I’m sick and tired of wars. I’m even more sick and tired of Trump and his cabinet full of stupid idiots. I came of age during the Vietnam war. After that disaster finally ended, I really thought our leaders would stay out of unnecessary wars. But it didn’t happen. These men (goddess forbid we elect a woman president!) just have to prove their “manhood” by attacking other countries. I’m just plain sick of it.
It also appears that Trump and his gang of idiots didn’t plan for the obvious results of their war–rising prices and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. In addition, Trump’s “Secretary of War” is advocating for war crimes. That’s where things stand so far.
For Batoul Hamdan and her two children, seven-month-old Fatima and Jihad, three, Monday’s iftar, the evening meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan, was special.
For a week, they had eaten to the sounds of bombs in their home in Arab Salim. Hamdan eventually decided to leave for Al-Nimiriya, the sleepy town where she had grown up. Surrounded by her parents and siblings in the family home, she hoped they could finally enjoy the festive mood of Ramadan.
They had just finished their meal when the bomb fell. The Israeli airstrike collapsed the two-storey building instantly, killing all eight members of the Hamdan family: grandparents Ahmad and Najib, their children, including Batoul, and grandchildren Fatima and Jihad – three generations wiped out in a moment.
On Thursday, only snarled rebar and broken concrete remained of the Hamdan family home. The fragments of their lives – a certificate of achievement from the children’s schooldays, cutlery from their cabinet, frayed purses – had been ejected by the force of the blast and now littered the ground.
“There was no warning before the strike. My own two kids started to cry, I picked them up and started to run away from the explosion when it happened,” said Qassem Ayoub, a neighbour and town police officer, as he stared at the wreckage. “Why were they targeted? I don’t know, ask the Israelis.”
Batoul and her loved ones were among the 773 Lebanese people – including more than 100 children – killed by Israel’s campaign in Lebanon since 2 March. They join a growing list of families completely wiped out by Israeli bombings, in a conflict whose death toll is rising faster than in any previous war in Lebanon.
Forty-one people were killed by Israeli airstrikes in Nabi Chit in the Bekaa valley in only five hours last Saturday, and 18 people died in a single night in the town of Sir el-Gharbiyeh on 8 March. The pace of death has stunned Lebanese people and left them struggling to keep up.
Do you think Netanyahu will stop these attacks on Lebanon if Trump calls off his war in Iran. I don’t.
BEIRUT (AP) — Fatima Nazha slept on the street for two days after she and her family fled their home in Beirut’s southern suburbs following an Israeli mass evacuation order.
All of the schools the government turned into shelters were full, and the family couldn’t afford a hotel or an apartment, so she and her husband eventually moved into a tent in the country’s biggest stadium while their kids and grandchildren found shelter near the southern coastal city of Sidon.
In just 10 days, more than 800,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced by war, just over a year since the last conflict uprooted over a million Lebanese from their homes. That’s one in every seven people in the tiny country, according to humanitarian organization the Norwegian Refugee Council. Many don’t have a place to stay, and the cash-strapped government has only been able to accommodate roughly 120,000 people as it scrambles to open shelters and bring in more supplies.
Nazha, who uses a wheelchair, said being forced from her home has been far more difficult this time than when Israel and Hezbollah were last at war more than a year ago. The strikes targeting the Iran-backed militant group have been more intense and unpredictable, and Israel’s evacuation order came abruptly, leaving her unable to gather all her belongings.
“The strikes used to target a specific area, but now they’re hitting all the areas,” she said, taking a drag off her cigarette. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Friday that more than 700 people, including 103 children, have died in the war.
Israel is planning to significantly expand its ground operation in Lebanon, aiming to seize the entire area south of the Litani River and dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, Israeli and U.S. officials say.
Why it matters: This could be the largest Israeli ground invasion of its northern neighbor since 2006, dragging Lebanon to the epicenter of the escalating war with Iran.
“We are going to do what we did in Gaza,” a senior Israeli official said, referring to the flattening of buildings Israel says Hezbollah uses to store weapons and launch attacks.
The big picture: An operation of this size and scale could lead to a prolonged Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.
Lebanon’s government is deeply alarmed that the renewed war — triggered by Hezbollah’s decision to launch rockets at Israel — will devastate the country.
The Trump administration backs a major Israeli operation to disarm Hezbollah, but is also pressing to limit the damage to the Lebanese state and pushing for direct Israel-Lebanon talks on a postwar agreement.
Driving the news: Until days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was still trying to contain the Lebanon escalation in order to stay focused on Iran, according to Israeli officials.
That calculus changed Wednesday when Hezbollah launched more than 200 missiles in a massive coordinated attack with Iran, which fired dozens of its own.
“Before this attack we were ready for a ceasefire in Lebanon, but after it there is no way back from a massive operation,” a senior Israeli official said.
State of play: The IDF has had three armored and infantry divisions on the Lebanese border since the start of the Iran war, with some ground forces conducting limited incursions over the past two weeks.
By Kim Haskins
And what is Jared Kushner up to now that he got Trump to help Netanyahu with his bloodthirsty plans?
Jared Kushner, one of the U.S. government’s chief negotiators in the Middle East, is trying to raise more money for his private equity firm from governments in the region.
Mr. Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has spoken with potential investors in recent weeks about raising $5 billion or more for Affinity Partners, his investment firm, according to five people with knowledge of the talks who were not permitted to speak publicly about the discussions.
As part of the fund-raising effort, Affinity’s representatives have already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which invests the proceeds of the kingdom’s vast oil reserves, two of the people briefed on the discussions said. PIF is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has formed close ties with Mr. Kushner and the Trump administration.
PIF, which is already the largest and earliest investor in Affinity, invested $2 billion soon after the first Trump administration ended.
As part of that deal, the Saudis must be given the first chance to invest during any subsequent attempts by Affinity to raise funds, the two people said. Other Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds that invested earlier in Affinity, including those in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, are also expected to be asked for more, the people said.
Mr. Kushner’s fund-raising is expected to stretch on for the better part of this year.
The efforts show the blurring of the lines between public service and private profit-seeking during Mr. Trump’s second term. Only a few weeks ago, in his role as Mr. Trump’s “peace envoy,” Mr. Kushner met in Geneva with Iran’s foreign minister. The U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign in Iran began shortly after those meetings concluded without a deal on Iran’s nuclear program.
Meanwhile, Kushner is not actually an employee of the Federal government. The corruption is breathtaking.
And what’s happening in in Iran these days? Well, it appears that the Trump gang didn’t plan for what to do if Iran cut off shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz–something they were warned about.
Of all the risks the global energy system has long faced, none was bigger or better known than the potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The narrow passageway out of the Persian Gulf is both vital — serving as the only gateway to the rest of the world for huge amounts of oil and natural gas — and extremely vulnerable to attacks.
But despite being widely recognized as a potential choke point, the strait remains the only way to export most of the energy produced in the region. That has come into sharp relief in the second week of the war in the Middle East, as the near-closure of the waterway sent oil prices soaring above $100 a barrel for the first time in almost four years.
The reason there is no true alternative comes down to a combination of geography, political tensions and economic competition among the region’s oil powers. There have been efforts to circumvent the strait, notably by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But the pipelines through those countries can carry only a small fraction of the energy produced in the Persian Gulf.
By Mathias Hauser
For many other energy-producing countries in the region, the only way to avoid the strait would be to lay a pipeline across a neighboring country — an expensive and politically fraught endeavor. Take Qatar, one of the world’s biggest natural gas exporters. Its only land border is with Saudi Arabia — a country that cut off diplomatic ties and closed that border during a regional spat resolved five years ago. Plus, any pipeline would itself be vulnerable to Iranian attacks.
“There’s nothing which is totally secure here,” said John Browne, a former chief executive of the London-based oil giant BP, once known as the Anglo-Iranian oil company. “In the end, someone with bad intention can do all sorts of things to oil and gas infrastructure.”
Some oil analysts also assumed that, if the time came, the United States, which has a keen interest in keeping energy markets stable, would use its military might to keep the strait passable.
Oh really? I guess these “analysts” didn’t consider the fact that Donald Trump is a psychopath who couldn’t care less about anyone but himself and his childish needs. Use the gift link if you want to read more.
Now that the shit has hit the fan, and prices on gas and just about everything else are rising rapidly, Trump has decided to send in some more troops.
About 2,500 Marines aboard as many as three warships are heading to the Middle East from the Indo-Pacific region, as Iran increases its attacks on the Strait of Hormuz, two U.S. officials said.
The shift, earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes as Iran’s response to nearly two weeks of aerial bombardment and long-range artillery strikes has proved more resilient than Trump administration officials anticipated.
The Marines will join more than 50,000 American troops in the region. The new deployment comes as Iran’s attacks on and near the strait have choked maritime traffic through the essential waterway, rocking the global economy. It was unclear how the new deployment would be used….
Last week, President Trump said he might order Navy warships to escort merchant ships through the crucial oil supply route, which U.S. forces did for a period of time in the late 1980s during similar tensions with Iran.
U.S. forces have carried out “large-scale” strikes on Kharg Island, a critical hub of Iran’s Gulf oil operations, with the country responding by threatening to strike U.S. allies’ oil facilities if any of its infrastructure is damaged.
U.S. Central Command said Saturday that naval mine storage facilities and missile storage bunkers were among targets destroyed in the “precision strike” on the island, hitting “90 Iranian military targets” while “preserving the oil infrastructure.”
Kharg Island, a tiny but strategic island 15 miles off the coast of Iran in the Persian Gulf, is home to an oil terminal that ships 90% of the country’s oil exports. There are also military capabilities there, including air defenses and mines buried underground.
Announcing the strike in a post on Truth Social late Friday, President Donald Trump said that U.S. forces had “totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island.”
Trump just loves that word “obliterated.”
The island’s oil terminal has so far been unscathed in the war, according to oil market research firm Energy Intelligence, and the president said the island’s oil infrastructure was spared in Friday’s attack, but could be struck down the road.
“Should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision,” Trump said, as Iran has actively interfered with shipping in the strait for several days.
A missile struck a helipad inside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, two security officials said.
The projectile landed within the embassy’s boundaries after the Green Zone, the heavily fortified district in central Baghdad that houses Iraqi government institutions and foreign embassies, added the security officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak with the press.
Video obtained by The Associated Press showed smoke billowing from inside the compound.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran openly threatened a neighboring country’s non-U.S. assets for the first time Saturday, warning people to immediately evacuate the busiest port in the Middle East and two others in the United Arab Emirates as the U.S.-Israel war with Iran entered its third week.
By Rudi Hurzlmeier
A missile struck a helipad inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, and debris from an intercepted Iranian drone hit an oil facility in the UAE, further increasing global anxiety about oil supplies.
Iran threatened to attack cities in the UAE, home to Dubai and one of the world’s busiest airports, saying the U.S. used “ports, docks and hideouts” there to launch strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island, without providing evidence. It urged people to evacuate areas where it said U.S. forces were sheltering, naming Dubai’s Jebel Ali port — the Mideast’s busiest — as well as Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa port and Fujairah port.
Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Arab Gulf neighbors during the war, but it said it was targeting U.S. assets, even as hits or attempts were reported on civilian ones such as airports and oil fields.
Back here at home, Pete Hegseth is in favor of committing war crimes. He’s already committed war crimes with his fishing boat strikes. His troops also committed a war crime when they sank Iranian ships and failed to attempt to rescue survivors. Then yesterday he said advocated for another war crime.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth offhandedly made a remark about the Trump administration’s attack on Iran during his speech on Friday that experts warned, if he’s serious, could be a war crime — even just for him to say out loud.
“No quarter, no mercy for our enemies,” said Hegseth. “Yet some in the press just can’t stop. More fake news from CNN reports that the Trump administration underestimated the Iran war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz. The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”
The phrase “no quarter” is often used colloquially in a political setting, but in a military context, it means any enemy combatants will be killed with no allowance for surrender — something that, as experts on X and Bluesky were swift to point out, is a violation of both international law and the U.S. military code.
“Went largely unnoticed but Hegseth on Iran said the U.S. would provide ‘no quarter, no mercy for our enemies’ during his press conference today,” wrote Wall Street Journal national security reporter Alex Ward. “‘No quarter’ is a violation of international humanitarian law.” He provided a link to the relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention.
“Today, Hegseth said: ‘No quarter, no mercy for our enemies.’ But the Defense Department’s own Law of War Manual (pp. 209-210) says: ‘It is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given,'” wrote Claremont McKenna College professor Jack Pitney.
“Former USG war crimes lawyer here,” wrote International Crisis Group senior adviser Brian Finucane. “Apropos of SecDef’s remarks this morning: Denial of quarter — even the declaration of no quarter — is a war crime. And recognized as such by the US Government. From DoD’s Manual for Military Commissions.” He screenshotted the section of the manual, which stated denial of quarter is punishable by up to life in prison.
“Declaring that no quarter will be given is straightforwardly prohibited under international humanitarian law,” wrote Stanford law professor Tom Dannenbaum. “When done to threaten an adversary, the declaration itself amounts to a war crime.”
“Yet another thing to put in our back pocket,” wrote Ryan Cooper of The American Prospect. “‘Ship em to the Hague’ is a completely valid option for a long and growing list of people who need to be dealt with.”
Donald Trump is lost in his fog of war. He compounds confusion with improvised fabrications as his naive expectation of a lightning victory has been sunk in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, he felt certain, would easily follow the “perfect scenario” of Venezuela, accede to naming a leader who would instantly do his bidding, and there would be no disruption of the oil markets – “a strong game plan”, stated Karoline Leavitt, his White House press secretary, who defends each of his changeable excuses with equal ferocity.
By Kim Haskins
There may be few if any facts underlying the delusions upon which Trump constructs his vapid explanations and evanescent strategies. The belief that coherent sense can be made out of Trump’s shuffling words is a weakness of the rational mind that refuses to accept the impulses of the inveterate demagogue for what they are. Searching for reason in the jungle of Trump’s tales may compel hopelessly sensible people to superimpose logic where there is none in order to satisfy the need for some semblance of soundness.
Trump’s erratic efforts to reframe his rationale further expose his incompetence and unintelligibility, utterly predictable but now lethal on a global scale. His stream of sputtering remarks has, however, clearly established the ground that should be explored by congressional inquiries into the war’s origins, planning and conduct.
Trump is also at war with the English language. His war is not a war, he insists, but a “short-term excursion”, a semantic dodge to skirt congressional and international accountability. Then, when asked whether it’s an excursion or a war, he replied: “Well, it’s both. It’s an excursion that will keep us out of a war.” His rhetorical legerdemain is the equivalent of René Magritte’s painting of a pipe with the caption, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” – “This is not a pipe.” The title Magritte gave to his painting was The Treachery of Images. Orwell or Magritte? Propaganda or surrealism?
Trump has declared he will force “regime change” or negotiate with some unnamed personage in the regime who happens to have been recently killed. “Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” he said. Trump demands “unconditional surrender” or he declares the war “very complete” after an hour-long conversation with Vladimir Putin, after Putin pledged “unwavering support” to the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khomeini, the 56-year-old son of the assassinated 86-year-old supreme leader, about whose ascension Trump said he was “not happy” and called him a “lightweight”.
I hope you’ll go read the rest. Blumenthal is good.
That’s all I have for today. I hope you’re enjoying your weekend, despite the ugly war news.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
A plume of smoke rises after an explosion in Tehran on Saturday.Credit…Atta Kenare, Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
I wish you all a good day, but it’s not a good day for our country. I woke up at around 5AM and was hit with the news that Trump has attacked Iran. He did this illegally, without consultation with Congress or the slightest respect for the clear wishes of the American people. He has only one ally in his war–Israel. I wonder what our NATO allies are thinking right now?
Let’s face it. The “president” is insane. He should have been impeached and removed long ago, but Republicans are too cowardly to do the right thing.
I’m no expert on Iran. I’m just going to share some articles that I think are helpful for understanding what we’re in for. I just want to say that if Trump hadn’t cancelled Obama’s agreement with Iran, this probably wouldn’t be happening. But he just couldn’t let a Democrat–especially a Black man–get any credit.
The U.S. military has launched “major combat operations” in Iran, Trump said in a video posted to Truth Social early Saturday, with the goal of stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and protecting American personnel and interests abroad and at home.
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people,” Trump declared from behind a podium dressed in a navy suit and wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with “USA” on it.
The strikes have killed at least five students at a girls’ school in southern Iran, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency. A Gulf regional leader told MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” that one person was killed by debris from missiles fired at the UAE.
Israel announced it was also participating in the military offensive, and The Associated Press reported that Israel had launched a daylight attack on Tehran, Iran’s capital, on Saturday. The Israel Defense Forces posted on X that Iran had launched missiles toward Israel, underscoring the possibilities of wider war in a Middle East already riven with tensions and conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the joint attack with the U.S. was aimed at ending “the threat of the Iranian ayatollah’s regime.”
Trump acknowledged there may be American casualties as a result of the U.S. military intervention labeled “Operation Epic Fury,” but said the mission was necessary to protect America and its allies in the future.
Leaders in Europe and around the world on Saturday urged all sides to exercise restraint after the United States and Israel launched a major attack on Iran, although some officials backed the American-led campaign.
President Trump said the attack was intended to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program and lead to a change in government, after several rounds of nuclear talks involving the two sides failed to reach a deal. Iran’s foreign ministry asked the United Nations Security Council “to take immediate action to confront the violation of international peace and security.”
Here’s what other governments are saying:
Britain: The British government said it had not participated in the strikes and did “not want to see further escalation into a wider regional conflict.” It added that it had recently enhanced its defensive capabilities in the Middle East and that its immediate priority was the safety of British citizens in the region. “Iran must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon and that is why we have continually supported efforts to reach a negotiated solution,” the government said in a statement.
Germany: A government spokesman said in a statement that Germany had been informed by Israel in advance of the strikes. Chancellor Friedrich Merz “is monitoring the development closely and is in close coordination with European partners,” the statement said. Mr. Merz is scheduled to meet Mr. Trump in Washington next week.
France: President Emmanuel Macron called for the attacks to stop and asked for a meeting of the Security Council. He also wrote that the Iranian leadership “must understand that it now has no other option than to engage in good-faith negotiations” over its nuclear program, and added that the Iranian people “must also be able to build their future freely.” [….]
Canada: Prime Minister Mark Carney and his foreign minister, Anita Anand, backed the American action. “Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security,” they said in a statement.
Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia called the reports of retaliatory Iranian strikes on Arab nations, including Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, “a blatant violation” of their national sovereignty. “Saudi Arabia affirms its full solidarity and support for these brotherly nations, pledging all its resources to assist them in any measures they take,” the foreign ministry said in a statement on social media.
China: China’s foreign ministry said on social media that Beijing was “highly concerned” by the strikes. “Iran’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity should be respected,” the ministry said.That
That is just a sampling. Read the rest at the gift link. I’m surprised how much support there is.
The United States has gone to war against Iran. America has only one ally—Israel—in this operation (the Arab states of the Gulf, which fear the Iranian regime, are targets of Iran, but so far are not participating in the attack), and both Washington and Jerusalem are making claims about “imminent” threats that require “preemptive” strikes. But we should dispense with such statements: Iran is not presenting immediate danger to the United States or Israel. Even President Trump, in a recorded address, didn’t bother overly much with such excuses; instead he presented a farrago of charges and accusations going back a half century that included everything from killing American troops in Iraq to terrorism. These indictments are all grounded in truth, but none presents a rationale for immediate attack. Trump ended by calling on Iranians to rise up and overthrow their government.
People watch as smoke rises on the skyline after an explosion in Iran, Feb. 28, 2026.
This is not a preemptive war. It is a war of choice, a discretionary war. It is a war for regime change. Many of Iran’s 92 million people want the regime removed. But it is far from certain that this will be the outcome.
To think about the possible courses of this war, we should start by clearly understanding three realities: First, Iran is a terrible regime that deserves to fall. The regime recently murdered thousands of its own citizens who were seeking freedom from their oppressive rule, and no one should be shedding tears for the mullahs hiding in their bunkers.
Second, “success” is not impossible—if by “success” we mean the fall of the ayatollahs and the rise of a better, more humane, pro-Western government that does not seek to destabilize the Middle East; dominate Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen; and eradicate Israel. But the path to that success is exceedingly narrow and mined with significant hazards. Destroying the regime’s capabilities is relatively easy, but nothing permanent—as Americans learned in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—is achieved by bouncing rubble and piling up bodies. Destroying the regime itself is a far trickier business; dictatorships have a high pain tolerance, especially when the hapless citizens, not the leaders, bear the brunt of that pain.
Third, the president has not offered a strategy, or identified any conditions that would signal that U.S. goals have been achieved. Yes, he has vowed to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, but beyond that, he seems to be arguing for just inflicting military damage on the regime, on the assumption that enough ordnance on enough targets will weaken the grip of the ayatollahs. Once the theocrats are on the ropes, the thinking seems to go, the people of Iran will finish the job of regime change for us.
A bit more:
America twice had its hands full in Iraq, a nation of 37 million, even with the assistance of several countries. The U.S., France, and Britain managed to subdue tiny Libya, a nation of 7.5 million, and left its dictator to be raped and beaten in the streets. This time, conditions are different and more challenging: The target is two and a half times the size of Iraq, America has exactly one openly declared ally in this enterprise, no serious armed rebel force exists in Iran, and no coalition of nations is assembling to march into Tehran.
Trump has boldly told the regime to lay down its weapons and surrender—but to whom? The president in his speech did not rule out American troops on the ground. Does he envision a conquering American general accepting the pistols and swords of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in some sort of ceremony?
Here’s one way, however, all of this can go right: The air campaign is so well designed, so precise, and so thorough that it strips the regime of its major military formations and its security police. Some of the top leaders are killed in at least a partial decapitation, and other forces begin to defect to the side of the people en masse. Rebel groups form quickly and efficiently to seize weapons and set up alternative ruling councils across the country. They cooperate with one another, rather than bicker or actually fight. Outside powers in the region stay away and let the Iranian people sort out their destiny. Peace, of a sort, comes to Iran.
Unfortunately, the ways that all of this can go wrong are more numerous and more likely. Perhaps the Americans, for example, take unexpected casualties, and Trump—who seems to be counting on an easy victory—pulls back. (Trump has spent years decrying American presidents who cost the lives of America’s soldiers; it seems unlikely that he will blithely accept American casualties.) The regime rallies, kills even more of its own people, and survives to fight another day. Or the current regime falls and is replaced by a junta or military regime even more brutal than the one that’s just been destroyed. Or what happens if Iranian retaliation turns out to be more effective than the Americans or Israelis expect, and the region becomes embroiled in repeating cycles of murder and reprisals that leave Americans and Israelis and others dead, but the regime intact?
In his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised voters that he would end wars, not start them. Over the past year, he has instead ordered military strikes in seven nations. His appetite for military intervention grows with the eating.
A woman stood on a rooftop to get a view of explosions in Tehran on Saturday.Credit…Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Now he has ordered a new attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran, in cooperation with Israel, and Mr. Trump said it would be much more extensive than the targeted bombing of nuclear facilities in June. Yet he started this war without explaining to the American people and the world why he was doing so. Nor has he involved Congress, which the Constitution grants the sole power to declare war. He instead posted a video at 2:30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, shortly after bombing began, in which he said that Iran presented “imminent threats” and called for the overthrow of its government. His rationale is dubious, and making his case by video in the middle of the night is unacceptable.
Among his justifications is the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program, which is a worthy goal. But Mr. Trump declared that program “obliterated” by the strike in June, a claim belied by both U.S. intelligence and this new attack. The contradiction underscores how little regard he has for his duty to tell the truth when committing American armed forces to battle. It also shows how little faith American citizens should place in his assurances about the goals and results of his growing list of military adventures.
Mr. Trump’s approach to Iran is reckless. His goals are ill-defined. He has failed to line up the international and domestic support that would be necessary to maximize the chances of a successful outcome. He has disregarded both domestic and international law for warfare.
The Iranian regime, to be clear, deserves no sympathy. It has wrought misery since its revolution 47 years ago — on its own people, on its neighbors and around the world. It massacred thousands of protesters this year. It imprisons and executes political dissidents. It oppresses women, L.G.B.T.Q. people and religious minorities. Its leaders have impoverished their own citizens while corruptly enriching themselves. They have proclaimed “Death to America” since coming to power and killed hundreds of U.S. service members in the region, as well as bankrolled terrorism that has killed civilians in the Middle East and as far away as Argentina.
Some of President Donald Trump’s Capitol Hill critics were quick to condemn his administration’s military action against Iran early Saturday, criticizing what they described as an unjustified act of war that hadn’t been approved by Congress.
Shortly after reports of the attack against Tehran emerged in the predawn hours, frequent Trump-basher Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) characterized the strikes on social media as “acts of war unauthorized by Congress.”
Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) are expected to force votes next week on legislation that would curb Trump’s ability to take unilateral military action against Iran without congressional approval. But the U.S.’ Saturday morning strikes came before the bipartisan pair could compel a war powers vote.
One of the first Democrats to respond to the strikes, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), condemned the attack on social media, writing that “we can support the democracy movement and the Iranian people without sending our troops to die.” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) added Saturday that Trump’s overnight military strikes against “a broad set of targets, including senior Iranian leadership — marking a deeply consequential decision that risks pulling the United States into another broad conflict in the Middle East.”
“The American people have seen this playbook before — claims of urgency, misrepresented intelligence, and military action that pulls the United States into regime change and prolonged, costly nation-building,” Warner said.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called Trump’s military action “a war of choice with no strategic endgame” and said that he will vote for the war powers resolution when it gets a vote next week.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been cut off from contact, and there is no certainty about his fate, Israeli officials told Walla on Saturday afternoon. Iranian officials promised to release a recording from Khamenei soon after Israeli strikes targeted his Tehran compound.
The preliminary assessment among Israeli officials was that Khamenei was hurt in the strike. No official confirmation has been received by Israeli, American, or Iranian sources.
The strikes came as Israel and the United States launched an attack on Iran, with Iranian state media reporting explosions heard in Tehran, Qom, Isfahan, Kermanshah, and Karaj.
Iran’s Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh and Revolutionary Guards commander Mohammed Pakpour are believed to have been killed in Israeli attacks, two sources familiar with Israel’s military operations and one regional source said.
Israeli and Iranian sources said earlier on Saturday that strikes on Iran killed several senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders and Islamic Regime political officials. Iran’s Security Council instructed residents of Tehran, as well as other major cities, to stay in safe, protected locations until further notice.
US-Israeli air strikes killed at least 85 people at a girls’ school in southern Iran, Iran’s judiciary said. The state-run IRNA news agency reported the strike happened in Minab in Iran’s Hormozgan province. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has a base in the city….
Just as Iranians began their workweek on Saturday morning, U.S. and Israeli strikes sent panicked residents of Tehran into the streets and parents racing back to schools where they had just dropped off their children.
Chaos and uncertainty set in as explosions shook the densely populated city, Iran’s capital, according to witnesses who spoke to The New York Times.
Ali, a businessman from Tehran, said in a text message that he was sitting in his office with many employees when they heard two explosions along with fighter jets streaking over the sky. Employees ran screaming out of the building, he said. He, like several other residents who spoke to The Times, asked not to be identified by his full name because he feared for his safety.
From the leafy, upscale district of Mirdamad, Hamidreza Zand, a resident, described seeing at least 10 fighter jets flying overhead as locals ran into the streets and some drivers abandoned cars on streets choked with traffic. With ambulance sirens wailing in the background, other residents scrambled to pick their children up from school.
“I rushed to school to get my daughter from middle school. The girls were hiding under the stairs and crying,” said Ali Zeinalipoor, whom a Times reporter reached on the Clubhouse social media app. “The principal did not know what had happened — everyone was so scared.”
From the roof of her apartment in Tehran’s northern Velenjak district, Golshan Fathi described seeing a second round of fighter jets.
“People are standing on the roof looking at the sky, pointing down. You can hear women screaming. Some of my neighbors are running to their cars,” she said. “It feels like we are in a movie.”
A bit more, because I don’t have any more gift links:
In the Pasdaran area, where a large compound belonging to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards forces is, residents heard multiple explosions that shook their windows.
“My children are crying and scared, we are huddling in the bathroom, we don’t know what to do. This is terrifying,” Esfandiar, an engineer living in the area, wrote in a text message.
As reports of explosions hitting other cities across Iran began to emerge on local media, telecommunications began to falter. A resident named Mahsa said she was fleeing Pasdaran without being able to contact her loved ones to tell them where she was going.
The attacks come at a fragile moment for Iran, whose government launched a brutal crackdown last month to stamp out nationwide protests demanding an end to Iran’s clerical rule.
Not all Iranians were angry as they watched the plumes of smoke rising from the blasts, said Arian, a resident of the Ekteban township west of the capital, who said some of his relatives were cheering the strikes. He said he could hear voices outside his building chanting, “Long live the shah,” a reference to Iran’s monarch, who was deposed in the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic to power.
As warplanes launched strikes across the country, President Trump released a video statement announcing to Iranians that “the hour of your freedom is at hand,” and urging them to rise up gainst the government once the bombing stops.
I’ll end there. I don’t know how helpful this post will be. Everything is happening right now. We’ll know more later on I guess. Take care of yourselves, everyone.
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I’m even more overwhelmed than usual with the news today. It’s absolutely insane.
Yesterday we got to see Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book, and it is simply disgusting, as JJ wrote yesterday. Trump can deny he wrote the note with his signature all he wants. No one is buying it. He was closse friends with this man for 10-15 years and had to know what Epstein was up to. Not only that, Trump makes other sickening appearances in the book, including one about buying a “fully depreciated” woman from Epstein.
That would be enough horrible news to deal with today, but there’s much more. Poland shot down Russian drones that entered their air space. Israel bombed a building in Qatar. The Supreme Court decision to legalize racial profiling continues to be a top story (Dakinikat covered that extensively on Monday.). ICE is continuing to terrify residents of numerous cities. Trump ventured out of the White House last night with some cabinet members and was called Hitler by citizens of Washington DC.
Looking back, I don’t know what exactly I was expecting when I opened “Request No. 1,” the PDF file containing the contents of Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th-birthday book. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and co-conspirator, created the book in 2003 by soliciting tributes from the financier’s friends and associates. Given the crimes Epstein was convicted of, I steeled myself before scrolling. Somehow, my internet-addled imagination failed me. This book is a nightmare.
The book was released yesterday by Congress after Epstein’s estate, which was subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee, provided a copy. It is the same book that contains the now-infamous letter and “bawdy” sketch from Donald Trump that ends: “May every day be another wonderful secret.” When The Wall Street Journal reported on the letter’s existence in July, the newspaper described it but did not republish the letter itself, so Trump vehemently denied that it was real and sued for defamation. But the now-public letter certainly looks real, and so does Trump’s signature. Many of the people who encountered it for the first time yesterday made a similar observation: Its creepy prose is framed by a markered sketch of what looks like the caricature not of a woman’s body, but of a girl’s. (The White House can no longer plausibly deny that the letter exists, but it now insists that Trump did not write or sign it.)
The Trump letter makes the birthday book inherently newsworthy. But it is far from the most disturbing or lecherous of the book’s contents. A section titled “Brooklyn” includes recollections of Epstein’s horrible sexual escapades, apparently including making a maid watch people have sex and holding a knife up while telling women to take off their swimsuits on a boat—a story told in the book under the heading “Girls on My Boat.” Given what we know about Epstein’s sex crimes, including his sex crimes against minors, the birthday book is a sickening document. Over its 238 pages, Epstein’s friends, “girlfriends,” and business acquaintances offer lurid tributes to the pedophilic multimillionaire in the form of acrostic poems, drawings, and letters extolling him as “a liver, a lover,” and, affectionately, the “Degenerate One.” Individual contributions vary but it is the sheer volume of sexual references and jokes that ends up being most shocking. So much so that I suggest you read the document yourself.
The book’s contributors apparently include former President Bill Clinton, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, the billionaire retailer Leslie Wexner, and, of course, Maxwell herself, as well as a prominent fashion designer, financiers, and a media magnate. Clinton, Mitchell, and Wexner did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Clinton referred The Wall Street Journal to a previous statement that said, “The former president had cut off ties more than a decade before Epstein’s 2019 arrest and didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes.” Wexner declined to comment to the Journal but previously told reporters he cut ties with Epstein in 2007.
Not all of the entries in the book allude to sexual activity, and it’s plausible that not all of the contributors knew about Epstein’s crimes. Still, the document is conspiracy jet fuel—visual and textual confirmation of the long-held suspicions that Epstein’s sex pestery was an open secret, enabled by powerful people who may have participated in it themselves or laughed it all off as a friend’s roguish quirk….
Sanitizing this document would be wrong, so I’ll be blunt: The Epstein birthday book is full of contributions from wealthy and powerful people who appear fully aware of Epstein’s attraction to “girls.” In fact, they seem to celebrate it and, in some cases, allude winkingly to Epstein’s predatory lifestyle.
Use the gift link to read the rest. I haven’t looked through the entire book yet. I suppose I should do it, but I’m not looking forward to it after what I’ve already seen and heard.
The splashy focus of Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book released by lawmakers on Monday was a lewd drawing apparently signed by Donald J. Trump. But Mr. Trump’s cameo in another part of the book also provided fodder for Democrats and other critics of the president.
An entry in Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book, contributed by the Florida real estate developer Joel Pashcow.
The entry, included in a bound volume in 2003, was made by Joel Pashcow, the former chairman of a real estate company in New York and a member of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla. It shows a photograph of Mr. Pashcow at the resort with Mr. Epstein, another man and a woman whose face is redacted. Mr. Pashcow is holding an oversize check that appears to have been doctored, with a seemingly phony “DJ TRUMP” signature.
A handwritten note under the photo, which was taken in the 1990s, joked that Mr. Epstein showed “early talents with money + women,” and had sold a “fully depreciated” woman to Mr. Trump for $22,500.
The woman, whose name is also redacted in the files released by the House Oversight Committee, was a European socialite then in her 20s, according to two people familiar with the original photo. She had briefly dated both Mr. Epstein and Mr. Trump around that time, according to court transcripts and a person close to Mr. Epstein. The birthday book entry appears to be a reference to the competition between the two men for the woman’s affections.
The nature of the woman’s relationship with Mr. Epstein is murky. The New York Times is not naming her because she may have been one of his victims.
A lawyer for the woman said she knew Mr. Epstein in “a professional capacity” when she was a student but severed ties with him in 1997. She did not know anything about the letter or its “derogatory content,” the lawyer added.
A bit more information:
Mr. Pashcow appears to have contributed several consecutive pages to the book. On the page before the mock check is a vulgar cartoon depicting Mr. Epstein’s grooming of young girls: On one side, marked 1983, Mr. Epstein is handing out balloons to a group of girls; on the other, labeled 2003, he is receiving a naked massage from four topless young women. “What a great country!” it reads at the bottom.
The photograph with the giant check offers fresh insight on the social circles shared by Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein. It is no secret that the two were friendly in the 1990s and early 2000s, before Mr. Epstein was convicted of sex crimes in 2008.
A visual analysis by The Times found that the photo was taken at Mar-a-Lago after the resort opened as a club in 1996 and was landscaped with palm trees and other features.
Use the gift link to read more details if you so desire.
NATO fighter jets shot down multiple Russian drones that violated Polish airspace during an attack on neighboring Ukraine early on Wednesday, as the military alliance denounced Moscow for “absolutely dangerous” behavior that ratcheted up tensions to a new level.
The operation marked the first time that shots were fired by NATO since the start of the war in Ukraine. Polish and Dutch jets intercepted the drones, with assistance from Italian, German and NATO’s multinational forces, officials said.
People watch as a house is damaged after a drone or similar object struck a residential building according to local authorities, following violations of Polish airspace during a Russian attack on Ukraine.
Addressing the Polish parliament, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that while there was no reason to say that Poland was in a state of war, it was closer to a conflict than any time since World War II. He said the country was facing an “enemy that does not hide its hostile intentions.”
Tusk also announced that Poland has invoked Article 4 of NATO, meaning the alliance’s main political decision-making body will now meet to discuss the situation and its next steps.
Russia’s defense ministry said in a statement that it had carried out a strike against Ukraine overnight. It said that “no targets on the territory of Poland were planned for destruction,” and that the drones it used in Ukraine have a flight range that of no more than 700 kilometers (435 miles).
The Russian foreign ministry then said that these “specific facts completely debunk the myths repeatedly spread by Poland in order to escalate the Ukrainian crisis further.”
NATO chief Mark Rutte said, however, that the violation of Poland’s airspace was not an “isolated incident.”
Poland invoked Article 4 of NATO’s treaty on Wednesday after the alliance’s fighter jets shot down Russian drones that entered its airspace in the early hours of the morning. Russian drones have crossed into Poland before, including twice last week, but this was the first time that Russian drones had been shot down over the territory of a NATO country.
“What is clear is that the violation last night is not an isolated incident,” said Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general. “We will closely monitor the situation along our eastern flank, our air defenses continually at the ready.”
Here’s what to know about NATO’s Article 4….
Article 4 allows a member state to start a formal discussion among the alliance about threats to its security. While invoking Article 4 does not commit NATO to any military action, it is a required step toward a NATO decision to invoke Article 5. (An invocation of Article 5 is often assumed to have military implications, but the NATO treaty says only that its members will “assist” the party that has been attacked. This can also mean economic or political action.)
Article 4 states that the alliance’s members “will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.”
Since NATO’s founding in 1949, Article 4 has been invoked eight times. Before Wednesday, the last was on Feb. 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Now what?
The joint NATO response early Wednesday showed how quickly the war in Ukraine could escalate into a military confrontation between Russia and NATO.
Mr. Rutte said that the alliance’s air defenses were activated to ensure Poland’s protection. The response included fighter jets and air-defense systems from the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, he said.
“The security situation of our airspace has been stabilized, and ground-based air defense and radar reconnaissance systems have returned to standard operational activities,” the Polish military said on social media.
• US President Donald Trump expressed displeasure about the attack. “I’m not thrilled about the whole situation. It’s not a good situation,” he said, adding he would issue a full statement on Wednesday. Qatar’s prime minister was visibly angry as he described the strike as “state terrorism.”
Qatar said it has the right to respond to Israel’s strike in Doha that targeted Hamas political leaders, which it decried as a “blatant attack”.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister, described Tuesday’s attack as “state terrorism” that targeted the security and stability of the region.
Aftermath of Israeli strike inside Qatar.
“Qatar… reserves the right to respond to this blatant attack,” he told a late night press conference.
“We believe that today we have reached a pivotal moment. There must be a response from the entire region to such barbaric actions.”
US president Donald Trump said he was “very unhappy” about Israel’s airstrike that killed six people, saying it advances neither Israel nor America’s goals.
Trump called the strike on Hamas’s political wing “unfortunate” and said he had directed US envoy Steve Witkoff to warn Qatar but it was too late to stop the strike.
Hamas said five of its lower-ranking members and a Qatari security official were killed in the airstrike, but that all its leaders survived the attack.
A big change happened yesterday, when the Supreme Court said it was okay for ICE and the Border Patrol to racially profile individuals walking freely on America’s streets. If you’re brown, speak Spanish, and work in a blue-collar job, you officially belong to a different class of citizen and according to Chief Justice John Roberts, it’s okay to racially profile you.
We have never in US history seen a federal law enforcement agency operate the way ICE has operated this summer — it marks the arrival of a new style of domestic policing, more in line with the infamous “brown shirts” of authoritarian regimes the world over than any regular policing tradition in the nation’s interior. Yes, we’ve seen similar abuses of civil liberties and due process stem from corrupt and racist state police and country sheriffs in the Jim Crow south, and plenty of local police departments even today suffer from localized corruption scandals, but never we seen what is happening with ICE right now take place the whole country over.
All of the nation’s law enforcement are blending together into an “ICE auxiliary.” — Garrett Graff
The day-to-day behavior and aggression of ICE is corrupting the soul of America. I encourage you to watch this video of federal agents policing the start of an elementary school in DC — there not to secure the school and children, but specifically to intimidate and punish schoolgoers. Tell me that isn’t the picture of authoritarianism? You know how you’re going to be the bad guy in the eyes of history? If school children and mothers have to push their way through your armed, masked gang while you’re carrying assault weapons in order to attend school. I can’t help but think how the Trump administration has turned the proud tradition of the US Marshals at the University of Mississippi or the 82nd Airborne at Little Rock Central High on its head. Similarly, this video of a masked officer detaining a father outside immigration court in New York City — the masked officers are indistinguishable from Wild West bank robbers.
There are four things that have really struck me about ICE’s operations over the last month, all of them worrisome about the trajectory of that agency and the presence and role of federal law enforcement in American life. (Separately, I’m going to write about the warning signs already visible in ICE’s dramatic hiring surge.) Taken together, they paint a picture of an already rogue agency that feels it operates outside of the Constitution and owes nothing to the Americans it’s supposed to serve.
(NOTE from BB: You’ll need to go to the link to read the entire explication under the four headings)
1) Everything is now ICE.
The most worrisome aspect of the quick militarization and turbo-charging of ICE is how American law enforcement across the board — and much of the government beyond — is being subsumed by ICE’s mission and lowering themselves, from hiring to behavior to tactics, down to ICE’s standards.
We have different federal law enforcement agencies for a reason — and moreover, as citizens, we as a country need and want federal law enforcement. The FBI, DEA, ATF, Secret Service, and the US Marshals all have their own lanes, authorities, and responsibilities, but right now we’ve watching the Trump administration turn all of federal law enforcement across both the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security into an faceless quasi-ICE auxiliary, blending all these agencies and agent into some amorphous anonymous blob of masked, brown tactical-vest-wearing federal law enforcement. I wrote recently about how this precisely is what authoritarian regime looks like — armed, masked, anonymous agents of the state jumping from unmarked vehicles and whisking people away….
2) Collapse of Moral Legitimacy.
I wrote earlier in the summer about how in a democracy policing requires moral legitimacy and the permission of the policed. That’s been one of the hallmarks of policing ever since Sir Robert Peel built the first modern police force in London’s Metropolitan Police. One of his core principles of policing was: “To recognize always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behavior, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.”
The DC police department was literally created originally in Peel’s image, which is why it too is known awkwardly as the “Metropolitan Police.” Now, in a historical irony, it is ground zero for the erosion of the moral legitimacy of federal law enforcement writ large….
3) Operating without due regard for civil liberties and due process.
In my essay at the end of August about how America has tipped in fascism, I wrote, “America has become a country where armed officers of the state shout ‘papers please’ on the street at men and women heading home from work, where masked men wrestle to the ground and abduct people without due process into unmarked vehicles, disappearing them into an opaque system where their family members beg for information.”
Add up all of the above and you have a portrait of a rogue agency, which is what leads me to my final dangerous warning sign: This agency clearly knows that it can do no wrong in the eyes of the White House and administration — there is no level of violence, brutality, or abuse of civil liberties that would get any of these agents or officers in trouble with their bosses. Earlier this summer, I wrote about how ICE is acting as if it will never face accountability again. We’ve seen ICE flaunt federal law that requires congressional oversight — and, instead, it has tried to arrest and charge federal lawmakers, a bright line if there ever was one.
At every turn, though, the agency is going out of its way to make it harder to hold officers accountable. ICE officers don’t routinely wear name tags or easily visible badge numbers (in this video, check out how you have to zoom in on his badge on his belt to even begin to identify his badge number.) Moreover, though, despite the fact that we’re weeks and months into this national ICE takeover, the agency has made no effort to make its masked officers on the streets identifiable to either the public — or even to itself.
You there. Stop what you’re doing. Take off that tool belt and hard hat—let’s see some ID. Why? Because we don’t think you’re a citizen. Now show us your papers.
This kind of behavior by government officials is now legal in the United States.
Masked ICE agents in Los Angeles
Yesterday, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court allowed ICE officials to conduct roving patrols and use racial profiling to stop and detain people for no other reason than their skin color, the language they’re speaking, suspicions about their national origin—or, really, if immigration officials just feel like it.
But wait, you might object. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. Did the Court explain why that protection apparently no longer applies to you if you’re a day laborer or running a fruit stand? Good luck with that: This Court’s majority doesn’t explain itself to anyone. It merely lets stand or overturns the decisions of lower courts—lately, almost always in favor of expanding the power of, and corroding any checks on, President Donald Trump.
Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo is a case from Los Angeles about whether ICE can stop people because of a suspicion of their being in the United States illegally, based solely, as SCOTUSblog summarized it, on any combination of four factors: a person’s “‘apparent race or ethnicity,’ speaking in Spanish or accented English, being present at a location where undocumented immigrants ‘are known to gather’ (such as pickup spots for day laborers), and working at specific jobs, such as landscaping or construction.”
A California district-court judge had earlier enjoined ICE from making such stops, perhaps appalled by this example:
Plaintiff Jason Brian Gavidia is a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in East Los Angeles and identifies as Latino. On the afternoon of June 12, he stepped onto the sidewalk outside of a tow yard in Montebello, California, where he saw agents carrying handguns and military-style rifles. One agent ordered him to “Stop right there” while another “ran towards [him].” The agents repeatedly asked Gavidia whether he is American—and they repeatedly ignored his answer: “I am an American.” The agents asked Gavidia what hospital he was born in—and he explained that he did not know which hospital. “The agents forcefully pushed [Gavidia] up against the metal gated fence, put [his] hands behind [his] back, and twisted [his] arm.” An agent asked again, “What hospital were you born in?” Gavidia again explained that he did not know which hospital and said “East L.A.” He then told the agents he could show them his Real ID. The agents took Gavidia’s ID and his phone and kept his phone for 20 minutes. They never returned his ID.
In overturning the lower court’s decision, five of the Court’s six right-wing justices—there is no other reasonable way to describe them at this point—took advantage of their right to remain silent, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh gamely tried to speak up in a concurrence. If his goal was to be reassuring, he did not help matters: Such stops are usually “brief,” he explained. Again, I am not a scholar of the Constitution, but I had no idea that I could be deprived of my rights under the Fourth (or any other) Amendment as long as my getting roughed up takes only a few moments out of my busy day.
President Donald Trump stepped out for dinner in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday only to find himself immediately confronted by protesters calling him “the Hitler of our time,” forcing him and his entourage of cabinet officials to stand awkwardly listening to their taunts before they could sit down to eat.
Activists took advantage of Trump’s rare public outing to to Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab, a short walk from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to heckle and berate the president with cries of “Free D.C.! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!”
“You are not welcome here!” one woman can be seen telling him in a video shared on social media. “Yes he is,” another diner countered.
Trump initially looked unfazed by the provocation but then gestured to his security team and said impatiently: “Come on. Let’s go. Get them out of here.”
The activist in question was escorted out of the dining area but continued to yell, despite some boos: “He’s terrorizing communities all over the world! From Puerto Rico… to Palestine to Venezuela! He’s not welcome to D.C.! He’s not welcome to Palestine! Palestine is not for sale!”
Only after she had been removed could Trump and his guests take their places at their table.
Joining the president for dinner were Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other senior White House officials.
Those are my offerings for today. What’s on your mind?
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Well, I know I’m not sleeping well at night. How about you?
JJ sent me the link to this horrifying story. It gave me my first share, but now I’m wondering if I’ll actually be able to eat lunch today. This is from the New York Times. “Inside Trump’s Decision. The Times pieced together the days and hours leading up to President Trump’s decision to strike Iran. It’s a story of diplomacy, deception, and a secret that almost got out.” We don’t have to worry about him being around to take that 3 am phone call. The Pentagon was worried about him putting the entire attack plan on Truth Social. I’ve gifted the link to you so you can read the entire thing. You know the Missouri Bombers he blathered about? One fleet was a ruse. Aaron Fritschner, Deputy Chief of Staff at Congressman Don Beyer, tweeted it out.
Inside the Pentagon and the U.S. Central Command, military planners worried that Trump was giving Iran too much warning about an impending strike. So they worked up their own ruse: They had two fleets of B-2 bombers leave Missouri at the same time, one flying east and one flying west. Flight trackers spotted the westward planes, which offered some idea of the timing of a possible attack. But those planes were a decoy.
The eastbound planes crossed the Atlantic undetected, joined with fighter jets and flew into Iranian airspace. At 2:10 a.m. local time yesterday, the lead bomber dropped two of the bunker-busters on the Fordo site. By the end of the mission, 14 of the bombs had fallen.
You may read about the details of the attack at PBS if you aren’t overwhelmed already by the thought of Sex Pest and Drunk, Pet Hegseth being a part of this. This headline from The Hillwon’t make you feel any less queasy. I’m assuming you knew that #FARTUS was also posted that he would help Iran Make Iran Great Again. That was while Hegseth and Rubio were busily telling the press that our hijacked country had no plans for regime change. Remember, if his lips are moving, he’s telling a big ol’ story. “Israel attacking government sites in Iran as Trump floats regime change.” The reporting here is by Sarah Fortinsky.
Israel said it is carrying out attacks on Iranian government sites and “regime targets” — including the notorious Evin Prison — as President Trump muses publicly about a regime change in Tehran.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a social media post at noon local time on Monday that Israeli forces are “currently striking with unprecedented force regime targets and governmental oppression entities in the heart of Tehran,” according to an English translation of the Hebrew statement.
He said those targets include the headquarters of Basij, the paramilitary volunteer militia within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Evin Prison, used to incarcerate political prisoners and opponents of Iran’s leadership; and the “Destroy Israel” clock in Palestine Square.
Katz said the attacks are also striking “additional regime targets,” including internal security headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards and the ideology headquarters.
Throughout Monday morning, meanwhile, the Israeli military said sirens were sounding across the country as Iran continued to launch missiles targeting Israel.
That sure sounds like a war to me. Peter Nicholas, NBC News, reports that Democrats in the District are finally sounding some kind of alarm. “‘Biden didn’t start any wars’: Democrats sharpen their arguments against Trump’s foreign policy. In the wake of the U.S. airstrikes on Iran, Democrats are pointing to Trump’s own promises that he wouldn’t ensnare the country in foreign conflicts.”
Democrats are seizing on Donald Trump’s surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities to make the case that the world is becoming more dangerous on his watch, not less, and that he is reneging on a promise to avoid foreign military interventions.
The argument strikes at Trump’s contention that his blend of negotiating skills and toughness is enough to keep the United States safe.
In the space of a few days, Trump has made the United States a combatant in another Middle East war that exposes soldiers to potential deadly reprisals, Democrats contend.
In a statement, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin pointed to Trump’s inaugural address, in which he said he would measure his success by “the wars we never get into.”
Yet, Martin said, “against his own words, the president sent bombers into Iran. Americans overwhelmingly do not want to go to war. Americans do not want to risk the safety of our troops abroad.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Several lawmakers said Sunday that they will press the Trump administration for clarity about the attack on Iran and the endgame he envisions. But they are also using the moment to try to undercut Trump’s standing with those who voted for him in the hope he would not get entangled in foreign wars.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said Trump’s commitment was “to get us out of foreign wars.”
“Say what you want about Joe Biden, Joe Biden didn’t start any wars,” Smith said. “He got us out of the one war that we were in [in Afghanistan]. Trump has now started a war with Iran.”
The Guardianhas a headline today that’s spot on. George Bush got led on by his own advisors. Trump’s advisors said no to the mission. Evidently, Trump was taken by strongman Benjamin Netanyahoo! After all that speechifying about Hillary getting us into another World War and how he’d never drag us into something like Dubya did to Iraq and Afghanistan. Here we are. “Like George W Bush, Trump has started a reckless war based on a lie. The Iraq War was built on a lie. Now history is repeating itself.” Mohamad Bazzi has the analysis.
In May 2003, George W Bush landed on the deck of a US aircraft carrier to deliver a triumphant speech, declaring that major combat operations in Iraq had ended – six weeks after he had ordered US troops to invade the country. Bush spoke under a now-infamous banner on the carrier’s bridge that proclaimed: “Mission Accomplished”. It would turn into a case study of American hubris and one of the most mocked photo-ops in modern history.
As Bush made his speech off the coast of San Diego, I was in Baghdad covering the invasion’s aftermath as a correspondent for a US newspaper. It was clear then that the war was far from over, and the US was likely to face a grinding insurgency led by former members of the Iraqi security forces. It would also soon become clear that Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq was built on a lie: Saddam Hussein’s regime did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not intent on developing them. And Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US, despite the Bush administration’s repeated attempts to connect Hussein’s regime to al-Qaida.
Today, Donald Trump has dragged the US into another war based on exaggerations and manipulated intelligence: the Israel-Iran conflict, which began on 13 June when Israel launched a surprise attack killing some of Iran’s top military officials and nuclear scientists, and bombing dozens of targets across the country.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed that Israel had to attack because Tehran was working to weaponize its stockpile of enriched uranium and racing to build a nuclear bomb. “If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” Netanyahu said, as the first wave of Israeli bombs fell on Iran. “It could be a year. It could be within a few months.”
Before dawn on Sunday, US warplanes and submarines bombed three major nuclear facilities in Iran. In a speech from the White House, Trump declared the operation a “spectacular military success” and said the sites had been “totally obliterated”. Trump added that his goal was to stop “the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror”.
But does Iran pose the immediate threat that Netanyahu and Trump have claimed?
US intelligence officials, along with the UN’s nuclear watchdog and independent experts, say that while Iran has dramatically increased its supply of uranium enriched to nearly weapons grade, there is no evidence it has taken steps to produce a nuclear weapon. In March, the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, told Congress that America’s intelligence agencies continued “to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”. She added that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003”.
I’m sure none of this is lost on us. Mark Landler writes this analysis for The New York Times. “Iran’s Nuclear Dreams May Survive Even a Devastating American Blow. Through revolution and upheaval, the program has become intertwined with the country’s security and national identity.” Let’s hope all of this sinks in before Trump’s Folly starts costing American lives.
By joining Israel’s military campaign against Iran, Mr. Trump has greatly raised the costs for Iran’s leaders in refusing to accept stringent curbs on their uranium enrichment program. Yet, however this conflict ends, he may have given them even more compelling reasons to seek a nuclear deterrent, experts say.
“Any strategic thinker in Iran, present or future, realizes that Iran is located in the Middle East, that its neighbors are Netanyahu’s Israel, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and M.B.S. in Saudi Arabia,” said Professor Alvandi, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
To that list of threats, Iran can now add the United States.
The American bombardment likely inflicted serious damage on the enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo, and the research complex at Isfahan. Earlier Israeli strikes killed several of Iran’s prominent nuclear scientists, as well as damaging installations. Taken together, that could set back Iran’s program by years.
But bombs alone cannot erase the knowledge that Iranians have accumulated over nearly seven decades, since 1957, when Iran first signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the Eisenhower administration. The United States was then encouraging countries to engage in the peaceful exploration of nuclear science through President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative.
In 1967, with American help, Iran built a small research reactor in Tehran that still exists. A year later, it signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a symbol of the shah’s desire to be accepted into the club of Western nations.
Flush with cash from 1973 oil shock, the shah then opted to rapidly expand Iran’s civil nuclear program, including developing a homegrown enriching capacity. He sent dozens of Iranian students to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study nuclear engineering.
The shah viewed it as a prestige project that would vault Iran into the front ranks of Middle Eastern countries. But that put him at odds with the United States, which worried that Iran would reprocess spent fuel into fissile material that could be used in a weapon.
“It was an icon of the country having arrived as a major power, with the side idea that if Iraq ever threatened Iran, it could be diverted to military uses,” said Professor Alvandi, who published “Nixon, Kissinger and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War.”
Everything old is new again. History repeats itself. Yup, another Republican steps on the detonator. Historian Heather Cox Richardson has a bigger perspective at her Substack, Letters from an American.
In last night’s speech to the nation, Trump appeared to reach out to the evangelical wing of MAGA that wanted the U.S. to intervene on Israel’s side in its fight against Iran. Trump said: “And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God, I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military, protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”
But while the evangelicals in MAGA liked Trump’s bombing of Iran, the isolationist “America First” wing had staunchly opposed it and are adamant that they don’t want to see U.S. involvement in another foreign war. So today, administration officials were on the Sunday talk shows promising that Trump was interested only in stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions, not in regime change. On ABC’s This Week, Vice President J.D. Vance said explicitly: “We don’t want to achieve regime change.” On X, poster after poster, using the same script, tried to bring America Firsters behind the attack on Iran by posting some version of “If you are upset that Trump took out Obama’s nuclear facilities in Iran, you were never MAGA.”
This afternoon, Trump posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term “Regime Change,” but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
On ABC’s This Week, Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) said: “It’s way too early to tell what the actual effect on the nuclear program is, and of course, it’s way too early to tell how this plays out, right? I mean, we’ve seen this movie before. Every conflict in the Middle East has its Senator Tom Cottons who promise us mushroom clouds. In the Iraq war it was Condoleezza Rice promising us a mushroom cloud. And initially—and this is true of every one of these wars in Libya, in Iraq, and Afghanistan—initially, things looked pretty good. Saddam Hussein is gone. Muammar Qaddafi is gone. The Afghan Taliban are gone. And then, over time, we start to learn what the cost is. Four thousand, four hundred Americans dead in Iraq. The Taliban back in power. So bottom line, the president has taken a massive, massive gamble here.”
There are already questions about why Trump felt obliged to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites right now. In March, Trump’s director of national intelligence, who oversees all U.S. intelligence, told Congress that the intelligence community assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. The U.S. and Iran have been negotiating over Iran’s nuclear program since April, and when Israel attacked Iran on June 12, a sixth round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran was scheduled to begin just two days later, in Oman.
White Christian Nationalists have been at the heart of the big problems in just living your American life, extending their warmongering, hateful, bigoted selves into a second century. Meanwhile, back in the USSR, the bear awakens. Has Trump changed his fealty? This is from the Washington Post. Will he give up his position as RasPutin Fangirl and such to Netanyahoo? “Russia condemns U.S. strikes on Iran but takes no concrete actions. Iran’s foreign minister is in Moscow seeking support, but other than condemning the attack, Putin has not taken any major moves to back Tehran.” I was last night years old when I read that a Russian official told the press there were lots of countries willing to send actual nukes to Iran. It was part of the reason I didn’t sleep last night without a hefty dose of Benadryl. I didn’t snore either, from my poor stuffed sinuses suffering from the humidity and pollen here.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday condemned the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran ahead of a meeting with Iran’s top diplomat, describing the strikes as “absolutely unprovoked,” but he has so far stopped short of any more concrete measures to assist Russia’s regional ally.
The U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have underscored Putin’s declining capacity to influence events in the Middle East — once a key plank of his foreign policy — with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria last year, Moscow’s cooler relations with Israel and Putin’s failed effort to convince President Donald Trump that he could be a mediator in the Iran crisis.
In comments Monday to military graduates, Putin said Washington’s involvement was dangerous and a sharp escalation. “Non-regional powers are also being drawn into the conflict,” he said, referring to the U.S. bombings. “All this is bringing the world to a very dangerous point.”
The conflict has demonstrated the limits so far to Russia’s willingness to assist Iran militarily — after both sides signed a strategic agreement in January without a mutual defense clause.
I’m going to start wrapping things up, but I wanted to share a few of the reporters outside the beltway. Jude Legum writes this for Popular Information. “A new war based on manipulated intelligence. More than two decades after the Iraq War commenced, history is repeating itself.” Even the weirdos he put in his cabinet saw the intelligence and just thumbed their noses at them. He “knew” better and used his instincts.
On March 20, 2003, President George W. Bush began the bombing campaign in Iraq, justifying the attack with manipulated and bogus intelligence. Twenty-two years later, history is repeating itself.
The clear judgment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not authorized a nuclear weapons program. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the nation’s top intelligence official, said so publicly on March 25, 2025. “The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Gabbard asserted in her opening statement.
Last Tuesday, asked about Gabbard’s testimony on Iran, Trump said, “I don’t care what she said.” On Friday, as his rhetoric became more bellicose, Trump was reminded of that March assessment and asked: “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon?” Trump did not say that the intelligence community had gathered new information since March. Rather, Trump said that “my intelligence community is wrong.” He also publicly rebuked Gabbard again, adding, “She’s wrong.”
Now, to justify the bombing of several sites in Iran, top members of the Trump administration claim Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, Vice President JD Vance said that the administration believed “the Iranians were rushing toward a nuclear weapons program.” That directly contradicts the March assessment by the IC that no such program had been authorized, much less commenced.
Vance dodged questions on whether the intelligence has changed since March:
KRISTEN WELKER: Why launch this strike now? Has the intelligence changed Mr. Vice President?
VANCE: A couple things about that Kristen. What Tulsi said back in March is that Iran was producing highly-enriched Uranium that was only consistent with them wanting to build a nuclear weapon.
The transcript of Gabbard’s Congressional hearing reveals Vance’s characterization of Gabbard’s remarks is false and misleading. She did say that Iran was enriching Uranium, something that has been true for many years, and that its enriched uranium stockpile was higher than that of other nations without nuclear weapons. But she was clear that they had not taken steps to build a nuclear weapon, nor had such a program been authorized.
On Sunday, in an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the intelligence about whether Iran had decided to build a nuclear weapon “irrelevant.”
Margaret Brennan: Are you saying there that the United States did not see intelligence that the supreme leader had ordered weaponization?
Rubio: That’s irrelevant. I see that question being asked in the media all the time. That’s an irrelevant question. They have everything they need to build a weapon.
Brennan: No, but that is the key point in U.S. intelligence assessments. You know that.
Rubio: No, it’s not.
Brennan: Yes, it was.
Rubio: No, it’s not.
At a Pentagon press conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also avoided answering whether the intelligence assessment had changed since March …
Jennifer Ruben, now writing at The Contrarian, has the term I’ve been using for at least two weeks. “Trump’s wags the dog. Risky military action disrupts the political dynamic. He’s been trying to get us off the topics of Doge, the Big Beautiful Budget-Busting bill, and the incredible cuts floating around the Senate.
Donald Trump, without authorization from Congress and without substantive consultation, took a fateful step in ordering the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites, based on the false pretext that Iran was on the verge of completing a nuclear weapon. The consequences of this move have yet to unfold, and the breathtaking array of outcomes—from another forever war to a failed state in Iran to a quickly negotiated nuclear deal—makes it impossible to predict how this will affect Trump’s agenda and his ongoing assault on democracy.
His failure to get authorization for a strike in a war in which the U.S. was acting offensively, despite there being no immediate threat (no one with sense believes Trump’s contradiction of our own intelligence that Iran was on the verge of making a bomb) raises grave constitutional and political consequences.
Despite Trump’s war-talk Saturday night, Vice President JD Vance insists we are not at war. That, as even this crew understands, would require congressional action. On one level, such an assertion is preposterous—as we have indeed become combatants in an extended, ongoing war.
Whatever fiction the administration advances, as Tom Nichols points out, “the enemy gets a vote.” The most likely scenario, he suggests, is not as tidy as Trump would have us believe:
The Iranian regime will be wounded but will likely survive; the nuclear program will be delayed but will likely continue; the region will become more unstable but is unlikely to erupt into a full-blown war involving the United States.
Should we get bogged down in an extended war or face retaliation, Trump’s unilateral action based on a lie (not even DNI Tulsi Gabbard thinks Iran was on the verge of making a bomb) will be viewed as a gross error and a constitutional overstep.
I’m ready for No Drama Obama to make a comeback. Trump is an exhausting and soul-snatching miscreant. I’m so tired but yet I cannot sleep. How are you doing? We shall live in Peace someday.
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The assassination of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson has set off a spirited public discussion of the U.S. health insurance system. That is the top news story today.
The shooter wrote the words “Delay,” “Deny,” and “Depose” on bullets left at the scene, suggesting that his action was triggered by denial of coverage by the health insurance giant. That has set off angry discussions on social media and probably in homes and workplaces around the country.
People are also wondering how the shooter managed to evade police, disappear in Central Park and escape New York City for an unknown destination. Police are examining security footage to try to find out where he went. They have also found images of the shooter’s face, which should help the effort to locate him.
He killed a high-profile CEO on a sidewalk in America’s largest city, where thousands of surveillance cameras monitor millions of people every day.
But the man who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a busy hotel keeps evading capture. Now, authorities say he might have slipped out of New York – meaning the elusive gunman could be anywhere….
Police believe the suspect arrived in New York City 10 days before the killing – on November 24, a law enforcement official told CNN. Throughout his stay, the suspect appeared on camera numerous times – but always kept his hood over his head and wore a mask in public places.
“He knows he’s on camera – it’s New York,” said John Miller, CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst.
Police are searching for and scouring countless hours of video footage in hopes of finding more clues, such as whether the suspect met with anyone while in the city.
“It will take them weeks. … They will build out every step of his trip that’s on video,” Miller said. “They will create a movie of his every move.”
While the gunman meticulously planned many parts of his crime and getaway, he might be surprised by “how far the NYPD is going to go in collecting video,” said former NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey.
“And they’re not just going to take it from the crime scene to his escape route,” Corey said. “They’re actually going to rewind now, and they’re going to try to account for all 10 days that he spent in New York City. And I don’t think that he anticipates that.”
The police on Friday offered a nearly minute-by-minute timeline of a gunman’s movements before and after he fatally shot Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, in Midtown Manhattan two days earlier.
The police have made no arrests in the shooting, and do not have a name for a suspect, but investigators have begun to piece together the movements of a man they believe killed Mr. Thompson on a city sidewalk early Wednesday morning.
Joseph Kenny, the Police Department’s chief of detectives, said at a news briefing on Friday that the suspect arrived in the city at 10:11 p.m. on Nov. 24 on a bus that originated out of Atlanta. Detectives have looked at the route the bus took and plan to reach out to the police department of each of the six or seven towns the bus stopped in, he said.
Upon arrival in New York, the man took a cab to the New York Hilton Midtown — where he would later fatally shoot Mr. Thompson — and spent about half an hour walking in the area of the hotel before checking in to a hostel on the Upper West Side, the chief said.
By Katrina Pallon
At the hostel, he stayed under fake identification, always using cash, avoiding conversation and hiding his face with his mask even during meals, the chief said. He never spoke with anyone and lowered his mask once to speak, smiling, to the hostel clerk when he first checked in, the chief said.
On Wednesday, the day of the shooting, the gunman left the hostel at 5:30 a.m. and likely rode a bicycle toward Midtown, Chief Kenny said. Though investigators do not have video of him taking the bike to the scene of the shooting, they are speculating that he did because it took him only 10 minutes to get from the hostel on 103rd Street to West 54th Street. The police are “still looking into” the possibility that he could have stolen the bike, he said.
At 5:41 a.m., he arrived at the Hilton and began wandering the area near the hotel, walking back and forth on West 54th Street, before entering a Starbucks, where he bought a bottle of water and a snack bar.
He fatally shot Mr. Thompson at 6:44 a.m. He then got back on the bike and made it into Central Park four minutes later. He left the park at 6:56 a.m., still on the bicycle.
Surveillance cameras captured footage of him, still on the bicycle, two minutes later at 86th Street and Columbus Avenue. By 7 a.m. he was still on 86th street, but no longer on the bicycle. He then took a cab northbound, to a bus station near the George Washington Bridge that is used by interstate buses.
By 7:30 a.m. he had made it to the station, where video surveillance showed him going in but not coming out, Chief Kenny said.
It started barely minutes after the horrifying news broke that the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, had been fatally shot in Midtown Manhattan. Even before any details were available, the internet was awash in speculation that the company had refused to cover the alleged killer’s medical bills — and in debates about whether murder would be a reasonable response.
Soon there was a video of a man in a hoodie, face not visible, walking up behind Thompson and shooting him multiple times, ignoring a woman standing nearby before walking away. Could he be a hit man?
Then came the reports that bullet casings bearing the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose”were found at the scene. “Delay” and “deny” clearly echo tactics insurers use to avoid paying claims. “Depose”? Well, that’s the sudden, forceful removal from a high position. Ah.
After that, it was an avalanche.
The shooter was compared to John Q, the desperate fictional father who takes an entire emergency room hostage after a health insurance company refuses to cover his son’s lifesaving transplant in a 2002 film of the same name. Some posted “prior authorization needed before thoughts and prayers.” Others wryly pointed out that the reward for information connected to the murder, $10,000, was less than their annual deductibles. One observer recommended that Thompson be scheduled to see a specialist in a few months, maybe.
Many others went further. They urged people with information about the killing not to share it with the authorities. Names and photos of other health insurance executives floated around. Some of the posts that went most viral, racking up millions of views by celebrating the killing, I can’t repeat here….
The rage that people felt at the health insurance industry, and the elation that they expressed at seeing it injured, was widespread and organic. It was shocking to many, but it crossed communities all along the political spectrum and took hold in countless divergent cultural clusters.
Even on Facebook, a platform where people do not commonly hide behind pseudonyms, the somber announcement by UnitedHealth Group that it was “deeply saddened and shocked at the passing of our dear friend and colleague” was met with, as of this writing, 80,000 reactions; 75,000 of them were the “haha” emoji.
Before UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down in Midtown Manhattan this week, he was steering his company through court battles and legislative threats at a time of public frustration over health insurance industry tactics.
UnitedHealthcare’s parent company — which generates $400 billion in annual revenue — has been under increasing scrutiny by lawmakers and federal officials for allegedlyhurting consumers with monopolistic practices. Some Democratic lawmakers have accused UnitedHealthcare of intentionally denying claims to boost profits. And Thompson himself has been accused of insider trading.
By Katrina Pallon
Thompson, 50, was well liked internally at UnitedHealth, where he had risen in the ranks over 17 years before being named CEO of the insurance giant in 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile and company statements. He had previously run the Medicare business within UnitedHealthcare.
Legal scrutiny around UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare business regarding potentially overbilling the government affected Thompson personally during that time, said a former colleague, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of Thompson’s death.
“He called me and said, ‘I’m from Iowa, my parents have difficulty explaining what I do, let alone being sued for a billion dollars,’” he said.
Colleagues described him as smart and affable, with an Iowa farm background that allowed him to explain complexities of health care in relatable terms. Known affectionately as “BT,” with the build of a former high school athlete, Thompson had the presence to give major speeches and lead corporate events — and a self-effacing manner that drew staff to him in more intimate settings, remembering personal details about hundreds of UnitedHealth employees, colleagues said.Thompson was known within the company for his focus on keeping premiums low, said one UnitedHealthcare staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their job.
More information on Thompson at the WaPo link.
In other news, Trump is in Paris today acting as if he is already president as Macron sucks up to him.
President-elect Donald Trump kicked off his first foreign trip since his reelection with a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace.
Ahead of the meeting, Macron welcomed Trump, saying, “It’s a great honor for the French people to welcome you five years later.”
Macron thanked Trump for his “solidarity” and “immediate action” during his first presidency: “You were at the time the president, the first time, and I remember the solidarity and your immediate action. Welcome back again. Thank you. We are very happy to have you here.”
Trump in return celebrated the “great success” the United States and France had together on “defense and offense” during his first term and said they will talk about how the world is “going a little crazy right now.” [….]
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined Macron and Trump at about 11:34 a.m. Eastern time. However, he did not offer remarks ahead of the meeting.
Trump is in France to partake in the reopening ceremonies for Notre Dame more than five years after a fire severely damaged the cathedral. First lady Jill Biden is also among the representatives from around the world attending the ceremonies.
The meeting comes at a time when Macron’s government is undergoing a political crisis after his prime minister, Michel Barnier, resigned after facing a no-confidence vote. Macron, who became president in 2017, has vowed he will serve until the end of his term in 2027 despite facing calls from some to resign.
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed Donald Trump to Paris on Saturday with a full a dose of presidential pomp as the two men resumed the relationship they established during Trump’s first term after a four-year hiatus….
By Katrina Pallon
As Trump arrived at the Elysee Palace, the official residence of the French president, Macron went out of his way to project an image of close ties, posing for multiple handshakes interspersed with plenty of back-patting. Trump said it was “a great honor” and talked about the “great relationship” they have had.
Trump said the two would be discussing a world that’s gone “a little crazy” as they met one-on-one ahead of a celebration of the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral five years after a devastating fire.
At the palace, a grand red carpet was rolled in the same way the French welcome sitting American presidents….
Macron, who has had an up-and-down relationship with Trump, has made a point of cultivating a relationship since the Republican defeated Democrat Kamala Harris last month. But Macron’s office nonetheless played down the significance of the invitation, saying other politicians not now in office had been invited as well.
Trump was invited as president-elect of a “friendly nation,” Macron’s office said, adding, “This is in no way exceptional, we’ve done it before.”
The red carpet treatment was yet another sign of how eager both Macron and other European leaders are to win Trump’s favor and placate him even before he takes office.
Macron is hoping to convince Trump to continue supporting Ukraine’s fight to remain and independent democracy.
Trump’s visit to France comes as Macron and other European leaders are trying to win Trump’s favor and persuade him to maintain support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion. Macron’s office said Macron and Trump would discuss that as well as wars in the Middle East.
That meeting will take place before the Notre Dame event, as will the get-together with Prince William, who’s also scheduled to meet with Jill Biden, according to the British royal palace.
Macron also planned to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It’s not clear whether Trump will meet Zelenskyy, too. Trump has pledged to end the war in Ukraine swiftly but has not specified how, raising concerns in Kyiv about what terms may be laid out for any future negotiations.
In an effort to build trust with the incoming U.S. administration, Zelenskyy’s top aide Andriy Yermak met key members of Trump’s team on a two-day trip earlier this week. A senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak publicly, described the meetings as productive, but declined to disclose details.
Meanwhile, Syrian insurgents continue to threaten Bashar al-Assad’s control of the Syrian government.
Insurgents’ stunning march across Syria gained speed on Saturday with news that they had reached the suburbs of the capital and with the government forced to deny rumors that President Bashar Assad had fled the country.
The rebels’ moves around Damascus, reported by an opposition war monitor and a rebel commander, came after the Syrian army withdrew from much of southern part of the country, leaving more areas, including two provincial capitals, under the control of opposition fighters.
The advances in the past week were among the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations. As they have advanced, the insurgents, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have met little resistance from the Syrian army.
The U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, on Saturday called for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition.” Speaking to reporters at the annual Doha Forum in Qatar, he said the situation in Syria was changing by the minute.
In Damascus, people rushed to stock up on supplies. Thousands rushed the Syria border with Lebanon, trying to leave the country.
Many shops in the capital were shuttered, a resident told The Associated Press, and those that remained open ran out of staples such as sugar. Some shops were selling items at three times the normal price.
Once again, the government is denying that al-Assad has fled the country.
Amid the developments, Syria’s state media denied rumors flooding social media that Assad has left the country, saying he is performing his duties in Damascus.
By Katrina Pallon
Assad’s chief international backer, Russia, is busy with its war in Ukraine, and Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of fighters to shore up his forces, has been weakened by a yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran, meanwhile, has seen its proxies across the region degraded by regular Israeli airstrikes.
Pedersen said a date for the talks in Geneva on the implementation of U.N. Resolution 2254 would be announced later. The resolution, adopted in 2015, called for a Syrian-led political process, starting with the establishment of a transitional governing body, followed by the drafting of a new constitution and ending with U.N.-supervised elections.
Iran began to evacuate its military commanders and personnel from Syria on Friday, according to regional officials and three Iranian officials, in a sign of Iran’s inability to help keep President Bashar al-Assad in power as he faces a resurgent rebel offensive.
Among those evacuated to neighboring Iraq and Lebanon were top commanders of Iran’s powerful Quds Forces, the external branch of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the officials said.
Guards personnel, some Iranian diplomatic staff, their families, and Iranian civilians were also being evacuated, according to the Iranian officials, two of them members of the Guards, and regional officials. Iranians began to leave Syria on Friday morning, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.
Evacuations were ordered at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, and at bases of the Revolutionary Guards, the Iranian and regional officials said. At least some of the embassy staff has departed.
Some are leaving by plane to Tehran, while others are leaving via land routes to Lebanon, Iraq and the Syrian port of Latakia, the officials said.
“Iran is starting to evacuate its forces and military personnel because we cannot fight as an advisory and support force if Syria’s army itself does not want to fight,” Mehdi Rahmati, a prominent Iranian analyst who advises officials on regional strategy, said in a telephone interview.
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
I’m sick and tired of wars. I’m even more sick and tired of Trump and his cabinet full of stupid idiots. I came of age during the Vietnam war. After that disaster finally ended, I really thought our leaders would stay out of unnecessary wars. But it didn’t happen. These men (goddess forbid we elect a woman president!) just have to prove their “manhood” by attacking other countries. I’m just plain sick of it.
The preliminary assessment among Israeli officials was that Khamenei was hurt in the strike. No official confirmation has been received by Israeli, American, or Iranian sources.
The book was released yesterday by Congress after Epstein’s estate, which was subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee, provided a copy. It is the same book that contains the now-infamous letter and “bawdy” sketch from Donald Trump that ends: “May every day be another wonderful secret.” When The Wall Street Journal reported on the letter’s existence in July, the newspaper described it but did not republish the letter itself, so Trump vehemently denied that it was real and sued for defamation. But the now-public letter certainly looks real, and so does Trump’s signature. Many of the people who encountered it for the first time yesterday made a similar observation: Its creepy prose is framed by a markered sketch of what looks like the caricature not of a woman’s body, but of a girl’s. (The White House can no longer plausibly deny that the letter exists, but it now insists that Trump did not write or sign it.)
You may read about the details of the attack at PBS if you aren’t overwhelmed already by the thought of Sex Pest and Drunk, Pet Hegseth being a part of this. This headline from The Hill won’t make you feel any less queasy. I’m assuming you knew that #FARTUS was also posted that he would help Iran Make Iran Great Again. That was while Hegseth and Rubio were busily telling the press that our hijacked country had no plans for regime change. Remember, if his lips are moving, he’s telling a big ol’ story. “Israel attacking government sites in Iran as Trump floats regime change.” The reporting here is by Sarah Fortinsky.
That sure sounds like a war to me. Peter Nicholas, NBC News, reports that Democrats in the District are finally sounding some kind of alarm. “‘Biden didn’t start any wars’: Democrats sharpen their arguments against Trump’s foreign policy. In the wake of the U.S. airstrikes on Iran, Democrats are pointing to Trump’s own promises that he wouldn’t ensnare the country in foreign conflicts.”
The Guardian has a headline today that’s spot on. George Bush got led on by his own advisors. Trump’s advisors said no to the mission. Evidently, Trump was taken by strongman Benjamin Netanyahoo! After all that speechifying about Hillary getting us into another World War and how he’d never drag us into something like Dubya did to Iraq and Afghanistan. Here we are. “Like George W Bush, Trump has started a reckless war based on a lie. The Iraq War was built on a lie. Now history is repeating itself.” Mohamad Bazzi has the analysis.
I’m sure none of this is lost on us. Mark Landler writes this analysis for The New York Times. “Iran’s Nuclear Dreams May Survive Even a Devastating American Blow. Through revolution and upheaval, the program has become intertwined with the country’s security and national identity.” Let’s hope all of this sinks in before Trump’s Folly starts costing American lives.
Everything old is new again. History repeats itself. Yup, another Republican steps on the detonator. Historian Heather Cox Richardson has a bigger perspective at her Substack, Letters from an American.
White Christian Nationalists have been at the heart of the big problems in just living your American life, extending their warmongering, hateful, bigoted selves into a second century. Meanwhile, back in the USSR, the bear awakens. Has Trump changed his fealty? This is from the Washington Post. Will he give up his position as RasPutin Fangirl and such to Netanyahoo? “Russia condemns U.S. strikes on Iran but takes no concrete actions. Iran’s foreign minister is in Moscow seeking support, but other than condemning the attack, Putin has not taken any major moves to back Tehran.” I was last night years old when I read that a Russian official told the press there were lots of countries willing to send actual nukes to Iran. It was part of the reason I didn’t sleep last night without a hefty dose of Benadryl. I didn’t snore either, from my poor stuffed sinuses suffering from the humidity and pollen here.
I’m going to start wrapping things up, but I wanted to share a few of the reporters outside the beltway. Jude Legum writes this for Popular Information. “A new war based on manipulated intelligence. More than two decades after the Iraq War commenced, history is repeating itself.” Even the weirdos he put in his cabinet saw the intelligence and just thumbed their noses at them. He “knew” better and used his instincts.
Jennifer Ruben, now writing at The Contrarian, has the term I’ve been using for at least two weeks. “Trump’s wags the dog. Risky military action disrupts the political dynamic. He’s been trying to get us off the topics of Doge, the Big Beautiful Budget-Busting bill, and the incredible cuts floating around the Senate.
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