It was a moment that once would have been relegated to the quiet, grim margins of history—a lunatic, learning that the highest court in the land had ruled his tariffs illegal, and responding not with the silent dignity demanded by the office he holds, but with a screeching screed about the 2020 election.

The Supreme Court had delivered a decision on trade policy, a matter of law and economics.

President Donald Trump turned it into a rerun of his favorite fever dream. The usual concoction: the petty grievances dressed up as grand conspiracies, the tantrum of a man who believes the courts exist to bend to his will and, when they do not, simply changes the subject to the election he lost four years ago.

And yet, to view this latest eruption as merely the predictable tantrum of a sore loser is to miss the forest for the rotting, splintered trees.

For while the president busies himself dictating press releases that read like the manifestos of a casino owner who has just been cut off at the bar, those who actually wore the uniform of this nation are sounding an alarm that is no longer a warning, but a verdict.

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton is not a man given to the vapors of cable news punditry.

He is a soldier. He spent a career understanding the quiet, sacred contract between the American military and the American people: that the armed forces serve the Constitution, not a man; that they remain the shield of the republic, not the cudgel of a faction.

Watching Trump, General Eaton has done something that does not come easily to a man of his background.

He has named the rot plainly, without the genteel euphemisms that so often allow the unthinkable to become normalized.

In Trump, General Eaton sees no patriot.

He has looked upon the man who reportedly dismissed fallen service members as “suckers” and “losers” and rendered a judgment that is brutal in its simplicity.

He sees a man who is “unfit” to command—not merely unqualified, but fundamentally incompatible with the very concept of leadership that does not begin and end with personal fealty.

Trump, General Eaton argues, has taken a wrecking ball to the military’s chain of command, firing officers not for incompetence, but for the high crime of independent thought.

He has demanded loyalty oaths. He gathered generals to berate them about “wokeness,” treating the most powerful fighting force in human history as if it were a grievance-themed podcast.

The general used another word, too.

Stalin. It is a word that ought to land with the weight of a safe falling from a great height. He accused Trump of politicizing the military in a manner “reminiscent of Stalin.”

That is the company this man now keeps, according to a man who swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It is the politicization of the uniform, the demand for personal loyalty over professional duty, the seeding of a military beholden to a man rather than an idea.

When Trump incited a mob to march on the Capitol in a violent attempt to overturn an election, General Eaton saw the culmination of it all: a commander-in-chief who failed to protect the nation because he was too busy trying to burn it down.

Eaton went further, into territory that might seem speculative if it were not so consistent with the observable decline of the man in question.

He suggested dementia. He suggested delusion. One listens to the latest eruption—the tariffs ruled illegal, and the response is a fresh recitation of the 2020 fantasy—and one is forced to wonder: is it fair to call it a strategy anymore, or is it simply the reflex of a man whose grip on reality has become a matter of national security?

For let us not forget the stakes while we argue about the decorum.

This is a man who has already demonstrated that he views the Constitution as an obstacle to be circumvented.

He took the nation to war—against the very mechanisms of its own government—without authorization from Congress.

He holds the nuclear codes, the power to unmake the world in a fit of pique.

He has spent years telling us, through his actions, that he believes those codes exist to serve his ego.

The General’s diagnosis, then, is not merely political commentary.

It is a warning from a man who knows the machinery of power, who understands what happens when that machinery is entrusted to someone who views the military as a personal guard, the courts as an annoyance, and the truth as a flexible arrangement for the help.

When a man like Paul Eaton looks at Donald Trump and sees a man unfit for command, a man no patriot, a man engaged in a Stalinist project to corrupt the armed forces, and a man potentially suffering from a delusional cognitive decline—and when that same man is vying to once again hold the power to end the world—it is no longer a matter of partisan squabbling.

It is a matter of whether the republic can survive a second act of a tragedy it barely survived the first time.

Five weeks into the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran, the conflict has defied every initial promise made by President Donald Trump while fulfilling the worst predictions of critics and honest brokers.

What was billed as a swift, decisive operation has instead settled into a grinding confrontation that is testing American resolve, draining global energy supplies, and exposing deep rifts between the United States and its traditional allies.

Despite initial predictions of a 4-5 week duration, the war —labeled “Operation Epic Fury” by the U.S. and “Operation Lion’s Roar” by Israel— has stretched into its fifth week, with both the aggressors’ military strikes and Iranian resistance continuing.

Trump now finds himself trapped between the public promise of imminent victory and the reality of a conflict that will not bend to his will.

On Tuesday, he told reporters in the Oval Office that the United States would wrap up its military campaign in two to three weeks. Hours earlier, he had lashed out on social media at European nations for refusing to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, telling them to “go get your own oil.”

The contradiction is not lost on those watching from Tehran.

“We possess the necessary will to end this conflict,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tuesday, “provided that essential conditions are met, especially the guarantees required to prevent repetition of the aggression.”

Those conditions, as outlined by Iranian officials, include war reparations, recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the strait, and a complete halt to what Tehran calls “aggression and assassinations.”

The United States has offered a 15-point plan that would require Iran to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure, abandon its regional allies, and reopen the waterway under American terms. Neither side appears willing to blink.

The Strait as Leverage

The narrow waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf has become the fulcrum on which this war turns. Before the fighting began Feb. 28, some 100 ships passed through daily, carrying much of the world’s oil and natural gas. Today, the strait is effectively closed, and Iran controls access.

The economic toll is now hitting American drivers. Gasoline prices crossed an average of $4 per gallon Tuesday for the first time since August 2022, according to AAA. The jump—35 percent since the war began—has become a political burden for a president who promised to lower energy costs.

But the damage extends far beyond the pump. Fertilizer exports from the region, which account for roughly 46 percent of the world’s urea supply, have ground to a halt at precisely the moment northern hemisphere farmers need them for spring planting. Analysts at Goldman Sachs warn that the current shortage will manifest as crop losses later this year, with the most severe impacts on food prices expected in early 2027.

Taiwan, the world’s leading producer of advanced microchips, depends on Qatar for one-third of its liquefied natural gas and 69 percent of its helium—both critical for semiconductor manufacturing. That supply chain has been severed.

The Human Cost

Numbers tell only part of the story. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, at least 1,574 civilians have been killed in Iran since the war began, including 236 children. Lebanon’s health ministry reports more than 1,260 dead in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. In Gulf nations, Iranian attacks have killed at least 50 people. American service members killed stand at 13, with 348 wounded as of Tuesday.

Amnesty International this week warned that Trump’s threats to target Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure would constitute war crimes under international humanitarian law.

“Intentionally attacking civilian infrastructure such as power plants is generally prohibited,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, the organization’s senior director of research. “Given that such power plants are essential for meeting the basic needs and livelihoods of tens of millions of civilians, attacking them would be disproportionate and thus unlawful.”

When power plants collapse, she noted, water pumping stations stop functioning, hospitals lose electricity, and food distribution networks crumble. The threat to target such infrastructure, she said, signals “a willingness to plunge an entire country into darkness.”

Allies Push Back

The war has opened fissures between Washington and its European partners that may not heal quickly. Italy last week denied landing rights to U.S. military aircraft after determining their flight plans were linked to the war effort, according to a senior Italian official.

Spain has gone further, refusing not only base access but also overflight rights to aircraft involved in attacks on Iran.

Trump has responded with fury. On Truth Social, he wrote that European nations should “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait and just TAKE IT.”

He added: “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself; the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore.” This remark is widely considered a return to language that will ultimately destroy NATO, as member states wonder if the military alliance can rely on America.

The European refrain has been consistent: “This is not our war.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who initially backed the U.S.-Israeli attack, told a German newspaper Friday: “I’m just not convinced that what’s happening right now will actually lead to success.”

In Rome, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni—long considered a Trump ally—is watching her political armor crack. Her defense minister told a newspaper this week that “Trump goes his own way without listening to anyone but himself. We go our own way without subservience.”

Uncertainty about whether the U.S. would abide by Article 5 of the collective defense pact to keep Europe safe raises questions about whether NATO has the capacity to deter Russia from attacking its member states.

Russia and China Watch

The geopolitical ripple effects are perhaps more significant than anything happening on the battlefield. Russia, which three months ago was offering oil at $22 per barrel to attract buyers, is now selling at $100 per barrel. The Financial Times estimates Moscow is collecting an additional $150 million daily from surging oil prices.

The United States has temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil. It has also diverted $750 million in NATO-provided funding intended for Ukraine to restock American military inventories depleted by the Iran campaign.

China, meanwhile, has used the conflict to underscore what it sees as American overreach. Beijing recently restated that it is not ruling out military intervention in Taiwan, a message widely interpreted as taking advantage of U.S. military and political resources being consumed elsewhere.

No Good Options

Military analysts describe a situation with no clean exits. A withdrawal without achieving stated objectives would be a humiliation for American power. Continuing the campaign risks deepening the economic pain and further eroding public support. Escalation—whether through ground operations or strikes on energy infrastructure—carries its own perils.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday refused to rule out the use of American ground forces. “You can’t fight and win a war if you tell your adversary what you are willing to do, or what you are not willing to do,” he said.

But the Pentagon has already begun repositioning forces. Elements of the 82nd Airborne Division, including its headquarters and a brigade combat team, are deploying to the Middle East. They will join roughly 50,000 U.S. personnel already in the region and thousands of Marines on amphibious assault ships.

Iran has signaled it expects a possible incursion from Kuwait, either across the Iraqi border or by sea onto Kharg Island—Iran’s primary oil export terminal. The Iranian response, officials have made clear, would be immediate and severe.

The Information War

As conventional fighting continues, another battle rages online. AI-generated videos claiming to show burning American aircraft carriers, crying soldiers, and devastated Gulf cities circulate widely on social media. Some are so convincing that Trump said he called his generals to verify whether the USS Abraham Lincoln was actually on fire.

“False information can spread up to ten times faster than accurate reporting on social media,” said Marc Owen Jones, a professor at Northwestern University in Qatar who studies digital disinformation. “Outrage drives sharing before fact-checking can occur, which is exactly what bad actors exploit.”

The result is a conflict where reality and fabrication are increasingly difficult to separate—a fog of war amplified by technology.

What Comes Next

Trump is scheduled to address the nation on Wednesday evening. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president would provide “an important update” on the war. What he will say remains unclear.

On Tuesday, he offered competing narratives: the war would end soon; negotiations were proceeding well; European allies were cowards; Iran had agreed to most of his demands. The Iranian foreign minister denied that any formal negotiations were taking place.

In Pakistan, officials say they are ready to host talks in the coming days. Whether either side is prepared to make the concessions necessary for an agreement remains unknown.

What is known is this: The war has entered its fifth week. The objectives announced at its outset—regime change in Tehran, the dismantling of Iran’s military capacity—remain unachieved. The Iranian leadership appears more confident than when the bombing began. And the American president, who promised a quick victory, is now telling the country he will be leaving soon—without explaining what leaving means, or what will be left behind.

A Pakistani defense minister recently posted on social media: “The goal of the war seems to have shifted to opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war.”

It was a simple observation. But it cut to the heart of a conflict that has already lasted far longer, cost far more, and delivered far less than anyone planned.

by Sophie Nieto-Munoz, New Jersey Monitor

A woman who worked at Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin’s law firm is suing the firm and accusing it of firing her after she sought time off to care for her ailing mother-in-law.

According to the complaint, filed earlier this month in state Superior Court in Middlesex County, Dorota A. Ferraro alleges the firm violated the New Jersey Family Leave Act by restricting her ability to work remotely and then abruptly firing her after she asked for time off.

Coughlin, a Democrat and the longest-serving Assembly Speaker in the state’s history, has expanded New Jersey’s family leave law during his time leading the lower chamber. The law bars employers from retaliating against workers who seek to exercise their leave rights.

In January, a bill sponsored by Coughlin to expand the act to make 400,000 additional workers eligible was signed into law.

“Study after study shows that expanding family leave is good for the workforce, good for babies and families, and good for our state as a whole,” Coughlin said after that bill passed the Legislature.

A spokeswoman for Coughlin and an attorney for Ferraro did not respond to a request for comment.

Ferraro, of Laurence Harbor, was employed as a paralegal at Rainone Coughlin Minchello from March 2023 to Sept. 18, 2024 (Coughlin is a partner at the firm), the complaint says.

Ferraro alleges her mother-in-law suffered a stroke around September 2023, which led to some weakness or paralysis on her left side, and by the summer of 2024, Ferraro notified the firm’s manager that she would need one to two days off weekly to serve as a caregiver.

After she raised the issue of family leave, the firm told her she could no longer work from home, as she had been doing about twice a week, and she was terminated in September without having received any verbal or written warning from the firm, the complaint says.

Ferraro is seeking reinstatement, back pay, punitive damages, and attorneys’ fees.

One would think that in the middle of a war, the US would be getting what they need to win. But that’s just not the case.

By Stavroula Pabst | Responsible Statecraft.

Just when the U.S. military could use reliable machinery for its hot war on Iran, defense contractors plan to send it radarless F-35s that are unfit for combat.

Breaking Defense reported late last week that the military will start accepting F-35s without radars starting this fall. Defense Daily reported last month that some F-35s have already been delivered without them, but the F-35 Joint Program office denied this.

The problem stems from Northrop Grumman’s delays in producing upgraded radars for the F-35 as part of the program’s ongoing modernization effort. The radars are supposed to help the fighter jet detect, track, and target adversarial threats. Not built to host the older radars currently in use, the incoming radarless F-35s can still fly, but will only be used for training purposes until they can be retrofitted with the new radars — effectively sidelining them from combat.

“Right now, [F-35s are] going to be produced with ballasts [instead of the new radars], which…creates an aircraft that’s not going to be combat-coded anytime soon,” Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee, told Breaking Defense earlier this month.

The critical readiness issue the delay creates only stands to compound with time: if Northrop Grumman can deliver the new radars soon, Breaking Defense reports the issue might only affect a “handful” of F-35 deliveries. But if radar production delays persist past next year, more than 100 F-35s could be delivered without radars.

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Citing the F-35 program’s history of production delays, Dan Grazier, director of the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center, tells RS it is unlikely the new radars will be ready soon.

“Chances are extremely high that the contractor will not be able to deliver a working radar next year. Every time a program official has made such an announcement about a timeline, the promise never materializes,” Grazier told RS. “The only timeline program officials ever stuck with was to declare initial operational capability on time. Those announcements happened a decade ago, and yet the F-35 program is delivering jets without a basic combat system.”

Radar retrofits for the jets, meanwhile, could be expensive and time consuming.

“When you add it all up, retrofits to the F-35 will ultimately cost taxpayers tens-of-billions of dollars. This will only add to that absurd tab,” said Ben Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute, which publishes RS. “It’s well past time we cut our losses and stopped buying more of these overpriced and underperforming planes.”Lockheed Martin, meanwhile, is redesigning the front end of the jet’s internal frame so that newer F-35s can use either the old or new radars; that workaround is not expected to be available until 2027.

The F-35’s latest flop

The current radar debacle stands to leave the U.S. without critical military equipment amid its potentially long-term war on Iran — which has damaged or destroyed a number of key U.S. military assets, including an F-35, since hostilities began on February 28.

But the impasse is decades in the making, brought about by an F-35 program characterized by underperformance and delays — at the expense of American taxpayers and military readiness alike.

Indeed, all F-35s delivered in 2024 were late. Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) deemed the F-35 mission capable little more than half the time in 2023, despite being in service for more than a decade.

Notwithstanding these issues, defense contractors have raked in hundreds of millions in incentive fees — which, ironically, are supposed to encourage contractors to deliver weapons systems on-time — over the lifetime of the F-35 program, which will altogether cost taxpayers an eye-watering $2 trillion.

To expert observers, the radarless F-35 deliveries are just another sign the program has flopped.

The radar problem is “proof positive that the F-35 program is a failure,” Grazier told RS. “This jet has been in development for a quarter century as of this October and the contractor is delivering aircraft to the services that don’t have a functional radar. The American people deserve a reimbursement at this point.”

Northrop Grumman and the F-35 Joint Program Office did not respond to requests for comment.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states do not have the authority to ban licensed therapists from subjecting LGBTQ children to a scientifically discredited practice that every major medical association in the country calls harmful, ineffective, and a form of child abuse.

In an 8-1 decision, the justices sided with a Christian counselor in Colorado who argued that her right to free speech under the First Amendment allows her to counsel minors who want to “reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions.” The ruling effectively dismantles laws in more than 20 states that had prohibited licensed professionals from attempting to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of young people.

The practice known as conversion therapy has been linked to suicide attempts at rates nearly twice those of peers who never underwent it. A study published this year by the American Medical Association found that 42% of those subjected to the practice attempted suicide, compared with 5% of those who were not. The United Nations has called it torture.

None of that mattered to the majority.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court, said Colorado’s 2019 law violated the First Amendment because it “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The state, Gorsuch wrote, cannot “enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech.”

Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. She read her opinion from the bench, a rare public display of disagreement that signaled the gravity of what she called a “dangerous can of worms.” States, she warned, will now find themselves hamstrung when trying to regulate medical care, whether it involves a therapist telling a 13-year-old that God made him wrong or a doctor giving fraudulent medical advice.

“This decision might make speech-only therapies and other medical treatments involving practitioner speech effectively unregulatable,” Jackson wrote. She accused her colleagues of making “this momentous decision without adequately grappling with the potential long-term and disastrous implications.”

The case began in 2022 when Kaley Chiles, an evangelical Christian therapist in Colorado Springs, sued the state over a law that prohibited her from helping young patients who, she said, wanted to live in accordance with their faith. Chiles said she did not seek to “cure” clients of same-sex attractions but rather to help those who came to her with what she called “unwanted” feelings.

Colorado’s law carried fines of up to $5,000 per violation and the potential loss of a counselor’s license. It included an exemption for religious ministry. No one had ever been penalized under it.

Chiles was represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, the same conservative legal organization that successfully argued before the same court in 2023 that a Colorado web designer had a First Amendment right to refuse to create wedding websites for same-sex couples. The Trump administration backed Chiles in court.

The ruling lands at the intersection of two competing principles that have divided the court for years: the government’s long-established authority to regulate the conduct of licensed professionals and the First Amendment’s protection of speech.

Colorado argued that it was not censoring ideas but regulating medical practice, something states have done since the nation’s founding. A therapist’s advice to a patient, the state contended, is not abstract political speech but professional conduct subject to standards designed to protect the public from harm.

The majority disagreed. Gorsuch wrote that the law “trains directly on the content of her speech and permits her to express some viewpoints but not others.”

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, filed a concurring opinion that appeared intended to limit the reach of the decision. Kagan wrote that the law was unconstitutional because it suppressed “one side of a debate while aiding the other.”

But the debate in question, as the scientific record makes clear, is not a genuine debate at all. It is a collision between evidence and belief.

The term “conversion therapy” itself is a misnomer, according to medical professionals who have spent decades trying to erase it from practice. There is no therapy in conversion therapy. There is only a collection of interventions—talk therapy, aversion techniques, electric shocks, induced nausea, hypnosis, and in the darker chapters of its history, chemical castration and lobotomy—all built on the foundational lie that something is broken in a child who is gay or transgender.

The practice is rooted in the belief that LGBTQ people are somehow inferior, morally or physically, and must be fixed. The Pan American Health Organization declared in 2012 that conversion therapy had no medical justification and represented a severe threat to health and human rights. The World Psychiatric Association said in 2016 that “there is no sound scientific evidence that innate sexual orientation can be changed.”

The Williams Institute at UCLA estimates that as of 2019, about 700,000 LGBTQ adults in the United States had undergone conversion therapy. About half received it as adolescents.

What those numbers do not capture is the aftermath. The depression. The post-traumatic stress. The indelible scars on body and mind from being told by a trusted authority figure that who you are is a sin to be corrected. The children who were shackled, beaten, deprived of food, subjected to exorcisms. The ones who did not survive.

The court’s decision does not only affect Colorado. It casts doubt on similar laws in nearly 30 states, many of which were passed over the past decade as evidence mounted that the practice caused lasting psychological harm. In one stroke, the court has told those states that their efforts to protect children from what the UN calls torture may be unconstitutional.

Jaymes Black, CEO of the Trevor Project, which provides suicide prevention services to LGBTQ youth, said in a statement that the ruling “will put young lives at risk.”

“These efforts, no matter what proponents call them, no matter what any court says, are still proven to cause lasting psychological harm,” Black said.

Chiles, the therapist who brought the case, hailed the decision. In a statement, she said she had turned away families whose children were struggling with sexual identity because she feared running afoul of the law. “Counselors walking alongside these young people shouldn’t be limited to promoting state-approved goals like gender transition,” she said.

There is no evidence that Chiles, or any therapist practicing conversion therapy, is being asked to promote gender transition. The Colorado law she challenged did not require any therapist to affirm a child’s gender identity. It simply prohibited licensed professionals from using their credentials to tell a child that their fundamental identity is a problem to be solved.

The decision is the latest in a string of rulings in which the court’s conservative majority has expanded religious liberty claims while narrowing protections for LGBTQ people. In 2022, the court allowed a high school football coach to pray at the 50-yard line after games. In 2023, it ruled for the web designer in Colorado who did not want to work with same-sex couples. Last term, it upheld a Tennessee law banning certain gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender minors.

Now, it has ruled that a state cannot stop a licensed professional from using speech to try to change who a child is.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser warned last year that a ruling against his state would open a “dangerous Pandora’s box” that could extend far beyond conversion therapy. If states cannot regulate speech by licensed professionals, he argued, then they cannot regulate lawyers giving bad legal advice or financial advisers making fraudulent claims.

The court did not address that broader question directly. It sent the case back to the lower courts to determine whether Colorado’s law meets a strict legal standard that few laws survive.

But the message was clear. A state can no longer tell a licensed therapist that they cannot counsel a child to suppress who they are, even when the evidence shows that such fraudulent counseling leaves lasting scars.

A state can no longer protect citizens from torture, even when the consensus of medical science is unanimous, or when children die as a result.

The First Amendment, Gorsuch wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”

On Tuesday, that shield protected a form of speech that, by every credible measure, has done nothing but harm. The children the shield was meant to protect were left on the other side of it, exposed.

The famous quote, “Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” is widely attributed to Mark Twain, but it was actually written by his friend and collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner.

The Democratic Party has spent the better part of nine years warning Americans that Donald Trump represents an existential threat to constitutional democracy, but action speaks louder than words, and precious little has been done.

It turns out that complaining about Trump was the easy part.

Stopping him has proven considerably more difficult, in part because stopping him would require the party to do something other than raise money, hold press conferences, and organize events that are carefully designed not to actually inconvenience anyone with power.

Saturday’s No Kings Day of Nonviolent Action drew enormous crowds. Bruce Springsteen performed. Bernie Sanders spoke. Joan Baez sang. Photographs were taken. The images circulated on social media. Donations were solicited.

The next morning, Donald Trump woke up as president of the United States, with the same unchecked executive powers he had on Saturday, the same deportation apparatus running at full speed, and the same billionaire allies collecting gigantic tax considerations, and the same war grinding forward in Iran with new plans to put boots on the ground.

The protests were, in the clinical sense of the word, expressive. They were not effective.

This is not an argument against protest. It is an argument about what protest is for and whether the people organizing it have thought seriously about that question or are simply producing a political product for a Democratic base that has confused the feeling of resistance with its substance.

Consider where No Kings began.

The inaugural rallies took place on June 14, 2025 — Flag Day, and Donald Trump’s birthday, a date the administration had chosen for a military parade through Washington that critics described, with considerable accuracy, as the kind of display more commonly associated with governments that do not hold competitive elections.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who wished to register their opposition to Trumpism chose that day to gather. They gathered in parks. They gathered in city centers. They gathered everywhere, it seemed, except along the parade route itself, where the tanks rolled and the aircraft flew and the president reviewed his military pageant without meaningful interruption.

The organizers had made a choice, whether consciously or by default, not to place bodies between the symbols of democratic governance and the man treating those symbols as personal property. They chose, in other words, not to be inconvenient.

That choice reflects something deeper and more troubling than tactical timidity.

It reflects a Democratic establishment that has internalized, at some level, a set of boundaries around what constitutes acceptable opposition — boundaries that the opposition itself has drawn, and that the people being opposed have noticed and are grateful for.

You may march. You may chant. You may donate. You may vote in elections whose integrity is under active assault. What you may not do, apparently, is disrupt. What you may not do is make the exercise of illegitimate power visibly, materially costly.

The results of this approach are now part of the public record. Trump’s second term has proceeded at a velocity that has consistently outpaced Democratic response. Immigration enforcement operations of legally dubious authority have arrested and detained people without warrants.

The administration has attacked university funding, gutted federal agencies, and in the case of Iran, commenced military action that has already killed more than 1,500 people and threatens to draw the region into a wider conflagration — a war that polls indicate a majority of Americans oppose.

Congressional Democrats have responded with statements, letters, and the occasional strongly worded floor speech. They have not stopped any of it.

Following the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by Trump’s Gestapo-like federal agents, Chuck Schumer rushed five appropriations bills through the Senate with Democratic support and made an impotent display of obstruction by holding up one for the Department of Homeland Security, which got enough money in the One Big Beautiful Bill to last three years.

Trump later signed an order to pay airport workers, which demonstrated how pointless it was, but even when Schumer shut down the federal government, his caucus capitulated after 40 days, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Iran war represents perhaps another glaring failure of the organized resistance, and the No Kings coalition’s treatment of it was instructive.

The Indivisible coalition’s own description of the protest’s aims mentioned foreign military spending primarily as a budgetary grievance — money being wasted — rather than as a moral catastrophe in its own right.

An administration whose own officials have essentially acknowledged that Israel’s interests were a principal motivation for the unprovoked conflict has managed to wage that war with the mainstream Democratic opposition declining to make it a central rallying point.

The reason is not mysterious.

The institutional Democratic Party and its donor network have their own complicated relationship with the policies that produced this war, and the No Kings coalition, whatever its energy, is not independent of that corrupt political establishment.

Meanwhile, the antiwar tradition that once gave American opposition movements their moral clarity has been methodically suppressed.

Students who organized against the Gaza genocide in 2024 were met by university administrations and law enforcement in ways that had a measurable chilling effect on subsequent organizing. Americans who objected to their tax dollars providing the means to kill tens of thousands of children were labeled ‘antisemitic,’ and such lawmakers as Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush were outspent into oblivion.

The campus movement that briefly suggested the possibility of a genuine, principled challenge to American foreign policy consensus has been substantially quieted. What remains is a protest movement with enormous energy, genuine grassroots participation, and no coherent theory of how any of it translates into the cessation of any specific harm.

A movement without a central demand is a parade.

It may be a very large parade, with excellent music and genuine emotional power, but it leaves those in power with nothing they are required to do and nothing they stand to lose by doing nothing.

The history of successful movements in this country — movements that ended wars, secured rights, changed laws — is a history of people who understood that moral witness, while necessary, is not sufficient.

Moral witness must be accompanied by disruption, by leverage, by a willingness to impose costs on those who continue the behavior being protested. The Montgomery Bus Boycott worked because it cost the bus company money. The Vietnam-era movement worked, to the extent that it did, because it made the continuation of the war politically untenable for the people prosecuting it.

What, precisely, did the Trump administration stand to lose from Saturday’s events?

What specific policy was threatened? Which official faced a consequence?

These are not cynical questions. They are the only questions that matter, and the fact that they are difficult to answer tells you something important about the state of American opposition politics.

The Democratic Party, for its part, continues to operate as though the principal challenge it faces is messaging. The problem, its strategists suggest, is that voters do not sufficiently understand what is being done to them or who is responsible. This theory flatters the party’s consultants and absolves its leadership, but it is a lie.

Voters understand what is happening. They are living it. What they have not seen is a political institution willing to treat the situation with the urgency it has spent many years insisting the situation deserves.

The Democratic political establishment is funded by the same billionaires and corporations that finance the Republicans, and those donors do not want radical change. They want to keep making money by exploiting workers and polluting the planet with impunity.

A party that declares fascism at the podium and negotiates at the negotiating table is not a resistance. It is a token opposition that has been neither particularly loyal to its stated principles nor particularly effective in its opposition.

The crowds that gathered on Saturday deserved better than that. So does the country.

By Imani Laird

This January, bracing the winter cold, delighted anti-abortion advocates traveled throughout the streets of Washington, D.C., for the annual March for Life.

Two days earlier, the U.S. House of Representatives had delivered them a major victory. In a narrow vote of 215 to 209, the House passed House Resolution 6945, the “Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Women and Families Act,” and sent it to the Senate for review.

Simply looking at the name, this bill sounds like a compassionate lifeline for struggling parents. In fact, it is designed to protect a controversial pipeline of cash: the diversion of federal anti-poverty funds into the coffers of anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs), the overwhelming majority of which are religious.

Also known as anti-abortion fake clinics, CPCs “portray themselves as medical facilities that provide comprehensive reproductive care [but] are driven by religious convictions opposing abortion and do not provide patients with a full spectrum of reproductive options.”

In prior years, the Biden administration sought to close the regulatory loophole that allows states to use the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to fund these faith-based organizations.

H.R. 6945 attempts to codify this loophole permanently, ensuring states can continue to bankroll religiously motivated programs with money meant for the poorest of American families.

Crisis pregnancy centers’ deceptive practices

So what makes the funding of CPCs so lamentable? Walking into a typical crisis pregnancy center, you might think you are in a medical clinic. Staff often wear white lab coats.

They offer free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. But these centers are not comprehensive medical facilities.

They exist to intercept vulnerable pregnant people and dissuade them from terminating their pregnancies.

Staff typically have no medical training. Centers may have obtained licenses to conduct ultrasounds, but fetal images are used to dissuade women from abortion.

Many aren’t bound by HIPAA privacy laws, and multiple undercover investigations have documented CPC staff feeding clients blatant medical disinformation, such as falsely claiming that abortions cause breast cancer or permanent infertility. 

Most CPCs are affiliated with evangelical Christian networks and national anti-abortion organizations, but rather than being transparent about their ideological position, they advertise themselves as unbiased.

In addition to their anti-abortion work, other services for parents rarely come without strings attached. Rather than handing out free diapers to needy parents, many CPCs utilize a curriculum called “Earn While You Learn.” To get basic necessities like baby formula or a car seat, clients must earn “mommy bucks” by attending mandatory classes.

These classes are heavily saturated with religious messaging. Clients report being forced to attend Bible studies, abstinence seminars, and “sexual integrity” workshops to access the supplies they desperately need. The curriculum’s own promotional material boasts that the program “creates openings for the counselor to share Christ.”

What is TANF?

Created during the 1996 welfare-reform era, TANF is the primary federal cash assistance program for families living in deep poverty.

But unlike its predecessors, TANF is given to states as a “block grant,” meaning states get a chunk of federal money and wide latitude on how to spend it.

States must ensure the money meets one of four broad goals. While the first two goals focus strictly on assisting needy families and promoting job preparation, the third goal, “preventing and reducing the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies,” has no such limits.

Today, it’s estimated only about 20 percent of eligible, low-income families actually receive direct cash assistance from TANF.

Funding instead has been increasingly funneled into crisis pregnancy centers.

Pennsylvania, the pioneer of using TANF for CPCs, offers a cautionary tale.

In 2001, Republican U.S. Senator Rick Santorum received approval from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to use TANF for support of CPCs. However, in 2017, the state discovered that a portion of its public grants were used to expand CPCs into other states. 

This isn’t an isolated practice. In 2021, at least ten states were actively diverting TANF funds to CPCs.

The Texas “Thriving Texas Families” (TTF) program commands a $140 million budget. Texas lawmakers shower CPCs with millions in state and TANF funds for “educational” classes and brochures, but explicitly refuse to mandate that these organizations provide actual medical care. When lawmakers proposed giving just 2 percent of the TTF budget directly to secular diaper banks, which distribute aid without ideological strings, the measure was defeated.

The bottom line on crisis pregnancy centers

H.R. 6945 and the ongoing diversion of TANF funds to crisis pregnancy centers highlight a profound distortion of the American social safety net. When poverty relief is weaponized as a tool for proselytization, the government ceases to be a protector of the vulnerable. It’s a betrayal of the poorest families who desperately need cash assistance, and a direct assault on the separation of church and state. 

There is a board in this land, a body of sixteen souls, charged with keeping an eye on the United States Air Force Academy.

Their task, set down in the black and white of the U.S. Code, is no small thing: they are to inquire into the morale, the discipline, the curriculum, the very soul of the institution that forges the men and women who will command the skies.

They advise the Secretary of Defense, with power to poke into the academy’s fiscal affairs, to scrutinize the academic methods, and to report back on whether this great engine of war is running as it should.

It is a grave responsibility, and one would naturally assume it falls to those who have walked the runway, who have felt the force of G-forces push them into their seats, who have served in the very service they are now tasked with overseeing.

One would be mistaken.

But the enthusiasm for unqualified appointees is a defining characteristic of the administration of President Donald Trump, who is offended by hiring practices like diversity, equity and inclusion.

The United States Air Force Academy Board of Visitors is a good example.

Look first at the chair, Congressman August Pfluger of Texas. He is a retired combat aviator, a graduate of the Academy’s class of 2000, appointed to his post by the Speaker of the House.

When he speaks of the institution, he speaks with the authority of someone who once sat where the cadets now sit, and that carries a certain weight. He is joined by a handful of others who have actually worn the uniform.

Colonel Doug Nikolai, a retired Air Force colonel and also a graduate, was placed on the board by the President. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who serves by virtue of his chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a former officer in the Air Force and the Air Force Reserve. And Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, designated by the House Armed Services Committee chairman, is a retired brigadier general.

These men have earned their place at the table the hard way.

But they are the exceptions, and the exceptions are few.

The rest of the board reads less like a council of military elders and more like a guest list for a political rally.

Consider the six members appointed directly by the President. There is Erika Kirk, the widow of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, placed there to “continue his legacy.”

The White House calls her a “fearless advocate,” and she may well be. But neither she nor her late husband possesses any formal military training or experience.

Her appointment, made with no announcement, simply saw her name appear on the list one day.

Alongside her are Dan Clark and Dina Powell, presidential appointees with no military record at all.

Robert Bigelow, another presidential pick, shares that distinction.

Then there is Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, also a presidential appointee, whose qualifications for overseeing military training rest on a long and successful career in college football coaching. He is a man who knows how to win a Saturday game, which is not the kind of preparation for understanding the complexities of modern aerial warfare.

The congressional delegation does not fare much better.

Senator Steve Daines of Montana, appointed by the Senate Majority Leader, has no military service in his background. Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, placed by the Minority Leader, is in the same boat.

Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina, Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado—all lawmakers, all tasked with overseeing the Air Force Academy, and none of them have ever served a day in the armed forces.

Representative Jeff Crank of Colorado, appointed by the Speaker, and Representative Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico, a designee of the House Armed Services Committee, also have no military service record.

Representative Don Davis of North Carolina, appointed by the House Minority Leader, rounds out the list of civilians governing those in uniform.

So there you have it.

A board of sixteen, given the solemn duty to inquire into the discipline, morale, and academic rigor of a premier military institution.

Among them are a handful who have actually lived that life.

The rest are a collection of political appointees, activists, and lawmakers—perhaps they are decent people, but individuals whose closest experience to a cockpit might be a flight in first class.

By law, of the six members the President directly appoints, at least two must be graduates of the Academy.

It is a small safeguard, a nod to the idea that some actual experience ought to be in the room. It is a low bar, and one wonders if even that is enough. For what would the cadets, these young men and women learning the hard art of war, make of their overseers?

They are being trained to lead in the air, to make split-second decisions with the weight of the world on their shoulders, to embody a profession of arms.

And looking at the board that judges their readiness, they might be forgiven for asking a simple question: Who among you has done what we are preparing to do?

The answer, for the majority, is a quiet and resounding no one.

There’s an old saying that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

But what of those who saw it coming, warned the rest of us, and were ignored, only to stand up 15 years later and realize we’ve built a much bigger house of cards, this time with the world’s dinner sitting on top of it?

Back in 2007, a political economist named Anastasia Nesvetailova published a book warning that the global financial system was drunk on cheap credit and shaky mortgages. She thought nobody would pay it any mind.

London was booming, the champagne was flowing, and the banks were handing out money like candy at a parade. But then the music stopped.

Lehman Brothers folded up like a cheap suitcase, and the world got a painful lesson in what happens when a few big players run the table with borrowed chips.

Now that same woman sits in a high office at the United Nations, looking at the global food supply, and what she sees ought to make your blood run cold.

She says the financial crisis of 2008 will look like a picnic compared to what’s coming if we don’t pay attention to who’s really running the grocery store.

The problem, stripped of all its fancy jargon, is that five giant companies have their hands on just about everything you eat.

That’s not an exaggeration. Depending on how you count it, somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of the global food trade is controlled by a handful of names you probably never think about while you’re pushing a cart down the aisle.

They go by the initials ABCCD, or just the Big Five.

They are Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, Bunge, Cargill (all three American), China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation, and the French-Dutch Louis Dreyfus Company.

They own the grain, the shipping, the fertilizers, the logistics.

They are the pipeline from the farmer’s field to your kitchen table, and they sit right in the middle of it all. They have faced allegations of corruption and severe human rights violations.

Now, in calm weather, you might not notice. The trucks show up, the shelves stay stocked, and life goes on. But Nesvetailova points out that these aren’t just food companies anymore.

They’ve turned themselves into something else. They’re part of the financial system now, deeply and dangerously.

The UN estimates that nearly three-quarters of their income comes from financial wheeling and dealing.

They’re lending money, packaging loans into securities, and betting on the price of wheat the way Wall Street used to bet on subprime mortgages.

You see where this is going. The world food supply is dependent upon the continued success of greedy corporate gamblers.

If one of these giants gets into trouble, if their financial bets go sour the way the banks’ bets did in 2008, they won’t just be too big to fail.

They’ll be too hungry to fail. They’ll come to the government with their hats in their hands and say, “Bail us out, or nobody eats.” And what choice will anyone have?

The companies have more than 900 subsidiaries apiece, scattered across dozens of countries, borrowing from hundreds of banks that often don’t even know they’re all part of the same beast.

It’s a tangle so thick that no single regulator can untangle it.

While the nations of the world are busy stockpiling food again, worried about wars and climate and instability, the real power over what gets eaten and at what price sits in the boardrooms of these five outfits.

Nesvetailova calls some of these traders shadow banks, and the label fits. They’ve learned all the tricks of the financial trade.

They repackage risk, they move money through hidden channels, and they have better information about the global food supply than most governments do.

When a drought hits or a war disrupts shipping, they know it first. And they can position themselves to profit from it, whether the news is good or bad for the rest of us.

Now, the defenders of this system will tell you that size brings efficiency. That these giants can take risks on farmers that smaller companies wouldn’t dare. That they grease the wheels of global commerce.

Maybe that’s true, right up until it isn’t. The same things were said about the big banks, right before they needed a trillion-dollar rescue.

The uncomfortable truth is that we won’t know just how fragile this arrangement really is until it breaks.

And if it does break, it won’t be just a bunch of investment bankers carrying their belongings out of a skyscraper in cardboard boxes. It’ll be empty shelves. It’ll be prices that ordinary people cannot pay. It’ll be the kind of trouble that makes a financial panic look like a disagreement over the check.

The woman who saw the last crash coming is standing at the podium again, pointing at the same kind of smoke rising from a different part of the forest. It would be a shame if we waited for the fire this time before we believed her.

But then again, we’ve got a pretty good track record of waiting until it’s too late. It’s an American habit, and a human one too, to assume the train will keep running right up until the moment it jumps the tracks.

It was a decision that, in its stunning disregard for settled law and the very bedrock of civic engagement, arrived with the quiet thud of a gavel wrapped in bureaucratic indifference.

A state judge in Bergen County has looked at a unanimous United States Supreme Court ruling, looked at a citizen silenced by his own mayor, and decided that the Constitution, in this particular instance, could wait.

The ruling denies a man—a citizen, a taxpayer, a voice—the simple right to be heard. The man, Howard Fredrics, made the mistake of voicing an opinion a local mayor did not care for.

For that sin, he was cast out of the digital town square. He was blocked. Exiled. Made invisible on the official Facebook page of Montvale Mayor Mike Ghassali.

When Mr. Fredrics, an award-winning composer and public access television operator, sought a preliminary injunction to be let back in, to simply have his say in the forum where his government conducts its public business, Judge John O’Dwyer told him no.

The judge’s logic is a curious specimen. He ruled that Mr. Fredrics had not demonstrated “irreparable harm.”

The implication is that a year of being silenced, of being denied the ability to engage with his elected representative on the very platform the representative uses to communicate policy, issue directives, and gauge public sentiment, is merely a minor inconvenience.

It is a legal nicety that ignores a fundamental truth: a citizen who is not allowed to have input on a public issue in the very forum where opinions are considered at the time decisions are made is not a citizen at all. He is an exile. And exile, by any name, is harm.

This ruling does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in direct defiance of a unanimous decision from the highest court in the land.

In Lindke v. Freed (2024), the Supreme Court was unequivocal: when a public official uses their social media page to conduct government business, that page becomes a public forum.

In a public forum, the government cannot silence a person simply because it dislikes their views. The mayor, by using his page to communicate in his official capacity, opened the door to the public square. He does not then get to decide which citizens are fit to stand in it based on whether they agree with him. That is not governance; it is the whim of a monarch with a “Block” button.

The judge, in his written order, attempted to draw a distinction, noting that Mr. Fredrics could still post on the borough’s official page. This is the kind of hairsplitting that would make a medieval theologian blush. It ignores the reality that the mayor’s page is the primary, direct line of communication. To tell a man he can still shout his concerns from the curb while barring him from the council chamber is not a compromise. It is a farce.

One is reminded of a simple, profound truth, illustrated in a story of twelve jurors in a sweltering room. The power of that story lies not in the volume of the arguments, but in the principle that every voice must be heard.

The lone dissenting juror was not an obstacle to efficiency; he was the safeguard of justice. The moment a juror is locked out of the room because his viewpoint is found to be irritating, the proceeding ceases to be a deliberation and becomes a mere ratification of power. So it is here. When a mayor can silence a constituent with a click, the democratic process is reduced to a one-man show.

The mayor, for his part, claims he hasn’t even seen the lawsuit. A convenient ignorance. Meanwhile, the machinery of the law grinds forward, with the plaintiff’s attorney vowing to pursue the case to its full adjudication. But the damage of this preliminary ruling is already done. It sends a message to every elected official in New Jersey that the unanimous wisdom of the Supreme Court can be treated as a mere suggestion, that the First Amendment is subject to a local judge’s assessment of what constitutes “irreparable” harm.

What is irreparable, if not this? The erosion of the principle that in America, you do not get to silence critics simply because you hold the office. The courts are supposed to be the bulwark against such petty tyranny. In this case, the bulwark has crumbled, and a citizen who only sought to be heard has been left standing on the outside, staring in, while the machinery of government continues to turn without him.

A conflict launched in the name of American security is producing the opposite effect.

By Sarah Yerkes

In February, President Donald Trump cited “imminent threats” as the motivation to launch a war with Iran. But nearly a month into the conflict, the United States is increasingly harming its own interests rather than making America safer.

Rather than creating a world more friendly to U.S. interests, the war is disrupting U.S. alliances, empowering a regime more hostile to the United States than the one Trump sought to remove, and unleashing anti-Americanism.

As Trump now tries to find a way to exit the war, Iran is skeptical of his intentions and motives, deepening the divide. All of this adds to a lack of trust in Washington that jeopardizes American stability, both in the short and the long term.

Strained Partnerships and Alliances

First and foremost, the war has damaged U.S. relationships with allies and partners. In the Middle East, Gulf states that did not initiate the strikes have suffered attacks on their own soil and damage to important infrastructure, including water desalination plants and energy facilities.

Although the Gulf states stand to benefit from a weakened Iran, the price these countries’ citizens and economies are paying while the United States is left more or less unscathed has frustrated Gulf leadership.

Although Americans are feeling the costs of the war at the gas pump, the impact has been minimal so far. In the Gulf, though, an Iranian drone damaged Bahrain’s desalination plant, impacting the water supply in thirty villages. Further hits on plants in Kuwait and the UAE threatened the supply of drinking water there.

Iranian strikes also damaged the largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) production facility in the world—Qatar’s Ras Laffan—as well as oil and gas facilities in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudia Arabia, and the UAE have all suffered more human casualties than the United States as a result of the war.

And the Israeli dimension does not help: No Gulf leader wants to be seen supporting Israel’s agenda in the wake of the immensely unpopular Gaza war. 

At the same time, the war has highlighted Gulf security dependence on the United States. The second Trump administration has explicitly sought to deprioritize the Middle East. Its 2025 National Security Strategy argued that “America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede” and referred to the region as “a place of partnership, friendship, and investment,” rejecting the idea of “fruitless ‘nation-building’ wars.”

The war with Iran runs counter to the administration’s stated goals in nearly every way. Furthermore, Gulf leadership had been working to develop an effective regional security mechanism that would make it less reliant on U.S. security partnerships. This war has instead reinforced a vicious and expensive dependency cycle both sides would prefer to exit—but is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

In addition, the already tense U.S.-Europe relationship is being further strained by the Iran war. Trump failed to consult Europe prior to the first strikes, taking the continent by surprise. An attack on Cyprus and rising energy prices have forced Europe to partially join the war: The UK authorized use of its bases by U.S. military, a coalition of European nations has committed to diplomacy to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, and France and Germany have prepared a defensive posture (albeit reluctantly).

But Europe, which is not eager to enter what it sees as a war of choice, has refrained from proactively joining U.S. and Israeli strikes and some European leaders have questioned the legality of Trump’s actions.

One of the clearest examples of the transatlantic rift was over the initial reaction to closures in the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping channel for approximately 20 percent of the world’s seaborne oil and LNG traffic. Multiple European countries refused to bow to Trump’s demand that they send warships to help keep the strait open, inviting public ire from Trump, who called his NATO allies who did not comply with his demands “COWARDS” on Truth Social.

Khamenei 2.0

Second, the United States has a very poor track record when it comes to intervention in the Middle East: Time after time, removing a leader or otherwise meddling in domestic politics has set in motion widespread ripple effects, often to the detriment of U.S. national security. The United States is making a similar mistake in Iran today, forcing regime change without considering all possible outcomes.

Take George W. Bush administration’s Freedom Agenda, a response to the 9/11 attacks that sought to introduce democracy to the Middle East to counter the region’s hostile autocrats. But rather than usher in an era of liberal democracy, the Freedom Agenda was ineffective at best and directly damaging to U.S. interests at worse. Most infamously, the Bush administration pushed for elections in Palestine that brought Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, to power. And just as Hamas was worse for U.S. interests than Fatah, Mojtaba Khamenei will likely prove worse than his father.

Another example was the 2003 Iraq war, which the United States and its “coalition of the willing” initiated to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power and stop the country’s alleged weapons of mass destruction program. Although Hussein was captured and eventually executed, Iraq did not blossom into a liberal democracy. Instead, the U.S.-led invasion created a multiyear security and governance vacuum that contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and 4,500 U.S. soldiers, and eventually saw the rise of ISIS.

The parallels between the invasion of Iraq and Operation Epic Fury are increasingly clear: both could be described as ill-conceived military campaigns justified by faulty intelligence and with unclear aims. Indeed, rather than build on and support the growing Iranian public frustration with their government, the United States and Israel have instead poured fuel on the fire of the dictatorship.

The strike that took down Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei did not usher in freedom and democracy, as Trump had hoped, but rather passed the torch to his son, who is even closer to the hardline Revolutionary Guard than his father.

Trump’s fickle nature and lack of trustworthiness in the eyes of Iran have made it more difficult for him to negotiate an end to the war. As Trump himself acknowledged, U.S. and Israeli strikes have killed most of the Iranian leadership, making a negotiated exit to the conflict even more challenging.

And intelligence has made clear that if Iranians take to the streets, they will likely be met with violence. The Iranian regime has already killed thousands of anti-government protesters this year, demonstrating both the high level of repression it is willing to inflict on its own people and its resiliency.

All this likely adds to long-term damage on U.S. credibility and trust.  

Losing Hearts and Minds

Finally, the war is turning the Middle East public opinion against the United States. In Iran, continued U.S.-Israeli strikes resulting in civilian casualties are decimating the little credibility the Trump administration had built following the twelve-day war.

While few Middle Eastern states, with the exception of Algeria and Libya, have outwardly condemned the U.S.-Israeli strikes, they have also refrained from publicly supporting the war. The countries directly impacted have condemned attacks on their own territories or those of their neighbors, as well as expressed frustration at being dragged in to a conflict they did not start.

The loss of Arab hearts and minds is detrimental to the United States, which depends heavily on cooperation with Arab partners for intelligence-sharing, energy security, cooperative security arrangements, and military basing rights. The latter in particular is key: The war is being carried out largely with U.S. troops based in the Middle East, making host countries targets of Iran. And without friendly basing agreements, the United States would be far less well-positioned to defend itself and its friends and allies in the region.

U.S.-Israeli actions are not just creating a backlash in Iran; they are driving anti-Trump action at home. Polling from March 13–15 found that 58 percent of Americans disapprove of U.S. military strikes against Iran, with just 38 percent of people approving of the strikes. A Fox News poll found that more than half of Americans believe Trump’s “handling of relations with Iran” has made the United States less safe.

The U.S. war with Iran is straining U.S. alliances, creating anger among publics at home and abroad, inflicting pain on U.S. partners in the Gulf and emboldening an Iranian leadership hostile to the United States. Each day the war continues, without explicit goals or a clear exit strategy, opposition to the United States—from friends and foes, inside and outside—is also likely to grow, making America less safe and less secure.

A war launched in the name of American security is, in fact, producing the opposite effect.

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Sarah Yerkes is a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Middle East Program, where her research focuses on Tunisia’s political, economic, and security developments as well as state-society relations in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Port Arthur oil refinery blast came just after seven on a Monday evening, the kind of hour when families sit down to supper, and children finish the last of their homework before bed. It shook homes for 11 miles.

The sky above the Valero refinery in Texas turned the color of a bruise, thick black smoke rolling eastward into the neighborhoods that have lived in the shadow of that plant for generations.

By the grace of simple luck, no one died. All 770 workers were counted. No injuries were reported.

The fire burned through the night, and by morning, the shelter-in-place that had held some 2,767 people — nearly three-quarters of them people of color, more than a third low-income — was lifted. Officials said the air was safe. They said there was no concern.

And in the hours that followed, the rumors began. Iran. Retaliation. The war in the Middle East had sent crude oil to $94 a barrel, and here was a fire at one of the nation’s largest refineries, and the mind does what the mind does when it has learned to expect the worst.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s office put that speculation to rest. Chief Deputy Donta Miller said they were not investigating it as a deliberate act. The cause, they said, was a heater. A diesel hydrotreater. An accident.

It is a curious word, accident. It suggests the random, the unforeseeable, the bolt from a clear sky. But the events that led to this fire were not written in the stars. They were written in Washington, in a series of choices made over years, choices that left the people of Port Arthur breathing smoke and wondering if the ground beneath them would hold.

Consider the regulatory landscape. The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program, known as CFATS, expired on July 28, 2023. Congress did not pass an extension.

A single senator placed a hold on reauthorization, arguing that industry could regulate itself.

Since then, the agency that once enforced security at high-risk chemical facilities has been unable to compel compliance, conduct inspections, or require security plans. It has been reduced to asking nicely.

Consider the Risk Management Program. Under the Biden administration, the EPA finalized rules that would have required facilities to assess safer technologies, plan for natural disasters, give workers the authority to stop unsafe operations, and share chemical hazard information with communities living within six miles.

Those rules were the product of years of work, born of disasters that had come before. They were designed to answer a simple question: what if we could prevent the next one?

Now consider what is happening in that same Washington while the smoke still hangs over Port Arthur. The Trump administration has begun the process of rolling those rules back. The EPA’s current proposal would eliminate third-party audits for facilities with a history of accidents. It would scrap the requirement to assess safer technologies.

It would scale back workers’ right to stop work they believe is dangerous. It would end the public’s right to request chemical hazard information from nearby facilities. It would eliminate the requirement for natural disaster response plans.

The EPA justifies this by pointing to accident data that show incidents have fallen. It estimates the rollbacks will save the industry roughly $235 million annually.

What the EPA does not say, at least not in its public filings, is that the data show incidents fell under the very rules it is now dismantling.

And it does not mention that the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, the independent agency that investigates the root causes of these disasters, is on the chopping block itself — targeted for elimination in the proposed fiscal year 2026 budget.

So here is what you have in Port Arthur. A refinery that processes 380,000 barrels of oil a day, one of the largest on the Gulf Coast. A fire that began in a diesel hydrotreater, ignited by an “unforeseeable release of process fluid,” according to the report filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

An emissions event that pumped more than 15,000 pounds of particulate matter into the air, along with carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide. Chemicals that irritate the eyes and lungs. Chemicals that make it hard to breathe.

The report says it is unclear if there were offsite impacts. The report does not ask what it means to shelter in place for 12 hours in a community where 71 percent of the people within one mile are people of color and 37 percent are low-income.

The report does not count the ways in which this pattern — accident, fire, smoke, assurance, repeat — has become the rhythm of life along the Houston Ship Channel, where a 2016 investigation found an accident occurred every six weeks.

Jennifer Hadayia of Air Alliance Houston put it plainly. “It’s hard to grasp unless you are living in it day to day,” she said. “I wish that our policymakers were prioritizing public health and safety as much as they are prioritizing industry convenience.”

And yet the convenience of industry is precisely what is being prioritized. The public comment period on the EPA rollbacks runs through April 10.

Labor unions, environmental groups, and public health organizations have asked for an extension. They have asked for hearings. They have pointed out that the same political forces that allowed CFATS to lapse are now working to dismantle what remains of the safety net that was built, piece by piece, after the disasters that came before.

Meanwhile, the price of diesel has climbed to $5.35 a gallon. Gasoline is approaching $4. The war in the Middle East has tightened global supply, and the shutdown of the Port Arthur refinery will tighten it further. Valero says it expects to restart operations later this week. The diesel hydrotreater, the one that exploded, has a capacity of 47,000 barrels a day. They will fix it. They will turn it back on. The smoke will clear. The market will adjust.

But the underlying machinery of risk remains unchanged. The regulatory gaps remain unfilled. The workers who return to those units will do so under rules that give them less authority to stop unsafe operations than they had a year ago. The neighbors who live within a mile will have less access to information about what is stored in their midst than they had a year ago. The next accident will come, as it always does, and Washington will call it unforeseeable. They will call it an accident.

But an accident implies a departure from normal operation. In Port Arthur, this is the normal operation.

The machinery of American industry runs on a fuel of deregulation and deferred maintenance, and the people who live closest to it pay the price not only in their lungs but in their property values, their schools, and their sense of safety.

They pay because the system was designed to externalize the cost — to put the risk on the neighbors and the profit on the balance sheet.

There was a time when a fire like this would have prompted a reckoning. When the CFATS program was alive, when the Risk Management Program was being strengthened, when a bipartisan consensus held that some things were too important to leave to the goodwill of industry.

That time has passed. In its place is a regulatory landscape pockmarked with expired programs and proposed rollbacks, defended on the grounds that industry knows best.

They did not mean to cause an explosion. They did not mean to send a cloud of particulate matter over the west end of Port Arthur. They did not mean to shelter in place a community of nearly 3,000 people for 12 hours. But they did not mean to prevent it either. And in the ledger of American industrial policy, that distinction has become the whole story.

The fire is out now. The shelter-in-place has been lifted. The price of diesel continues to climb. And somewhere in Washington, the public comment period on the EPA rollbacks ticks toward its close, waiting to see if anyone is still paying attention.

The war initiated by the United States and Israel against Iran has unleashed a level of volatility in global energy markets that analysts say shows no signs of abating, with even the most sober observers now warning that the price of a barrel of oil could soar past $200 if the conflict continues to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The numbers tell a story of a market unmoored. Benchmark Brent crude, which traded below $60 per barrel earlier this year, jumped to $80 last Thursday. It then bounced to $120 in thin weekend markets before settling around $92. The range of the recent oil price has been 50 percent of where it stood a mere five days ago. This is not normal behavior for what remains the modern world’s most important industrial commodity.

A similar but slower move from $70 to $120 per barrel was seen in late 2021 and early 2022 around the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But as investment bank Goldman Sachs has noted, the physical disruption of oil supply due to the war in the Persian Gulf is 15 times as severe as that of the Ukraine crisis.

One respected and usually non-alarmist oil commentator has suggested the price could jump to over $200 per barrel if the situation in the strait is not resolved.

The International Energy Agency announced this morning that member countries would release 400 million barrels of oil from storage, starting with Japan. But the impact of the announcement has been muted. A release that amounts to four days of global consumption and roughly 20 days of oil and products transiting through the Strait of Hormuz has done little to calm a market grappling not just with multiple uncertainties but also wildly inconsistent official messaging.

The fundamental diplomatic uncertainty cuts to the heart of the matter. It remains unclear what U.S. and Israeli aims are in this war. At various moments, the White House has called for Iran’s unconditional surrender, then modified this to reflect that the administration will determine what constitutes such an outcome, whether they themselves say it or not.

Yet other officials have called for the equivalent of a Morgenthau Plan that leads to the comprehensive deindustrialization of Iran. And even if President Trump decides he has had enough and wishes to end the war, it is far from clear that Iran would agree to what might seem a premature ceasefire from its own point of view, where it was still left substantially weaker against future attacks and had not imposed enough costs to restore deterrence.

Against this backdrop, the oil market struggles to judge both U.S. and Israeli intentions and the potential scale of Iranian retaliation against all the oil infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, a region that accounts for about 20 percent of all global production of crude petroleum and products.

“Get ready for oil to be $200 a barrel, because the oil price depends on regional security, which you have destabilized,” said Ebrahim Zolfaqari, a spokesperson for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who warned the world to expect oil prices to surge as the Strait of Hormuz stays closed amid military operation in the region.

The diplomatic uncertainty has been compounded by two basic questions that reflect the military uncertainties: What can Iran do to harm shipping, and can the U.S. Navy escort ships safely through the straits?

As to the first, three vessels were reportedly struck yesterday in the Strait, indicating that Iran is ready and able to use force to stop ships.

The answer to the second question is more ambiguous. Yesterday, the U.S. appended a farcical element to the tragedies unfolding in the Gulf, as Energy Secretary Chris Wright first posted, then deleted, a tweet saying the Navy had successfully escorted a tanker through Hormuz.

The White House later confirmed that no such escort had taken place, with a spokesperson saying the post was incorrectly captioned by department staff. Greater clarity from the U.S. on this question does not appear to be forthcoming.

The broader point is that Iran’s offensive capabilities against civilian shipping have been described as cheap and plentiful, a reflection of the revolution in drone warfare. It is perhaps this capacity that has led the Navy to tell the shipping industry that it is simply not possible to escort ships right now.

The scale of the war and the fact that the U.S. is a primary and declared belligerent in the conflict also undermines financial tools like the reinsurance coverage that has been proposed by the Development Finance Corporation. This makes for a different situation than the convoy and insurance combination provided by the U.S. to Gulf shipping during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Iran knows very well that the price of gasoline remains a key factor in U.S. domestic politics. This fact suggests that Hormuz and the global oil markets will remain a key point of pressure in this war. And solutions to the diplomatic, military and financial uncertainties described above still seem very far away.

An Indiana man has been charged with stalking a 12-year-old girl online, coercing her to harm herself and send him sexually explicit images, U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer announced.

Billy Joe Holman, 26, also known as William Holman, of West Lebanon, Indiana, is charged in a two-count criminal complaint with cyberstalking and possession of child pornography. He made an initial appearance Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Scott J. Frankel in federal court in the Northern District of Indiana and was ordered detained.

According to court documents, Holman met the victim in or around October 2025 on a social media platform. Prosecutors said he knew the girl was 12 years old and systematically targeted her through grooming and coercion, using a pattern of manipulation that included alternating affection with verbal abuse and threats.

Over the course of approximately one month, Holman directed the girl to harm herself, authorities said. This included carving his initials into her skin and punching herself in the stomach on video, which she then sent to him. Holman also demanded that she take and send him photographs that constituted child sexual abuse material, according to the complaint.

The cyberstalking charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, while possession of child pornography carries a statutory maximum of 10 years. Holman also faces a potential fine of up to $250,000.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann appointed Frazer, a veteran prosecutor, as U.S. attorney for New Jersey, ending a dispute between the judiciary and Trump administration.

Brann disqualified three Justice Department officials from leading the U.S. attorney’s office, ruling they were installed in an illegal power grab after the judge previously barred the president’s first pick, former personal attorney Alina Habba, from the post.

“With all these options remaining, why does the fate of thousands of criminal prosecutions in this district potentially rest on the legitimacy of an unprecedented and byzantine leadership structure? The government tells us: the president doesn’t like that he cannot simply appoint whomever he wants,” wrote Brann.

Frazer credited investigators from the Newark and Indianapolis Joint Terrorism Task Forces of the FBI, the Morris County Sheriff’s Office and the Dover Police Department. He also thanked the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana for its assistance.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sammi Malek of the National Security Unit in Newark, with assistance from Trial Attorneys Justin Sher and James Donnelly of the Justice Department’s Counterterrorism Section.

The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a Justice Department initiative launched in 2006 to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.

The charges are merely allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

A 31-year-old U.S. Army veteran and mother of two has become the first woman in Georgia charged with murder under the state’s restrictive abortion law after she delivered a premature infant who died shortly after birth.

Alexia Moore remains in the Camden County jail with bail set at $29,150 for charges of felony murder, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of dangerous drugs.

The charges stem from a Dec. 30 hospital visit when Moore, then approximately 22 to 24 weeks pregnant, arrived at Southeast Georgia Health System’s Camden Campus reporting severe abdominal pain.

Doctors delivered a premature baby girl who exhibited cardiac activity and struggled to breathe before dying within about one hour, according to police reports.

The case marks the first time Georgia prosecutors have applied the state’s 2019 Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, which prohibits terminating a pregnancy once embryonic cardiac activity is detectable at roughly six weeks of pregnancy, to bring murder charges against a woman for an alleged self-managed abortion.

A hospital security guard, a retired Camden County sheriff’s deputy, contacted Kingsland Police after emergency room staff reported that Moore had taken medication to end her pregnancy, according to an arrest report.

Police cited Moore’s medical records, blood work, and the deceased infant’s blood work as evidence.

According to the arrest warrant, Moore told nursing staff: “I know my infant is suffering, because I am the one who did the abortion. I want her to die.”

The warrant alleges Moore took misoprostol, a medication commonly used to induce abortion, along with oxycodone. Misoprostol is used in obstetrics and gynecology for abortion up to 11 weeks, managing incomplete miscarriages, and treating postpartum hemorrhage. It is also approved to prevent NSAID-induced gastric ulcers.

Due to its wide-ranging applications in reproductive health, misoprostol is on the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines.

Officers recovered a blue medicine bottle labeled with Moore’s name and “Misoprostol” bearing a fill date of Nov. 20, 2025, but lacking a physician’s name, pharmacy name or warning labels — leading investigators to conclude the pills were purchased online.

Moore’s mother, Bishop Dr. Edith Marie Moore-Terry, a pastor at Emmanuel Christian Center, said her daughter served in the Army and was discharged with 100% disability benefits after a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. She described her daughter as an excellent mother to her two sons, ages 6 and 9.

“As a mother, and me talking as a grandma, she’s an excellent mother,” Edith Moore said. “I believe her children are her life.”

The elder Moore said she first learned of her daughter’s pregnancy on New Year’s Day, after the emergency room visit. She said her daughter is experiencing postpartum depression while in custody and is being held in a cell alone with medical monitoring.

“She never could understand being adopted. I believe that was traumatic,” Edith Moore said of her daughter. “I believe going into the military and winding up with PTSD… It was trauma after trauma.”

A friend who spoke with Moore before the hospital visit offered a different account, telling The Current that Moore had not taken abortion pills but had taken a prescription pain pill. The friend, who declined to be identified due to the ongoing criminal investigation, said she offered to raise the child if Moore felt unable to do so.

“I remember her calling me, freaking out. She was bawling her eyes out. She said she didn’t know what to do,” the friend said.

Camden County Sheriff Kevin Chaney defended the hospital security guard’s decision to involve law enforcement, noting that security personnel at the facility are sworn peace officers.

“They’re law enforcement at the hospital, so they’re not just security officers,” Chaney said, a Republican who ran against his former boss, unseating Democratic incumbent Sheriff Jim Proctor, on November 5, 2024. “They’re actually sworn peace officers in the state of Georgia. And plus your mandated reports and stuff like that. Along those lines, we share information constantly.”

Southeast Georgia Health System declined to answer questions about whether the security guard followed hospital policy or about the circumstances under which the facility shares patient information with law enforcement.

“The hospital places the highest priority on the care of its patients and is unable to comment on matters that might relate to patient care,” said Marketing Director Jenni Morris.

Legal experts say the case tests the boundaries of Georgia’s abortion law, which includes exemptions for medical emergencies but does not explicitly exempt women who end their own pregnancies from criminal prosecution.

A 2015 case in Georgia involving similar charges against a woman who took abortion pills was dropped by prosecutors, who concluded state law did not permit prosecuting women for terminating their pregnancies before the enactment of the 2019 LIFE Act, which significantly tightened restrictions.

The LIFE Act prohibits most abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, typically around six weeks of gestation. Passed on May 15, 2019, it includes exceptions for rape, incest, medical emergencies, and cases where the pregnancy is not viable, while granting personhood to the fetus.

“Murder is intentionally causing the death of a person,” said Andrew Fleischman, a Georgia defense attorney not involved in the case. “I’m not sure prosecutors are eager to be the first one to jump this hurdle.”

Dana Sussman, senior vice president of the advocacy group Pregnancy Justice, said the organization has documented at least 210 women across the country charged with crimes related to their pregnancies in the 12 months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 — the highest number in any 12-month period the group has tracked.

“No one should be criminalized for having an abortion,” Sussman said.

A hearing for Moore is scheduled for Monday. The district attorney will determine whether to present the case to a grand jury for indictment.

Edith Moore said her daughter’s two young children do not understand why their mother is in jail.

“She is a decent person who is caught up in her circumstances,” she said.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, has removed a label referring to US President Donald Trump’s two impeachments during his previous term.

The temporary label had been added in 2021 to a long-term exhibition titled The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden, and specifically a section about limits on presidential power.

The label’s removal came amid a review of the museum’s content, a museum spokesperson told the Washington Post and The New York Times.

“In reviewing our legacy content recently, it became clear that the ‘Limits of Presidential Power’ section in The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden exhibition needed to be addressed,” said a Smithsonian spokesperson. “The section of this exhibition covers Congress, the Supreme Court, impeachment, and public opinion. Because the other topics in this section had not been updated since 2008, the decision was made to restore the impeachment case back to its 2008 appearance.”

The exhibition The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden was first unveiled in 2000 but had not been meaningfully updated since 2008.

In 2021, a label was added discussing the impeachments of presidents Trump, Andrew Johnson, and Bill Clinton, along with the possible impeachment of Richard Nixon that led to his resignation. Trump is the only US president to be impeached twice. Both impeachments, in 2019 and 2021, resulted in acquittals following trials in the Senate.

“In September 2021, the museum installed a temporary label on content concerning the impeachments of Donald J. Trump,” the Smithsonian spokesperson added. “It was intended to be a short-term measure to address current events at the time, however, the label remained in place until July 2025. A large permanent gallery like The American Presidency that opened in 2000, requires a significant amount of time and funding to update and renew. A future and updated exhibit will include all impeachments.” No timeline was provided for the updated display.

The Smithsonian has come under Trump’s scrutiny since he returned to office in January. In March he signed an executive order stating that federally funded institutions should prioritise “uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing”. The Smithsonian receives around two thirds of its annual operating budget of more than $1bn from funding appropriated by Congress; the remaining third comes from a range of sources including its endowment, private philanthropy and earned revenue.

Trump aims to remove ‘improper ideology’ from Smithsonian with new executive order

Helen Stoilas

The order directed vice-president JD Vance to lead a purge of “divisive, race-centered ideology” from all Smithsonian institutions and withhold funding from any exhibitions or works that “degrade shared American values”. The executive order singled out exhibitions and displays at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum for apparently running afoul of the Trump administration’s priorities.

In a subsequent memo to Smithsonian staff, the institution’s secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III wrote that its work will continue to “be shaped by the best scholarship, free of partisanship, to help the American public better understand our nation’s history, challenges and triumphs”.

In May, Trump targeted the leader of one of the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, the National Portrait Gallery, claiming in a social media post that he had fired its director Kim Sajet. Though Sajet initially remained in her role—the Smithsonian is governed by a board of regents, not the president—she eventually resigned.

About 50 communities across New Jersey will join over 3,000 locations nationwide on Saturday for the third wave of “No Kings” protests, a coordinated demonstration against the Trump administration’s immigration policies, the ongoing war with Iran, and what organizers describe as a pattern of authoritarian governance.

The rallies, scheduled in cities and towns from Cape May Court House to Newton in Sussex County, are expected to draw thousands of demonstrators. Organizers say the March 28 events represent the largest mobilization yet in a movement that began in June 2025, when millions turned out for protests coinciding with a military parade in Washington.

“We will come together to show that our communities reject corruption, senseless war and division,” said Katie Bethell, executive director of MoveOn, a progressive advocacy group, which is one of the organizing partners. “Instead, we welcome immigrants, believe in the rule of law and stand up for an economy that works for everyone. More of us than ever before will rise up, because America does not belong to strongmen or those who rule through fear. It belongs to us, the people.”

The protests come amid a partial government shutdown that has led to extended security lines at airports across the country, as well as rising fuel prices and a Reuters/Ipsos poll showing President Donald Trump’s approval rating at 36 percent. Organizers say the administration’s intensified immigration enforcement operations and the military conflict with Iran have galvanized new participants.

For Oscar Sevilla, a 30-year-old mechanical engineer from Long Beach, California, the administration’s immigration crackdown is personal. He attended the first two rounds of No Kings protests and plans to be at a third.

“Things were simmering at first, now it’s like the lid is about to blast off,” Sevilla said. “I still believe this country could be better, where the American dream could be real — not according to who has money, who has power.”

Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, one of the national groups coordinating the events, said the goal is to surpass the turnout of previous mobilizations. An October 2025 protest drew an estimated 7 million participants nationwide, according to figures cited by organizers and published by Encyclopedia Britannica.

“We are all united in this fight to save our democracy from this administration, and we will win,” Levin said. “From every corner of this country, we are all saying: NO KINGS.”

The protests are organized under the banner of the 50501 Movement, a name that stands for 50 states, 50 protests, one movement. Partner organizations include the American Civil Liberties Union, National Nurses United, the Working Families Party, Amnesty International and several labor unions.

In New Jersey, elected officials, including Rep. LaMonica McIver, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Sen. Andy Kim, and Rep. Donald Norcross, are scheduled to appear at various rallies. State and local officials, including former state Attorney General Matt Platkin and Assemblyman Chigozie Onyema, are also expected to speak.

“No Kings rallies are important because they give everyday people and everyone in our communities the opportunity to resist and protest against Donald Trump and his administration and all of the crazy things that they’re doing,” McIver said. “The key message is to basically reject Donald Trump and his administration’s agenda and to remind people that this country does not have kings.”

Analilia Mejia, the Democratic candidate in the April 16 special election for New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, said the demonstrations reflect the highest form of democratic participation.

“Our democracy depends on the full participation of us as citizenry,” Mejia said. “When we take direct action, when we organize and have peaceful demonstrations in order to both inform our neighbors and to also make demands of our government, that is the highest form of democracy. The truth is, our government has been taken over by ideological extremists who are content to strip the American people of their constitutional rights, their constitutional civil liberties, and we have to stand up for each other.”

In Maplewood, the South Orange-Maplewood Action coalition is sponsoring an event featuring music, children’s activities and student speakers from local high schools and Seton Hall University.

“We will showcase the community,” said Allison Posner, co-president of SOMA Action. “It is more than just a protest. We will make a movement, have music and be joyful. Show what the power of the people can do. We are getting back to hyperlocal organizing, showing how to build resistance to authoritarianism on your street, your neighborhood.”

Posner said she will bring her two young children to the rally.

“Kids feel injustice strongly,” she said. “They know you should protect your neighbor. They take it as a given. They know a bully when they see one.”

MoveOn activist Lisa McCormick said the sustained protests have already produced measurable results.

“Protests won women the right to vote,” McCormick said. “Protests led to the adoption of the Civil Rights Act. Protests hastened the end of the Vietnam War. These actions do work. They do make a difference. Sometimes, it takes a little while.”

McCormick cited research by Harvard Kennedy School professor Erica Chenoweth, who found that nonviolent protests involving 3.5 percent of a population reliably lead to political change.

“For the U.S., that would be about 11 million people,” McCormick said. “We’re on the way there. Some Republicans are finally developing a backbone and are standing up to Trump, after his Epstein files cover-up and this unprovoked Iran war.”

In Camden, where a rally is scheduled at Roosevelt Plaza Park, Antoinette Miles, state director of the Working Families Party, said the focus should extend beyond the president.

“We are rightly focused on Trump,” Miles said. “But there’s an entire billionaire class that’s throwing its weight around, and they’ll be there long after Trump is gone.”

Organizers said smaller community events are designed to be accessible to elderly participants, people with disabilities and parents with young children. In Somerville, the Somerset County Indivisible chapter is planning a midday gathering that organizers said would demonstrate to local residents that opposition to the administration exists within their own communities.

Jimmy Small, president of the Muslim League of Voters, noted that the country’s founding was a rejection of monarchy.

“The women’s marches, the anti-war movement — these things do work,” Small said. “If you’re elected or running for office and want to get elected, you need to listen to the people.”

Liz Glynn, director of organizing for New Jersey Citizen Action, said the demonstrations would highlight the effects of federal policy on household costs.

“The actions and policies of the Trump administration and our Republican-controlled Congress have continued to wreak havoc for New Jersey families by driving up costs for essential needs like food, healthcare, utilities and gas,” Glynn said. “We’ll be rallying in Somerville to shine a spotlight on Kean’s silence on these issues and how he has failed to fight for his constituents.”

Organizers have emphasized that all events are intended to be nonviolent. A statement from No Kings organizers said participants should seek to de-escalate potential confrontations and that weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.

Law enforcement agencies said they are preparing for the demonstrations.

“We are aware of a planned demonstration this weekend,” a law enforcement spokesperson said in a statement. “While we encourage our community to safely and peacefully exercise your First Amendment rights, we remind everyone that criminal activity will not be tolerated. Anyone engaging in unlawful activity, including vandalism, destruction of property or assault, will be held accountable.”

The first No Kings protests in June 2025 drew millions to cities including Los Angeles, where the event was peaceful for several hours before police and demonstrators clashed. Authorities used flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas after some protesters threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at officers, according to published reports.

President Trump dismissed the earlier demonstrations in an interview with the BBC in October.

“You know — they’re referring to me as a king,” Trump said. “I’m not a king.”

In New Jersey, rallies are scheduled in about 50 municipalities, including Newark, Jersey City, Camden, Princeton, Morristown, Trenton, Atlantic City, Toms River, Teaneck, Rutherford, Somerville, Glassboro, Montclair, and Newton.

A complete list is available at nokings.org.

The third round of protests, organizers said, reflects a sustained level of engagement that has not diminished since the election.

“For our local chapter, membership has doubled since Trump’s second election,” said a leader of a local Indivisible group who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal organizing. “We have about 3,000 people on the mailing list and about 2,500 Facebook followers.”

Nationally, the group’s membership has quadrupled in the past year, the organizer said.

Mike Waters, who has helped organize protests in Illinois affiliated with the national events, said he expects turnout to exceed previous mobilizations. About 3 million participated in a “Hands Off” rally in April 2025, he said. The first No Kings protests in June drew 5 million, and the October events drew 7 million.

“Hopefully, we’ll top that again on March 28,” Waters said.

In New Jersey, the demonstrations will unfold across all 21 counties, from courthouse squares to municipal greens to intersections along state highways. Organizers said the geographic spread is intentional: a visible reminder that the opposition is not confined to cities.

“We will come together because silence is not an option,” the No Kings organizing coalition said in a statement. “On March 28th, rise up, take to the streets, and say it loud: no thrones, no crowns, no kings. We’re not watching history happen — we’re making it.”

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New Jersey No Kings Events (March 28, 2026)

To sign‑up for any of these, visit the No Kings Mobilize map, enter the city or zip code, and click the event marker.

Location	Time (EST)
Lambertville	10:00 AM
Oradell (Schirra Park)	10:00 AM
Ocean City (55 W 9th St.)	10:00 AM
Mountainside (City Hall)	10:00 AM
Phillipsburg	10:00 AM
Bloomfield (1 Municipal Plaza)	10:00 AM
Princeton (Monument Park)	10:00 AM
Camden (City Hall / Roosevelt Plaza Park)	11:00 AM
Newton (Newton Green)	11:00 AM
Bridgewater (Somerset County)	11:00 AM
Hightstown	11:00 AM
Wayne	11:00 AM
Morristown (200 South St.)	11:00 AM
South Orange (Maplewood Town Hall)	12:00 PM
North Plainfield (US 22 & West End Ave)	12:00 PM
Closter (Closter Plaza)	12:00 PM
Glen Ridge (Ridgewood & Bloomfield Aves)	12:00 PM
Newark (12 Springfield Ave.)	12:00 PM
Highland Park (Farmers Market)	12:00 PM
Trenton (125 W State St.)	12:00 PM
Berlin (59 S White Horse Pike)	12:00 PM
Galloway (Township Municipal Complex)	12:00 PM
Pine Hill (Branch Ave. & Erial Road)	12:00 PM
Toms River (1055 Hooper Ave.)	12:00 PM
Lakewood (Route 70 & Airport Road)	12:00 PM
Hackettstown (Main Street)	12:20 PM
West Caldwell (Crane Park)	1:00 PM
Denville	1:00 PM
Weehawken (Hamilton Park)	1:00 PM
Teaneck (Teaneck Municipal Green)	1:00 PM
Piscataway (455 Hoes Lane)	1:00 PM
Rutherford	1:00 PM
Monroe (Perrineville & Prospect Plains Rds)	1:00 PM
Cape May (Cape May Courthouse)	1:00 PM
Montville (195 Changebridge Rd)	1:30 PM
Tinton Falls (Asbury Ave & Green Grove Rd)	2:00 PM
Freehold	2:00 PM
Hopewell	2:00 PM
Glassboro (William Dalton & Delsea Drives)	2:00 PM
LBI (Ship Bottom) (382 W 9th St.)	2:00 PM
Frenchtown	3:00 PM
Atlantic City (Police Department)	3:00 PM
Lacey Township (Municipal Building)	3:30 PM
Rahway (St. Georges & West Grand Aves)	4:00 PM

The numbers arrived quietly, without fanfare, without alarm—just another data set buried in a government spreadsheet. But to those who know how to read such things, they told a story that should have stopped the country cold.

In the first two months of 2026, more than 1,100 Americans contracted measles. That is six times the normal rate for that period. And that is just measles.

The Pan American Health Organization will convene on April 13 to decide whether the United States should be stripped of its measles elimination status—a certification it has held since the disease was declared vanquished in this country a quarter-century ago.

The question, to anyone paying attention, is not whether that will happen, but whether anyone in Washington will notice when it does.

The answer, if the past year is any guide, is probably not.

Something has happened to America’s public health apparatus. It did not collapse in a single dramatic moment, with sirens and flashing lights. It was dismantled, piece by piece, in the cold bureaucratic language of budget reconciliations and personnel actions and the quiet deletion of web pages.

More than 4,400 people have left the National Institutes of Health—roughly one of every five who were there when the year began. Thousands more have departed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those who remain have been instructed, in some cases, to keep their heads down and not look too closely at what might be spreading.

What is spreading, it turns out, is quite a lot.

In Nevada, a dairy worker contracted bird flu from an infected cow. In Ohio, a poultry worker was hospitalized with the same virus. In Wyoming, the owner of a backyard flock fell so ill that doctors had to reach deep into his lungs for a specimen that would confirm what was killing him.

The virus that infected him carried a mutation—E627K in the polymerase basic 2 protein—that scientists have long known makes influenza replicate more efficiently in mammalian cells.

Seventy confirmed human cases of H5N1 have been documented since April 2024. But that number, like so many others, comes with an asterisk. With surveillance systems hobbled and agricultural workers often reluctant to come forward, the true count is almost certainly higher.

The virus is spreading cow-to-cow now. Cow-to-human has been documented. The only thing standing between this virus and the next pandemic is a roll of the genetic dice. And the people who used to watch that dice game for a living have been told to find other work.

Tuberculosis, that old companion of tenement housing and frontier poverty, has returned to polite conversation.

More than 10,000 cases were confirmed in 2024 and 2025—an increase after decades of steady decline.

The disease clusters in places where the rent is cheap and the public health clinics are understaffed. It lingers in lungs and waits. And now, with research grants canceled and screening programs disrupted, it waits with less interference than it once faced.

The numbers tell a stark story.

At the NIH alone, roughly 2,400 research grants have been terminated.

Among them were 97 grants for infectious disease research—14 percent of all such funding. Clinical trials involving more than 74,000 patients have been shuttered midstream, leaving those enrolled not only without treatment but with a profound suspicion of the institutions that recruited them.

The Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, established in 1999, lost its funding without explanation. Eight studies were open and enrolling when the money stopped. Children with ependymoma—a cancer that often laughs at chemotherapy—were in the middle of a phase 1 trial for CAR T-cell therapy when the grinding halt came. The study is now closed to new patients.

Across the government, the story repeats. The CDC’s FoodNet system, which tracked foodborne pathogens like campylobacter and listeria and cyclospora, has seen its surveillance reduced.

The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report—for decades the gold standard of public health communication—lost the very writers who produced it, before some were hastily rehired when someone noticed the coding error.

The United States has begun the process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization. The sharing of global influenza data, which depends on precisely the kind of international cooperation that such membership facilitates, has become less certain.

And the diseases that Americans once thought belonged to other places, other climates, other centuries, have been quietly establishing residence.

Chagas disease, transmitted by the so-called “kissing bug” that bites sleeping faces and defecates near the wound, has now been found in 32 states.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 280,000 Americans carry the parasite. Left untreated—and it often is, because few physicians think to test for it—it can lead to heart failure, stroke, and death years after the initial infection.

Leprosy. Dengue. Lymphatic filariasis. These are not words that belonged in American public health briefings a decade ago. They belong there now.

The response, such as it is, has been piecemeal and improvisational. Several states—California, New York, and Illinois, among them—have formed their own alliances and reached directly to the World Health Organization for guidance. They track outbreaks themselves. They promote vaccine access themselves. They do, in other words, what the federal government used to do for them.

But states cannot replace the National Institutes of Health. They cannot rebuild the CDC’s disease surveillance networks.

They cannot restore the 1,000 pages of infectious disease information that were removed from federal websites.

They cannot rehire the scientists who have fled to Europe or Canada or the Netherlands, where research funding does not vanish because a bureaucrat in Washington decided that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” were unacceptable words.

In January, the Department of Health and Human Services announced changes to the childhood immunization schedule, aligning it more closely with the practices of other developed nations.

The new schedule recommends vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, polio, and pertussis—the usual suspects. It leaves other vaccines to “shared clinical decision-making” between doctors and parents.

The announcement noted, almost as an aside, that public trust in health care institutions had declined significantly between 2020 and 2024. It noted that childhood vaccination rates had fallen. It noted that the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases had increased.

It did not note the irony.

In Mali, a woman named Diango Tounkara recently learned that the program which treated her trachoma—and the program where she worked for two decades distributing drugs to prevent neglected tropical diseases—had been shut down. American funding had paid for those programs.

American funding had helped eliminate trachoma in her country. American funding had been cut without warning, leaving health officials scrambling and communities wondering what would come next.

“I felt totally deceived,” she told a reporter.

That sentiment is not confined to Mali.

In Chicago, a clinical trial examining whether counseling could prevent depression and reduce HIV transmission in young stimulant users was halted midstream. The Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV Interventions had been operating since 2001. Its $17 million in grants were terminated. The participants, many of them young and already distrustful of medical institutions, were told to go home.

“The harms to the communities we serve—being cut off from trials, from relationships with research teams and institutions—and the increased mistrust in research that abrupt terminations caused is the most palpable damage, and the hardest piece to rebuild,” said Sybil Hosek, one of the network’s directors.

The question that hangs over all of this—over the measles outbreaks and the bird flu mutations and the clinical trials that will never finish—is whether anyone is still watching.

The CDC continues to publish estimates of the reproductive number for various diseases, tracking whether infections are growing or declining state by state. As of February 3, COVID-19 was growing or likely growing in 13 states. Influenza in 9. RSV in 24.

These are the numbers that used to prompt action. Now they simply exist, updated weekly on a website, waiting for someone to notice that the line has crossed into the red.

The administration announced in January a $50 billion investment in rural health, spread over five years, to transform access and promote innovation. It was the largest such investment in history, according to the press release.

But money alone does not rebuild what has been dismantled. It does not restore the scientists who have left. It does not rebuild trust with communities that have been abandoned mid-trial. It does not track the next mutation of H5N1 or detect the next foodborne outbreak before it sickens hundreds.

The boulder that Sisyphus pushed up the hill—the long, grinding work of eliminating neglected tropical diseases, of controlling infectious outbreaks, of building a public health system that protects everyone—has rolled back down. It will take a generation to push it up again.

The question is what happens in the meantime.

The viruses, bacteria, and parasites are not waiting.

They do not respect budget cycles, personnel actions, or changes in administration. They do not care about the decline in public trust or the deletion of web pages. They simply do what they have always done: look for the next host, the next opportunity, the next crack in the defenses.

And the defenses, after the past year, have more cracks than they have had in a very long time.

In a moment of decision in the great American courtroom, where people are forever trying to cure with a gavel what we has been wrought with greed, a jury of seven women and five men, twelve ordinary citizens pulled from the machinery of their daily lives, has looked upon the gleaming facades of our most powerful corporations and delivered a verdict as simple as it is profound: you broke this child, and you will answer for it.

The case was brought by a young woman, now twenty years old, identified only as K.G.M. She did not sue for the things people posted.

She did not sue for the words of her peers or the cruelty of strangers. She sued for the machinery itself. She looked at the infinite scroll, the algorithmic recommendations that feed like a slot machine pulling a lever in the dark, and said: you built this to break me.

The jury agreed.

The companies—Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and Google, which owns YouTube—were found negligent.

The design of their products, the jury determined, was the injury. They must pay three million dollars in compensatory damages.

Meta will contribute the larger share. YouTube, the rest. It is a sum that would not cover the coffee budget for the week at either company’s headquarters, but the principle it represents is worth more than all the gold in California.

It says a software feature can be a defective product. It says a feed can be a flaw.

This is the first time a jury has sat through the testimony of executives, has seen the internal documents where the word “addiction” was used not as a warning but as a goal.

The lawyers for the young woman called it a breakthrough. They spoke of cigarettes and digital casinos, of a century-old playbook finally pulled from the shelf and dusted off.

What a spectacle it is. For years, we built these platforms, invited our children onto them, and then stood back in wide-eyed wonder as the architects of the slot machine claimed they had no idea it was a gambling den.

Now, the jury has said what any parent who ever watched a teenager stare into a glowing rectangle until three in the morning already knew. It was not an accident. It was the business model.

Of course, the companies respectfully disagree. They are evaluating their legal options. This is the language of the cornered, the formal diction of those who have just been told that a thing they swore was a library was, in fact, a trap.

Make no mistake, the language of the defense was the same old tune: we are but a platform, a neutral vessel, a mere mirror held up to the world. We cannot be held responsible for what people do with our product.

But a mirror does not recommend what you see next. A mirror does not use an infinite scroll to keep you from putting it down. A mirror does not spend billions of dollars perfecting the art of holding your attention hostage so it can sell it to the highest bidder.

A mirror, in short, is not a product designed by some of the most brilliant minds of a generation, all bent to the singular purpose of making sure you cannot look away.

That is not a platform, it is a machine designed to capture attention and then direct it in ways that can be inescapable.

And now the same jury will return to decide the punitive damages, the reckoning for malice or fraud.

It is the second act of the play. The first act was the tobacco trials, where companies swore their product was harmless until the documents proved they knew it was killing people.

That case led to settlements, regulations, a cultural shift, but killer corporations remain in business and customers keep on dying. The lawyers hope this is that moment for the machines in our pockets.

Eight more cases like this one are waiting in line in California.

A federal court in Oakland has a docket full of them, brought by states and school districts who are tired of seeing their classrooms hollowed out by a glowing rectangle.

In the wings, we have the other news of a federal judge in Virginia who ruled that Google holds an illegal monopoly over the technology that sells the ads that fuel this whole miserable contraption but that court gave the company a green light to break the law.

It is all connected. The attention machine, the ad machine, the machine that harvests our children’s peace of mind to sell to the highest bidder—it is all one machine, and the courts are finally looking at the gears.

They will appeal, of course. They will spend a fortune on lawyers. They will argue that the First Amendment protects their right to design a product that harms children. It is a strange liberty they seek, the freedom to build a better trap.

And what of us? We who watched it happen, who gave our children the devices and called it education, who scrolled alongside them and called it connection?

The jury has done its duty. They have spoken. They have said, in the plainest terms, that there is a line, and it was crossed. Whether it is a turning point or just a footnote in the long, sad history of commerce devouring conscience remains to be seen.

But for now, a jury has looked at the story we told ourselves—that these were just tools, that the harm was an accident, that the addiction was a user error—and they have called it what it is. A lie.

For one afternoon, in a courtroom in Los Angeles, the truth cost three million dollars. A pittance, really. Less than what was spent to make the lie look good. But it is a start.

In a world built on such transactions, a start is more than we had yesterday, but it’s not likely our elected representatives are going to regulate this injustice.

Political establishment denizens value corporate contributions far more than they disdain injuries to their constituents.

That is the way it is. For now.