrender document, the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) calls on Iran to dilute, or “downblend,” ❓-whaaa- its enriched uranium under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency. So did the JCPOA (which also called for removing some of that uranium to other countries). In the MOU, Iran “reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons.” 

But Iran has always maintained that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.

Details for a final deal will be negotiated in the coming two months — an absurdly short time frame for incredibly complex issues. In the meantime, the United States will release billions of dollars of frozen Iranian assets. The United States pledges to lift all sanctions if and when a final deal is signed. 

Oddly, all this must be endorsed by the United Nations, a body Trump has long mocked as useless. And by unfreezing Iranian assets before a final nuclear deal is struck, Trump is effectively agreeing to pay Iran to return things to the way they were before February 28, 2026.

Nowhere does the surrender MOU address Iran’s mass manufacturing of ballistic missiles and weaponized drones, or its subsidizing of military proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen. Iran pledges to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for commercial shipping — but the MOU seems to leave open the possibility that in 60 days Iran can start taxing tankers to transit the waterway, something it was not doing before.

So, in many ways, Trump’s deal will return the Persian Gulf to the status quo ante — only arguably worse, because Iran now understands that the mighty US military cannot prevent it from strangling the world’s economy by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil supply flows.

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, admittedly no friend of Trump’s, summed it up fairly when he wrote on X: “Before the war, the strait was open, Iran was being crushed by sanctions, and 13 service members were still alive. Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped. This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

Cassidy’s assessment touches on the cost of this underwhelming settlement. The approximately 15-week campaign left 13 American service members and more than 3,500 Iranians dead. It cost the US military more than $32 billion and nearly drained the nation’s storehouse of missile and drone interceptors.

And the threat the war posed for the global economy was enormous. The sharp reduction in tanker traffic through the strait caused possibly the biggest disruption in oil supply in history, driving the price to above 💲120 a barrel and forcing countries to dip deeply into their reserves.

Before the first US and Israel bombs fell on Iran, gas in the United States was selling on average for less than $3 per gallon at the pump. By early June, the average nationwide price had risen to more than $4 a gallon. All told, according to Moody’s Analytics, the war cost the United States a total of $132 billion in both military spending and higher consumer costs — nearly $1,000 per American household.

Amid the disruptions in oil, natural gas, and fertilizer supplies, the World Bank lowered its forecast for global economic growth to 2.5 percent — the lowest since the COVID-19 pandemic.

No wonder Trump told reporters in Europe after signing the surrender MOU that he was worried that the war was about to trigger a global economic downturn rivaling the Great Depression of 1929 — an outcome that would have made him look as bad as Herbert Hoover. “I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have ​happened,” the president said.

It was boldly honest of the president to admit that he was so worried about his image for history. But surely the Iranians were pleased to hear that their ability to create global economic havoc has become their superpower against this superpower.

Sending the country into war is a president’s most somber and significant power, and Trump, true to form, has used it rashly in this war. It took a primary loss against a Trump-supported rival for Cassidy to speak honestly about the emperor’s new clothes. Might this be the moment when other Republican members of Congress remove the veil from their eyes and rein in his recklessness before he overreaches again❓

One could be forgiven for not betting on that possibility. But there are midterm elections this fall, and chances are higher that voters will use their ballots to hold the Donald Trump accountable. Trump pledged in 2024, to end military missions overseas and to focus American resources on America’s working people. This war did neither.

Donald John Trump's blundering, costly, and pointless use of the American military has damaged the US economy and its international standing — and it should be beyond the pale for anyone who truly puts America first.

Maine Writer post script- Senator Susan Collins where are you❓

Donald Trump cannot fool all of the people all of the time: Donald John Trump signed an Iran surrender MOU at Versailles

Failure of Iran war reveals Trump’s inability to deal with America’s security needs.  Echo opinion published in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Trudy Rubin.

Scary❗😱 Donald Trump's ego-based foreign policy is making the U.S. more vulnerable to our enemies at home and overseas.

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” That maxim is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but it’s occasionally credited to the great American circus showman P.T. Barnum. It has special relevance when applied to Donald Trump, who has outdone Barnum in self-promotion.

Donald John Trump has had astonishing success in fooling some of the people all the time, from his foundational lie that the 2020, election was stolen through his daily blast of falsehoods about everything from the economy to the financing of his ballroom.

Yet, with his blatant efforts to bamboozle all the people about his Iran deal, Trump may have finally reached the point where most Americans realize he is (and always has been..."bone spurs"...) a fraud.

For starters, Trump’s claim that he has reached a “Great Deal [that] will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region” is flat out fraudulent. The Iran war has laid bare the incompetence of a U.S. leader who assumes that force alone produces victory.

The U.S. and Israel may have destroyed much of Iran’s military, but Tehran has denied them a geopolitical win, which all the world’s leaders (except for Trump) recognize.

And most Americans will soon see this for themselves.

Until the U.S. joined Israel in the February attack on Iran, Tehran’s religious and military leaders had never tried to close the Strait of Hormuz for fear of arousing American wrath. But after Trump openly called for regime change, they had nothing to lose.

Despite its military losses, Iran proved (as has Ukraine) that a smaller country using unconventional means (drones, mines, a willingness to absorb pain) can hold off a superpower.

Moreover, Tehran is still insisting it will charge ships fees for transiting the strait after the 60-day ceasefire extension expires, contrary to Trump’s claim that the strait will be “toll free.” And the world knows that, if pushed, Tehran can close the strait again.

Trump now looks like a chump.

Trump alienated Mideast allies, including Gulf states, which took the brunt of Iran’s military revenge. He encouraged America’s adversaries, including Russia and China, by revealing his lack of any long-term strategy.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping had only to watch as the U.S. military squandered huge numbers of precious missiles against Iranian drones, leaving them in such short supply that the U.S. military is exposed in the Indo-Pacific.

Moscow can only toast Trump’s blindness, as the U.S. cancels promised sales of mid- and long-range missiles to Europe for defense against Russia and to pass on to Ukraine. 

This horribly bad decision left Ukrainians defenseless against Russia’s rain of cruise missiles on civilians — and on a thousand-year center of Orthodox Christianity, the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery and its golden-domed Dormition Cathedral.

Not a word of protest by Trump or MAGA’s white Christian nationalists who admire Putin’s religiosity. Instead, POTUS has bizarrely praised Putin’s help with Iran. Could he possibly be referring to Moscow’s sharing of intelligence on U.S. targets with Tehran❓

Donald John Trump signed the surrender MOU with Iran on June 17, 2026, at the Palace of Versailles in France, the same place where Germany surrendered after World War One.

But, never mind. Let’s get to the surrender MOU document Trump signed electronically* on Sunday. It was not a peace deal. Rather, it was a so-called Memorandum of Understanding — “about a page and half … a very general document,” according to Vice President JD Vance.

Contrary to Trump’s grandiose claims, this memorandum kicks all the main questions about dismantling Iran’s nuclear program down the road to future negotiations over the next 60 days.

By keeping the document secret at least until Friday, the president is relentlessly trying to frame his defeat as an astounding victory in hopes this will shape the thinking of the cult MAGA faithful.

From Trump’s own words, however, and those of his henchmen, it’s already clear he has abandoned most of the stated goals of this war.

Let’s look at what we already know.

1. There will be no regime change, as POTUS called for on the opening day of the war, urging the Iranians to rise up. Trump now bizarrely calls Iran’s new leadership pragmatists in a New York Times interview, labeling them “smarter” and more “rational” than those who were assassinated. Yet the Revolutionary Guard’s military commanders now running the show are more hardline and more confident about defying the U.S. president.

2. As so far revealed, the negotiating framework to end Iran’s nuclear program sounds no better than President Barack Obama’s 2015, agreement. POTUS bragged in the Times that the agreement would ensure Iran “cannot develop or purchase a nuclear weapon.” But Tehran has asserted for decades that it would not do so and made the same pledge on the first page of Obama’s deal, known as the JCPOA.

Trump Always Chickens Out

Although Trump promised to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program entirely, he appears to have backtracked significantly, (a.k.a. "TACO Trump) now saying that Iran “can never go beyond a certain amount” of enrichment that could be used for military purposes. Again, this echoes the JCPOA, which limited enrichment to 3.67%, an amount that can be used in power reactors, but not for a bomb.

As for how long Iran would have to limit enrichment, Trump hinted that he might settle for a 15-year suspension, which is the same time limit the JCPOA required❗ (But in a contradiction, he said the limit would be “forever,” although there is no sign Tehran would agree to this.)

If POTUS hadn’t pulled out of the JCPOA in 2015, the 15 years would have extended until 2030, and Iran would now have no highly enriched uranium.

The flaw in the JCPOA was the 15-year sunset, after which Iran could have restarted enrichment, but Trump seems headed toward a similar limitation.

As for the 11.5 tons of enriched uranium Iran produced since Trump junked the JCPOA — including a half ton of nearly bomb-grade nuclear fuel — the president has talked about reducing its purity level (known as downblending), possibly inside Iran. A far cry from previous demands for removing it entirely.

In the Obama deal, 97% of Iran’s stockpile was removed outside the country to Russia. No sign that Trump’s deal will do as well.

Moreover, the joint Israel/U.S. 12-day war against Iran in 2025 had buried Iran’s enriched uranium, and as Trump has recently admitted, U.S. satellites could see if the Iranians tried to remove it. Negotiations in February, mediated by Oman, were reportedly headed toward a better deal than Trump will ever achieve, if he achieves any deal at all.

Trump killed those talks by starting his choice to wage an illegal war.

So, if you parse Trump’s own admissions, there was no need for his four-month war, which has cost America 13 dead and hundreds of billions of dollars — not to mention 3,000 Iranian dead and severe damage to the global economy.

Yet the outpouring of Trump lies this week designed to disguise his failure roll on.

While the president insists that Iran will get no economic benefits until a deal is concluded, it appears that Tehran will be able to immediately restart exporting oil during negotiations. And there are reports that other Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates or Qatar may release Iranian funds held in their banks immediately, enabling Iran to benefit economically before any nuclear deal.


Moreover, a future Trump deal doesn’t cover an end to Iran’s missile buildup, or the end of support for proxies, sins for which Trump never stops excoriating President Obama. Also, Israel and Hezbollah aren’t party to the deal and are likely to keep fighting.

When the details of Trump’s non-deal are revealed, he will try to paper over his failure with more prevarications. But as Barnum noted, “you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

*Donald John Trump signed the surrender MOU at Versailles on June 17, 2026.  

Donald Trump will destroy the American constitution for the purpose of preventing voters from taking back our democracy

Americans must rise up to protect our democracy against Trumpzism

Echo opinion letter:  Philadelphia Inquirer editorial about Donald Trump’s losses in the courts and elsewhere correctly described as historic the mounting damage caused by his cult of corruption, incompetence, and cruelty. In fact, The Inquirer also pointed out that Trump is never more dangerous than when he is losing. That said, I don’t think you went far enough by calling on readers to hold Trump and his GOP enablers accountable by voting in the midterms. What makes you think Trump will accept the November results if he is not completely successful in suppressing the vote? Here’s a more effective action plan: Impeach Trump for treason and remove him from office before he subverts the next election. Treason is specifically defined among the constitutional grounds for impeachment, and treason is what Trump has committed repeatedly.

Donald Trump instigated an attack on Congress on January 6, 2021, and indiscriminately pardoned hundreds of the criminal attackers. 

More recently Donald Trump even pardoned the former criminal president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted by a jury of conspiring to smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine into our country. These acts — giving aid comfort to the enemies of the United States — meet the definition of treason. Notably, Trump has ordered the summary execution of hundreds of noncombatants suspected of lesser crimes.

Americans must follow the Constitution and hold the wrongdoer-in-chief accountable, so we will be able to vote — and have our votes count.

From Peter Pinnola, in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania