POTENTIAL RESULTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF US AIRSTRIKES ON IRAN

President Donald Trump’s unilateral preemptive strikes—codenamed Midnight Hammer—on Iran’s nuclear facilities this past weekend have been met with both praise and criticism, but by far more of the latter. Polling in the aftermath of the strikes, which made use of weapons never before deployed on the battlefield, demonstrates that a sound majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the action against Iran.

Along party lines, and as per usual, Republicans and Democrats are pretty evenly divided between yays and nays at about eighty-odd percent of Republicans “for”, and eighty-odd percent of Democrats against. But where the rubber meets the road is in the middle of majority sentiments. Independents smash the two-party tie with a full sixty percent opposed. In total, fifty-six percent of Americans apparently disapprove of Trump’s actions. Worse still for the MAGA camp, only thirty-eight percent of Independents trust Trump to make appropriate decisions in dealing with Iran in the future.

That said, there are both clearly plausible logic and firmly based facts on either side of the argument. The first, in favor of Trump’s clearly uncounseled action, is that nobody with any sense wants to see Iran, under its current leadership, get its hands on nuclear weapons. It is a radical theocracy known as the world’s greatest supporter and exponent of international terrorism. At the core of its radicalism is the idea that “infidels” are free game and that Western democracy is an axis of evil that should be destroyed.

In that sense, there is a great deal of logic in taking steps to dismantle and/or destroy the current Iranian regime’s nuclear capabilities. But before we cheer for President Trump, it is worth pointing out that diplomacy had already gone a long way toward not only curtailing the advancement of Iran toward becoming a nuclear threat, but also toward becoming a less hostile and more integrated member of the concert of nations. President Barack Obama and America’s Western allies successfully negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran that went a long way toward ensuring that it became trustworthy in terms of making only peaceful use of its nuclear capabilities.

With one fell swoop of his Sharpie, Trump, in 2018, arbitrarily trashed the aptly named Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—e.g., the Iran nuclear deal— in a reckless move that not only left US allies stunned and confounded, but that also caused Iran to immediately go back on the promises it made in that accord and to start intensifying, even more than before, its development of a path to nuclear weaponry. In other words, it is largely the fault of Trump’s actions during his first term in office that we have reached this juncture with Iran in the first place. This is typical of Trump’s ham-handed approach to diplomacy, such as it is, which relies more on threats, insults, bullying and humiliation than it does negotiation and compromise. This seems ironic, since Trump has long considered himself a consummate negotiator and deal-maker. Truth be told, at least in his governance techniques, there is precious little evidence of this alleged skill.

But putting that aside, there are factual reasons on  which supporters of last weekend’s airstrike can hang their argument. Some of these include the following:

Ø Experts seem to agree that the airstrikes have substantially delayed—though not definitively detained—Iranian nuclear development. It is worthwhile noting that Iran’s original efforts toward obtaining a military nuclear device were largely in response to Israel’s nuclear arms development, which extensively predates Iran’s program. Israel began nuclear weapons development already in the 1950s, shortly after becoming a country, and it is thought to have had a deliverable nuclear device already in 1966 or 1967, while Iran still does not have a nuclear arsenal.

Ø  For better or for worse, Trump’s move, in concert with the bombing raids already being carried out by Israel, sends an unequivocal message that the current US administration is willing to use military force in order to curtail nuclear arms proliferation, be it Iran or any other nation entertaining the idea of becoming a nuclear power—something very likely making other bad actors like North Korea sit up and take notice.

Ø The preemptive move against Iran’s nuclear arms program could strengthen US ties with allies like Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States that have been watching Iran’s nuclear development with understandable concern. None of them wants a nuclear-armed Iran.

Ø The at least temporary destruction of its nuclear arms program is bound to limit Iran’s regional influence and to undermine its leverage in any future diplomatic negotiations.

Ø The airstrikes may have a broader effect on Iran’s military-industrial capabilities as a whole, making it less of an aggressive, belligerent presence throughout the region.

Ø Principally, the strikes will undoubtedly put hobbles on Iran’s ability to produce weapons-grade fissile materials. Those strikes have thus achieved the non-proliferation goals of the US, at least in the short term. According to David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, whether the mission was a complete success in wiping out Iran’s ability to reach its nuclear arms goals is debatable. But its facilities sustained at least very significant damage. Albright calculates that if indeed Iran manages somehow to recover from the strikes, it will take it “at least a year or two” to retool and reinitiate its nuclear arms development.

But while all of that may be well and good seen from the viewpoint of hawks, who always tend to prefer might over diplomacy, there are other very real and very negative factors to be taken into account. These include the following:

Ø As Albright indicates, backed up by prior US intelligence community assessments and reports, the airstrikes will, in all likelihood, only manage to delay, not halt, Iran’s advancement toward its nuclear arms goals. This is especially true considering that intelligence reports suggest that the Iranian government managed to load up at least part of its already substantially enriched uranium supplies and to move them to an unknown location. That means that if Iran can manage to quickly rebuild its nuclear infrastructure, in some more secretive or hardened location, it could continue the enrichment process from an already advanced stage. It could, therefore, have a nuclear device within a relatively short time span. And the US bombings, in support of Israel, with weapons never before used in war, could give the Iranian regime a very real incentive to do so.

Ø The unprecedently aggressive move by the Trump administration provides Iran with the incentive to further deepen its ties with,  and to seek the cooperation of other potential US enemies. The two that stand out, while not the only ones, are North Korea and Russia. Iran and North Korea maintain strategic ties, characterized by a history of cooperation in areas like arms deals and missile technology, and they are united by a shared opposition to US influence in their regions and the world. The US has designated both nations to be sponsors of international terrorism, a fact that aligns them philosophically and materially against US foreign policies. Russia, meanwhile, is indebted to both the Iranian and North Korean regimes. Both have provided substantial military aid to Vladimir Putin in his war of aggression on Ukraine, and, in the case of Iran, in its other war of aggression against the people of Syria, and in favor of the bloody regime of former pro-Russian dictator Bashar al-Assad that oppressed them. Russia and North Korea are both technically and politically capable of providing Iran with help in reaching its aggressive nuclear goals sooner rather than later.

Ø Finally, there is the inherent threat of direct Iranian retaliation. Indeed, Iran has made it clear that it plans to take revenge. Considering that the current Iranian regime is one of the world’s most dangerous purveyors of anti-American and anti-Western terrorism, since the bombings the US has potentially become a considerably more dangerous place, as has international travel and residence for Americans in certain parts of the world. Furthermore, US military and embassy personnel in the region surrounding Iran and within reach of its missiles and drones have been placed at considerably higher risk than before the airstrikes were carried out. There is also greater incentive for Iran to heighten its backing for international terror groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. All of these things create more fertile terrain for expanding instability in the Middle East, and for the eventual need for US boots on the ground. Trump’s aggressive action has singlehandedly created those conditions, despite the fact that Americans as a whole, and even a core of MAGA Republicans have no appetite for another protracted war in the Middle East. There is also concern that any retaliatory action by Iran to hamper shipping in the Strat of Hormuz could send oil (and thus fuel) prices skyrocketing, a factor which would have a significantly negative effect on both the US and global economies.

Beyond all of these considerations, there are domestic and, as usual under Trump’s governance, constitutional issues that are of no small concern. Trump has once again placed at risk the system of checks and balances that protects and upholds US representative democracy.  To begin with, under the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8), only Congress has the power to declare war. Unilateral military action without congressional approval circumvents this constitutional check.

Trump’s move also is in apparent violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution. Although this piece of legislation provides presidents with a sixty-day window in which to take limited military actions without congressional intervention, that authorization is necessarily subject to prior notification of Congress at least forty-eight hours in advance of any such action.

Trump apparently provided an informal heads-up to legislators from his own party—a message that at least one Republican described as “cryptic”—but failed to give any notification at all to Democratic members of Congress. Under these conditions, last weekend’s preemptive strikes were in apparent violation of this legal constraint intended to maintain the balance of power between co-equal branches of government.

The unilateral and un-consulted way in which the president ordered the strikes has further advanced Trump’s attack on co-equal governance and bolstered his campaign to vastly expand authoritarian executive power, by effectively weakening Congress’s constitutional ability to oversee executive actions and its influence on foreign policy and the employment of the country’s armed forces.

His action has also undermined principles of co-governance with the third branch of government by completely bypassing judicial review. If the courts are unable—or unwilling, due to pressure from a Department of Justice that, under Trump, has lost all independence—to review such actions because of executive invocation of the so-called “political question” doctrine or of “national security privilege”, this then limits the judiciary’s role in checking unconstitutional or otherwise illegal uses of force.

In short, conducting such military strikes without full transparency or consultation reduces interbranch deliberation and public accountability, while centralizing all authority in the executive. This is behavior typical of authoritarian regimes and has no place in US representative democracy.

All things considered, we are witnessing a disproportionate shift of power to the Executive Branch, one that significantly weakens the Constitution’s intended purpose of creating a system of inviolable checks and balances. Unfortunately, by handing the president congressional and judicial powers on a silver platter, the Republican majority in Congress is complicit in the relative success that Donald Trump is having in his bid to turn the US into an oligarchic authoritarian regime.

 

THE CALIFORNIA COUP DE E’TAT

 

A couple of weeks back (June 9), I posted my assessment of Donald Trump’s intensifying assault on democracy: “Make no mistake. Troops occupying LA uninvited isn't a preventive measure. It's an authoritarian invasion for political ends.”

Shortly afterward, a statement by General James Mattis, from June 2020, during the George Floyd riots in Minnesota went viral. Although the general’s concise essay on freedom wasn’t new, it could not have been more apropos of the current Trump administration’s  intervention  in California, and, in general, ICE raids and deportations without due process of people who have lived, worked and raised families in the US for decades. The 2020 essay is entitled, In Union There Is Strength.

You’ll recall that Mattis was Trump’s Secretary of Defense from 2017 to 2019 (before he’d had enough and withdrew). He previously commanded troops in the Gulf War, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

In his statement, General Mattis says, in part: The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

It was a bold statement then, and remains so now. One that, having served in the Army for three years, also a half-century ago, and having sworn that same oath as Mattis, I celebrated, and was filled with gratitude, since today, it seems, that vow, sworn to as well by the president, cabinet, and all members of Congress, is being taken lightly, almost anecdotally. And as a result, we are losing the battle to maintain democracy. Not since the Civil War has there been such a direct and urgent threat to democracy and to the nation’s founding principles.

The obvious overkill that marked Trump’s deployment of troops in California was a clear message of intimidation, not just for the state’s governor, but for every governor in the Union. The message was, cross me, and I’ll take over your state.

Truthout, an online independent medium that reports the news from a left-leaning viewpoint, but which is highly respected among the independent media for its factual accuracy and uncommon investigations, made clear just how overblown Trump’s federal action was. According to Truthout: “President Donald Trump’s latest deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles means that there are now more troops carrying out Trump’s anti-protest crackdown in southern California than in both Iraq and Syria…

“Trump has dispatched roughly 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to respond to L.A.’s protests of his immigration raids, for a total of roughly 4,700 troops. Meanwhile, according to publicly reported Pentagon figures, the US has roughly 2,000 troops deployed in Syria and 2,500 troops in Iraq, for a total of 4,500.”

General Mattis continues: We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response…sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

Yes, equality before the law, and the rule of law in general, founding principles of representative democracy, something Donald Trump knows nothing about, and cares about even less. His contempt for the rule of law was already on full display during his first term (2017-2020), when Mattis wrote his essay on freedom and democracy, after leaving the Trump administration. That disregard for the law and the right of Americans to freely choose their leaders was capped during the final two weeks of Trump’s first term in office, when, on January Sixth, 2021, he fostered a populist insurrection that briefly, violently and dramatically held Congress hostage in an effort to use death threats and physical force as a means of overturning the results of an election that he legitimately lost.

While vilifying protesters in California and elsewhere, the president’s supporters seem to forget that this is the same Donald Trump who, in one of his first actions as president, gave a blanket pardon to the fifteen hundred MAGA supporters convicted of crimes perpetrated during the January Sixth Insurrection in which millions of dollars in damage was done to the Capitol and in which one hundred forty police officers were attacked and injured and one died.

 The difference? The insurrectionists backed Trump in his authoritarian designs. Today’s protesters do not.

While that was the most stunning example of blatant authoritarianism by an American president in the history of the United States, it was, as it turns out, only the beginning. In the second term that he has been handed—shamefully, for the GOP, considering the thirty-four felony convictions handed down against him, and the multiple indictments for high crimes and misdemeanors that he was facing in the run-up to the 2024 election—his disdain for the Constitution and the rule of law in general is now on steroids.

Since taking office for the second time, six months ago, Trump has brazenly violated major tenets of federal law no fewer than nine times.

His unilaterally federalizing of the California National Guard as a repression force, in flagrant disregard for the express demands to the contrary of that state’s governor, and in violation of the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution, is just the latest, if clearly the gravest to date, a fact confirmed by California District Senior Federal Judge Charles Breyer.

In a subsequent appeal to the 9^th District Court of Appeals, a three-judge panel—two appointed by the first Trump administration and the third by former President Joe Biden—Trump won temporary continued control of the California National Guard. Trump celebrated this as a full-blown victory, but the decision was handed down along with a number of caveats. First, that control was indeed temporary, while Governor Gavin Newsom’s legal action against the Trump administration continues to play out. Second, it gives Trump no power to take over law enforcement in the state. The troops he mobilizes can only be used to protect federal agents and federal property. Third, it contradicted the Trump Justice Department’s claim that, once the president decided that an emergency merited the intervention of troops, no court or governor can review that decision. The Court of Appeals rejected that argument out of hand.

Furthermore, of the three conditions set out under the law in which a president can federalize a state’s National Guard, Trump’s decision in California objectively only met one: arguably, the idea that a situation is created in which the US government is unable to execute the country’s laws using regular forces. In short, a few violent protesters, out of a generally peaceful protest, who clashed physically with ICE agents gave Trump the excuse he needed to intervene. The other two factors—rebellion, or danger of a rebellion against the federal government—simply didn’t exist.

The appeals court said that the one plausible condition had “probably been met,” because protesters hurled items at immigration authorities' vehicles, used trash dumpsters as battering rams, threw Molotov cocktails and vandalized property, “frustrating law enforcement,” meaning the continuing ICE raids.

According to Gov. Newsom, troops were deployed
in LA without adequate food and water provisions
and with no arrangements for their comfort.

Even though the Appeals decision to let Trump temporarily maintain control of the California National Guard was a much less smashing victory than Trump has tried to make out, it has indeed rewarded Trump once again for his authoritarian behavior. And, the fear of every freedom-loving supporter of democracy should be that he will take it as a litmus test for future authoritarian actions. In other words, having gotten away with it in one state and city, it will make it all the easier in the future for him to use federal troops to intimidate and undermine the authority of state governors, mayors and officials, especially considering that pushing the envelope and blurring the lines between lawful and unlawful are signature traits of the Trump regime.
 

Other Trump violations of the Constitution and/or Federal Law include:

·        An attempt to restrict Americans’ Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of birthright citizenship. On January 20^th, Trump issued an executive order—one of one hundred sixty-two he has signed in the less that six months since he returned to office—in which he pretended to wipe out this constitutional right with the stroke of a Sharpie. Four federal judges immediately blocked execution of the authoritarian decree, citing it as a direct violation of the Constitution.

 

·        Trump had his Office of Management and Budget issue an official directive immediately freezing federal spending on grants. This was a heavy-handed violation of the Appropriations Clause under federal law, since funds appropriated for grants are under the authority of Congress, not the president. As a result, nearly half the states in the Union sued the administration over the move, and a Rhode Island federal judge blocked execution of the directive—almost before the Sharpie ink dried.

 

·        Trump again violated the powers of the co-equal Legislative Branch when he unilaterally sacked seventeen inspectors general. It should be noted that the job of inspectors general, as the name indicates, is to oversee government operations and ensure that they are above board and corruption-free—making them an apparent thorn in the side to the Trump-Musk billionaire team. This was a flagrant violation of the Inspector General Act, and of the so-called Take-Care clause under federal law.

 

·        He further violated federal law, under the Equal Protection and Administrative Procedure statutes when he issued a brace of orders both banning transgender individuals from serving in  the Armed Forces, and withdrawing federal support for gender-affirming care. Multiple courts handed down immediate injunctions, citing constitutional rights issues.

 

·        Clearly no friend of First Amendment rights (unless they’re his own) in May, Trump signed an order (EO14290) to withdraw Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding, which mainly supports National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), two stellar outlets for accurate information and cultural dissemination in the US today.

They are also two of the most professional, accurate and objective sources of news and commentary in the United States. The Trump administration views that accuracy and objectivity as a “lack of loyalty” to the head of state. If Trump can’t turn them into a propaganda tool for MAGA, he prefers to gut them.

The administration has also gutted Voice of America. VOA was founded during World War II as an international tool to unmask Nazi propaganda. Throughout the Cold War and beyond, VOA has become one of the most important international sources of objective news and information available to people in countries where the local media are censored and where disinformation is rife. The Trump administration apparently feels VOA’s important mission is trivial when it comes to clawing back funds to help make up for billionaire tax breaks. 

·         Use of the Alien Enemies Act for Mass Deportations, in violation of the constitutional tenets of Due Process and the Separation of Powers. In March 2025, the administration erroneously employed the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to expel alleged gang-affiliated individuals, including Venezuelans—not a declared enemy nation, which that legislation addresses. A federal judge issued a restraining order citing constitutional concerns, but the ultra-conservative Supreme Court once again gave Trump a pass and temporarily allowed the policy.

 

·         In an outgrowth of Trump’s anti-immigration challenge to due process and the rule of law, his administration further disregarded the principle of judicial supremacy, by defying court orders in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia Case, in which a man who was apparently not related to gang activity—something that only could have been determined through appropriate due process—was picked up in an ICE sweep and directly deported, with no legal recourse, to one of the world’s most notorious foreign prisons. In April 2025, courts ordered the return of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who, it was determined, had been wrongly deported. Trump’s DOJ team ignored the order, prompting legal experts to flag this omission as a direct challenge to judicial authority, establishing a constitutional crisis.

 

·         Misappropriation of executive power to retaliate against law firms and media outlets for not toeing the administration’s line, in direct violation of their First Amendment rights.

The courts eventually blocked the retaliatory actions of the Executive Branch, which targeted the law firms Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale, as well as several media outlets including the Associated Press, stating that the arbitrary retaliation violated their constitutional rights.

 

In the specific case of the Trump administration’s heavy-handed intervention in California, MAGA Republicans—who, it has become apparent, are willing to toss the Constitution and the nation’s laws out the window in bending over backwards to justify any outrage that Trump perpetrates—have sought to excuse Trump’s dispatching of US troops to intimidate state authorities by citing President Lyndon Johnson’s use of federal troops to respond to state-sponsored racial segregation in Alabama under Governor George Wallace.

If there was ever a case of comparing apples to oranges, this is it. That was not a case of rival policies, or even of rival parties, since Wallace, like Johnson, was a Southern Democrat. It was, rather, the case of a governor who was willfully and flagrantly violating federal law, and doing so at the service of racial discrimination that directly violated his black citizens’ constitutional rights.

Alabama’s Governor George Wallace faces General Henry Graham in Tuscaloosa on June 12, 1963, at the University of Alabama.  Federal troops under General Graham intervened after Wallace blocked the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. Despite an order of the federal court, Governor George Wallace appointed himself the temporary University registrar and stood in the doorway of the administration building to prevent the students from entering.
-Getty Images-

Wallace’s stubborn refusal to embrace and materially support the principle of racial desegregation as espoused by the Civil Rights Act and other federal legislation led to Johnson’s decision to send Federal Marshals, and to mobilize federal troops in order to ensure that the rule of law prevailed in the face of Wallace’s flagrant lawlessness.

Make no mistake, Trump's intervention in California has nothing to do with riot control and everything to do with taking over power. It is, as I posited earlier, a litmus test to see if anyone makes a serious effort to stop him, as a prelude, in my opinion, to the possibility of declaring martial law and taking over power entirely. This last seems clear to me from the fact that the Trump administration is doing everything it possibly can to further inflame situations in the cities where he is seeking to take federal control, instead of helping de-escalate them.

Just to be clear, when Trump, during his first campaign for president, said that he could “shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose a vote,” this is what he meant. And it is only possible because the GOP has been corrupted, and has lost its way. Trump Republicans will justify everything he does, given that, for them, Constitution is "just a word" and the oath they took to it means about as much as their consistently broken promises and duplicitous discourse.

To again (and in conclusion) quote General Mattis’s 2020 essay:

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us…

We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.

Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

 

THE RICH GET RICHER

 

If you believe MAGA propaganda, you probably think Elon Musk made a huge sacrifice to be a uniquely autonomous part of the Trump administration, losing money hand over fist while helping Trump "make America great again."

But if that’s what you think, you would be dead wrong. Trump is no longer tweeting about Elon, and Musk himself is suddenly keeping a low profile. Maybe that's because year-over-year reports have begun to come out regarding just how profitable his time with Trump has been, while he has been busy putting thousands of Americans out of work and throwing state agencies into utter chaos.

Here's the lowdown: Depending on the source quoted, just since Trump's election in November of 2024, from which time Musk became an even more high-profile figure in the administration than his boss, Elon increased his net worth by an estimated $83 billion or more. Year-on-year between April of last year and April of this year—a year in which he was a central figure in Trump's campaign, election victory, and the first one hundred days of the Trump administration—his fortune increased by somewhere between $132 billion and $186 billion.

In fact, Musk, who was already the richest man on earth, has now broken even his own record for just how filthy rich one man can be. His net worth is currently calculated at right around $350 billion. Let’s put that amount into perspective: $350 billion is the annual GDP of the Czech Republic, one of the most advanced economies in Central and Eastern Europe, and one of the EU's most manufacturing-intensive economies.

White House reporters claim that, despite the sudden muting of his previously boisterous profile, Musk is still very much in the picture in Trump World. And he is still reaping the benefits of his close link to the Trump administration, and of the MAGA crowd’s infatuation with making billionaires richer.

Nor is he alone in garnering the benefits of the bedlam and confusion that is Trump’s trademark smokescreen for keeping America’s eye off the ball. Statistics show that, year-on-year since April of last year, the top ten American billionaires, including, Musk, have increased their combined net worth by between $365 and $500 billion (in other words, each of their fortunes on average has burgeoned by a hundred million dollars a day in the last year).

Meanwhile, average Americans have seen their 401(k) accounts ravaged and inflation remain out of control, despite Trump campaign promises to rein it in. To understand the inequality of accumulation at the top of the American wealth pyramid, it’s worth noting that ten average American workers—making $66,000 a year, which few middle-class workers actually earn—would have to work approximately fifty-five thousand years each and not spend a dime in order to scrape together the combined amount by which the ten top billionaires in country augmented their wealth in a single year.

And if the GOP manages to pass Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” into law, billionaires further stand to benefit. The bill, as it stands now, includes provisions that could significantly lower taxes for high-income earners and corporations. More specifically, it includes proposals to make permanent the tax cuts enacted under the first Trump administration, which included lower corporate tax rates and increased tax deductions on capital gains.

And although that tax bill presumes to lower taxes for average Americans as well, it is noteworthy that only the higher average wage-earners will benefit in real terms.

According to Professor Martha Gimbel, executive director and co-founder of the Yale Budget Lab, a research center that analyses government policy, "This is a bill where the positive impacts are really tilted toward rich Americans. It doesn’t really matter if people at the bottom are getting relatively small tax cuts if they're losing their health care, they're losing their SNAP benefits and they're having to pay more money in tariffs."

In other words, cuts that the bill proposes in Medicaid and food stamps will not only wipe out any tax-cut benefits to workers making less than thirty thousand dollars a year, but will also put an increased burden on their already strained finances.

In short, as the old song goes, “There's nothing surer /The rich get rich and the poor get poorer.”  And never has that been truer in the US than it is today.

THE DUNG BEETLE THEORY

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says Trump getting a luxury jet from Qatar is the same as the United States receiving the Statue of Liberty from France. 

In my opinion, anyone who can make that comparison with a straight face doesn't have the critical-thinking ability of a dung beetle.

ABOUT THIS DAMNED PARADE

 In a private group that I belong to, someone posted this query:

I have a question for any of the veterans in this group who would be kind enough to educate me. First of all, Thank You for your service.
And I am not making any judgment calls on this. I am just very curious. What do you think about the military parade that is supposed to happen in June? As a veteran, do you feel honored by this parade? I am not a veteran. And neither was my husband so I do not have a really good understanding of how this type of event would make you feel.

This was my response:

As a Regular Army vet (and former Spec 5) from the seventies, and as the son of a WWII sergeant who won four bronze stars in the fight against fascism in Europe, I feel angry that Trump is usurping the 250^th anniversary of the Army to celebrate, not the Army, but himself. It is especially upsetting when he is a serial draft-dodger, and someone who has repeatedly disparaged us and our brothers-and-sisters-in-arms both living and dead.

A man who said Navy pilot John McCain, held and tortured for years on end in Vietnam, wasn't a hero because he got caught; a man who referred to Army fallen in a French war-dead cemetery as suckers and losers; a man who stood in Arlington beside a decorated Marine general who had lost a son of his own in combat and said, "I don't get it. What was in it for them."

This man isn't fit to pronounce the NAME of the US Army, let alone be its commander-in-chief, and less still to hitchhike on an Army day of celebration and respect to hold a narcissistic, self-serving celebration for his own birthday, in which thousands of troops are forced to participate. This is especially true when the 250th anniversary of the US Army should be a celebration of democracy and of the hundreds of thousands who have defended it with their lives, patriotism and sacrifice, not a day of sadness on which he rubs our noses in the authoritarian regime that he has created.

 

That's how I feel about it.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S LATEST ATTEMPT TO RADICALIZE AMERICA

I saw this meme recently and decided to fact-check it. What I found out was that the news is even worse than it indicates. Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s supervision, more than three hundred eighty titles have been removed from the Nimitz Library at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. The titles all have to do with issues regarding race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, social injustice, and related topics.

While this move to suppress all progress made in the past century regarding diversity, equity and inclusion—in other words, civil rights—is one of the most detestable policies imposed by the pro-authoritarian Trump regime to date, what is as equally shocking as what the government has removed from the Nimitz Library is what it hasn’t. The cherry-picking nature of the administration’s raid on a broad cultural approach to forming future naval officers seems bent on stripping the academy’s library of an honest look at race and gender in America, while conserving works that promote fascist ideals and white supremacy.

That is not to say that those titles should be suppressed either. A place like the Nimitz Library, the idea of which is to help form the leaders of the future, should be an oasis of free expression. It is condescending to think that higher-education scholars should be directed to read only specific ideologies or authors. Reading broadly is how intellectuals develop critical thinking. You can't know what is behind Nazism, Marxism, fascism or any other political ideology without reading the original dogma. Otherwise you are only left with what you've been told by others who, more often than not, pretend to know because they too are working from second hand. 

Similarly, you can't know about the struggle for civil and human rights, the price of freedom and the cost of maintaining and extending democracy and ethnic equality without reading the works of those who have made those sacrifices. Nor can you understand why, in the face of such injustices, there is no such thing as reverse racism when compared to the overwhelmingly evil force of white supremacy. Unfortunately, that's the whole idea behind this regime's library purges.  

According to the Legal Defense Fund and LAMBDA Legal, an organization founded by Federal Judge and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1940, which sent a letter of protest and concern to Hegseth and to Vice-Admiral Yvette M. Davids, Superintendent of the Annapolis academy, “the US Naval Academy evaluated its book collection in Nimitz Library following the verbal order” (apparently by Hegseth) “demanding compliance with President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14190.” LAMBDA Legal reported that, “the Naval Academy reviewed nine hundred titles to screen for what it claims are ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ topics. The list of three hundred eighty-one titles removed from circulation almost exclusively touch upon topics pertaining to the experiences of people of color, especially Black people, and/or LGBTQ people, including:  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Stone Fruit by Lee Lai,  The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen, Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, and Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.

LAMBDA Legal and the LDF point out that, “At the same time, the collection retained other books with messages and themes that privilege certain races and religions over others, including The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan by Thomas Dixon Jr., Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad” (a novella considered a literary classic in which Conrad sharply criticizes the devastating nature of European colonialism, but in which his nineteenth-century view of Africans as inferior savages has been called into question by modern-day scholars as decidedly racist).

In their letter to Hegseth and Davids, Lambda Legal and the LDF make clear their objection to any sort of censorship imposed by the government as a whole or by any specific administration. They underscore that the fact that it is “the constitutional responsibility of the US Naval Academy to protect cadets’ right to receive information and the danger of censoring materials based on viewpoints disfavored by the current Administration.” They also emphasize the importance in intellectual development of reading and engaging with varying viewpoints from diverse authors, “particularly writers from historically marginalized communities,” as a key to developing critical thinking, empathy and intellectual agility. They point out that this is the only way to properly prepare future officers “to engage thoughtfully and responsibly with topics that reflect the rich diversity of our nation.”

In their letter,  LAMBDA Chief Legal Officer Jennifer C. Pizer and LDF Director of Strategic Initiatives Jin Hee Lee, warn that  “the decision of the Naval Academy to strip the Nimitz Library of diverse voices and viewpoints, especially those written by and/or about Black and LGBTQ people, constitutes unconstitutional censorship of politically disfavored ideas in direct conflict with a functioning democracy.” They add that, “such censorship is especially dangerous in an educational setting, where critical inquiry, intellectual diversity, and exposure to a wide array of perspectives are necessary to educate future citizen-leaders.” LAMBDA Legal and the LDF point out that the US Naval Academy “is tasked with educating and cultivating cadets to be leaders of a pluralistic nation,” and conclude that, as such, “it has done a disservice to cadets by preventing access to critical information.”

The complaint formulated by these two respected American legal organizations sheds light on the culture war the Trump administration is waging, mostly unspecified and behind the scenes. It serves to demonstrate that the warnings being issued since 2016 by journalists and liberal academics regarding a sharp turn toward extreme-right, pro-fascist ideals in the Era of Trump is not “fake news fabricated by the liberal mainstream media” or “lies made up by Democrats” to discredit what is clearly a white-supremacist cult of personality surrounding Donald Trump. Rather, it is hard evidence—in addition to such actions as the gutting of American public schools, bullying premier civilian institutions of higher learning, and the shuttering of the Department of Education—of an intentional policy by the administration to censor any but the most extreme far-right ideals within the nation’s education system.

As I’ve mentioned here a number of times, the Era of Trump is guided by a blueprint that, in the president’s previous term as, to a far more extreme degree, in this one would almost seem to take its cue from some of the most chilling dystopian novels ever written: notably, George Orwell’s 1984 (in which every aspect of society is dominated by an all-powerful dictator known as Big Brother), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (in which women are stripped of all rights and become the submissive wives, loyal jailers and brood mares of a patriarchal society), and now, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (in which “firemen” start rather than put out fires, and what they burn are books, and the homes and buildings where clandestine libraries are stored).

Considered a sub-section of “sci-fi”, this type of dystopian literature has proven prescient, escaping the bounds of the realm of frightening irreality, and coming home to roost as the new reality of the Era of Trump 2.0 in America. Only time will tell if Americans will rise up and rebel against the trend or, if like the beleaguered citizens of the grim dystopian worlds of fiction, they will submissively “wait and see” until it is too late to halt the organized destruction of a two-and-a-half century-old once-great democracy.  

 

 

 

 

 

CRIMEA: LET’S LOOK AT THE FACTS

When Donald Trump came to office last January, it was with the promise that he would have the war in Ukraine over with in twenty-four hours. Like much of what Donald Trump says and promises, this statement too was empty, hyperbolic and always undoable.

Since then, however, he and what I call his non-negotiators—principally Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice-President JD Vance and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff—have sought to quickly end the conflict by scandalously siding with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and vilifying Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. This approach ignores completely the fact that the Ukraine War is a war of aggression perpetrated by Russia’s totalitarian leader against a sovereign nation. It also disregards the direct challenge Russia’s aggression poses to NATO, and to the sovereignty of the nations of both Eastern and Western Europe.

The Trump administration’s stance further ignores the fact that Russia is a natural enemy of the US and of the West as a whole, engaged ever since World War II in an ideological and geopolitical struggle for worldwide influence and power that is opposed to the West’s own world leadership goals. There has only been one brief period of rapprochement following the fall of the Berlin Wall. But since the start in 1999 of the reign of Vladimir Putin, alternating between the offices of prime minister and president, the focus of the Kremlin has been on reviving Russian imperialism and on the reestablishment of a bipolar world.

Incredibly, considering this environment, the officials handling Trump’s virtual capitulation to Putin’s whims are now quoting a Russian talking point as the basis for their “negotiations”. Namely, that the war is not Russia’s fault at all, but Ukraine’s for seeking a place as a Western ally within the framework of NATO. Here, my friends, is where we should be seeing a huge flashing sign reading: What’s wrong with this picture?

What I mean by that, in case you’ve let yourself get confused about who Putin is and who the US is supposed to be, is that Ukraine’s wanting a closer relationship with the West is now, and should always have been, a good thing, not a fault. Ukraine is a key piece in the geopolitical puzzle, the very terrain which stands between Russia and renewed domination of Eastern Europe. In case you’re getting lost on the map, if Ukraine’s wanting to be in NATO sparked Russia’s war of aggression, letting Russia have Ukraine is the same as opening a gaping hole in Western defense against a repeat of Russian post-war imperialism, and of the czarist imperialism that preceded it.

In the manner of Herod making a reluctant gift to Salome of John the Baptist’s head, Trump administration officials conducting these non-negotiations are starting from a position of abject weakness by kneeling before Putin with Crimea on a platter. Their sorely uneducated notion is that Crimea has always pretty much been Russian anyway, and besides, Putin grabbed it a decade ago, so, hey, finders keepers.

But is that really the case? The answer is, no.

The fact is that prior to Russia’s original imperialist advances, Crimea was inhabited by various ethnic groups, but principally the Crimean Tatars. They were a Turkic people who established the Crimean Khanate in the fifteenth century. Indeed, the name Crimea is derived from the Turkish root word Qirim. Crimea was a vassal khanate of the Ottoman Empire from 1478 to 1774. The Ukrainian region was, then, part of the Ottoman Empire’s broader sphere of influence, not that of the Russian Empire.

It was only through conquest, not by legal or consensual means, that the Russian Empire annexed Crimea in 1783, following the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774).  At the end of that war, the Ottoman Empire had granted Crimea independence through the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774). So the Russian annexation nine years later was the first instance of Russia’s simply grabbing sovereign Crimea for its own strategic purposes. It was that annexation that marked the start of a Russian presence on the peninsula, but contrary to Putin’s narrative, that presence wasn’t based on any inherent or historic Russian claim to Crimea.

Crimean Tatars

The Putin myth echoed by Trump officials that ethnic Russians have always formed the population of Crimea is also spurious.  While it is true that Cossacks traditionally formed part of the Crimean population, along with the native Turkic Crimean Tatars, and while it is also true that Cossacks took part in Russian military campaigns throughout history, the Cossacks cannot be counted as Russians. They were a diverse group of predominantly East Slavic people. A mix of peasants, escaped serfs, and some nobility, they emerged as a nomadic society in the fifteenth century, banding together for mutual protection. They were a quasi-military and semi-nomadic society that primarily inhabited the Ukrainian steppes, venturing as well into Southern Russia. While the Cossacks still exist, with various levels of organization and activity, their communities have been reconstituted and adapted to modern society. 

Highly independent and of autonomous spirit, while not strictly mercenaries, the armies of the Cossacks often fought for a variety of regional powers, including Russia, in exchange for self-governance and a free lifestyle. They played a significant role in the history of the region, including participation in conflicts with various states in resistance against foreign invaders. But they formed part of no other nation.

Cossacks - quasi-military, semi-nomadic people

Nor is the term "Cossack" Russian. It is derived from the Turkic word kazak, which, literally translated, means adventurer or free man. Furthermore, East Slavs, the ethnicity to which the Cossacks pertain, were once part of a federation of principalities known as Kyivan Rus', a medieval state that existed from the late ninth to the mid-thirteenth century. It emerged as a powerful confederation with the city-state of Kyiv (today the capital of Ukraine) as its capital, and its territory encompassed much of what are today Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Russia. 

That said, the Cossacks weren’t indigenous to Crimea. Having taken  part in Russian military campaigns in the area, some of their number eventually settled on or near the Crimean Peninsula, but their presence does not give Russia a legitimate claim. Especially since some of the campaigns the Cossacks took part in where Russian efforts to subjugate and/or displace the native Crimean Tatars.

As for the Tatars, they were the dominant ethnic and political group in Crimea for centuries, and still formed the majority of the population until 1944, when Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin engineered their mass deportation. It was, then, through an act of what is today known as ethnic cleansing, rather than through any legitimate transfer of sovereignty, that the Crimean region’s demographic balance was tipped toward a predominantly ethnic Russian population.

Stalin's deportation of the Tatars

From a strictly legal standpoint, ten years after Stalin’s annexation of Crimea in 1944, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (governing body of the USSR) transferred the peninsula back to Ukraine in 1954. Basically, the Supreme Soviet removed Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and placed it once more under the original control of Ukraine (at the time, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic). Ukraine’s claim to Crimea was never questioned after that, until Putin’s decade-long challenge to Ukrainian sovereignty—not by the Russian Federation after the fall of the USSR in 1991, nor by any international body.  

What is more, International law recognizes Crimea as part of Ukraine. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine inherited Crimea as part of its internationally recognized borders. Russia itself recognized these borders in multiple treaties, including the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal.

Bearing all of this in mind, Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its armed invasion of other parts of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, using devastating military force, are violations of international law, and have sparked the largest major ground war in Europe since World War II—one involving a world-class nuclear power. Russia’s war of aggression on a sovereign country has drawn widespread condemnation in the international community. The United Nations has passed a resolution (R68/262) reaffirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity and declaring invalid a referendum held by Russia in Crimea to try and justify its annexation.

Crimean Tatar children in traditional dress

In short, Russia’s claim to Crimea and all other areas of Ukraine that it has usurped by military force since 2014 is historically, ethnically, legally and morally illegitimate, and the Trump administration’s attempts to justify Russia’s actions based on some “might makes right” theory that forms part of Trump’s authoritarian view of the world, fly in the face of international law, of respect for the sovereignty of free nations, and of America’s traditional role as the erstwhile leader of the Western world.

Worst of all, Donald Trump admires authoritarians. It’s a schoolyard philosophy, a bully’s attitude of joining other bullies in ganging up on the weaker kids in order not to have to stand up to the other bullies himself.  It’s a stance that not only makes the US Russia’s vassal, but which is also tantamount to appeasing a dangerous, megalomaniacal imperialist.

It is easy enough to understand if we stop pretending this is business as usual and start realizing that Trump identifies with Putin because Trump has megalomaniacal expansionist delusions of his own when it comes to our neighbors. There is all too obviously no difference between Trump’s feverish, openly-stated ambition of taking over Canada and making it a state, and Putin’s realized dream of invading Russia’s sovereign neighbors and making them part of his empire.

Appeasing bullies has never worked. There is no better example to quote than that of another megalomaniacal expansionist who invaded his neighbors prior to World War II. The US and Europe alike appeased Germany’s Adolf Hitler when he took over Austria. They turned a blind eye as well when he went on to invade Czechoslovakia, apparently hoping if they let him violate the sovereignty of a couple of nations, he would somehow get it out of his system. It was a fatal mistake, one with the most catastrophic consequences the world has even known.

Western Europe needs to stop appeasing not only Vladimir Putin, but also Donald Trump, if the US itself continues to fail to rein in its rogue leader. European leaders must stop hoping against hope that Trump will have some sort of epiphany and suddenly begin exercising the kind of pro-Western leadership the US consistently produced before the Era of Trump. For as long as Trump is leading it, the US is no longer a reliable ally, and does not have the best interests of the free world in mind. If anyone is to save Europe from the new wave of Russian imperialism—which, make no mistake, will not end in Ukraine if Ukraine is abandoned to its fate—it will have to be Western Europe itself, and the time to step up, sideline Trump, and draw a line in Ukraine is now.