Hank Mobley Sextet: Hank (1957 [2026], Blue Note): Tenor saxophonist, Leonard Feather called him the "middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone," which suggested that he couldn't compete with Coltrane and Rollins, but was masterful under any other light. This is pretty early, but one of seven albums from 1957 that Wikipedia lists, most with redundant or unimaginative titles, some tied to his membership in the Jazz Messengers. With John Jenkins (alto sax), Donald Byrd (trumpet), Bobby Timmons (piano), Wilbur Ware (bass), and Philly Joe Jones (drums). Reissued in Blue Note's Tone Poet series. B+(***) [yt]

Lee Morgan: City Lights (1957 [2026], Blue Note): Trumpet player, a key player in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, off to a very solid solo career. With George Coleman (tenor/alto sax), Ray Bryant (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Art Taylor (drums). Superb when he goes in hot, less so with a ballad. B+(**) [sp]

Tyrone Washington: Natural Essence (1967 [2026], Blue Note): Tenor saxophonist, b. 1944, recorded three albums 1968-74, leaving music for religious reasons, and eventually becoming a Sunni Muslim minister (as Mohammad Bilal Abdullah). He joined Horace Silver for The Jody Grind in 1966, and Larry Young for Contrasts in 1967. This was his first as leader, with Woody Shaw (trumpet), James Spaulding (alto sax/flute), Kenny Barron (piano), Reggie Workman (bass), and Joe Chambers (drums). This is pretty exciting, especially Shaw. Evidently a second Blue Note session was recorded but never released. A- [sp]

Old music:

Hank Mobley: With Donald Byrd and Lee Morgan (1956 [1957], Blue Note): Tenor saxophonist, one of seven albums he released in 1957, a four-song hard bop blowing session with the two trumpet players, piano (Horace Silver), bass (Paul Chambers), and drums (Charlie Persip). B+(**) [sp]

Hank Mobley: A Caddy for Daddy (1965 [1966], Blue Note): One of the few 1960s albums I missed by the tenor saxophonist, a sextet with Lee Morgan (trumpet), Curtis Fuller (trombone), McCoy Tyner (piano), Bob Cranshaw (bass), and Billy Higgins (drums), playing four originals and one Wayne Shorter piece. B+(*) [sp]

Barbara Rosene With Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks: Deep Night (2000-01 [2001], Stomp Off): Trad/swing jazz singer, Michael Steinman raved about a recent performance so I thought I'd look her up. Nothing new since 2013's Nice & Naughty, but I had missed this first album, and I felt like a break from the new stuff. Discogs doesn't list musicians, but Giordano plays tuba and bass, and his band recorded from 1984-2006 (also backing Loudon Wainwright III on his 2020 I'd Rather Lead a Band). AI suggests Conal Fowkes (piano), Dan Levinson (sax/clarinet), Jon-Erik Kellso (trumpet), and Andy Stein (violin). B+(**) [sp]

Barbara Rosene & Her New Yorkers: Ev'rything's Made for Love (2003, Stomp Off): Another generous batch of old-timey songs (25, 73:40), backed by a nine-piece band where Jon-Erik Kellso (trumpet) and John Gill (drums) are probably the best known, with notable contributions by Conal Fowkes (piano), Matt Munisteri (guitar/banjo), and Meg Okura (violin). B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Atlantic Road Trip: Watch as the Echo Falls (Calligram) [04-03]
• Ryan Blotnick: The Woods (Fishkill) [04-17]
• Chicago Soul Jazz Collective: No Wind & No Rain (Calligram) [04-10]
• Paul Citro: Keep Moving (Home) (Calligram) [05-01]
• Caleb Wheeler Curtis: Ritual (Chill Tone) [04-10]
• Cyger & Butterworth: Plaid Pants (Outrageous8) [03-11]
• Bill Evans: At the BBC (1965, Elemental Music) [04-18]
• Robert Jospé Quartet: The Night Sky (self-released) [01-11]
• The Paul Keller Orchestra: Thank You Notes: The Music of Gregg Hill (Cold Plunge) [03-27]
• Freddie King: Feeling Alright: The Complete 1975 Nancy Pulsations Concert (Elemental Music, 2CD) [04-18]
• Michel Petrucciani: Kuumbwa (1987, Elemental Music, 2CD) [04-18]
• Ted Rosenthal Trio: The Good Old Days (TMR Music) [05-01]
• Paul Silbergleit Trio: The Stillness of July (Calligram) [05-01]
• Alister Spence: Always Ever (Alister Spence Music) [04-24]
• Cecil Taylor Unit: Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts (Elemental Music, 2CD) [04-18]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, March 22, 2026

After I posted my initial take on Trump's Iran war in my Days of Infamy Substack piece, and followed that with a Music Week, I figured I should go ahead and publish whatever I had in Loose Tabs before the next Music Week comes around. So I set the date for Sunday, March 22, and, well, this is it: very incomplete, with several usual sections completely missing, but pretty long nonetheless. I could work the rest of the night on it, then tomorrow, then the rest of next week. I probably will make some adds when I do get around to Music Week. I'm also thinking I should do a synopsis on Substack, possibly before I do my planned follow-up piece where I try to cut through all the noise and explain the Iran war by answering four basic questions:

1. Why did Netanyahu want to attack Iran?
2. Why did Trump go along with the attack?
3. Why didn't Iran surrender once it was attacked?
4. And how and when and under what conditions is this war likely to end?

You can probably find answers to these questions in the previous piece, and scattered here and there below, but I think it will help to organize them thusly. Of course, the first three answers are pretty simple, at least if I don't go into much historical detail. I don't know the precise answer to the fourth, but the basic point is simple enough: when Trump (or one of his successors) decides he's had enough, and is willing to negotiate a deal. This will depend on variables, including how much Iran is willing to concede, how little Trump is willing to settle for, and how long Israel will be able to muck up any possible deal. Those factors will vary over time, so the best we can do is to lay out a model. That will take some thought, but the factors aren't too complicated.

Meanwhile, there is nothing below on Cuba, which is heating up, and dominating my X feed tonight. Trump has said that Cuba's next, and it's not like he has the patience to do things in considered order. Most leaders dread two-front (never mind multi-front) wars, but for Trump each one distracts from the other. The conditions in Cuba are different, as are the motives — other than the absolute supremacy of American power, which seems to have become an obsession with Trump.

PS: I added a few more links on [03-25]. I'm not really trying to keep up with the news, although some creeps in. Most are actually tabs I had open but hadn't picked up. I use Firefox as a browser, running under Xbuntu with six workspaces to split out my work, with Firefox typically running 6-8 windows with well over 100 tabs, so it's easy to overlook something I meant to circle back to.

This is an occasional collection of newsworthy links and comments, much less systematic than what I attempted in my late Speaking of Which posts. The new name comes from my extensive use of browser tabs. When I get around to cleaning up, I often find tabs opened to old articles I might want to comment on and/or refer back to. So these posts are mostly housecleaning, but may also serve as a very limited but persistent record of what 20+ years ago I started calling "the end of the American empire" and nowadays feels more like "the end of civilization." I collect these bits in a draft file, and flush them out when periodically (12 times from April-December 2025). My previous one appeared 23 days ago, on February 27.

I have a little-used option of selecting bits of text highlighted with a background color, for emphasis a bit more subtle than bold or ALL CAPS. (I saw this on Medium. I started with their greenish color [#bbdbba] and lightened it a bit [#dbfbda].) I'll try to use it sparingly.

Table of Contents:

• Trump Bombs Iran
• Epsteinmania
• SAVE America Act
• The Oscars
• Israel
• Elsewhere Around the World
• Trump Threatens the World
• Trump Attacks America: Law, lawlessness, and the courts.
• Trump Administration: What they're doing while you're worried about the news flak.
• Donald Trump, Himself
• Economists and the Economy
• Dean Baker
• Jeet Heer
• Paul Krugman
• Heather Digby Parton
• Jeffrey St Clair
• Nick Turse
• Joel Gouveia: The death of Spotify.
• John Herrman: On betting on war.
• Chris Dalla Riva: On a documentary about Robert Christgau.
• Harold Meyerson: On Cesar Chavez.
• Some Notable Deaths
• Tweets

Topical Stories

Sometimes stuff happens, and it dominates the news/opinion cycle for a few days or possibly several weeks. We might as well lead with it, because it's where attention is most concentrated. But eventually these stories will fold into the broader, more persistent themes of the following section.

Last time: Epsteinmania, Melania, Washington Post, Super Bowl LX, DHS shutdown, Tariffs at the Supreme Court.

Trump Bombs Iran: On Feb. 28, Trump and Netanyahu launched a massive wave of airstrikes against Iran, opening what Wikipedia is calling 2026 Iran war. The bombing appears to have been originally designed to kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and thus to decapitate the Islamic Republic of Iran, but it was expanded to attack the whole nation's security structure. The bombing has continued. Iran has responded with missile and drone attacks aimed at Israel, US bases in the region, and other infrastructure related to the US and its allies. Israel has ramped up its war in Lebanon, nominally targeting Hezbollah. The following are various pieces collected on the fly, including several that I added to my previous Loose Tabs, which starts on February 19 with a link to a piece by Joshua Keating: It really looks like we're about to bomb Iran again.

• Iran War Cost Tracker: "Based on the Pantagon's preliminary estimate of $1 billion per day." Also note: "Independent analyses suggest the true cost may be significantly higher."

• Al Jazeera [2025-06-18]: The history of Netanyahu's rhetoric on Iran's nuclear ambitions: He "has warned of an imminent threat from a Iranian nuclear bomb for more than 30 years."

• Richard Silverstein

  • [02-28]: Iran: Trump's war of annihilation: One key point here, not widely reported elsewhere, is that Ayatollah Khamenei "reportedly prepares leadership plan if killed."

  • [03-03]: Iran's massive retaliation hits targets throughout Middle East.

  • [03-12]: Israeli cultural and environmental genocide in Iran.

  • [03-14]: Beirut: 1,000 dead as Israel threatens Gaza-style genocide.

  • [03-19]: Iran: Trump's fatal miscalculation.

• Andrew O'Hehir:

  • [02-28]: Trump's war on Iran: America's shame, and the world's failure: "Trump's attack on Iran is an act of vanity and desperation, fueled by America's collective moral blindness."

  • [03-08]: Behind Trump's war fever lies profound weakness: "US wages fast-escalating war, with no clear motivation and no realistic plan. It isn't fooling anyone." I'm not sure "weakness" is the right word, but it's the sort of taunt that flies in the faces of people who value power above all else. The US always seemed more powerful when it advanced policies that were best for all, and much weaker when it tried to strong arm others into doing its self-centered will. While it is likely that the US has lost power steadily since peaking at the end of WWII, no US president has tried to flex its power to anywhere near the same degree as Trump. That he comes up short seems inevitable. That he finds this mystifying is no surprise, either.

• Craig Mokhiber [03-01]: Understanding the US and Israel's illegal war on Iran: "The illegal US-Israeli war on Iran continues a rampage that has devastated countries and international institutions to eliminate all obstacles to US hegemony. The US-Israeli Axis has not succeeded yet, and it is up to the world to stop them." The world, on the other hand, is hoping this war just collapses under the dead weight of its instigators' stupidity, as no one else is in a position to do anything significant about it.

• Trita Parsi: Has a long track record of writing about Iran and how Israel and the US have attempted to deal with it, most notably in his books: Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (2007); A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy With Iran (2012); Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy (2017). The first book I regard as essential, as it makes clear that Israel's alliance with Iran survived the fever days of the 1979 Revolution, when Khomeini solidified control of a much broader-based revolt, to no small extent by building on pent-up resentment against the United States (the hostage crisis was a reflection of this) and by challenging Saudi Arabia's leadership of the Islamic World (given control of Mecca and Medina, and the annual Hajj). The US and Saudi Arabia never got over those affronts, but Israel had no problem with Iran until the 1990s, when Iraq ceased to be a credible existential threat to Israel, and Hezbollah developed in opposition to Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. From that point, it was fairly easy to manipulate American resentment into designating Iran as part of "the axis of evil." Parsi has a critical but nuanced view of Iran that is much more credible than most of the rote (or simply regurgitated) propaganda elsewhere. I haven't read his later books (on Obama and the JCPOA negotiations), which should help update the story. Nor have I read Vali Nasr's 2025 book, Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History, but he seems to have a similar understanding of Iran's political leadership and military strategy.

  • [03-01]: Some observations and comments on Trump and Israel's war on Iran: I scraped this off Facebook, so might best just quote it here:

    1. Tehran is not looking for a ceasefire and has rejected outreach from Trump. The reason is that they believe they committed a mistake by agreeing to the ceasefire in June - it only enabled the US and Israel to restock and remobilize to launch war again. If they agree to a ceasefire now, they will only be attacked again in a few months.

    2. For a ceasefire to be acceptable, it appears difficult for Tehran to agree to it until the cost to the US has become much higher than it currently is. Otherwise, the US will restart the war at a later point, the calculation reads.

    3. Accordingly, Iran has shifted its strategy. It is striking Israel, but very differently from the June war. There is a constant level of attack throughout the day rather than a salvo of 50 missiles at once. Damage will be less, but that isn't a problem because Tehran has concluded that Israel's pain tolerance is very high - as long as the US stays in the war. So the focus shifts to the US.

    4. From the outset, and perhaps surprisingly, Iran has been targeting US bases in the region, including against friendly states. Tehran calculates that the war can only end durably if the cost for the US rises dramatically, including American casualties. After the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran says it has no red lines left and will go all out in seeking the destruction of these bases and high American casualties.

    5. Iran understands that many in the American security establishment had been convinced that Iran's past restraint reflected weakness and an inability or unwillingness to face the US in a direct war. Tehran is now doing everything it can to demonstrate the opposite - despite the massive cost it itself will pay. Ironically, the assassination of Khamenei facilitated this shift.

    6. One aspect of this is that Iran has now also struck bases in Cyprus, which have been used for attacks against Iran. Iran is well aware that this is an attack on a EU state. But that seems to be the point. Tehran appears intent on not only expanding the war into Persian Gulf states but also into Europe. Note the attack on the French base in the UAE. For the war to be able to end, Europe too has to pay a cost, the reasoning appears to be.

    7. There appears to be only limited concern about the internal situation. The announcement of Khamenei's death opened a window for people to pour onto the streets and seek to overthrow the regime. Though expressions of joy were widespread, no real mobilization was seen. That window is now closing, as the theocratic system closes ranks and establishes new formal leadership.

  • [02-20]: No, even a 'small attack' on Iran will lead to war: "The deal Trump wants is a no-go for Tehran, which is resigned to retaliating if bombed again, limited or otherwise." This was written a week before Trump's "decapitation" strike, so nothing here should have caught Trump or his advisers by surprise. The key thing is that after last year's "12 day war" Iran's internal strategic arguments shifted from calculated appeasement to the realization that they would have to fight back to establish any kind of deterrence:

    Third, since the U.S. strategy, according to the WSJ, is to escalate until Tehran caves, and since capitulation is a non-option for Iran, the Iranians are incentivized to strike back right away at the U.S. The only exit Tehran sees is to fight back, inflict as much pain as possible on the U.S., and hope that this causes Trump to back off or accept a more equitable deal.

    In this calculation, Iran would not need to win the war (militarily, it can't); it would only have to get close to destroying Trump's presidency before it loses the war by: 1) closing the Strait of Hormuz and strike oil installations in the region in the hope of driving oil prices to record levels and by that inflation in the U.S.; and 2) strike at U.S. bases, ships, or other regional assets and make Trump choose between compromise or a forever war in the region, rather than the quick glorious victory he is looking for.

    This is an extremely risky option for Iran, but one that Tehran sees as less risky than the capitulation "deal" Trump is seeking to force on Iran.

    By not giving Iran's leaders a choice they can live with, Trump backed them into a corner, from which they had no choice but to fight back. Now the question becomes how painful that war is to Trump, and what sort of resolution can he live with? Trump may hate the idea of backing down in any respect, but Iran isn't threatening America (or even Israel) like the US is threatening Iran. The US will suffer some losses, but nothing remotely existential. Iran is not demanding that the US give up its own ability to defend itself. Iran is not even remotely a threat to the US homeland. So how much is it worth for Americans to "stay the course" just to shore up Trump's battered ego? If anyone other than Trump could make this decision, it wouldn't take a minute's thought. But this egomaniacal moron was made president, and the presidency was vested with the power to wage war without any checks and balances, so we're stuck in this situation which no one (except for Netanyahu and a few diehard hawks like Lindsey Graham) really wanted.

  • [02-28]: How does this war with Iran end? Or does it? "Trump certainly doesn't want this to turn into a civil war, though Israel has different designs." I think anything that attributes forethought and/or concern to Trump is cutting him too much slack, but Israel is another matter (and by Israel I mean Netanyahu, his coalition partners, and upper security echelons).

  • [03-09]: Trump press conference reveals a man who wants out of war: "He may be preparing the ground for a face saving declaration of victory, but I don't think Iran is going to concede that easily without something in return." A change of leader might have been enough of a cosmetic change in Venezuela to save face and avoid further polarizing warfare, the long and cruel build up to war against Iran has foreclosed those options. Trump's ambitions are higher here, Israel has veto power, and at this point the regime in Iran would be jeopardized more by surrender than by fighting back.

  • [03-13]: Trita Parsi on the hidden influences behind the pointless war in Iran: Interview by Nathan J Robinson.

  • [03-17]: Larijani's killing will destroy Iran war off-ramps for Trump: That, of course, is Israel's point: kill off anyone with the temperament and authority to make and sell a deal. Parsi offers three possible explanations, including "opportunity," which was probably decisive, but the idea of making negotiations impossible is so deeply ingrained in Israeli politico-military culture that it was always assumed. If Israel wanted to make a deal with the Palestinians that would allow for peaceful coexistence and shared prosperity, they could have done it 50-60 years ago. The only thing they really needed was credible Palestinian leadership, but they've systematically killed off everyone, all the while whining about having "no partner for peace."

  • [03-17]: Trump's window for face-saving exit may be closing now: "Escalation is only putting him in a lose-lose situation, so negotiating is the only option. However, Iran's growing leverage could prevent an easy off-ramp." Sure, the leverage is reason for searching out an off-ramp. But finding one is going to be hard for Trump to swallow. First he needs to throw Netanyahu under the bus: this was was all his idea, based on faulty intelligence and bad analysis, and to make this credible he needs to radically cut back military aid to Israel, including anything that could give Israel range to attack Iran. And he needs an intermediary to cut a deal with Iran, which the US could then agree to. I initially thought about neutrals like Turkey and India, but better still would be a separate peace with Saudi Arabia and the Perisan Gulf states which ultimately calls for demilitarization of the Persian Gulf (i.e., removal of US bases, in exchange for which Iran will limit rearmament fully normalize relations, and end all sanctions).

  • [03-19]: Facebook post: I won't quote this one in whole, but it starts:

    The developments of the past 24h may prove a turning point in this war: Israel and the US's escalation by striking the Qatari-Iranian Pars field, the strikes against Asaluyeh, Iran's massive retaliation against oil and gas installations in Saudi, Qatar and beyond, which shot up oil prices, the near downing of a F35 by Iran and Secretary Bessent's revelations that the US may unsanction Iranian oil on the waters to bring down oil prices.

    Some grasping at straws here, as it feels more to me like all sides are digging in.

• Joshua Keating: Vox's foreign policy "expert," I've rarely been impressed by him, but I cited his pre-war piece in the introduction, and early on wrote up a comment on his [03-09] piece. I wound up deciding his whole series of articles is worth citing, partly to show evolving thinking from someone who drinks too much of the Kool-Aid but doesn't always swallow it, and because they raise interesting tangents.

  • [02-28]: Why did the US strike Iran? "And five other questions about the latest conflict in the Middle East, answered." Some useful background, but not many answers. One section starts "In fairness to Trump," then notes that he's done stupid things before and gotten away with them, so he may be feeling excessively confident, but then he both sides Iran, concluding "The confidence on both sides may end up getting a lot of people killed." What he fails to note is that over-confidence explains action, which Trump initiated, and not reaction, which is something the aggressor forces you into. Iran may have overestimated their ability to resist and strike back, but once Trump broke off negotiations and ordered the strike, what other option did they have?

  • [03-01]: How Khamenei transformed Iran: "And what could come next." Interview with Alex Vatanka ("a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and author of the book The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran, which examines how the Islamic Republic's backroom rivalries and leadership struggles have shaped its approach to the world"). MEI is mostly funded by the US and Arab governments. Vatanka offers little here, although this seems peculiar:

    I don't know what to make of Khamenei meeting senior folks in his office. That almost seems like he was asking for death. He had been talking a lot about martyrdom in recent speeches.

  • [03-02]: World leaders are almost never killed in war. Why did it happen to Iran's supreme leader? "The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could usher in a new age of assassination." He ventures that "The nearest precedent for the killing of a head of state may be the KGB assassination of Afghan Communist leader Hafizullah Amin in 1979," although that was more like the US coup that killed their Vietnamese puppet Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, shortly after the killing of Patrice Lumumba in 1961. More relevant here, Israel has a long history of assassination, going back to the killing of UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, and extending through scores of prominent Palestinians and various others. Also Trump's killing of Qasem Soleimani, not even mentioned here. So his headline is already dated, if ever true. The bigger problem is that the only way to end wars is through negotiation, and for that to work, both sides have to have credible leaders. It would be much easier for Khamenei to sell an unpalatable deal than it will be for some unproven substitute. Even though the US had insisted on Japan's unconditional surrender, MacArthur saw the utility of leaving Hirohito in office.

  • [03-04]: Iran had a plan to fight Israel and the US. It all collapsed after October 7. "The rise and fall of the 'axis of resistance.'" One thing that's always bothered me: if "axis of resistance" really was Iran's masterplan for fighting Israel, why did they give it such a stupid (and inflammatory) name? The whole notion seems like an Israeli psych op. Perhaps Iran should have worked harder to dispel the allegations, but Israel's aggression and intimidation campaign was pushing all of them into common cause and sympathy. And given that Iran was already largely sanctioned by the West, they may have gotten an ego boost by appearing to be the ringleader. But Keating's notion that Iran's own defense was weakened by Israel's wars against Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis is imaginary — albeit of the kind that gave Israel and Trump more confidence to attack.

  • [03-09]: The dangerous lesson countries may take from the Iran war: "Having a nuclear weapon has never looked more appealing." The main reason Iran never developed nuclear weapons, despite having all the building blocks, was the conscience and/or shrewd political judgment of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Trump may have "set back" Iran's nuclear capabilities, but he definitely removed the one real roadblock. The result is that anyone in the regime who advised to go ahead ("just in case") is looking prescient these days, which makes them more likely to accede to power and redouble their efforts. Of course, it may be hard for Iran to progress under the current barrage, but unless the US and Israel relent and can be viewed by Iranians as benign — hard to imagine right now — sooner or later Iranians will regroup and vow to never let this happen again. (Just imagine what we would do under the same circumstances.) But the same lesson, that you actually have to have nuclear weapons ready to fire in order to deter foreign attacks, will also be learned by others, with more leeway to act. (This is, of course, the lesson North Korea drew after the US convinced Iraq and Libya to give up their nuclear programs, then toppled up their regimes.) The surprise here is that the first nation to feel the need to step up its nuclear efforts is France. But others are mentioned here, including Poland, South Korea, and Taiwan. None of those nations are likely to use their weapons against the US, but having them could give them considerable more autonomy, especially the more Trump is viewed as unreliable and unstable.

  • [03-09]: Trump might want "boots on the ground" in Iran. Just not American ones. "An Iranian Kurdish leader says his people are ready to rise up, but need more US support." Easy enough to find some Kurds willing to take American money as mercenaries, but their prospects of success are very slim. Moreover, other countries with Kurdish minorities are likely to take a very dim view of this — especially Turkey, which has intervened against American-armed Kurds in Iraq and Syria. On the other hand, Iran is the one country in the region which has never had a serious Kurdish independence movement (at least as far as I know). Perhaps because Kurdish is more closely related to Persian. Or, more likely, because Iran is a holdover from the era of multi-ethnic empires, and has never had a strong nationalist movement (unlike Turkey and Iraq).

  • [03-11]: The world doesn't have enough ammo for the Iran war: "How long can Iran keep shooting missiles? How long can everyone else keep shooting them down?" That's a good question, but Iran doesn't need a lot of weapons to tie up the Strait and frustrate Trump, nor is the US and Israel likely to compel surrender (if indeed any side has any real idea what that might entail). So this could be a long and pointless war.

  • [03-17]: How Trump's war with Iran is helping Putin: "The spiraling conflict is a lifeline for Russia's leader." I don't think Putin needed a lifeline, but this war gives him a lot of options.

  • [03-20]: Here's how Iran could become a "forever war": "'Mowing the grass,' explained." That's the term Israel has used for its periodic sieges on Gaza, which brutal as they were failed to prevent the uprising of Oct. 7, 2023, but it establishes two salient points: one is that the war never ends; the other is that the approach is fundamentally dehumanizing and sadistic. One should note that this affects both sides: the victims obviously, but also the tormentors, who must continue to live in fear that their crimes will catch up with them. The power of this fear is what ultimately turned Israelis from fear to genocide. As noted here, "the limiting factor of this strategy is the White House's tolerance for war." That's been increasing ever since Bush launched his GWOT (or maybe since WWII), but still is far from Israeli levels. I'm reminded of a story of Ben Gurion talking to DeGaulle, and offering him help with Algeria. DeGaulle replied with something like, "you mean you want us to turn into you?" DeGaulle thought better, and gave up Algeria. Israelis may feel like they're on top of the world right now, but they're up there alone, not just hated by their victims, but increasingly viewed with shame by everyone else. That's not a good way to live.

  • [03-20]: Why the US wants to protect Iran's oil and gas: "The Mideast energy truce is breaking down." Trump has some very deranged ideas about energy, which includes vastly overrating the importance of oil and underrating the fragility of an economic system which he wants to make even more dependent on oil. One weird thing is that his sanction wars (with Russia, Venezuela, and Iran until he blew it up) mostly had the effect of inflating gas prices, which also benefited his Saudi and American donors, without unduly disturbing American voters, who had no idea how cheap gas would be if all the spigots were flowing. Yet having worked so hard to prop up prices, now he's panicking that they're suddenly too high. Plus, he's a greedy bastard, so his ideal solution to Venezuela and Iran is to steal all the oil he thinks is so valuable. Yet, here both his allies and his enemies are busy blowing up the resources he wants to corner — resources that his advisers, no doubt, promised he could capture when they signed him up for the war. This is the only part of the war that's actually funny, not least because it's going to drive everyone else to renewables, while the US turns into a technological backwater.

• Al Jazeera [03-02]: Rubio suggests US strikes on Iran were influenced by Israeli plans: This makes it pretty clear that Israel is directing US foreign policy:

  US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has suggested that a planned Israeli attack on Iran determined the timing of Washington's assault on the government in Tehran.

  The top diplomat told reporters on Monday that Washington was aware Israel was going to attack Iran, and that Tehran would retaliate against US interests in the region, so US forces struck pre-emptively.

  "We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action," Rubio said after a briefing with congressional leaders.

  "We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties."

• Michael Hudson [03-02]: The US/Israeli attack was to prevent peace, not advance it.

• Jonathan Larsen [03-02]: US troops were told Iran War is for "Armageddon," return of Jesus: "Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military." This story is also reported by:

  • Oscar Rickett [03-03]: US troops were told Iran war 'anointed by Jesus' to bring on Armageddon, watchdog says.

• Vijay Prashad [03-03]: A war that cannot be won: Israel and the United States bomb Iran: Of course, I agree with this conclusion, but that's largely because I subscribe to the broader assertion, that no war can ever be won. The best you can do is to lose a bit less than the other guys, but that does little to redeem your losses. I think this is true even when you downgrade your ambitions: instead of regime destruction and regeneration, which happened in Germany and Japan after WWII, or the occupation and propping up of quisling governments that the US attempted in Afghanistan and Iraq, Trump seems to have adopted Israel's Gaza model which is that of periodically "mowing the grass," hitting Iran repeatedly in a forever war that ultimately points toward genocide.

• Michael Arria:

  • [03-03]: The US media goes to war on Iran: "The US media is predictably spreading government propaganda and ignoring Israel's role as it cheers on the war against Iran and pushes for regime change."

  • [03-05]: War Powers resolution fails in Senate as Democrats scramble to figure out position on Iran war: Vote in favor of establishing some limits was 47-53, with only Rand Paul and John Fetterman breaking party lines.

• Philip Weiss [03-03]: Rubio confirms the heresy: the US went to war in Iran because of Israel: "The heresy of Walt and Mearsheimer's Israel lobby theory was the claim that Israel and its supporters pushed the US into war. Marco Rubio has not confirmed this analysis when he admitted that Trump went to war with Iran because of Israel."

• Zach Beauchamp

  • [03-03]: How does the Iran war end? "Regime change isn't likely. Here's what is." Early speculation, which inevitably leans toward optimism (hence "will end"), although the author eventually mentions "tail risk," which is a subtle way of saying "who fucking knows?"

  • [03-13]: The Iran war is not a video game: "Based memes, real blood." This starts with examples (see the article for links):

    On Wednesday, the New York Times published the preliminary findings of a US investigation into the recent airstrike on Shajarah Tayyebeh, an elementary school for girls in the Iranian city of Minab. The investigation confirmed what all public evidence had pointed to: that an American Tomahawk missile destroyed the school, killing roughly 175 people per Iranian estimates — most of whom were children. . . .

    The day after this damning news report, the White House released a video depicting the Iran war as a Nintendo game.

    The video, set to jaunty childlike music, depicts the United States as a player in various Wii Sports games — tennis, golf, bowling, etc. When the player character hits a hole in one, or bowls a strike, it cuts to real-life footage of a US bomb hitting an Iranian target. "Hole in one!" the Nintendo announcer declares, as we watch human lives being erased. . . .

    Various official X accounts have posted videos intercutting real bombings in Iran with clips from more violent video games, war films like Braveheart, sports highlights, and speeches from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth set to movie-trailer-style epic music.

    War is not hell, for this White House — it is fun.

    Beauchamp goes on to unpack this at some length, even citing Baudrillard, and concluding:

    The wartime sizzle reels are another manifestation of this ethos. Built not to persuade a neutral audience, but rather to appeal to those already-bought in, their primary service is thought-deadening: replacing any serious consideration of consequences with collective reveling in memes. "When you didn't want the US involved with Iran but the submarine kill videos are sick," one popular right-wing X account tweeted, with a GIF of an ambivalent Larry David posted below the text.

    It thus is not just collective self-deception at work for the administration and its very online supporters: It is collective exculpation. The crimes at Minab, and anywhere else, pale in comparison to sick kills.

  • [03-17]: A top Trump aide resigned over Iran. Liberals should stay away from him. "Antiwar antisemitism is still antisemitism." Well sure, don't pretend that he's a great guy — I mean, he was working for Trump, and got that job out of some kind of ideological loyalty to Trump — but why not except his gift for what it is: even Joe Kent says that Trump had no grounds for going to war, and lied when he said he did. How hard is that?

    • Philip Weiss [03-20]: Instead of taking Joe Kent's claims seriously, the media is disregarding him as an antisemite.

• Mitchell Plitnick:

  • [03-04]: Debunking the lies of the Iran War. Lies include: "Iran nuclear weapons program"; "imminent threat"; "underground missiles"; Pahlavi ("a marker for the general lack of any vision of what happens as a result of this criminal attack").

  • [03-06]: The war on Iran is forcing Gulf states to reconsider regional strategy as the US and Israel lead the region into uncertainty: "Iran's retaliatory attacks on its neighbors, and the US failure to plan for them, are forcing the Gulf Cooperation Council states to reconsider their regional strategies and their relationship with Washington." The Gulf states are by far the most vulnerable targets for Iranian retaliation, which can be justified by their allowance of US bases and other military and economic ties. They have to start wondering whether their alliance is worth the costs — especially given that they have no control or influence over what the US and Israel do.

  • [03-14]: How aligned are the US and Israel's goals in Iran? That's a good question, and I suspect the answer is not very close. Israel realizes that Iran has never been a serious threat, although the token support they've provided for Hizbullah and Hamas has been good for propaganda, especially with the Americans. They'd like nothing more than for the US to fight Iran, while they focus on Lebanon and the Palestinians (especially in the West Bank). The US, on the other hand, does have interests, especially around the Persian Gulf, that are threatened, and which will make it hard to sustain a long war, or even tolerate a short one. The US also has interests in Europe and Asia, perhaps elsewhere, that will be stressed by this war. And Trump, even more than Netanyahu, is starting off with little popular support, even for war. Trump never expected a long, debilitating war. He was told this would be quick and clean, that Iran would topple, and that he'd be seen as a great liberator. He was conned by people with ulterior motives, and those aren't Trump's motives (which mostly are to make money, which means keeping his Arab allies happy, and inflating his tortured ego). It remains to be seen whether he can figure out a way to act on his doubts, but he did corner Netanyahu into a ceasefire in Gaza.

• Robert Malley/Stephen Wertheim [03-05]: Of course Trump bombed Iran. They rightly accuse Trump, then let him off the hook:

  President Trump's attack on Iran is astonishing in its audacity, aggression and lawlessness. Mr. Trump ordered strikes in the midst of negotiations with a nation that posed no remotely imminent threat to the United States. He did nothing to prepare his country for war. Now he's offering a dizzying array of rationales and objectives, caught in a maelstrom of his own making.

  Beyond breaking with precedent, Mr. Trump also broke with himself. In three straight presidential campaigns, he criticized American military adventures in the Middle East, relying on this stance to distinguish his "America First" mantra from rival Republicans and Democrats alike. "I'm not going to start wars," he vowed on election night in 2024. "I'm going to stop wars."

  Yet for all its Trumpian characteristics, this war is the logical conclusion of how the United States has long dealt with Iran. For decades, presidents have depicted the Islamic Republic not just as a pernicious presence in the Middle East but also as an intolerable danger to the United States that no diplomatic deal could redress. When politicians inflate a threat and stigmatize peaceful means of handling it, an enterprising leader will one day reach for a radical solution.

  Trump could simply have said no, and no one would have criticized him. Attacking Iran was always bad policy, for many reasons. But while his predecessors didn't make that same mistake, they did so little to prevent it from happening that Trump figured he not only had a green light, but attacking Iran would just prove that he's the one president who has the guts to do the deed. Biden could at the very least have revived the JCPOA deal, ending Netanyahu's hysteria about Iranian nukes. Obama could have negotiated a better deal, one that Trump would have found harder to break. Bush and Clinton and/or Bush could simply have buried the hatchet — especially if they had delivered on reasonable peace proposals at the time. Carter and Reagan could have acknowledged that US support for the Shah had harmed most Iranians, and made some amends to keep the situation from deteriorating. War is always the end result of diplomatic failures, and everyone share blame for that aspect of the war on Iran. But only Trump was wacko enough to pull the trigger.

• James North [03-05]: Lies, distortions, and propaganda: how the US mainstream media coverage on Iran hides the truth: "Even those familiar with the biased US mainstream covers of the Middle East are shocked at how bad the reporting on the US-Israel war on Iran has been."

• Peter Beinart [03-06]: Iran is not an existential threat: "Iran poses no significant danger to Israel, let alone [to the] the US." I think that's what he meant in the subhed. The question of whether the US could undermine Israel is a different one, and even more hypothetical. One might as well ask whether Israel could destroy the US. (If so, Trump seems to be their Trojan Horse.)

• Brian Karem:

  • [03-06]: With Iran, confusion is the point: "The Trump administration's jumbled reasoning for war with Iran is part of the strategy."

  • [03-20]: Who still stop Trump on Iran? "As the war escalates and the president digs in, the White House says 'Nobody tells him what to do.'" Much of what I think is based on models of how I have observed people functioning. One thing I've noticed with presidents is that they usually start out cautious and tentative: the job is overwhelming, there is so much they don't understand about it, and they're worried about screwing up, so they look for consensus among their aides, and avoid moves that seem risky. On the other hand, as they settle in, they figure out what they can and cannot get away with, and everyone around them is so flattering they build up ever increasing confidence. Trump fits this model, to a rather extreme degree. Consequently, he has no aides who can question let alone challenge him, and he has many who are full or shit ideas, often ones that he is partial to. So it's hard to imagine anyone in a position to stop him, or even to nudge him into any slightly less self-destructive orbit. It's even becoming hard to see how our damaged democracy stop him. On the other hand, wars tend to impact regardless of how you try to spin them.

• Faris Giacaman [03-06]: Israel is using the 'Gaza doctrine' in Lebanon and Iran: The "old doctrine" was simply an extension of the British version of collective punishment for any transgressions against Israeli power: each and every offense would be met by an overwhelming reprisal, not necessarily directed against whoever was responsible. (During the 2nd Intifade, Israel made a habit of demolishing parts of Arafat's headquarters every time Hamas unleashed a suicide bomber. Needless to say, that wasn't much of a deterrent to Hamas.)

  October 7 changed this equation. "Mowing the lawn" was no longer enough, and neither was keeping the population blockaded in an open-air prison. The new stage of the Dahiya doctrine became the Gaza genocide. After two years of catastrophic civilian punishment, sustained by American financial and military largesse, Israel is now seeking to apply elements of its conduct in Gaza outside of Palestine's borders. We now see this new doctrine, characterized by protracted wholesale annihilation, playing out in Lebanon and Iran.

  Whether this will be recognized as genocide remains to be seen, but the intent is largely the same. While applying the same level of destruction to Iran is probably impossible (at least without resorting to nuclear weapons), Israel sees Iran as a job for the Americans, and for now is focusing on Lebanon.

• Layla Yammine [03-06]: Millions at risk of displacement as Israel bombards Lebanon: "After 15 months of a fragile ceasefire, Lebanon woke up on March 2 to the familiar sounds of Israeli bombs. As the violence escalates and tens of thousands are displaced, Lebanon's social divisions threaten to worsen an already dire situation."

• Umair Irfan [03-06]: The false promise of energy independence: "The Iran war shows yet again that US oil is still vulnerable to foreign shocks."

• Daniel Bush/Olivia Ireland [03-06]: Trump demands 'unconditional surrender' from Iran: The phrase had rarely been used before FDR adopted it as a policy goal in 1943. It was at the time widely noted that conditions were almost always terms of surrender, and were frequently necessary to gain any sort of agreement. In 1945, Japan was allowed the substantial condition of sparing and keeping its emperor. So when Trump says this, he is not only mocking American history, he is exalting himself to a level of power no Iranian leader is likely to recognize:

  Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said: "There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!

  "After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.

  "IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!)."

  Trump is saying, "don't even think of trying to negotiate with me." The point was probably unnecessary, not just because he lacked the power to impose his will, but because he had proved that he couldn't be trusted to follow through on anything he agreed to. [PS: The article also reports on a phone call from Putin to Iran's president Pezeshkian, but not much on details.]

• Benjamin Hart [03-06]: A political-risk guru's biggest worry about Iran: Interview with Ian Bremmer ("founder of the Eurasia Group," a consultancy group that "has been helping the corporate and financial worlds understand and integrate political risk into their decision making"). He doesn't strike me as all that bright, or clear — at least I have no idea what he thinks that "biggest risk" is. But he does offer this:

  I think the fundamental challenge here is that Trump really believed that this could be Venezuela redux, and Venezuela went exceptionally well on a bunch of vectors. First of all, they got the guy they were trying to get. They brought him to justice, and they didn't kill him. Now he's going to face a trial. There were no American servicemembers killed. There were Venezuelan civilians killed, but the numbers were comparatively pretty small, especially compared to the numbers the Venezuelans have killed themselves. And it was popular, not just in the U.S. but across the region. Trump has now gotten a whole bunch of support from the Mexicans, more support on going after their narco-terrorists. And the same thing with Ecuador, which we saw in the last 48 hours. The Americans now have a better regime to work with in Venezuela, with the potential for private-sector investment and support from the IMF, and an economy that might actually work for the Venezuelan people. Literally on every front, this went about as well as you could expect. So Trump was like, Great, let's do that again. And this is not going to work that way on any front.

  I think he's way too quick to count Trump wins here. Is it really true that any time Mexico or Ecuador make a move against a drug kingpin, they're doing it at Trump's behest? Or because they were so impressed by Trump's snatching of Maduro? And just because they captured or killed someone, that's a success that will stand the test of time? I don't doubt that Trump's arrogance was boosted by the Maduro escapade — just like I don't doubt that Hitler's resolve to invade Poland got a boost from Chamberlain's cave-in at Munich. But that doesn't mean that Trump, any more than Hitler, drew the right lesson.

• Ted Snider [03-09]: US and Iran were close to a deal before Trump chose war: This story has been fairly widely reported, and makes some sense, but with war plans clearly in the works, one doubts that Trump would have made any concessions to allow Iran to save face, and perhaps also that Israel was so much in control that any agreement would have been rendered impossible. What is certainly true is that an agreement to end Iran's uranium enrichment, which was the essential component for a nuclear weapons, could have been achieved, had the US and Israel shown the slightest interest in a peaceful resolution. But they had other points to make, and frankly weren't worried about uranium in the first place.

• Max Boot [03-09]: There are two winners in Iran. Neither one is America. "Oil disruption benefits Russia, as does less US aid for Ukraine. And Iran distracts from China." The point about Russia and oil prices is pretty obvious. The one about China is mostly neocon fever dream. It is unlikely that China will take advantage of American distraction in Iran to attempt to seize Taiwan, because they probably realize that the real problem there isn't US deterrence but the unreadiness of the people to rejoin the mainland. Perhaps they could force the issue, but as long as reunification remains a future possibility, they have little reason to be impatient. The only thing likely to force their hand is if the US gets overly aggressive in securing independence for Taiwan — which seems to be the goal of the anti-China hawks, spoiling for a fantastical display of American omnipotence, oblivious to the risks of actual war. But note that there is nothing here about Israel as a winner. While the war certainly adds to Netanyahu's reputation as someone who can wrap Trump around his finger, it doesn't objectively help Israel at all. It just plunges them deeper into a wider war, which beyond providing cover for further "ethnic cleansing" creates more risk than reward.

• Douglas J Feith [03-09]: Trump is trying something new in Iran. Hold on tight. "Critics demanding a 'day after' plan are confusing this presidency with that of George W Bush." Cited here in case you want to hear the latest thoughts from the guy Iraq War Gen. Tommy Franks called the "stupidest fucking guy on the planet," and who was later lampooned by Philip Weiss in [2008-07-30]: How did Doug Feith become a ridiculous figure?. Feith actually does a fairly good job of highlighting how Trump is different from Bush, and what the design is of his lose-lose-lost logic. He fails to note what the two have in common, which is a belief that they can kill their way to peace, and that God always smiles on America, so wars just always work out for the best. And he chides Democrats:

  Ironically, critics from the Democratic Party and elsewhere who are demanding to know the "day after" plan are implying that Trump should adopt Bush's outlook.

  That remark might have been clever, but he forgets that Bush didn't have a "day after" plan either. All he had was the "stupidest fucking guy on the planet" assigned to the job.

• Kate McMahon [03-09]: Israel's goal in Iran is not just regime change, but complete collapse: "For Israel, a failed Iranian state fractured by civil war is preferable to any other outcome." That's largely because they can't imagine any better outcome. That's because they don't want peace. They just want an enemy they can strike with impunity.

• Ron Paul [03-10]: Will the dollar be a casualty of the Iran war? I'm always curious about unseen risks of war, and don't doubt that this one will have hitherto unimagined impacts on world finance and trade. I'd be more worried if I thought Paul had the slightest idea how these things work, but he still hasn't gotten past the idea that you need enough gold to match the value of everything else.

• Jonathan Cook [03-10]: Israel planned war on Iran for 40 years. Everything else is a smoke screen: I don't doubt that there are documents supporting this, as well as Netanyahu's testimony of dreaming of war with Iran for over 40 years, but I've long thought that Iran was the smokescreen, and that Israel's real interests scarcely extended beyond the occupied territories, specifically their eternal quest to create "a land without [Palestinian] people" for a people who wants it all."

• Michael T Klare [03-10]: America's Gaza: "The bombing of Tehran." The population of the Tehran metropolitan area is 16.8 million, about 18% of Iran's total population of 93 million.

• Benjamin Hart [03-11]: Israel doesn't want to beat Iran. It wants to break it. Interview with Danny Citrinowicz ("senior researcher in the Iran and Shi'ite Axis Program at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies"), who previously summed up Israel's position as:

  If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people in the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn't care less about the future . . . [or] the stability of Iran.

  He also adds, "In Israel, there is no opposition on the Iranian issue. . . . But people think Iran is the country that wants to destroy us, and you can always justify war with Iran regardless of the price we're going to pay." And Netanyahu is loving this:

  He's considering pushing the election a little bit earlier because he thinks he can build on this. You don't hear the opposition leaders talking about the war. Politically, it's a win-win situation from all sides: He's working with the U.S., so there are amazing operational opportunities. Nobody's challenging him, nobody can counter him, and he's not going to trial because there's a war. And none of this will hurt him in a very close and tight election.

  So look, as long as President Trump will continue this war, whether Trump is there a week, a month, a year — it doesn't matter. We will be there.

• Eli Clifton/Ian S Lustick [03-12]: How the Israeli tail wags the American dog: "The US attack on Iran may be less about American security than about the priorities of Israel's government." Objectively that's certainly true. The only real security is in having others have no reason to attack you, which is the opposite of what one would expect after you attack them. Note also that we're not talking about security for Israel here, just interests. Israel's (or Netanyahu's) is to keep American military and financial aid flowing so Israel can keep operating their war machine, and using the threats they generate as cover for dispossessing Palestinians in their occupied lands.

• Sasan Fayazmanesh [03-13]: It's Israel, stupid!:

  As I have written in my academic works, and in CounterPunch, Netanyahu, Israel's chief devil incarnate and the butcher of Gaza, did not take no for an answer and kept pushing every US administration to attack Iran. He had no success, until a deranged man, surrounded by conduits for Israel, including his son-in-law and a real estate friend, took control of the US government.

  A man who to this day, cannot even pronounce the name of the Iranian general he ordered to be assassinated in 2020, or the name of the "supreme leader" of Iran whom he helped to be murdered in 2026, finally did what Netanyahu wanted to be done: attack Iran on behalf of Israel. The first attack, as I wrote in my July 2025 essay for this journal, did not accomplish Netanyahu's goal of a "regime change" and restoration of monarchy in Iran. So, Netanyahu kept up the pressure. He visited the White House multiple times since July 2025 to plan death and destruction in Iran.

• Mike Lofgren [03-14]: Why the Iran was was inevitable: "There were many reasons behind Trump's decision to attack — but none of them were about US national security."

• Deepa Parent [03-14]: 'You are all worse than each other': anti-regime Iranians turn on Trump: "Mood among some in Iran shifts from hope of being rescued to dismay at destruction of infrastructure, culture and lives." I doubt if anyone in Iran ever looked to outsiders for "hope of being rescued. The best thing outsiders can do for the beleaguered people under a regime they despise is to leave them alone, or short of that limit their efforts to peripheral issues, like limiting trade and foreign investments, while reporting on human rights abuses. That is roughly what happened in the ending of the regimes in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites. On the other hand, vigorous sanctions against Cuba and North Korea, and Iraq before the invasion, only strengthened harsh regimes. This piece quotes someone foolish enough to think that Trump's strikes might help topple the regime, but that person's already disillusioned. It shouldn't have taken actual strikes to realize that Trump and Israel have their own reasons for war, and the welfare of the people of Iran has nothing to do with them.

• Alfred W McCoy [03-15]: How the past whispers to the present in Iran: Good historical review of US mishandling of Iran, comparing this new war to the 1956 Suez Crisis, what he calls an instance of "micro-militarism," which is really just a vote for violence without thinking through how much you are risking.

• Bassam Haddad [03-15]: How might the US-Israeli war on Iran fail?: "Every week the US-Israeli war grinds on without a decisive conclusion becomes a lesson in the limits of US power. A campaign initially meant to reinforce US and Israeli supremacy may instead signal its decline." This doesn't go beyond the obvious, other than to stress that the attacks have only consolidated the regime's power in Iran.

• Richard Florida [03-16]: Could this be the end of Dubai?

• Lauren Aratani [03-18]: Trump waives US shipping law for oil and gas in bid to lower prices: "Trump issued a 60-day waiver of the Jones Act, a law passed in 1920 as a way to protect the US shipping industry. The law prevents foreign-flagged ships that carry commodities like oil and gas from traveling through US waterways."

• Michelle Goldberg

  • [03-18]: Joe Kent's resignation letter is dangerous because it's half true: Kent was Trump's director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He resigned, admitting that there was no imminent threat from Iran, and blaming Israel for spreading misinformation that led to Trump's decision to attack. Kent is a former Green Beret, who moved into counterterrorism (and politics) after his wife was killed by an ISIS suicide bomber. He could be called a right-wing nut case, but he's also "half-right," which Goldberg admits while worrying that "it taps into old antisemitic tropes about occult Jewish control," and "the more [the war] drags on, the more I worry about a full-blown American 'dolchstoßlegende,' a modern version of the stab-in-the-back myth that German nationalists used to blame Jews for their humiliation in World War I." I'd note that those tropes only persist on the right, where they are outnumbered by neocons and Christian Zionists who envy and/or worship Israeli power. Still, dispelling them will be difficult given how Netanyahu brags about his manipulation of Trump, the obvious dissembling of Israel lobbyists (Jonathan Greenblatt, head of ADL, is quoted here), and their insistence that opposition to Israel's caste system and genocide equates to antisemitism (let's call this the power of suggestion to otherwise naive people). Also that no matter how bad the Iran war goes for the US, it won't result in the degree of defeat Germany suffered in 1918 (or France in 1871, where a similar myth led to the Dreyfuss Affair).

  • [03-16]: Trump is trying to bully America into supporting his war. It won't work.

• Eldar Mamedov [03-18]: Israel's assassination game: Take all the pragmatists off the board: "The killing of Ali Larijani paves the way for more hardliners to fill the void, and conveniently for some, less chance to end the war peacefully."

• Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom [03-18]: Iran war shows perils of America's Mideast bases: "US outposts are sitting targets for Iranian strikes." I imagine they are fairly well protected, but they open their host countries up for attacks against softer targets. Iran is going to be looking for some kind of assurance that they won't be attacked again. The most reassuring proof I can think of would be the the US to remove its bases. This would have to be initiated by the host countries, who should be having second thoughts about allowing aggressive militarists to camp on their lawns. This could be combined with normalized relations and armament limits that would build trust and benefit all. And if this happened, Trump could hardly refuse to leave.

• Kelley Beaucar Vlahos [03-18]: Vast number of Trump voters want him to declare victory and get out: "A new poll showing cracks in MAGA support and no interest in boots on the ground."

• Arron Reza Merat [03-18]: Israel has nuclear weapons. It may use them. Worse, Netanyahu may trick Trump into using them. The prospect I can imagine is that Iran can resist conventional bombing indefinitely, while keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed, inflicting sporadic damage on Gulf targets, while Trump (not Israel) grows frustrated and impatient. Iran tries to hide its arms factories, moving most of them deep underground. This includes its stockpiles of uranium, any centrifuges that have survived, and parts for repairing or making more ones. The US supply of conventional "bunker buster" bombs proves inadequate, but they've developed nuclear warheads specifically as "bunker busters." They may feel that aiming them at remote targets can be justified, and go ahead. Global opinion condemns them, but doesn't stop them from launching another, and another, by which point someone proposes that they threaten a small city if Iran doesn't surrender. (My first thought was the holy city of Qom, but I was surprised to find it has amassed 1.2 million people, so they might want to pick somewhere a bit smaller for a demonstration.) Of course, if/when Iran develops their own nuke, the shoe will be on the other foot, at which point US and/or Israeli panic could very well ensue (and this is where Israeli panic could race ahead of American).

• Robert Kuttner [03-18]: Israel's manipulation of Trump on Iran: "The worse the Iran war goes, the more blame is likely to be directed at Israel, and by association the Jews."

• Blaise Malley [03-19]: Tulsi Gabbard distances US war goals further from Israel's: "In the congressional hot seat Thursday, the DNI and CIA director John Ratcliffe insisted Tel Aviv was focused on regime change but Washington was not."

• Jason Wilson [03-19]: West Point analysis warns that strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle US defense industry: "Report shows how minerals critical to defense readiness have seen 'near total' disruption in seaborne trade." Take sulphur, for instance, which is used to extract copper and cobalt from low-grade ores. "The current sulfur shock is becoming a copper problem, and that copper problem risks quickly becoming a readiness and resilience problem." They call this a "prelogistical crisis," which is to say a crisis which will be ignored until it's too late.

• Alex Shephard [03-19]: This is how forever wars begin: "First, with lies and bombs. Then, with a request for hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars. Will Congress cave to the White House yet again?"

• Ryan Cooper [03-20]: Ol' Donny Trump has really stepped in it this time: "In Iran, he finally created a jam for himself it will not be easy to wriggle out of." There's a reference here to an interesting piece from 2024 called Revisiting the tanker war, which Cooper sums up here:

  The Pentagon has filing cabinets stuffed with war plans dealing with this possibility. The U.S. might take out most of Iran's formal military, but even back in the 1980s during the Tanker War, when Iran was much less developed than it is today, the Navy found it very difficult to stop irregular forces from laying mines at night, or planting limpet bombs, conducting missile attacks from speedboats, and so on. Operation Earnest Will, an escort mission to keep the strait open, required more than two dozen ships operating simultaneously (including support from both the British and the French), went on for more than a year, and saw significant casualties.

  Today, not only do we have drone technology making these types of attacks much more dangerous and effective, but also the U.S. Navy is much smaller than it was at the end of the Cold War. In particular, it has almost none of the frigates and minesweepers that were core to the Tanker War's escort mission.

  Cooper also gets into the "how will this end" question, suggesting that "the easiest and least painful way to end Trump's war is likely just to give up and let Iran seize the strait" — assuming they would be content to collect tolls to allow ships to pass, but he doubts that would satisfy them (and obviously it wouldn't satisfy Trump or Netanyahu).

  Making everything worse is Trump's alliance with Israel, whose government is evidently bent on turning Iran into a stygian nightmare of death and suffering. As noted above, the destruction of Ras Laffan was touched off by an Israeli strike — and it happened after Trump asked Israel not to. Iran struggles to hit back at Israel, but it can hit at the allies of Israel's most important ally, and increase the pressure on the global economy.

  What Trump usually does when one of his dotard plots backfires is to retreat — chicken out, as Wall Street has called it — and pretend it never happened. That sort of works with something like tariffs, where long-term damage takes a long time to appear. But it likely won't be possible here. . . .

  So if Trump tries to cut and run, he will face one of the few things he reacts to — a storm of criticism on television — plus fierce pushback from the D.C. blob. Even if he were to try to do it, Israel almost certainly would bait him back into the conflict by inciting more tit-for-tat bombing.

  If Trump doesn't cut and run, he faces a hole in global energy needs that grows by about 20 million barrels of oil and 20 billion cubic feet of natural gas every day, with steadily increasing damage to the delicate energy infrastructure all around the Persian Gulf that will take months or years to repair, and more and more American soldiers wounded or killed.

  It would be a thorny situation even for the wisest statesmen in world history. Alas, all we have is an elderly idiot whose primary method of diplomacy is posting barely literate screeds on his personal social media site. Folks, it isn't looking good.

• Yumna Patel [03-20]: Anger in the GCC spreads as Iran retaliates over US-Israeli strikes: "These are signs of the growing impatience of Iran's Arab neighbors with Iran's tactic of striking at them in response to Israeli or American attacks. But the anger of the Gulf states isn't only reserved for Iran." A lot of stress here, which could crack up several ways.

• Bryan Walsh [03-20]: The pain from the Strait of Hormuz crisis will be felt far beyond the pump: "Four billion people are fed by fossil fuels. The Iran war is showing just how fragile that is." There's a chart here that argues that about half of the world's current population (8 billion) wouldn't be able to live today without synthetic fertilizers, which are mostly made with oil, with about 30% normally shipped through the now closed Strait of Hormuz. This production and distribution has developed with little thought from political leaders, especially ones as stupid and careless as Trump and Netanyahu, who have now endangered the entire world.

• Caitlin Dewey [03-20]: What everyday life is like for Iranians right now: "Iranians are still trying to work, study, and parent under the constant threat of both airstrikes and regime violence." This is a good question, but to answer it they're interviewing Roya Rastegar, a co-founder of Iranian Diaspora Collective, which is to say someone not in Iran, claiming only to be "in touch with a network of people on the ground in Iran," and even so "the blackout makes it almost impossible to hear about conditions on the ground in real time." So cue to say whatever you think is happening.

• Ian Welsh [03-20]: This is the end of the American empire. Period. Opens with:

  My friends, this is it. America isn't going to win this war, unless they use nukes, but even if I'm wrong and they squeeze out their .01% chance of success, it is over. The army is exhausted and can't be re-armed in less than a decade, with Chinese help. The Middle East will be in ruins. The AI bubble will crash out without money and resources from the Gulf. Everyone's going to turn hard from hydrocarbons to renewables, especially solar, and that means China is going to make absolute bank.

  I'm a little confused when he demotes this to "the second stupidest war decision I've seen in my entire life" ("the first was Ukraine refusing a very generous peace deal," something I somehow missed, but I don't doubt that Ukraine was solvable had Obama, Trump, and Biden shown any actual concern for the country they were arming), and it's probable that his life is a good deal shorter a period of time than mine. I also doubt that "the Israelis almost certainly have video of Trump raping kids," but in the same sentence he hits on a truism: "Americans can't admit they're losing." So caveat lector here, please do your own thinking. My thinking is divided between: yes, the empire may not be finished, but it is bound to be severely diminished; and, well, it wasn't really an empire in the first place, just a network of bases and arms placed at the service of global capitalism, which probably doesn't need them anymore (not least because countries like China and Russia are already part of that global capitalism, and others like Iran and Venezuela want to be, just not on America's terms).

• Brian McGlinchey [03-20]: Jion the US military — kill and die for Israel: This seems like a fair and useful debunking of many of the propaganda points used to indict Iran, turning them into a suitable target for US-Israeli aggression. Whether the US is doing its part for Israel or for its own reasons can be debated.

• Robert Wright [03-21]: War isn't a zero-sum game. I happen to be reading Wright's 2000 book Nonzero, so I'm deep into this sort of logic:

  But, that inconvenience aside, the fact that war is non-zero-sum seems like potentially good news. If nations rationally pursue their self-interest, shouldn't the knowledge that war often makes both sides worse off discourage them from starting wars?

  In theory, maybe. But, back in the real world, there's a massively destructive war going on in the Middle East.

  Well, we might as well put it to good use! I think viewing the Iran War in game theoretical terms can shed light on the question of why humankind seems so bad at respecting the logic of game theory — why nations keep getting into wars that, history tells us, may inflict huge costs on all concerned.

  While I don't want to distract from the very enlightening discussion that follows, I already have two points to make. One is that the weights get distorted when you absolutely don't care for how much harm is done to the other side (or even more if you regard that harm as a positive for your side). This is unfortunately common. Even countries that see themselves as liberators struggle to act in ways that show concern. Then there are countries that are totally self-concerned, like Israel. Second, some countries give themselves a handicap, by assuming that they will be attacked, and counting the losses they could suffer in that event as gains when they attack first.

  Well, I also have a third, which is that hardly anyone thinks to anticipate the long-range costs of seeming to win. Israel's stunning "win" in 1967 led directly to the 1970-71 and 1973 wars, and indirectly to dozens more, including the current war with Iran. Japan's big wins in 1895 and 1905 led to their massive defeat in WWII. Even before such a final reckoning, the arrogance and belligerence took a psychic toll, on the warriors as well as their victims. It's been said that the worst thing that ever happened to the US was "winning" WWII. The US became a very different country after that, much to the woe of the world and to ourselves.

  And maybe there's a fourth point, which is that the people who decide to go to war simply aren't very good at figuring out why. Wright finally gets around to this:

  I listen to a lot of podcasts, and some of them are what you could call foreign policy establishment podcasts — they're produced by, say, the Council on Foreign Relations or some very buttoned up DC think tank, or they feature conversations among the kinds of people who work at such places. And, almost invariably, the people on these podcasts, in gravely assessing the motivations that start and then steer wars, stay at the level of geopolitics and national interest and assiduously avoid the level of domestic politics. To hear them talk you'd think that Trump was Metternich — or at least a dimmer version of Metternich — rather than a former Reality TV star who is just trying to keep his ratings up by staging a new spectacle that's more eye-catching than the last one.

  This kind of credulous discourse is a disservice to the nation. It sustains the myth that the people who steer American foreign policy are by and large worth taking seriously. They're not. The politicians who steer it are for the most part just trying to get re-elected — and will serve whichever cluster of special interests can further that cause. And the "experts" who help steer it, including many of the voices on these podcasts, are people who managed to get hired by think tanks that, for the most part, are funded by the same special interests that are corrupting those politicians.

• Karim Sadjadpour [03-23]: Iran is trying to defeat America in the living room: "The regime knows that its best ally against American power is American public opinion."

  Although opinion polls, oil prices, and the number of projectiles remaining are measurable, the fate of the war will be determined in part by the resolve of both parties, something far more difficult to measure. A democratic president's will to fight is constrained by elections, polls, gas prices, and the news cycle. An authoritarian regime fighting for its survival answers to none of those pressures. Reagan had resolve until Congress didn't. Bush had resolve until six in 10 Americans called his war a mistake. This asymmetry of resolve is Iran's greatest structural advantage. Tehran wins by not losing; Trump loses by not winning.

• Kelly Grieco [03-23]: The "Iran is losing" narrative is tracking the wrong number: "Yes, missile and drone launch rates are down 90%+. But hit rate (or confirmed impacts per projectile fired) has been climbing steadily since Day 1." The thread provides more numbers. "And on the metric that matters (cost imposed per missile fired) Iran may actually be getting more effective as the war goes on, not less."

• Yun Li [03-23]: Volume in stock and oil futures surged minutes before Trump's market-turning post.

  • Paul Krugman [03-24]: Treason in the futures markets: Takes a closer look at this event. I hate the word "treason," and wouldn't use it here, but this sure looks suspicious, even compared to the level of graft we've come to expect. As I recall, back during the Bush admin, some genius wanted to create a futures market on terror attacks, purely as a way to harness the genius of markets as an intelligence source. The idea suffered a crib death, as the prospect of betting on terrorism was hard even for neocons to swallow. New "prediction markets" raise the same concerns about moral hazard, but they're run by the private sector, so nobody asked permission, and this administration won't lift a finger, possibly because ideologically they want rackets unregulated, or perhaps just because they want to use their insider knowledge to play?

    This "sharp and isolated jump in volume" — which you can see for the oil futures market in the chart at the top of this post — was especially bizarre because there were no major news items — no major publicly available news items — to drive sudden big market transactions. The story would be baffling, except that there's an obvious explanation: Somebody close to Trump knew what he was about to do, and exploited that inside information to make huge, instant profits.

    This wasn't the first time something like this has happened under Trump. There were large, suspicious moves in the prediction market Polymarket before previous attacks on Iran and Venezuela. But this front-running of U.S. policy was really large: the Financial Times estimates the sales of oil futures in that magic minute Monday morning at about $580 million, and that doesn't count the purchases of stock futures.

• Katherine Doyle/Courtney Kube/Dan DeLuce [03-25]: Inside Trump's daily video montage briefing on the Iran war: "The montage, which typically runs for about two minutes, has raised concerns among some of the president's allies that he may not be receiving the complete picture of the war."

• Dave DeCamp: He writes short news items for Antiwar.com. These are merely the most recent:

  • [03-25]: Suspected US airstrike kills seven Iraqi soldiers.

  • [03-25]: Iranian official suggests Yemen's Houthis could close Bab el-Mandeb Strait if US launches ground attacks.

Epsteinmania: As Steven Colbert noted right after Trump started the war: "Fun fact: 'Epic Fury' [the name given to the "operation"] is an anagram for 'Forget Epstein.'" This abbreviated section suggests it's working (but I've never pushed the story hard).

• Elie Honig [03-06]: The Clintons have testified about Epstein. Will Trump be next? No. Nor an I sure he should, but I can't blame folks for asking. The Republicans opened up this can of worms, in one of their few efforts at bipartisanship. As noted, Hilary had nothing to offer, and the only reason for subpoenaing her was to put on the record something we already knew: that Bill sometimes operated on his own. As for Bill, after admitting "some truth of Clinton's claim that he 'did nothing wrong,' Honig continues:

  But the "saw nothing" part of his testimony is open to reasonable questioning. Consider, first, that Clinton's friendship with Epstein peaked in the early 2000s — right as Epstein was running his massive international child-sex-trafficking ring, according to the Justice Department's indictment of Epstein, which charged criminal conduct up until 2005. And this wasn't some passing relationship, some casual glad-handing of a potential donor. Clinton flew on Epstein's plane at least 16 times, sent a warm note to Epstein on his 50th birthday in 2003, and gave a glowing quote to New York Magazine for a 2002 Epstein profile. He also shows up in many photographs partying and swimming and hot-tubbing and receiving massages while with Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and others — including women whose identities have been redacted. (Clinton testified that he did not know and did not have sex with his hot-tub partner.) Yet, through it all, Clinton — a Yale-trained lawyer, reputed possessor of a genius-level IQ, two-term former president — had no idea at all that anything might have been awry, not even an "inkling."

SAVE America Act: "Republicans are pushing to get historically restrictive voter ID bill to the president's desk." Evidently "SAVE" stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, a program "initially made to check if non-citizens were using government benefits." But the proposed law reportedly is much more restrictive, requiring a "birth certificate or passport," something which "half of Americans don't have." People who have changed their names, especially married women, face further obstacles. (I have an expired passport and a "REAL ID" drivers license. Unclear whether either would work, although both are based on a valid birth certificate.) The bill also adds burdens to mail in ballots. (Trump wants to completely ban them.) The bill passed the House on Feb. 11, and is being debated in the Senate.

• Eliza Sweren-Becker/Owen Backskai [03-20]: New SAVE Act bills would still block millions of American from voting.

• Jelinda Montes [03-18]: Trump is going all in on the SAVE America Act. It could make voting harder for millions.

• Jamelle Bouie [03-18]: This is what the president is fixated on right now? He points out that the bill could backfire against Republicans, as it most clearly discriminates against several groups that broke for Trump last time, like women who changed their name for marriage, and uneducated people who never got a passport. I'd throw in older folk who lost track of their documentation (I may be one: I have an expired passport, which should still prove my citizenship, but does it?). Perhaps the biggest question is who has enough motivation to fight the bureaucracy just to vote? Still, Trump and his party cling to the notion that the fewer people who can vote, the better:

  The point of the SAVE Act, for them, is to use a ginned-up panic over noncitizen voting to disenfranchise the tens of millions of Americans who oppose the president and who have, as a result, been placed outside the political community. The SAVE Act embodies Trump and the Republican Party's astonishing contempt for the idea that a fair election is one in which you can vote without being hassled by the state.

The Oscars: Prodded on by my wife, I managed to watch most of the nominated pictures (without, sorry to say, enjoying them much), so I was better informed than usual. I also watched the whole show (on a delay from fixing dinner, so we could fast-forward through the commercials). In last week's Music Week, I wrote a bit about the movies in advance of the show. Maybe I'll follow up in the next Music Week?

• Adam Nayman [03-16]: The last human Oscars?: "This year's show was both steeped in nostalgia for what the Oscars used to mean and bristling with ambivalence about the shape of things to come."

• Margaret Hartmann [03-16]: All the Trump insults at the 2026 Oscars: Including the following:

• Eileen Jones [03-16]: Javier Bardem was a bright spot at the Oscars last night.

• Brandon Harris [03-10]: What can an Oscar mean for Palestinian stories? "This year's international feature category became a test of what narratives the Academy is willing to recognize." A look at The Voice of Hind Rajab.

• Glenn Kenny [03-16]: Never won an Oscar pool: "Hollywood's biggest night, which is why they snubbed Brigitte Bardot in death, I suppose." I too kept waiting for Bardot to get a mention in their quite long and generally good memorial segment.

Major Threads

Israel: Netanyahu finally got his war against Iran, which is mostly reported in the long Trump Bombs Iran section. Hezbollah offered enough of a reaction for Israel to renew its assault on Lebanon (not that, despite a "ceasefire," it had ever halted). But more importantly, the Iran war distracts the US from Israel's violations of the "Gaza Peace Plan," and provides cover for more aggression against Palestinians in the West Bank.

• Yakov Hirsch [03-04]: The War to Erase October 7: What 'The Atlantic' leaves out about Netanyahu and the US-Israeli assault on Iran: "The Atlantic's Yair Rosenberg recasts Benjamin Netanyahu as a tragic figure forced to take radical action after October 7, ignoring his long history of fomenting war and exploiting Jewish trauma to further himself and his Zionist ideology." The section on "Weaponizing Holocaust memory" is useful for understanding the psychology that underlies Israeli politics:

  This silence is not just personal to Rosenberg. It flows from a broader Hasbara Culture that treats Netanyahu's worldview as sacred. A certain cluster of "Never Again" journalists — Jeffrey Goldberg, Rosenberg, Kirchick, and others — have spent decades telling American readers that Israel's enemies should be read through Holocaust categories. Iran is not just a hostile state; it is Amalek. Hamas is not just a brutal, rejectionist movement; they are, as Rosenberg himself argues, the new Nazis who simply want to kill Jews. Anyone who doubts that framework is portrayed as naive at best, or dangerously indulgent of genocidal antisemitism at worst. . . .

  In Hasbara Culture's world, Netanyahu is not just another politician; he is the man who sees 1938 coming again. His constant talk of "existential threats" is treated not as rhetoric but as revelation. Once you accept that frame, questioning his motives becomes almost taboo. If you say he is exaggerating or exploiting the threat, you are implicitly saying Jews should not take existential danger seriously. If you suggest he is using Holocaust memory for political gain, you risk being lumped with the people who accuse "the Jews" of "using" the Holocaust.

  That is why, when Netanyahu throws around Amalek and Holocaust analogies, these journalists nod along. It is why they treated his Gaza campaign and now his Iran war primarily as responses to October 7, rather than as the culmination of a long political and ideological project. And the long political and ideological project is the revisionist Zionist program he inherited and perfected: a maximalist claim to the land between the river and the sea; permanent rejection of Palestinian sovereignty; and an "iron wall" ethic that treats overwhelming, exemplary violence as the only reliable guarantee of Jewish safety and supremacy. Read this way, his invocations of Amalek and the Holocaust are not just panic or trauma, but the moral vocabulary of a worldview that prefers endless war-management, de facto annexation, and regional work-arounds to any settlement that would concede equal rights to Palestinians — and that is exactly how Gaza, and now Iran, end up looking like destiny rather than choice.

  Rosenberg's article is here:

  • Yair Rosenberg [03-02]: The Israel of October 6 is never coming back: Wherein "a senior Obama official" described Netanyahu as "a chickenshit" ("too timid to pull the trigger").

• Tareq S Hajjaj:

  • [03-04]: Palestinians in Gaza fear famine returning as Israel cuts off food amid Iran war: "Once Israel and the US launched their war on Iran, Israel closed the crossings into Gaza and cut off all aid. Palestinians in the Strip now fear a return to famine amid food shortages and soaring prices."

  • [03-19]: Food shortages return to Gaza as Israel tightens aid restrictions under the cover of its war on Iran: "Israel's tightened restrictions on the entry of aid into Gaza since the US-Israeli war on Iran have led to shortages of basic necessities and an astronomical rise in prices, raising fears of a return to famine."

• Ross Barkan [03-06]: The day Israel lost America: "The Iran war sure looks like a breaking point."

• Qassam Muaddi:

  • [03-07]: Israel 'strangles' West Bank amid war on Iran: "With the world's attention focused on the US-Israeli war on Iran, Israel is making conditions unlivable for Palestinians in the West Bank. Residents say that every Israeli measures to 'strangle' Palestinians feels like it's 'irreversible.'"

  • [03-11]: Why is Israel trying to cause an 'explosion' in the West Bank? "Israel is cracking down on Palestinians in the West Bank and pushing the territory to the brink of a major conflagration."

• Mohammed R Mhawish [03-09]: The Iran war is a disaster for Gaza: "How the crisis leaves Gaza's 2 million people more friendless, isolated, and vulnerable than ever before."

• Ahmed Dremly/Ibtisam Mahdi [03-10]: 'The war is between Israel and Iran. Why should people in Gaza pay the price?': "After closures of Gaza's crossings drove up food casts and stalled medical evacuations, ongoing Israeli strikes raise fears of a renewed large-scale assault." One could also wonder why Iran should pay the price of Israel's war against Gaza. I fear it's reached the point where it no longer matters to Israel who they are hitting, as long as they are hitting someone else, showing the world that this is what they can and will do.

• Michael Arria [03-10]: US support for Israel continues to plummet, despite media's best efforts. "Last month, a Gallup poll found that 41% Americans now sympathize more with Palestinians, compared to 36% who say they sympathize more with Israelis." Further down, I saw a term I hadn't heard before: "Holocaust inversion," which is a new code for people who think Israel is guilty of genocide. This tries to force an analogy with "Holocaust denial," which is not uncommon (but probably exaggerated) among old-school antisemites. But the new charge is very different: those who are so charged not only acknowledge the Holocaust, they are consistent in applying the standard definition of genocide, regardless of who's doing the killing, and who's being killed.

• Elia Ayoub [03-11]: Israel's renewed war on Lebanon is about more than just Hezbollah: "After violating the 'ceasefire' 10,000 times, Israel is once again pounding Lebanon as its enduring thirst for war drives ever expanding ambitions."

• Oren Ziv [03-13]: 'Our coverage is not truthful': How Israel is censoring reporting on the war: "Barred from publishing details of Iranian missile impacts or interceptions, local and international journalists are struggling to tell the full story."

• Janet Abou-Elias [03-18]: US policy toward Lebanon is badly broken: "Washington has stoked a cycle of violence by prizing Israeli security over Lebanese stability." Sane people would realize that stability is essential for security, and focus on the basics. Israel has proven repeatedly that security must be mutual, and cannot be attained by one side repeatedly bombing the other.

• Mayssoun Sukarieh [03-20]: The Gods must be cruel: Inside Israel's psychological warfare campaign in Lebanon: "Israel is waging a campaign of psychological warfare in Beirut by projecting godlike power from the skies, raining down bombs that mete out death and dropping leaflets vowing that Beirut and Gaza will share in the same fate."

• Michael Sfard [03-21]: From Sde Teiman, the truth about Israel's military justice system has been set free: "By dropping all charges against the soldiers filmed abusing a Palestinian detainee, Israel has abandoned the whole masquerade of accountability."

• Oren Ziv/Ariel Caine [03-24]: "Erasing the l ines": How settlers are seizing new regions of the West Bank: "After decades consolidating their control over Area C, Israeli settlers are expanding into Areas B and A — nominally under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction — and displacing communities."

Elsewhere Around the World: With Ukraine turning into something of a forgotten war, I thought I'd extend this section to pick up bits on how the rest of the world is reacting to Trump's adventurism. As far as I can tell, slowly and cautiously, which doesn't make for a lot of news, but I suspect there is more going on than I'm noticing.

• Alan Rappeport [03-12]: Trump removes sanctions on Russia to help oil flow amid Iran conflict: "Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it was 'unfortunate' that the move could benefit Russia, but maintained that it was only for the short term." Here I was thinking this was a hypothetical, until I saw this story. What about the Russian tankers headed to Cuba?

• Anatol Lieven

  • [03-18]: A Euro leader cursed for calling for peace — with Russia: "Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever said what he 'no one dares to say out loud' about Moscow, oil, and Ukraine."

  • [03-04]: Europe's weakness on Iran, Gaza has radicalized politics at home: "Israeli actions and the continent's complicity in them have destabilized the center, while the far left and far right become stronger"

Trump Threatens the World: I originally set this section up to deal with Trump's threats of war. We're obviously beyond that now, so see the section on Iran for more on that. Nothing much on Cuba here, but that front seems to be heating up. But there is a fair amount here on Trump's newfound militarist mentality. For a while, I thought Trump had an aversion to war — while appreciating the military's usefulness for graft — that distinguished him from classic fascists, but once again we find that fascist power fetishism inevitably ends in war.

• Leah Schroeder [02-17]: Further US intervention in Haiti would be worst Trump move of all: "Washington sent warships this month to deploy 'gunboat diplomacy' while the island nation continues its frefall of violence and corruption." Note date, 11 days before Iran. Never say never.

• David French [03-01]: War and peace cannot be left to one man — especially not this man. I disagree with much of this, but he tries hard to make "a case for striking Iran":

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

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

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

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

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

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

  This omits a lot of context, and also ignores the counterargument that if these constitute a casus belli for attacking Iran, one could construct a much longer list of similar reasons striking the US. Reasonable people should object to strikes on either, not based on the historical facts but because the attacks won't solve the problem, and will only lead to more problems. (By the way, I don't mean to justify the attitudes and behavior of Iran's rulers. I am critical of them, but one of my main complaints is the extent to which they have embraced their enemies' views on deterrence, subversion, and ultimately war. I also object to what I take to be the arrogant belief that they are a great country and deserve to have influence over lesser countries in the region.)

  French also offers a "case against an attack," which sad to say is even lamer than his case for. It starts with the worry that in attacking Iran, Trump is wasting missiles needed to deter China from attacking Taiwan. More sensible are his worries that Iran will fight back effectively, that the regime might not fall or collapse, and that its new leaders will emerge even more determined than ever to develop the nuclear weapons, especially since those Iranians who favored a path of caution have been killed off.

• Mark Mazzetti, et al. [03-02]: How Trump decided to go to war: "President Trump's embrace of military action in Iran was spurred by an Israeli leader determined to end diplomatic negotiations. Few of the president's advisers voiced opposition." The "paper of record" explains the semi-official story, which mostly makes sense, even if the reporters have little sense of just how extraordinarily deranged Trump's decision is. The essential elements are: Netanyahu's long, determined campaign to ensnare Trump in a war with Iran; the staffing of the White House and Pentagon with action-first figures, fitting Trump's own instincts; and "a remarkable piece of intelligence," an opportunity for decapitation which spurred Trump to act immediately. The assassination strike is reported here:

  • Julian E Barnes, et al. [03-01]: The CIA helped pinpoint a gathering of Iranian leaders. Then Israel struck.: "The killing of Iran's supreme leader and other top Iranian officials came after close intelligence sharing between the United States and Israel, according to people familiar with the operation."

• Michelle Goldberg [03-02]: The idea that Trump was antiwar was always delusional: "Trump's foreign policy has often been less a repudiation of neoconservatism than a mutation of it." Also: "This has always been the real Trump doctrine. Not no wars, but no rules."

• Ben Rhodes [03-02]: Trump may come to regret this: I doubt it, but that may be because whenever I see Trump's smiling mug, I immediately flash to the face of Alfred E Neumann, whose motto was "what, me worry?" I'm also reminded of the line in the Fog of War movie, where someone comments that "everyone's having Bob's ulcer but Bob." ("Bob" is Vietnam-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, the guy who famously saw the "light at the end of the tunnel." What I do wonder is whether Rhodes regrets his own not inconsiderable role in the long "real men go to Tehran" march to this war? He doesn't say, nor does he mention his old boss, Barack Obama.

• Ross Barkan [03-02]: Republican Warmongers are back in control: Especially Marco Rubio, who Trump in 2016 "mocked for being a neocon . . . a 'perfect little puppet' of hawkish megadonor Sheldon Adelson." Adelson's widow has since become Trump's top donor (or maybe 2nd to Elon Musk).

  There is a dark political logic to this administration's military adventures in Venezuela and Iran and the aborted threat to seize Greenland. As Trump's popularity plummets at home, his immigration and economic policies largely judged a failure by the American people, he has turned to sowing chaos abroad. Overseas, American presidents can act more like sultans than democratic leaders. Military operations can be launched without congressional oversight. Trump, increasingly emboldened, has indicated he might topple Cuba next. All of this is easier and more enjoyable for him than addressing the plight of the American people.

  Barkan notes that "killing a brutal dictator is easy — even Barack Obama did it in Libya"; but "power vacuums are dangerous, and old regime hands don't simply vanish into smoke." Also:

  Little of this new conflict in Iran makes sense other than as a wish-fulfillment scheme for Israel and frothing American neoconservative warriors. The U.S. already claimed to obliterate Iran's sites that were aimed at building nuclear-weapons capacity. The Iranian regime, hobbled before the air strikes, posed little threat to the U.S. Its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas have already been crushed by Israel, the latter in the de facto genocide in Gaza.

  An unsettling reality is that the current crop of neoconservatives in the Trump administration, beginning with Rubio, do not seem to believe in the need to make a popular case for what they do. When Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, he had the American people, misguided as they were, at his back. He had Republicans and Democrats. In apparently starting a war with Iran, the Trump administration has won over the minuscule slice of hawks in the electorate (and the much larger contingent in Washington), but that's about it. Younger Americans on the left and right are weary of what feels like America's constant capitulation to Israel.

• Aaron Pellish/Eric Bazail-Eimil [03-03]: US launches military operations in Ecuador: "The joint military operation with Ecuador targeted what the US called 'designated terrorist organizations' in the country."

• Jordan Michael Smith [03-06] Donald Trump has lit a global match: "Trump and his aides think the United States has global leverage that his predecessors refused to use. He seems to forget that other countries have leverage, too — and they're intent on using it to stop him." It's long bothered me to hear the US presidency described as "the most powerful job in the world," probably because it implied what Trump was the first to clearly hear: that the president can do anything, shake anyone else down, and they will have no choice but to submit.

• Andrew O'Hehir [03-08]: Behind Trump's war fever lies profound weakness: "US wages fast-escalating war, with no clear motivation and no realistic plan. It isn't fooling anyone." Well, they seem to be fooling themselves. Was the problem with Obama really just "no drama"? Is it possible he just didn't know how to get credit for being rational, predictable, and boring?

• Thomas B Edsall [03-08]: The smash-and-grab presidency reaches its apex.

  But it isn't just in foreign countries. The willingness to adopt policies that will result in increased deaths among Americans, particularly within Trump's loyal MAGA electorate, pervades administration decision making, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as I wrote in two previous essays, "What Can't Trump Wreck?" and "The MAHA Pipe Dream Is Going to Hurt MAGA the Most."

  Even so, Trump's war against Iran stands apart from past policies adopted on impulse. In this case, preliminary developments suggest Trump will pay a political price for his lack of careful planning and impetuous behavior. In fact, he may be forced to take responsibility for lost lives, damage to U.S. facilities and allies' cities, economic setbacks and the failure to anticipate predictable adverse events.

• Casey Ryan Kelly [03-10]: Why Pete Hegseth talks like he's in an action movie: "Many observers were taken aback by his haughty tone, hypermasculine preoccupation with domination, giddiness about violence and casual attitude toward death." This notes that speaking "in a manner that is bombastic, outrageous and perverse" isn't unusual in Trump's cabinet (cf. Kash Patel, Sean Duffy, Mehmet Oz), but Hegseth more than any other has made a role out of it. (Meanwhile, Trump himself seems to be becoming terminally blasé.)

Trump Attacks America: Law, lawlessness, and the courts.

• Sophia Tesfaye [03-17]: Trump wants to punish media for his unpopular war: "The president and FCC Chair Brendan Carr are threatening journalists and broadcasters for their coverage of Iran." "Carr's threat is a grotesque distortion of the FCC's mandate."

  • CK Smith [03-15]: FCC warns broadcasters over Iran war coverage.

• Elie Honig [03-20]: Trump's losing war against the Federal Reserve: "The thing is, if he'd gone about it more smartly, he would have gotten his way."

• Robert Kuttner [03-20]: How Trump lost the courts: "With every passing day, another federal judge issues a scathing order to contain Trump's autocracy and Trump keeps alienating the Supreme Court." Don't get excited too soon. But one thing you can expect judges to do is to defend their own authority, which Trump's megalomania is threatening to run roughshod over. If Republicans do manage to pass the "SAVE" act, I think it's going to have a rough time in the courts, and not just because it's blatantly unconstitutional, but because it is corrosive of the idea that the government (including the courts) reflects the will of the people.

Trump's Administration: What they're up to while you're distracted by the flood of shit emanating from the White House.

• Joah E Bromwich/Michael S Schmidt [03-02]: Trump Administration abandons efforts to impose orders on law firms: "The move amounts to a surrender in a clash that has led many law firms to submit to the president rather than face the threat of his executive orders." For starters, this makes the firms that surrendered in cases that could easily have been defended and won look cowardly and probably complicit in Trump's outrageous shakedowns.

• Sarah Jones [03-05]: The myth of the root cause: Meet "Dr." Casey Means, Trump's quack nominee for Surgeon General.

• David Dayen [03-19]: The quietest government shutdown: "It's been almost imperceptible, but the Department of Homeland Security hasn't been funded since February. Avenues to resolve the standoff keep getting cut off." Last month I had this as a separate story, but it barely qualifies for a mention this time — just long lines and other concerns at airports (here's a summary of How a DHS shutdown affects different components and employees). PS: Okay, here's some news on the shutdown:

  • Emily Davies [03-21]: Trump threatens to deploy ICE to airports as TSA shortages drive delays. As scabs? Or just as goons? Is he assuming that because they aren't competent at their own jobs, they might be at another one they weren't trained for? Or does he simply not care. Or does he think that another stupid threat will force his opponents to cave in?

• Maxine Joselow/Brad Plumer [03-23]: Trump admistration to pay $1 billion to energy giant to cancel wind farms: And, in case you didn't think the title was outrageous enough: "In exchange, the French company TotalEnergies would inest in oil and natural gas projects in Texas and elsewhere."

Donald Trump, Himself: Up close and personal, or blown up into some kind of cosmic enigma.

• Margaret Hartmann:

  • [03-02]: Trump is workshopping Iran War plan in weird calls to press: "Why did Trump go to war with Iran? You'll have to piece that together from his brief and contradictory remarks to a dozen reporters."

  • [03-05]: Trump fires Kristi Noem, but not for the reason you think: "The final straw wasn't DHS's cruel and chaotic tactics, her alleged affair, or various other scandals, but trying to use Trump himself as a cover."

  • [03-10]: Does Trump know his favorite shoe company is suing him? "Presumably he wouldn't be pushing $145 Florsheim oxfords on all his pals if he knew the company sued his administration over tariffs."

  • [03-12]: 8 scarily stupid moments from Trump's Kentucky rally: "Featuring Jake Paul, Trump's stair phobia, and an update on the Iran war — which we must keep fighting, though it's also 'over' and 'we won.'"

  • [03-13]: Trump boasts killing Iranian 'scumbags' is his 'great honor': "He's reveling in military fantasies on Truth Social, issuing threats to Iran's leaders and showing off photos of himself in uniform (as a teen)."

  • [03-18]: Judge isn't buying White House's 'brazen' ballroom defense: "He blasted the Trump administration for offering 'shifting' requirements and describing the East Wing destruction as a little 'alteration.'"

• Robert Reich [03-19]: Dear allies of America, please don't confuse our president with us: "We are trying our best to resist him, contain him and remove him from office as quickly as we possibly can. Thank you for your patience." This is really dumb. In the first place, our efforts aren't really working, nor are them likely to work until his term expires in 2029, if then. Sure, inside the US, there are lots of things that we are doing, or trying to do, to reduce the damage Trump is causing, but outside the US, for all intents and purposes Trump is the US, and you need to adjust your thinking to that simple fact. Just because you used to have an alliance with the US government (which was never the same as the American people), and thought that worthwhile, doesn't mean that Trump is still your ally, or won't fuck you over on some arbitrary whim. You have to do what's best for you, then reevaluate and adjust in 2029, if things change. Reich writes (my numbers, for future reference):

  In point of fact, we the people of the United States do need your help.

  1. We need your help fighting the global climate crisis.
  2. We need your help heading off pandemics.
  3. We need your help countering global criminal gangs that are trafficking people and dangerous drugs and weapons.
  4. We need your help fighting global poverty, hunger and disease.
  5. We need your help safeguarding freedom and democracy from authoritarian regimes intent on extinguishing freedom and democracy around the world.

  These are all things (and the list is far from exhaustive) that all people in all nations should want to work together on. In olden days, the US could help its "allies" on these (and vice versa), but Trump has changed that: He's said that 1 & 2 aren't problems, so you're on your own; 4 may still be a problem, but it isn't ours; 3 is something we're going to address with arbitrary violence, which you can join in on but have no authority over; and for 5, we want more authoritarian regimes, not more democracy. In short, these are areas where other nations, to the extent they realize these are real international problems, need to find their own solutions for, and that may (and probably should) involve breaking with the US. They don't have to become enemies. They can't really threaten us, and it won't do any good to interfere domestically. They may still find it possible to work with American companies (which aren't even all that American these days). But they shouldn't pretend that the US is their ally, when clearly Trump is not. Maybe when Trump is gone, the US will want to work with their organizations, and help with their solutions. But if the US is a lost cause, as currently it is, they shouldn't sacrifice their future for our ego.

  A lot of liberals, like Reich, are stuck on this idea that the US is, and should always remain, the natural leader of a network of global alliances dedicated to solving the world's problems. US foreign policy has always (but especially since WWII) been directed by financial and military interests, offering a little bit of altruism (and high-minded but often hollow rhetoric) as bait. All Trump has really changed has been to get rid of the nice-guy act. Restoring the act isn't going to wash. The world distribution of power has changed since 1945, even if the American ego has not. Moving forward needs to reflect this change, but also to recognize that power itself no longer suffices, and that cooperation has to be built on mutual respect. Trump is the antithesis of that.

• Henry Giroux [03-20]: Trump's Crusade: Christian Nationalism and the making of a holy war: This starts with a photo of Trump at his desk, surrounded by Christian clergy, many with their hands on Trump's slumped shoulders, blessing his divinely inspired war.

  In this register, Operation Epic Fury becomes barbarism refashioned as spectacle, draped in an aesthetic of impunity and moral annihilation. War is transformed into a form of public pedagogy, a daily lesson in domination delivered through media images, political rhetoric, and state policy, teaching that cruelty signals strength and that enemies, both foreign and domestic, are rendered disposable, unworthy of recognition or justice and instead subjected to humiliation, repression, and violence. Under such conditions, violence no longer hides behind the worn language of necessity or of making the world safe for democracy. It exposes what it has long been in American foreign policy, a ruthless instrument of imperial power. . . .

  This normalization of lawless violence feeds the broader war culture shaping the political imagination of the MAGA movement. Military force is framed not as a tragic last resort but as proof of national vitality. Violence becomes a measure of masculinity and patriotism, while reflection or restraint is dismissed as cowardice. War is imagined as a cleansing force capable of restoring national greatness. . . .

  When militarism fuses with apocalyptic religion, the consequences are deeply troubling. War ceases to be a tragic failure of diplomacy and becomes a sacred drama instead. Violence is sanctified as the instrument through which divine destiny is said to unfold.

• Chauncey DeVega [03-19]: Laugh at Trump's shoe gifts all you want — it's a loyalty test: "The Florsheim presents aren't about style — they reveal the mechanics of MAGA authoritarianism and if it can endure."

• Matt Ford [03-19]: There will be no post-presidential peace for Donald Trump: "The president and his allies will face impeachments, lawsuits, and maybe even The Hague." Shortly after Trump took office in 2025, I gave this some thought, and concluded that whoever follows him should grant him a blanket pardon from criminal prosecution (or maybe just advance clemency against jail time should he be convicted), but should let him fend for himself against civil suits (which are as common to him as eating). For one thing, this would settle the question of whether Secret Service should protect him in jail. (In theory, jail should be the safest place in America, but it doesn't seem to be.) I didn't consider the question of international law, as there seems to be no support for that even from Democrats. As for state laws, that's outside the jurisdiction of the next president, but short of shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, that's unlikely to be a problem. Since then, I find myself caring less and less. The main reason for the clemency, aside from the Secret Service issue (and one could argue that a convicted felon safe in jail doesn't merit that service), is that it helps bury the hatchet, or at least is a gesture in that direction. On the other hand, we already have tons of things that need to be publicly examined. It might be better to do so in a commission, especially one that can subpoena and grant immunity for revealing testimony. It's more important to expose what happened than it is to lock a few people up. As for Trump, I still like my idea of exiling him to St. Helena, where he would be free to build a luxury golf resort no one in their right mind would ever visit. But short of that, Eddie Murphy's advice in Trading Places still seems right: "the best way to hurt rich people is by turning 'em into poor people."

• Brian Karem [03-20]: Who will stop Trump on Iran? "As the war escalates and the president digs in, the White House says 'nobody tells him what to do.'"

• Cameron Peters [03-20]: Trump's new coin, briefly explained: "How Trump is celebrating his favorite things: gold and himself."

• Michael Tomasky [03-20]: Yes, Trump Derangement Syndrome exists; but it's among his supporters: "That Pearl Harbor comment: Aside from being a fascist, the man is a national embarrassment. The deranged Americans are those who still support this charlatan."

  Am I overstating things? Do I suffer — gasp — from Trump Derangement Syndrome? Elsewhere today on this site, Simon Lazarus issues a sharp and necessary reminder to liberals not to get overly obsessed with Trump himself — to bear in mind the movement and the intellectuals that support him.

  He's right about that. At the same time, though, I'd say that we shouldn't even accept the presumption that Trump Derangement Syndrome applies to people like us. It does not. The people who suffer from TDS in this country are the ones who support him. And it's getting worse: This week, Nate Silver found Trump's approval slipping into uncharted territory, and approval of the war generally polls in the 30s — but at the same time, an NBC News poll discovered that among self-identified MAGAs, Trump's approval stood literally at 100 percent to zero.

  They're the ones with TDS. You and I have Trump Awareness Syndrome. We see his un-thought-out war — and by the way, if it's almost over, why is he asking Congress for $200 billion? — and we hear him utter vacuous and offensive statements like the Pearl Harbor remark, and we know all too well what he's doing to this country. Awareness is a far heavier burden than derangement.

  The Lazarus piece is here:

  • Simon Lazarus [03-20]: Trump Derangement Syndrome is a self-destructive distraction: "Liberals aren't wrong to excoriate the president for his misdeeds, but they mustn't lose sight of the fact that Trumpism isn't about one man." As someone who's also recently read Laura Field's Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, I recognize the names of the so-called "MAGA intellectuals" mentioned here, but I want to point out that a lot of Trump's worst ideas derive not from them (or their gurus like Carl Schmitt and Harry Jaffa) but from more conventional Republican sources (paleocons, neocons, libertarians, Buckleyites, theocrats, and/or unprincipled weasels like Roy Cohn, and that's far from exhaustive, as the same irritable mental gestures and rabid defense of the elite go back centuries, when the same sort waxed eloquent about the virtues of slaveholding and monarchy. But Trump doesn't wax eloquent about anything. He may pick up thoughts on occasion because he swims in their same sewer, but thoughts don't stick to him, because he doesn't think them, he just spouts along with all the rest of his incoherent mish-mash. That leaves us in a quandary: he's too important, and too symbolic, to ignore, but he's too slippery to pin down, or maybe too sticky to escape ("tarbaby" comes to mind)?

    By the way, some more on Field's book:

  • Alexandre Lefebvre [2025-11-14]: A mole in MAGA's midst.

    What unites the New Right? One fear and one hope. The fear is that liberalism is everywhere, its tentacles wrapped around the public sphere and even the most intimate details of private life. Whichever MAGA faction you turn to, there is a shared conviction, as Field puts it, that "for all its pretensions to neutrality, liberal, pluralistic, modern constitutionalism has normative tendencies and implicit preferences and inevitably shapes the liberal democratic psyche in specific ways." Liberalism is right there on dating apps with every left or right swipe, in the empowerment slogans of multinationals, and in the endless Netflix scroll of choose-your-own-identity mush. And so, while MAGA strategies diverge on how to respond — from tactical retreat (the so-called "Benedict Option") to co-opting the liberal machine (Catholic integralists) to burning it all down (the chronically online Hard Right) — there is consensus on the enemy.

    That's the negative. What about the positive? Field credits Anton — author of the galvanizing 2016 essay "The Flight 93 Election" and now a senior Trump administration figure — with distilling MAGA's three-point creed: "secure borders, economic nationalism, and America-first foreign policy." But this, she shows, is only surface politics. The deeper point of Furious Minds is to reveal a near-consensus on a social vision and a set of moral ideals for what a postliberal United States should look like.

    Denoting these "moral ideals" as "the good, the true, and the beautiful" doesn't help explain them, because those are not concepts that liberals (or most people) lack, but ones they define differently (and less absolutely). The key thing is that the New Right wants their state (which is not your state, or any form of democratic state) to tell you what to believe, and to force you into believing it. They believe that if everyone thought the same things (the same things they think) all our problems would vanish and we'd have heaven on earth. And one of the things they think is that anyone who derides Trump is deranged?

  • Adam Gopnik [2024-03-18]: The forgotten history of Hitler's establishment enables: "The Nazi leader didn't seize power; he was given it." A review of Timothy Ryback's book, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power. This book, like the following review, was cited in the Lazarus piece.

  • Casey Schwartz [2025-11-11]: What could have stopped Hitler — and didn't: "In Fateful Hours, the road map to authoritarian disaster is laid out in gleamingly sinister detail by the German historian Volker Ullrich."

  • John Ganz [03-20]: Grand delusion: "The Trumpist intellectuals wake up." I'm having some trouble digesting this retort to Sohrab Ahmari, but I like the comparison of Trump to Napoleon III and the Marx quote (not the farce that follows tragedy one), but this seemed like as good a place as any to file it for further reference. Intellectuals try very hard to rationalize their world view, even if it has no rational basis at all, which is doubly difficult when your world view is bound to a leader [Trump] who has no sensible grounding at all. Oh, the Marx:

    An old, crafty roué, [who] conceives the historical life of the nations and their performances of state as comedy in the most vulgar sense, as a masquerade in which the grand costumes, words, and postures merely serve to mask the pettiest knavery.

Economists and the Economy: Note that I've moved Dean Baker into his own section.

• Richard Bookstaber [03-16]: I predicted the 2008 financial crisis. What is coming may be worse. One of the comments mentions how Trump "has bombed himself into a no-exit with the oil market," then concludes: "combine this behavior with our crumbled infrastructure, collapsing job market, rising prices, etc., and it's hard not to see a market meltdown."

Regular Columnists

Sometimes an interesting columnist writes often enough that it makes sense to collect their work in one place, rather than scatter it about.

Dean Baker: For more look here.

• [03-20]: Are the Biden and Trump economies the same? "While short-term economic data may appear similar, key differences in inflation, labor market strength, affordability pressures, and long-term poicy choices suggest the Trump and Biden economies are meaningfully different."

  Key takeaways:

  • Presidential impact on the economy is often overstated, but policy differences still matter.
  • Claims that Democrats overstated economic success overlook efforts to address affordability concerns.
  • Inflation was trending downward before policy shifts like tariffs disrupted progress.
  • Labor market indicators, especially quit rates and wage growth, point to weakening conditions.
  • Affordability concerns may stem from rising real household costs, especially healthcare and student debt.
  • Trump-era policy changes on energy, immigration, and research could harm long-term growth.
  • Short-term differences are modest, but long-term economic outlook under Trump appears weaker.

  I think the last point should be made much stronger. We're only one year into the Trump economy, and what has happened as a policy level is only starting to impact. Moreover, while the Iran war did quickly signal higher gas prices, it's real impact is still in the future. I don't think we'll actually see the worst-case scenarios that can be projected from Trump's governing principles, because I expect businesses to be more resilient and more resistant to Trump's worst excesses, but best-case is going to be pretty bad, especially as businesses trying to save themselves aren't likely to care much about anyone else.

  I might also note here that I was surprised to see a whole section on "Harris did not cheerlead the Biden economy":

  First, I think he [Jason Furman] is very unfair in saying that former VP Kamala Harris was running around touting that the US economy was the envy of the world. This claim was in fact true, but that was hardly the main story of her campaign.

  Harris went around everywhere saying that she knew people were hurting and outlined proposals, especially on housing, on how she would make things more affordable. We can debate the merits of these proposals, but she was quite explicitly trying to address what she said were major problems in the economy.

  Baker is still far more committed than Harris was to touting the Biden economy, while Harris seemed to be more sensitive to its shortcomings — something she got no credit for during the campaign. The question is why didn't her concerns and proposals get much if any airing in the media? Possible reasons include: that she didn't convey either much outrage or empathy; that her proposals were couched in terms meant to appeal to business and donors; and that she blame the obvious culprits (Biden would have been the easiest mark, as Trump proved). But shouldn't the media have at least tried to sort this out, or are they just totally incapable of reporting on wonky policy matters? I'm reminded here of Hilary Clinton's 2016 gaffe about "baskets of deplorables," which is the only thing the media reported, ignoring the context, which included a fairly detailed and generous plan to revive the economy of areas like West Virginia which had been left behind (something her husband had more than a little to do with). What Clinton proposed would have been much better for the people than Trump's bullshit about "clean coal," but Trump saw his biggest vote gains in areas that Clinton wanted to help, and could have. But who reported that?

• [03-18]: The "fraud" fraud: "The new anti-fraud push led by JD Vance is portrayed as politically driven, relying on exaggerated claims that don't align with the actual scale of the federal budget or national debt." Opens with:

  Fans of pet-eating migrant stories are thrilled to hear that JD Vance is heading up an anti-fraud task force operating out of the White House. As best anyone cal tell, the purpose is to drum up absurd allegations of fraud against prominent Democrats, like California Governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.

  If the reference to pet-eating migrant stories is too obscure, let me remind everyone. During the presidential campaign, Vance admitted that he invented stories about Haitian immigrants eating people's pets in Springfield, Ohio, to advance the Trump ticket's anti-immigrant political agenda. This is important background when considering the sincerity of his new anti-fraud crusade.

  The other important background item is that Trump just gave us an anti-fraud crusade last year. Doesn't anyone remember Elon Musk running around with his chainsaw and his "super-high IQ" DOGE boys? He was supposed to find trillions of dollars of fraud, and send us all $5k dividend checks.

  Baker is right that Vance's interest here is crassly political, and that the sort of blatantly illegal fraud that such a task force could conceivably find is small potatoes compared to the economy as a whole. But fraud is something people do care about, and Democrats would be smart to expose some on their own. They could, of course, start with Trump, and all the money coming in and favors handed out, which will make Reagan's "welfare queens" and whatever it was that Tim Walz got tangled up with in Minnesota look truly microscopic. Moreover, they could start looking at the broader picture of what is supposedly legal but creates a culture which allows fraud to operate and profit. For instance, every day I fend off dozens of phone calls and emails, some from legit businesses I have no desire to hear from, some surely more disreputable. How hard would it be to shut them all down? I'm sure there's a long list of things that could be done, that would in the end make business and government more respectable and trustworthy. But we live in a world where the politicians seem to accept an ethic of everyone having to struggle to screw everyone else, with our best advice being caveat emptor? We're approaching the point where vigilance against fraud is more than a full time job. It's certainly more than one can stand. And one of the worst long-term effects of Trump is that he's poisoning the entire culture by wrapping it up in his graft. Yet somehow he managed to convince lots of voters in 2016 and 2024 that he was the one who wasn't "crooked"!

• [03-17]: The AI bubble, like the housing bubble, is a big problem and it's not complicated: "Like the housing crash, today's AI bubble driven by inflated expectations and stock valuations poses a major risk to the broader economy when it bursts." I don't doubt that there is a large AI bubble, at least as far as stock prices are concerned, and that it's based on assumptions that won't pan out, but that probably follows 2001 more closely than 2008. On the other hand, I suspect that we're also in a real estate bubble. (My evidence: my tax assessment went up by about 15% this year, and 25% over two years ago.) Both AI stocks and real estate are largely driven to speculative capital, leveraged on a house of cards. The underlying problem is increasing inequality (specifically the ability of the rich to avoid taxation by various schemes).

• [03-16]: Trump agrees with Mark Carney: the old order is very dead: "Trump's unilateral war on Iran signals the end of the US-led world order and forces allies to reconsider security, trade, and global partnerships."

• [03-13]: When Pete Hegseth says "lethality" he's talking about killing Iranian school girls: "Relaxed rules of engagement under Pete Hegseth are blamed for increasing civilian casualties, including a deadly strike on a Iranian girls' school."

• [03-09]: The winning and losing countries from high oil prices: it's not just who has the oil: "Rising oil and gas prices function like a tax on consumers, and despite strong domestic production, US households still face major costs from higher energy prices."

• [03-05]: Little boy Trump goes to war: "Those of us in the United States who lied through Donald Trump's first presidency know that he is not a person who thinks carefully about his actions and their long-term consequences." For instance, Trump's war is going to accelerate the spread of renewable energy and electric cars. It should also accelerate the realignment of much of the world away from the US: "This war without reason removes any doubt that Trump is a threat to world peace and economic stability. The world needs to move away from any dependence on the United States as quickly as possible and now they all know this."

• [03-03]: A real abundance agenda starts by rolling back patent and copyright monopolies: "Genuine economic abundance requires weakening monopoly protections and financial rents that enrich the wealthy while driving up costs for everyone else."

• [02-28]: Trump's stock market is headed down!

• [02-27]: The Ellisons taking over Warner is pants on fire stuff, but team progressive just whines.

  And this is where progressives are far behind the curve. The fact that the Ellisons can put right-wing hacks like Bari Weiss in charge of the news that people see between the campaign ads is a far greater threat to democracy than the 30-second campaign ads that the rich can buy in abundance.

Heather Digby Parton:

• [03-02]: Trump's foreign policy has no rules.

• [03-05]: Trump's new plan for Iran doomed to backfire: "As the administration reportedly prepares to arm Kurds, history shows the risks of using militias for regime change." Aside from the general history of the CIA trying to arm ethnic minorities as guerrillas against supposed foes, is there anything specific about Kurds in Iran that makes them more likely to pay off? I can't think of anything, other than that Mossad may have used some Kurds as spies, but that's not a formula that scales up.

• [03-07]: Trump and Hegseth are writing their own rules of war: "As the Iran war widens, the president and defense secretary's long support of carnage matters a lot." Make that Secretary of War. Weren't you paying attention?

• [03-10]: Lindsey Graham is the little war devil on Trump's shoulder: "Now he says 'Cuba is next.'"

• [03-12]: Trump's threats against "radical left" echo a long history: "Conservatives have often used the federal government to go after protesters and dissenters."

• [03-15]: Trump's Strait of Hormuz problem: "Oil prices surge as the Trump administration shows no clear plan for the world's most critical shipping lane."

• [03-16]: How Iran is exposing Vance and Rubio's 2028 rivalry: Understatement to say that Rubio "has always been something of a hawk." His case to succeed Trump in 2028 is clearly tied to his wars, where he's even more enthusiastic about the next one in Cuba than this one in Iran or last months's in Venezuela (not that he's done there). Vance has a pretty checkered record himself, but shouldn't have any problem pinning the quagmire on Rubio.

• [03-19]: Trump's "America First" becomes America alone: "The nation's allies are refusing to help in Iran, leaving the president increasingly isolated on the world stage."

Jeffrey St Clair:

• [03-02]: Preliminary notes on a planned decapitation. The keyword here is "whacked": for Trump, that's all it comes down to, the solution to all problems. And if it doesn't work, just whack again.

  Trump has done the world a service. He has abandoned pretense and clarified the true nature of American power. There is no longer any need to manufacture a case for war, to make an attack seem conform to international law and treaties or to demonstrate its righteousness by acting as part of an international coalition. Now America can do what it wants to whomever it wants solely because the people who run its government want to. This has, of course, almost always been the case behind the curtain of diplomatic niceties. But Trump has ripped those curtains down and now the world is seeing American power in the raw: brazen, arrogant and mindless of the consequences, which will be borne by others and if they complain, they might be whacked, too.

• [03-06]: Roaming Charges: Calling all angels! Opens with "the shifting rationales (all fictitious) for Trump/Netanyahu's criminal attack on Iran." Let's give a prize to Mario Rubio for the most ironically unselfconscious explanation: "Iran is run by lunatics." This is followed by a video of Paula White ("the spiritual advisor to Trump and head of the White House Faith Office"). Further down, we get to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) explaining, "Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." Some other notes:

  • More than 70 percent of American public school teachers hold at least one side job, according to a new Gallup survey released this week.

  • On Monday, state officials in Ohio approved a $4.5 million sales tax exemption for a $136 million data center expansion in Northeast Ohio. The plant is expected to create a total of 10 new full-time jobs.

  • The number of US adults who feel optimistic about their future life has dropped to 59.2%, the lowest number ever, according to Gallup.

• [03-13]: Kill, lie, and cover up: The shooting of Ruben Martinez. Like Renee Good, he was a US citizen killed in his car by ICE. "Over the last 14 months, ICE has shot at more than 16 people, hitting 12, including 5 US citizens."

• [03-20]: Roaming Charges: Trump's little excursion hits the Straits:

  • Meme: "Republican support for war with Iran jumped from 23% to 85% the moment Trump started the war." Comment: "Yet more proof that the Republican Party has turned in to a Jonestown-like cult."

Miscellaneous Pieces

The following articles are more/less in order published, although some authors have collected pieces, and some entries have related articles underneath.

Joel Gouveia [02-25]: The death of Spotify: Why streaming is minutes away from being obsolete: Or so says Jimmy Iovine ("arguably the most important living bridge between music and tech": co-founded Interscope, built Beats by Dre, sold it to Apple for $3 billion). Some interesting points here, but none impress me much one way or the other, at least to the point of convincing me that what came before and/or what might come after is any better or worse.

John Herrman [03-05]: Is it really illegal to bet on inside information about the Iran war? How about MrBeast?: "Kalshi and Polymarket are creating a new kind of dilemma." There are few things in this world I find more offensive than gambling, for lots of reasons, but this kind of thing goes orders of magnitude beyond the ordinary.

Chris Dalla Riva [03-06]: Long live Robert Christgau: A conversation with Matty Wishnow: Wishnow has produced a documentary film about the long-time rock critic, The Last Critic, and talks about that here. Also see:

• Robert Christgau [03-18]: Film comment: "Notes from the premiere of the documentary The Last Critic at SXSW."

• David Fear [03-15]: Robert Christgau is the 'Last Critic' standing: "A new doc pays tribute to the legendary dean of rock criticism. But it also reminds you what critics do, and why we need them — now more than ever."

• Jason Gross [03-21]: on Facebook.

• Mike Hilleary [03-13]: Matty Wishnow on capturing Robert Christgau, one of the greatest to give a grade, with The Last Critic: An interview.

Harold Meyerson [03-19]: Cesar falls: "With the horror of the revelations of his sexual predations, an already tarnished icon collapses." I'm surprised to see this recent spate of stories, as I thought this was already old news. Related here:

• Timothy Noah [03-19]: The shame of Cesar Chavez: "We shouldn't forget the reasons he has come to be revered, but his legacy was tarnished long before this."

Some notable deaths: Mostly from the New York Times listings. Last time I did such a trawl was on February 27, so we'll look that far back (although some names have appeared since):

• [03-21]: Robert S Mueller III, 81, dies; rebuilt FBI and led Trump inquiry: "He imposed the most significant overhaul of the FBI in its history. After concluding that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, ,he became a target of the president's anger."

  • Erica L Green [03-21]: Trump's reaction to Mueller's death: 'Good, I'm glad.'

  • Jeet Heer [03-22]: Robert Mueller never should have been a liberal hero: "The cult of Mueller foolishly prioritized legal prosecution over political organizing."

  I had heard of Mueller, but first got some insight into him during a ridiculous, pointless sedition case he prosecuted. One of the defense attorneys was our friend Elizabeth Fink. I wish I could quote her assessment of him verbatim, but the net effect was that I never for a moment expected anything but the toothless whitewash of Trump he handed in.

• [03-20]: Chuck Norris, black-belt action star of movies and television, dies at 86.

• [03-17]: Len Deighton, author of espionage best-sellers, dies at 97.

• [03-15]: Paul R Ehrlich, who alarmed the world with The Population Bomb, dies at 93: "His best-selling 1968 book, which forecast global famines, made him a leader of the environmental movement. but he faced criticism when his predictions proved premature." I read his book shortly after it came out, and at the time I thought it made sense. It turned out that, like Richard Malthus' theory, it was incomplete, but not wrong.

  • Bryan Walsh [03-21]: The man who bet against humanity — and lost: "Paul Ehrlich predicted hundreds of millions would starve thanks to overpopulation. Here's what actually happened." Some cautionary notes about doomsaying here, but I still prefer Ehrlich's gloom to Julian Simon's whatever, and note that Walsh's continued worry about declining birth rates is wrong-headed under any scenario. Also note Walsh's piece on the Iran war's affect on fertilizer manufacture and distribution (under Iran war) shows that with war all bets are off.

• [03-14]: Jürgen Habermas dies at 96; one of postwar Germany's most influential thinkers: "In dozens of books, he rejected postmodern cynicism about truth and reason, arguing that rational communication was the best way to redeem democratic society." I was very interested in the Frankfurt School before I left college, but while I had learned much, I never really returned to critical theory. I read one of Habermas' early books (Knowledge and Human Interests), but in a speed reading experiment that yielded so little I gave up the approach, without giving him another chance.

  • Eric Alterman [03-19]: Jürgen Habermas has died. Will democratic optimism die with him? "The great German philosopher both robustly defended the public sphere — and for seven decades never stopped participating in it."

• [03-13]: John F Burns, prize-winning foreign correspondent for The Times, dies at 81.

• [03-12]: Walid Khalidi, scholar called father of Palestinian studies, dies at 100: "As a historian and diplomat, he gave intellectual shape to his people and made sure that they played a role in negotiating their future."

• [03-09]: Monti Rock III, gleefully untalented 'Tonight Show' favorite, dies at 86.

• [03-09]: Bo Gritz, Vietnam veteran called a real-life Rambo, dies at 87.

• [03-08]: Country Joe McDonald, whose antiwar song became an anthem: "Whoopee, we're all gonna die!"

• [03-04]: Bob Power, 73, hip-hop engineer and Tribe Called Quest collaborator, dies.

• [03-04]: John P Hammond, pioneer in 1960s blues renaissance, dies at 83.

• [02-28]: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, autocratic cleric who made Iran a regional power, is dead at 86: As Iran's supreme leader, he brutally crushed dissent at home and expanded Iran's footprint abroad, challenging Saudi Arabia for dominance in the Middle East." Note that Wikipedia also lists 12 more prominent Iranians killed in the same strikes (another article lists 9 of those 12, plus several Iranian officials killed later).

• [02-28]: Joe Randall, chef who celebrated black cooking traditions, dies at 79: "He helped bring the African American cooking of the Carolina Lowcountry to the world and became known as the 'dean of Southern Cuisine.'"

Also, not [yet] noted in New York Times:

• Calvin Tomkins, 100, American author and art critic (The New Yorker) [03-20]; also see David Remnick [03-20]: Remembering Calvin Tomkins, a master of the profile.
• Ali Larijani, 67, Iranian politician, twice secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, speaker of the Parliament (2008-2020), and minister of culture (1992-1994) [03-17]; The New York Times reported on Larijani's death, but not in the Obituary section: Ali Larijani, a top Iranian politician and emissary, is dead at 67.

  • Yeganeh Torbati [03-24]: Iran's new security chief is a hard-line former Guards commander: "Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr replaces Ali Larijani, who is was killed last week in an Israeli strike. He has a history fo expanding the Guards' reach into Iran's politics." Once again, Israel promotes ever more militant opponents.

• Roy Book Binder, 82, American blues musician [03-03]

Tweets: I've usually used this section for highlighting clever responses and/or interesting ideas.

• Alon Mizrahi: "So basically the US is at war, its president is making one deranged statement after another, and the whole world ignores him like he is a crazy person on a bus."

• Corey Robin [03-19]: Starts with: "If you haven't seen this yet, you have to take one and a half minutes — that's all it takes — to listen to Marc Andreessen, one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley, talk about the evils of introspection. He claims that he doesn't do introspection, and I believe him." You can follow the link to six points Robin makes, including "can you think without introspection? Silicon Valley says yes." More on this:

  • David Futrelle [03-23]: Marc Andreessen's Dangerously Unexamined Life: "The tech mogul has declared himself an enemy of introspection, and that conveniently erases considerations of conscience from his amoral investment empire." Includes a Sun Tzu quote that seems to have escaped Trump: "Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a thousand battles without disaster."

    We should note that Marc Andreessen does in fact have an inner life, because we all do. As a result, his declaration of zero introspection is either a weird and extreme failure of self-knowledge or (more likely) a performance, a brand identity so thoroughly constructed and maintained that it functions like an authentic account of the brander's experience. Either way, the practical effect is identical: a man with enormous influence over the technologies of war and surveillance, over the political direction of the country, over the infrastructure of violence that his firm has spent a decade funding, has, in effect, announced that he has no interest in examining his conscience.

    Andreessen has built the perfect ideology for Silicon Valley in the Trump age: Move fast, break people, and don't devote even a moment to self-examination.

• Cory Robin [03-21]:

  Ten headlines from today's New York Times:

  1. You've Lost Your Health Insurance. It Shouldn't Have Been a Surprise.
  2. Trump's Reaction to Mueller's Death: 'Good, I'm Glad.'
  3. I Predicted the 2008 Financial Crisis. What Is Coming May Be Worse.
  4. The 'Hunger Games,' Hamptons-Style: Hiring a Private Chef for Summer
  5. No Pills or Needles, Just Paper: How Deadly Drugs Are Changing
  6. Student Freed From ICE Detention Worries About Those Left Behind
  7. Across the West, Record Heat Is Colliding With a Snow Drought
  8. Unclogging a Hairy Drain Is Gross. This $15 Stopper Makes It Less So.
  9. The Future of the Democratic Party Is Emerging
  10. Here's what happened in the war in the Middle East on Saturday.

Current count: 310 links, 25755 words (30834 total)

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Saturday, March 14, 2026

March archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 45655 [45603] rated (+52), 39 [11] unrated (+28).

This is indeed the first Music Week of March. I've been slow all year, and I'm not very optimistic about ever catching up, but I do keep plugging away at it. Last Music Week actually appeared around March 2, but was backdated to February 28, which was a fairly honest cutoff date. I had been held back trying to wrap up an overgrown and unruly Loose Tabs, which barely made it just before Trump's decapitation strike against Iran, and then got sidelined by a minor illness. The squeeze kept me from sending anything to my Substack newsletter, Notes on Everyday Life, although I had a draft piece on comfort cooking in the works, and several more ideas.

Those all got shelved by the Iran war. I was shocked and appalled the moment I heard the news, although the shock wore off as soon as I replaced the initial hypothetical (why would any rational leader do something as obviously stupid and counterproductive?) with the names of the actual leaders: Trump and Netanyahu. It's not that they are incapable of reason, although each is trapped in his own matrix of myths (some self-generated, especially for the exceptionally vain and gullible Trump), but their judgment is perverted by enchantment with power and a genuine lack of care for their victims, let alone any longer-term consequences.

I felt the need to write something, if only to clarify my own thoughts. I remembered what I had written on March 18, 2003, the day after Bush started his full-scale war on Iraq. I started out:

Yesterday, March 17, 2003, is another date that will live in infamy. On this date, U.S. President George W. Bush rejected the efforts and council of the United Nations, and the expressed concerns of overwhelming numbers of people throughout the U.S. and all around the world, and committed the U.S. to attack, invade, and occupy Iraq, to prosecute or kill Iraq's government leaders, and to install a new government favorable to U.S. interests.

At the time, the effort to sell Americans on the war didn't seem remarkable: it had started with the neocon Project for the New American Century in 1997, and went into hard sell, no-lie-left-unturned mode in September 2002. In the end, it's fair to say that the snow job failed, with Bush arbitrarily starting the war and palming it off as fait accompli (PR, much like his later "mission accomplished" moment). But as I started thinking about the "day of infamy" quote, it occurred to me that the word belonged more to the ones attacked. A more accurate word for the attackers would be "ignominy": the dictionary starts with "deep personal humiliation, public shame, or total disgrace," then adds "dishonorable actions or loss of reputation." While both wars started in fits of arrogance, Trump's is unique in his disregard for any sense of democracy. I'm not much impressed by Democrats who would like to support this war but who balk on procedural grounds, but they do have a point: this is not just a war against Iran, but one against whatever's left of democracy in America. It seeks not just to engage in war, but to deprive the people of any say in when or why the US goes to war. And while Democrats have often contributed to exalting presidential power — e.g., Obama's bombing of Libya and Syria — this time it feels different, because Trump's ambitions are domestic as much as foreign.

The rest of the Iraq war posts are interesting enough I'm tempted to dust them off as a "Big Lookback." On March 25, 2003, one week after the war started in earnest, I wrote:

The war grinds on. The fantasy that expected the Iraqis to roll out the red carpet for their American liberators has been dashed. Nobody expects that Iraq will be able to repulse the U.S. invasion, but the level and form of resistance pretty much guarantees that eventually the U.S. will leave Iraq without having accomplished anything more notable than the perverse satisfaction of serving up Saddam's head on some platter.

As I said earlier, the level of resistance will be telling. If you want a rule of thumb for neocolonialist wars of occupation, it's that once you can't tell your friends from your enemies in the native population, you're fucked. At its simplest level, that's because the occupiers get nervous and make mistakes. The mistakes, in turn, compound, pushing more and more people from the friendly side to the hostile side. That in turn reinforces the nervousness, the mistakes, the alienation. In turn, the resistance gets bolder; as this happens, the occupation digs in, becoming more brutal, vicious, capricious. The high-minded rhetoric is exposed as pure hypocrisy, and the occupation becomes more nakedly about nothing more than power. Such wars become vastly unpopular, and eventually the occupier has to cut their losses and go home. This is pretty much what happened in Vietnam, and we're going to be hearing a lot more about the similarity as this war bogs down. . . .

So, let's face it, the U.S. war against Iraq is a colossal failure. The only question remaining is how long it will take the U.S. to give up and get out, and how much destruction the U.S. will leave in its wake. So remember this: This war did not have to happen.

I also wrote this on April 11, 2003:

There was a period back in the Afghanistan war when the Northern Alliance started reeling off a quick series of victories — not so much that they were defeating the Taliban in confrontations as that the Taliban was high-tailing it out of the cities, allowing Herat, Kabul, and Kandahar to fall in quick succession. The hawks then made haste to trumpet their victory and to dump on anyone who had doubted the US in this war. Back then, I referred to those few weeks as "the feel good days of the war." Well, we had something like that in Iraq, too, except that use of the plural now seems unwarranted. So mark it on your calendar, Wednesday, April 9, 2003, was the feel good day of the Iraq war.

I mentioned the looting, the killing of shi'ite collaborators, and mob reprisals against Ba'ath leaders. I could have mentioned Rumsfeld's blasé "stuff happens" quote. I ended with "So happy last Wednesday. That's very likely to be the last one for a long time now." It was.

Anyhow, it took longer than I expected (what else doesn't these days?), but I finally sent out my Days of Infamy piece on March 13. Reaction so far has been underwhelming: three likes, no comments. A notice on Facebook got one like, no comments. (I've rather arbitrarily limited my Facebook "friends" list to people I know personally, but that's still over 100. By the way, I just enabled "Professional Mode," which I think will allow non-Friends to follow me. I don't really know a lot about this, but settings are pretty open, and we'll see how that goes.) Probably a lot of "TL;DR." It could have been longer, even beyond the earlier draft of a final section I cut (but it's still in the archive file, along with two more attached footnotes. I'll have more to say as I collect links for Loose Tabs (if you're interested, the draft file has a couple dozen already, as well as a few extras). I'll try to wrap that up fairly quickly (perhaps before next Music Week, which is likely to skip next week).

I'm also thinking about following up the Iran piece with a second, hopefully more succinct one. I'm thining the format there should be questions and answers. Here's my first stab at a list:

1. Why did Netanyahu want a war with Iran?
2. Why did Trump go along with the war?
3. Why didn't Iran surrender once the Supreme Leader has killed?
4. How long can Iran continue to fight back?
5. Is there any chance of regime change (anywhere)?
6. Will world opinion of the US and Israel change? And will it matter?
7. If the US and Israel aren't stopped, will they go on and attack more countries?
8. Will the war end democracy?
9. Is there any chance for a revival of international law?

Most of these questions are addressed in my piece, but not in a very well organized way. I could be more explicit about the political prospects for Trump and Netanyahu, but I thought I'd slip that in under "regime change" (since those are the regimes that really need to change). I could also break out the question of terrorism and other economic impacts. Important stuff, but I think secondarily (even through they're already receiving a lot of attention). Or I could just stop with the first four, and let the rest of the chips fall where they may. Maybe ask readers for questions. I do have a little-used question form.

Oscars tomorrow night. My wife has been plotting to see all the nominated movies (except some rejected out of hand). We watch a couple hours of TV every night every night, which sometimes she wants to use for a movie. I have only rarely enjoyed movies for quite some time now. My most obvious complaint is the need to fit a whole story into allotted time, either compressing it or stretching it out, with a story arc that grows ever more clichéd, essentialist, and/or dreary. Still, given that I have a moment here, and I like to be reasonably well informed, I thought I'd run down the nominee films. No reviews, or even grades (which I've been known to do, but long ago). No real criticism (but some griping). Just notes. The best film nominees, as far as I know:

• Bugonia: We watched it tonight. I don't have much to say about it.
• F1: We watched 10 minutes last night. Full of shit, over the hill driver hitches a fast ride, probably to glory. I followed F1 closely in my teens, and I can tell you a lot about everyone from Tazio Nuvolari up to whoever preceded Niki Lauda (whose name I had to check spelling on). I'd watch it. I don't regret having watched Ford vs. Ferrari, which was history I knew, even if the focus had changed. Wasn't great, but watchable.
• Frankenstein: L liked, but I didn't see.
• Hamnet: L had no interest.
• Marty Supreme: I don't even remember hearing about it. Something about table tennis.
• One Battle After Another: L turned it off after a minute, but was talked into giving it another try. We watched it. I thought the politics were absurdly cartoonish. Only at the end did I see that it was based on Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. I've long been a huge fan of V., but only made it half-way through Gravity's Rainbow, and haven't tried his later books. Still, I wonder whether knowing it was based on Pynchon might have let me accept the premise and run with it.
• The Secret Agent: Brazilian film set in the 1970s. We watched it. I thought it was awful slow and I struggled to follow it — I didn't get that the tape-monitoring scenes were distant future (now-ish) until the end, which helped make sense. So I remember it better than I experienced it.
• Sentimental Value: Norwegian film. We saw it. I thought it was fine, but mostly after the fact.
• Sinners: We saw it. I hated the vampire shit, but otherwise it could have been good.
• Train Dreams: Didn't see. I don't think L did either.

Other films with prominent nominees:

• Blue Moon: Richard Linklater film about Lorenz Hart. We saw it. Dialogue reads better than it sounds, but I rarely mind that.
• If I Had Legs I'd Kick You: Didn't see, or hear of it.
• It Was Just an Accident: Set in Iran. We saw it. I found it tedious and uncomfortable. Settled better after it ended, not that I actually liked the ending.
• Song Sung Blue: We saw it. About a Neil Diamond tribute duo, which was bound to be hokey, but we enjoyed it.
• Weapons: I don't recall hearing about it, but as a "supernatural mystery horror film" I wouldn't. [PS: Turns out that L watched this. Liked it, but didn't think I would.]

I skipped over several films in the song, makeup, sound, and visual effects categories. In international features, we didn't see: Sirat; The Voice of Hind Rajab. We didn't see any of the documentary features. I didn't see any of the animated features, although L may have.

Almost two weeks of records below. Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide got me to reevaluate Buck 65 and Gogol Bordello. Phil Overeem's February list was also useful. I've done some minor updating to the EOY Aggregate. I doubt I'll be doing much more of that, but hard to say for sure. I did save off my frozen 2025 file as of March 1, which is a month earlier than last year, but typical of previous years. Seemed like a good enough breaking point, as my appetite for more 2025 releases has sunk down to my level of interest in 2026 releases. I will continue adding late 2025 releases to that file, marked in color, as well as to the year-end lists for jazz and non-jazz.

Aside from the Streamnotes bookkeeping, I've finally caught up with my unpacking, hence this week's oversized list. I'll work on knocking that down.

New records reviewed this week:

Melissa Aldana: Filin (2025 [2026], Blue Note): Tenor saxophonist from Chile, debut 2010, third album on Blue Note, a quartet with Gonzalo Rubalcaba (piano), Peter Washington (bass), and Kush Abadey (drums), mostly playing Cuban ballads arranged by Rubalcaba. Cécile McLorin Salvant sings two of them. B+(**) [sp]

Kal Banx: Rhoda (2026, Top Dawg Entertainment): Rapper Kalon Berry, Discogs credits him with a couple of singles, also seems to have some production experience, first solo album a sprawling 25 tracks, 81 minutes. First half consistently solid; second slipped in and out. B+(**) [sp]

Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore: Tragic Magic (2026, In Finé): The former is known for wrapping choral vocals in electronic loops, with four solo (and now three collaborative) albums since 2011. The latter, with solo albums back to 2013, adds harp. B+(*) [sp]

By Storm: My Ghosts Go Ghost (2026, Dead Air/By(e) Storm): Two-thirds of Arizona hip-hop trio Injury Reserve (rapper Nathaniel Ritchie and producer Parker Corey), carrying on after rapper Steppa J. Groggs died in 2020. Working through some pain, somewhat short of voice. B+(*) [sp]

Ron Carter & Ricky Dillard: Sweet, Sweet Spirit (2026, Blue Note): Bassist, best known as part of the Miles Davis Quartet (1963-68), nearing 90 he probably holds the record for most recording sessions ever (per Wikipedia: 2,221). Dillard is a gospel choirmaster, starting with his New Generation Chorale in 1990, and out in force here. Standards arranged around bass lines composed by Carter, it's fun to focus on the bass, although the rest is overkill. B+(*) [sp]

Charli XCX: Wuthering Heights (2026, Atlantic): An unlikely follow up to the huge Brat, a slim (34:34) batch of 12 songs tied to a new movie version of Emily Bronte's 1847 novel. Strings for soundtrack ambiance, and the ambiance is thick, but some songs are striking. B+(***) [sp]

Steve Cohn/Billy Stein: Up From the Soil (2021-24 [2025], Hathor Music): Cohn plays piano, shakuhachi, trombone, drums, and Fender Rhodes in four duets with the guitarist. B+(**) [cd]

The Cucumbers: As You Heard Me: Songs From "Hello George" (2026, Life Force): New Jersey group, formed by Deena Shoskes (vocals) and Jon Fried (guitar), released a good EP in 1983 and a great LP in 1987, with various stops and restarts ever since. This is a collection of 16 very fetching songs, based on the novella Hello George by Fried (who has several more short story collections). [PS: I have the novella, but haven't read it yet. Too much war in the way.] A- [cd]

Daggerboard: The Skipper and Mike Clark (2022 [2026], Wide Hive): Group led by Erik Jekabson (trumpet) and Gregory Howe (percussion), has a handful of albums since 2021. Skipper (bassist Henry Franklin) was a guest last time, joined here by keyboardist Mike Clark, Dave McNab (guitar), Dave Ellis (tenor/soprano sax), Mads Tolling (violin), and Babatunde (congas). B+(**) [cd]

Dead Pioneers: Po$t American (2025, Hassle): Indigenous punk rock band from Denver, second album, spoken word, so no compromising he messages by searching for rhymes. The music is as pointed as the critique of settler colonialism, with lines like "the audacity (no the caucasity)," "there will always be another settler to take your place," and an Indian name I can't transcribe which means "white person who talks too much, presumes too much, and has no boundaries, which is a mouthful." A- [sp]

DJ Eprom: We Are the Biobots (2026, JuNouMi): Polish electronica producer Michal Baj ("who has ties to Silesia") has synthesized the perfect Kraftwerk album, built from turntable scratch samples and electronically processed vocals. Thankfully, the robot world is one we can still laugh at. A- [sp]

Art Edmaiston & Chad Fowler: Memphis Mandala (2024 [2026], Mahakala Music): Tenor/soprano saxophonist from Tennessee, based in Memphis since 1990, has quite a few side credits since 1997, mostly with blues groups like JJ Grey & Mofro. Gets a shot at a free jazz album, with label head Fowler playing strich and flute, backed by bass (Damon Smith) and two drummer/percussionists (Ra Kalam Bob Moses and Clifford "Pee Wee" Jackson). Seems a little subdued. B+(*) [sp]

John Ellis & Double Wide: Fireball (2019 [2026], Sunnyside): Saxophonist from North Carolina, albums since 1997, band connected to New Orleans with Jason Marsalis (drums), Alan Ferber (trombone), Matt Perrine (sousaphone), and Gary Versace (keyboards; one track also with Rogerio Boccato on percussion). Recording date inferred from doc. The low brass is delightful. B+(**) [sp]

Fakemink: The Boy Who Cried Terrified (2026, EtnaVeraVela, EP): British rapper, has a previous album (21:17) as 9090gate, this one runs 7 songs, 14:39. B+(*) [sp]

The Femcels: I Have to Get Hotter (2026, Getting Hotter): British group, first album, sketchy punk-pop, often slips off the beat and sometimes out of tune, which is both appeal and some kind of limit. 16 songs, 32:31. B+(**) [sp]

Bill Frisell: In My Dreams (2025 [2026], Blue Note): Jazz guitarist, major figure since 1980, one frequent theme is his use of folk materials (including "Hard Times" and "Home on the Range" here). Group with strings — Jenny Scheinman (violin), Eyvind Kang (viola), Hank Roberts (cello), Thomas Morgan (double bass) — and drums (Rudy Royston). B+(**) [sp]

Peter Furlan: The Peter Furlan Project Live at Maureen's Jazz Cellar (2025 [2026], Beany Bops): Tenor/soprano saxophonist, composer and arranger, Discogs credits him for this and two other albums (1981-83). Fairly large group (nine pieces), allowing for some interesting solo textures. B+(*) [cd]

Heavenly: Highway to Heavenly (2026, Skep Wax): British twee pop band, released four albums and an EP 1991-96, Amelia Fletcher the singer, first album since reuniting in 2023. B+(*) [sp]

Imarhan: Essam (2026, City Slang): Tuareg desert rock band from the Algerian side of the Sahara. Reports are that earlier albums distinguished themselves by rocking harder than their similar-sounding contemporaries, but this one starts out leisurely, and hardly suffers from doing so. B+(***) [sp]

Jon Irabagon: Focus Out (2022 [2026], Irrabagast): Saxophonist, alto here, a star in Moppa Elliott's Mostly Other People Do the Killing, has a substantial discography on his own. Quartet with Matt Mitchell (keyboards), Chris Lightcap (bass), and Dan Weiss (drums), plus guest spots, including two Kokayi raps, and spots for trumpet, guitar, and tenor sax (two at once). B+(***) [cd] [03-13]

Jon Irabagon and Dan Oestreicher: Saturday's Child (2023 [2026], Irrabagast): Instruments not listed, but Oestreicher is a New Orleans-based baritone saxophonist who likely goes even lower here, giving this a delightfully jaunty oom-pah feel. Just the two of them, as far as I can tell. B+(***) [cd]

Lazy Californians: Back to San Francisco (2026, Angel Island): Group led by Cameron Washington, plays trumpet and vocals, based in San Francisco, patterned on New Orleans brass bands but supplements trad jazz with rap and funk organ and more. B+(***) [cd]

Shawn Lovato: Biotic (2024 [2026], Endectomorph Music): Bassist, has a couple previous albums, this one a trio with Ingrid Laubrock (tenor sax) and Henry Mermer (drums), a fine example of the form. B+(***) [cd]

Mandy, Indiana: Urgh (2026, Sacred Bones): French singer-songwriter Valentine Caulfield, mostly in French, organized the band in Manchester, although they also have a toehold in Berlin. Second album, with Scott Fair (guitar, production), Simon Catling (synthesizer), and Alex Macdougall (drums) sharing writing credits. Mostly going off sound here, which is dense but hard to parse. B+(**) [sp]

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis: Deface the Currency (2026, Impulse!): Guitar-bass-drums trio had a couple albums (2018-19) before they joined up with the powerhouse tenor saxophonist. I filed the early albums under rock as the bassist (Joe Lally) and drummer (Brendan Canty) came from Fugazi, although guitarist Anthony Pirog had a fringe-jazz resume (two albums with Henry Kaiser, one a conduction of Terry Riley, a couple more I've heard but don't particularly recall). Time to move them into the jazz file, but I'm not all that pleased. The saxophonist makes a strong effort, but it's hard to sort him out. B [sp]

Pat Metheny: Side-Eye III+ (2026, Ubiquity Music): Jazz guitarist, long career, exceptionally popular, second Side-Eye recording (after 2021's Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV)), but a different group — the trio with Chris Fishman (keyboards) and Joe Dyson (drums) gets cover billing, plus guests including a vocal ensemble. B+(*) [sp]

Van Morrison: Somebody Tried to Sell Me a Bridge (2026, Townsend Music/Orangefield): He turned 80 last year, has developed a reputation as a sociopolitical crank, and he's writing fewer songs (4 of 20 here, not sure how many are new), but keeps active, here with his 48th studio album, mostly blues covers that get a fresh dose of swing. He's in good voice, and plays a little saxophone, some harmonica, a bit of guitar, while entertaining guests like Elvin Bishop, Taj Mahal, and Buddy Guy. Sounds good, but wears a bit thin before ending strong. B+(*) [sp]

Quinsin Nachoff: Patterns From Nature (2023 [2026], Whirlwind): Canadian saxophonist, based in New York, albums since 2006, some earlier side credits (especially with Michael Bates). Two long, complex pieces (one dubbed a concerto), played by a large ensemble with extra strings, a bit much for my taste. B+(***) [cd]

Negative Press Project: Friction Quartet (2025 [2026], Envelopmental Music): Bay Area chamber jazz octet led by Ruthie Dineen (piano) and Andrew Lion (bass), debuted in 2017 with an album called Eternal Life: Jeff Buckley Songs and Sounds, this their fifth album (although Discogs only lists their first), supplemented here by the Friction Quartet ("a cutting-edge string ensemble"). B+(*) [cd]

Angelika Niescier: Chicago Tapes (2025 [2026], Intakt): Alto saxophonist, born in Poland, debut album 2000, with a fairly well known pick up band in Chicago, names on the cover: Jason Adasiewicz (vibes), Nicole Mitchell (flute), Mike Reed (drums), Dave Rempis (alto/tenor sax), and Luke Stewart (bass). B+(***) [sp]

PVA: No More Like This (2026, It's All for Fun): British electropop, or perhaps trip-hop, group; second album, has a striking sound. B+(***) [sp]

Ratboys: Singin' to an Empty Chair (2026, New West): Chicago indie rock band, Julia Steiner the singer, guitarist David Sagan the other principal, sixth studio album since 2015. B+(**) [sp]

Ron Rieder: Compositions in Blue and Other Hues (2024 [2026], Meson): Composer, based in Boston, has a couple of recent Latin jazz albums, this a collection of more conventionally postbop pieces, played by a quintet I scarcely recognize — Yaure Muñiz (trumpet) is on some Cuban albums I've heard, and Mark Lockwood (bass) was in the Fringe. B+(**) [cd]

Brandon Seabrook: Hellbent Daydream (2026, Pyroclastic): Guitarist, also plays banjo, albums since 2014, many credits, has leaned toward metal noise, does some kind of chamber jazz experiment here, with bass (Henry Fraser), violin (Erica Dicker), and keyboards (Elias Stemeseder). Has some interest, but not much appeal. B+(*) [cd]

Shabaka: Of the Earth (2026, Shabaka): Last name Hutchings, British saxophonist, has been a major figure in groups like Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming, his own Ancestors, has a couple solo albums, at one point swore off sax in favor of flute, but seems to have recovered. Solo, with rhythm tracks and some rap. Still a lot of flute. B+(*) [sp]

Sleaford Mods: The Demise of Planet X (2026, Rough Trade): British post-punk duo, started in 2007 with raw rap vocals, has evolved into something slightly more sung, like Psychedelic Furs. Lyrics matter, but so far I'm mostly taking theirs on faith. B+(**) [sp]

Squirrel Nut Zippers: Squirrel Nut Zippers Starring in "Fat City" (The Ballad of Lil' Tony) (2026, Music Maker): Swing revival band from North Carolina, first appeared in 1995, five albums up through 2000, after which Jimbo Mathis recorded as a solo, and others scattered. A couple revivals later, he returns with a suite of songs based on his grandfather, Tony Malvezzi, "a bootlegger and juke joint operator" who moved on to promoting big bands in New Orleans. B+(**) [sp]

Karen Stachel, Norbert Stachel & LehCats: Live @ the Breakroom With Giovanni Hidalgo (2024 [2025], Purple Room Productions, 2CD): Wife and husband, she sings and plays flutes, he plays soprano and tenor sax (and more flutes), the band includes Matt Clark on keyboards, Dan Feiszli on bass, and Dan Gonzalez on drums, with guest percussion for more than a little Latin tinge. B+(*) [cd] [03-20]

Teen Jesus & the Jean Teasers: Glory (2025, Mom + Pop Music): Australian riot grrrl-inspired quartet, second album after a couple EPs, 10 snappy songs in 29:16, songcraft up, energy down. B+(**) [sp]

They Might Be Giants: Eyeball (2026, Idlewild, EP): John Flansburgh and John Linnell, their 1986 debut was my favorite album of the year, although I've never again been so taken by their musical and lyrical wit. Four songs, 8:31, one a remix. B- [sp]

Zu: Ferrum Sidereum (2026, House of Mythology): Italian group, founded 1999, came to my attention in jazz but always had a fondness for noise and lately have gravitated toward metal. Principally Luca T Mai (sax) and Massimo Pupillo (bass), both also on keyboards, plus new drummer Paolo Mongardi. I have this tagged as "avant-metal," but it's instrumental, and as tricky as ever. B+(**) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Kelan Phil Cohran & Legacy: African Skies (1993 [2025], Listening Position): Trumpet player (1927-2017), in Sun Ra Arkestra 1959-61, recorded several albums, leading Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. Plays various instruments here (congas, flute, guitar, harp, trumpet, violin uke, and his own invention of an electrified kalimba, the frankiphone). Starts uncertain, with some vocals, but finds its groove, highlighted by a blues. A- [bc]

Marty Ehrlich/Julius Hemphill: Circle the Heart (1982 [2026], Relative Pitch): Hemphill (1938-95) founded the Black Artists Group in St. Louis, which Ehrlich joined before moving to New York. Duets, both playing soprano and alto sax, and flute, with Ehrlich also on bass clarinet. B+(**) [sp]

Grupo Um: Nineteen Seventy Seven (1977 [2026], Far Out): Brazilian jazz group, with Roberto Sion (soprano sax/clarinet), Lelo Nazario (keyboards), Zeca Assumpção (electric bass), and Zé Eduardo Nazario (drums), released three albums 1979-82, this find dating from a bit earlier. B+(**) [sp]

Abdallah Oumbadougou: Amghar: The Godfather of Tuareg Music Vol. 1 ([2024], Petaluma): Tuareg guitarist-singer from Niger (1962-2020), a pioneer in the Saharan rock style practiced by many later bands from Niger and Mali. No info on when this well-selected classic material was recorded, but Sahel Sounds released another good album from 1995, Anou Malane. A- [sp]

Ranil Y Su Conjunto Tropical: Galaxia Tropical ([2026], Analog Africa): Cumbia group, from Iquitos deep in the Pervian Amazon, led by singer Ranil (Raúl Llena Vásquez, 1935-2020). Dates are hard to come by, but he/they released a dozen albums starting in the 1970s (Discogs only has dates on three 1974-77 singles, plus some later compilations). This German label came up with a previous compilation in 2020 (plus a digital-only supplement called Stay Safe and Sound Rail Selection!!). A- [sp]

Old music:

Dead Pioneers: Dead Pioneers (2023, self-released): Indigenous punk-rap group from Denver, Gregg Deal the vocalist, with two guitars, bass, and drums, racing through 12 songs in 22:01. Starts with: "America's a pyramid scheme, and you ain't at the top." Continues: "The foundation of this country is rooted in slavery and genocide, born in the bosom of colonialism," then after noting capitalism adds "this structure is a rigged game." He goes on to admit to being a "Bad Indian" and a "Doom Indian" ("doom sustains me; it's no longer a description so much as a solid indigenous character; doom is angry and real and could care less about how it makes you feel." A- [sp]

Madonna: Madame X: Music From the Theater Xperience (2020 [2021], Warner): As the pace of her studio albums has slowed, she's gotten into the habit of punctuating them with live megatour albums — the tours being the main point of the albums. Thus we have The Confessions Tour (2007), Sticky & Sweet Tour (2010), MDNA World Tour (2013), Rebel Heart Tour (2017), and now this, following her excellent Madame X album (2019). This one was recorded in Lisbon, where Madonna moved in 2019, and incorporates a fado segment, among the new songs that mix in with the always welcome hits. In between, her banter is more sharply political than ever. Good. B+(***) [sp]

Madonna: MDNA World Tour (2012 [2013], Interscope): Her fourth live album, following MDNA, her twelfth studio album (2012), one of her better ones. The new album contributes 9 songs ("Turn Up the Radio" is one of the best), in a 114-minute, 24-song program. Sound is a bit thin, but the music is terrific, as ever. B+(***) [sp]

Madonna: Rebel Heart Tour (2016 [2017], Eagle): Another megatour, behind her thirteenth studio album, Rebel Heart (2016), a concert from Sydney, originally released as a 138:16 video, later reduced by a 22-track, 99:01 album. Eight songs from a good but not great album, plus many more. B+(**) [sp]

Masaka Kids Africana: Greatful (2021, Masaka Kids Africana): Group of Ugandan teens (more or less), under the name of a nonprofit that helps "orphaned, vulnerable and abandoned children," in this specific case to become YouTube dancing and musical stars. Second album after a 2019 debut, one more since plus several EPs, including some Xmas music. Several sources misread the album title as "Grateful," which they may well be, but they're also pretty great. A- [sp]

Range Rats: Range Rats (1986 [2010], Mississippi): Ragged-but-right country-rock band led by Fred and Toody Cole, "some sad lilting ballads & some punk as hell," seems to be their only album under this name but the Coles have other credits, including the Rats (1980-83, before their country turn) and Dead Moon (1988-2004; I have two of their albums at A-). A- [sp]

Michael Hurley/The Range Rats: Dead Moon Night (1986-2017 [2024], Mississippi, EP): "Limited one time edition," consists of the folksinger covering a Dead Moon song from Portland's first Dead Moon Day (in honor of the band, after Freddy Cole's death), followed by a previously unreleased Range Rats song. Curios at best. B [bc]

Grade (or other) changes:

Buck 65: Do Not Bend (2026, Vertices): Rapper/beatmaker Richard Terfly, from Nova Scotia, seems to be in Toronto these days, called his 1988-96 juvenilia compilation Weirdo Magnet, has released many albums since, with a 2014-22 break, but he's been superb ever since. Short one (14 tracks, 26:43), snappy, as exceptional as ever. Noted: "I don't like this universe, let's move on to another one." [Label unspecified, but Christgau used Buck 65's Substack title. Lyrics here.] [was: B+(***)] A- [bc]

Gogol Bordello: We Mean It, Man! (2026, Casa Gogol): New York-based punk band, principally Eugene Hütz, the one constant since 1999, draws heavily on his Ukrainian background. Strong album. [was: B+(***)] A- [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week (actually last several, as I had fallen way behind):

• David Adewumi: The Flame Beneath the Silence (Giant Step Arts) [03-27]
• Tyrone Allen II: Upward (Dreams and Fears) [03-16]
• Anthony Branker & Other Ways of Knowing: Manifestations of a Diasporic Groove & Spirit (Origin) [03-20]
• Asher Brinson: Midnight Hurricane (AsherBrin) [04-03]
• Owen Chen: Eternal Wind: The Ghibli Collection (OA2) [04-03]
• Steve Cohn/Billy Stein: Up From the Soil (Hathor Music) [2025-10-03]
• Matt Dwonsyk: Live at the Sidedoor (self-released) [03-06]
• Simon Hanes: Gargantua (Pyroclastic) [03-27]
• Alexander Hawkins/Taylor Ho Bynum: A Near Permanent State of Wonder (RogueArt) [2025-09-12]
• Steven Husted and Friends: Two Nights - "Live!" (self-released) [02-16]
• The Interplay Jazz Orchestra: Bite Your Tongue (self-released) [02-26]
• Jon Irabagon: Focus Out (Irrabagast) [03-13]
• Jon Irabagon and Dan Oestreicher: Saturday's Child (Irrabagast) [03-13]
• Javon Jackson: Jackson Plays Dylan (Solid Jackson/Palmetto) [03-27]
• Jamile/Vinicius Gomes: Boundless Species (La Reserve) [04-03]
• DeYeon Kim: Wellspring (TAO Forms) [05-01]
• Erica von Kleist: Picc Pocket (self-released) [04-23]
• Anna Kolchina: Reach for Tomorrow (OA2) [02-27]
• Steve Kovalcheck: Buckshot Blues (OA2) [04-03]
• Brian Landrus: Just When You Think You Know (BlueLand/Palmetto) [03-20]
• Scott Lee: Greetings From Florida: Postcards From Paradise (Sunnyside) [04-16]
• Tom Lippincott: Ode to the Possible (self-released) [03-02]
• Lisanne Lyons: May I Come In (OA2) [02-27]
• Quinsin Nachoff: Patterns From Nature (Whirlwind) [02-27]
• Luke Norris: Moment From the Past (self-released) [03-20]
• Adam O'Farrill: Elephant (Out of Your Head) [03-20]
• Meg Okura: Isaiah (Adhyâropa) [02-20]
• Beto Paciello: The Stoic Suite (Moons Arts) [04-17]
• Chenxi Pan: This Very Moment (Origin) [03-20]
• Benjie Porecki: Faster Than We Know (Funklove Productions) [03-02]
• Reverso: Between Two Silences (Alternate Side) [03-27]
• Harvie S: Bright Dawn (Origin) [03-20]
• Marta Sanchez: For the Space You Left (Out of Your Head) [04-17]
• Dave Schumacher & Cubeye: Agua Con Gas (Cubeye Music) [04-17]
• Yuyo Sotashe & Chris Pattishall: Invocation (self-released) [03-20]
• Chad Taylor/Aymeric Avice/Luke Stewart: Deep in the Earth High in the Sky (RogueArt) [02-09] *
• Harriet Tubman & Georgia Muldrow: Electrical Field of Love (Pi) [03-27]
• Jack Wood: For Every Man There's a Woman (Jazz Hang) [03-24]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Saturday, February 28, 2026

February archive (finished).

Music: Current count 45603 [45565] rated (+38), 11 [27] unrated (-16).

I'm writing this introduction on March 2, but it seems fair to backdate this one. Not that I'm not happy to be done with February, but the shortfall of days messed up my schedule (or would have, if I had followed a normal schedule in February). Besides, the cutoff is honest. All of these reviews were logged by Feb. 28, and I haven't written any more since. Saturday was disrupted by having someone come over to trim the giant elm tree in the backyard. Then I picked up some kind of stomach bug, and I spent most of Sunday in bed. I'm feeling somewhat better today, but remain in a bad mood, and I don't expect that to alleviate any time soon.

I published a rather massive Loose Tabs on Friday, where I obviously didn't pay enough attention to the likelihood that Trump would be so befuddled as to launch a war against Iran. I did a minor update last night, where I noted that Franklin Roosevelt's designation of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor as "a day in infamy" applies equally well to Trump's attack on Iran and to Bush's 2003 attack on Iraq. I also wrote:

That Trump and Netanyahu have blindly thrust us into a new state of the world is undeniable. The things we should be absolutely clear on are: the "crisis" that precipitated this action was totally fabricated, the result of Israel hyping Iran as some kind of supreme existential enemy, for no reason beyond their desire to provide cover for their ongoing displacement of the Palestinian people; that the US has gone along with demonizing Iran because the CIA installation of the Shah in 1953 and the subsequent support of the Shah's terror campaign against his people is something Americans have never acknowledged and made any sort of amends for; and that several generations of American politicians, including Biden and Trump, have allowed themselves to be manipulated and dictated to by Israelis, Netanyahu in particular. There was never any need to go to war with Iran, and even a week ago an agreement could have been negotiated, at least had the US shown any decent respect for the Iranian regime and people.

I wasn't able to follow the news as the attack unfolded, and thus far I've barely skimmed a couple of reports. As far as I've been able to glean, Trump wants to continue bombing for several more weeks. As such, he's wasting the opportunity caused by killing Khamenei: a pause would allow cooler heads to regroup, while keeping up the attack will only increase Iran's resolve to fight back — as they are doing, but thus far to limited effect. I wouldn't dismiss the possibility that Iran could make their attackers feel real (if not commensurate) pain, but what worries me more at the moment is the extraordinary exhilaration and hubris Trump and Netanyahu are feeling in flexing their power to destroy and wreak havoc, especially given how unpopular their warmaking is. I doubt either of them will meet the justice they deserve. I just fear that they're on a path that will only get worse until someone finally stops them (as if anyone could or would).

In old age, I often reflect back on maxims I learned when I was a child. One of the most enduring is: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Sure, Trump was pretty corrupt long before he had the absolute power to kill thousands or millions of people. I don't know how people couldn't have seen through Trump, but for all of my lifetime, we've been brought up to adore and trust American power, despite constant reminders that we cannot and should not.

I finally cracked into the 2026 promo queue last week (or two), so that's much of what you'll find below. I have more that I haven't unpacked yet. Main thing that's slowed me down is that my office space has descended into a horrible mess. I'll try to straighten that out next week. Meanwhile, my main source for new non-jazz picks this week is RiotRiot. I also looked up some Neil Sedaka after his death — I've been playing The Brill Building Box, where Stairway to Heaven is a favorite (here's a live take, in a medley) — and I also sampled a couple of this year's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominees that I had nothing rated by (still missing for me are Inxs and Iron Maiden).

I'm not invited to vote, and almost certainly never will be, but Chuck Eddy is, so I followed his link as a checklist, then I compiled a table of the 17 nominees' graded albums: only 4 had A/A- graded albums (Joy Division/New Order, Pink, Shakira, Wu-Tang Clan), so I would have been very hard-pressed to meet their minimum of 7 votes: I wouldn't begrudge Vandross, and admit that lots of (almost exclusively British?) people like Oasis to a HOF degree, and I'm somewhat into the post-New Edition solo/trio albums. But it feels to me like in their rush to induct everyone they've started scraping the bottom of the barrel — although I'm pretty sure that if I did a bit of research I could find many much better individuals and/or bands they've overlooked (e.g., Pere Ubu, Pet Shop Boys, Kid Creole & the Coconuts, Pavement).

New records reviewed this week:

Michael Aadal: Aggressive Hymns, Energetic Ballads (2025 [2026], Losen): Norwegian guitarist, tenth album since 2009, cover lists last name only, quartet with André Kassen (tenor/baritone sax), Audun Ramo (acoustic/electric bass), Gunnar Sæter (drums), all original pieces, most pretty strong. B+(***) [cd]

Joshua Achiron: Climbing (2026, Calligram): Young guitarist, from Chicago, first album, playing original pieces (plus one Ellington), backed by veteran who elevate his game: Geof Bradfield (tenor sax), Clark Sommers (bass), and Dana Hall (drums). B+(**) [cd]

Naseem Alatrash: Bright Colors on a Dark Canvas (2025 [2026], Levantine Music): Cellist, Arabic heritage, teaches in Boston, is a member of Turtle Island Quartet, has credits with Danilo Perez and Simon Shaheen. Seven original compositions, 32:03, backed by piano, bass, string quartet, and drums. Zips right along. B+(***) [cd] [02-27]

Eddie Allen's Push: Rhythm People (2023 [2026], Origin): Trumpet player, originally from Milwaukee, based in New York, credits back to 1987 (Lester Bowie, Mongo Santamaria), albums from 1993, one called Push from 2014. Sextet here, plus "special guest" Steve Turre (trombone). B+(**) [cd]

Courtney Marie Andrews: Valentine (2026, Loose Future): Country singer-songwriter, ninth album since 2008. B+(*) [sp]

Kris Davis and the Lutoslawski Quartet: The Solastalgia Suite (2024 [2026], Pyroclastic): Pianist, originally from Canada, put together a series of impressive albums in the 2000s, then moved to the forefront when she set up a label that is much more than just herself. Now she's making moves, this one with a scratchy Polish string quartet that doesn't allow you the option of not listening. A bit too "classical" for my taste, but those not similarly prejudiced are likely to be impressed. B+(***) [cd]

Hilary Duff: Luck . . . or Something (2026, Atlantic): Pop singer-songwriter, sixth album since 2002 (when she was 15), only second album since 2007 (when she was 20), started as a Disney "teen idol," has a fairly long (if not all that distinguished) list of acting credits, and has written a trilogy of "young adult" novels. B+(**) [sp]

Gaudi: Jazz Gone Dub (2025, Dubmission): Italian producer Daniele Cenacchi, plays keyboards, has been dabbling in jazz, electronica, and especially dub since the late 1980s, moving to London in 1995. B+(**) [sp]

Gogol Bordello: We Mean It, Man! (2026, Gogol): New York-based punk band, principally Eugene Hütz, the one constant since 1999, draws heavily on his Ukrainian background. Strong album. B+(***) [sp]

Andy Haas: In Praise of Insomnia (2025 [2026], Resonant Music): Saxophonist, career goes back to the 1980s, including the notable group Radio I-Ching. Solo exercises, credit "saxophone, circular breath, nano pulsar"). This format is inevitably limited, but revelatory if you pay close attention. Helps that it is varied but short: 12 tracks, 29:24. B+(**) [cd]

Hemlocke Springs: The Apple Tree Under the Sea (2026, AWAL): Pop singer-songwriter Isimeme Udu, has degrees in biology and medical informatics, released a well-regarded EP in 2023, first album (10 songs, 33:22). B+(***) [sp]

Joyce Manor: I Used to Go to This Bar (2026, Epitaph, EP): Punk band from California, Barry Johnson the singer-songwriter, Chase Knobbe on guitar, Matt Ebert on bass, various drummers since 2011, seventh album, but at 7 songs, 19:03 I'm inclined to treat it as an EP. B+(*) [sp]

Gil Livni: All In (2024-25 [2026], OA2): Guitarist from Israel, seems to be his second album, a quartet with Amit Friedman (sax), Yonatan Riklis (organ), and Yonatan Rosen (drums), so soul jazz? Three covers (including a Lennon-McCartney), seven originals, pretty lively. B+(**) [cd]

Chris Madsen/Dana Hall/Clark Sommers: Threefold (2025 [2026], Calligram): Tenor/soprano saxophonist, name listed last but type suggests crediting him first. If so (he produced and wrote 4/8 songs, the others by bassist Sommers), this may be his first, although he has side credits back to 2000. This is very solid. B+(***) [cd] [03-06]

Luke Marantz/Simon Jermyn: Echoes (2025 [2026], Chill Tone): Presented as duets (although a drummer is also credited), Marantz plays piano/keyboards, Jermyn electric guitar and bass. Marantz has a fair number of side credits since 2011. Jermyn, from Ireland but based in New York, had a debut album in 2010 (solo electric bass). B+(**) [cd]

Bruno Mars: The Romantic (2026, Atlantic): Pop genius Peter Gene Hernandez, broke through with Doo-Wops and Hooligans in 2010, and since then has shown occasional flashes of brilliance without putting together another compelling album. But this is only his fourth, with a 10-year gap since 2016's lame 24K Magic. This isn't lame, but the overproduction is pretty severe. B+(*) [sp]

Megan Moroney: Cloud 9 (2026, Columbia Nashville): Country singer-songwriter from Georgia, third album. B+(***) [sp]

Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon: As of Now (2026, Lex): Rapper Jamonte Lyde, from Charlotte but he's been around, Discogs lists 15 albums since 2019 but this is his big step forward. A- [sp]

Kate Olson: So It Goes (2025 [2026], OA2): Soprano saxophonist, from Seattle, has a previous (2009) album of "improvised duets" I wouldn't hold against calling this a debut, and side work with Wayne Horvitz, who appears as a guest here (3 tracks). Mostly quartet with Conner Eisenmenger (trombone), Tim Carey (electric bass/guitar), and Evan Woodle (drums), with extra double bass (Geoff Harper) on three tracks. B+(***) [cd]

The Paranoid Style: Known Associates (2026, Bar/None): Singer-songwriter Elizabeth Nelson, with husband Timothy Bracy, fifth album, pens historico-politico-philosophical tracts set to conventional, guitar-heavy but far from sludgy rock and roll. As someone who is slow to grasp lyrics, I tend to be less than impressed at first, then start to notice phrases and appreciate the clarity of the music. Main thing I've noted so far is that these songs are all hooked to their titles, which are somewhat more oblique than usual ("Tearing the Ticket," "A Barrier to Entry," "Shark Eyes," "Elegant Bachelors," the title song). A- [sp]

Pony: Clearly Cursed (2026, Take This to Heart): Toronto indie-pop group, Sam Bielanski the singer-songwriter, third album, with Matty Morand now the exclusive guitarist. Ten songs, 30:45. B+(**) [sp]

Brad Schrader: Late Nights With Brad Schrader (2025, self-released): Standards singer, been plying his trade for 25 years, nothing under Discogs, this seems to be his first. Seven standards (23:50, including the all-but-obligatory Jobim), backed nicely by piano (music director Jerry Vezza), bass, drums, and sax. B [cd]

Noé Sécula/Jorge Rossy: A Sphere Between Other Obsessions (2023 [2026], Fresh Sound New Talent): French pianist, second album, mostly duo with vibraphone (7/10 cuts), mostly playing Monk tunes. B+(*) [bc]

Dave Stryker: Blue Fire: The Van Gelder Session (2025 [2026], Strikezone): Guitarist, from Nebraska, called his first album First Strike (1988), co-led a long-running group with saxophonist Steve Slagle, has lately been in the habit of releasing something new every January. This year's offering is a back-to-roots session with organ (Jon Gold) and drums (McClenty Hunter). B+(**) [cd]

Mattias Svensson: Embrace (2022 [2026], Origin): Swedish bassist, studied in New York but returned to Sweden, has a couple previous albums under his own name, plus several dozen side-credits (especially with Jan Lundgren and Viktoria Tolstoy). Wrote all the pieces here, performed with Bill Mays (piano) and Morten Lund (drums). Nice outing. B+(**) [cd]

Craig Taborn: Dream Archives (2024 [2026], ECM): Pianist, first came to my attention in James Carter's 1990s quartet, has a wide-ranging solo career with several dozen albums and many more side-credits, ultimately leading to a MacArthur grant in 2024. Trio with Tomeka Reid (cello) and Ches Smith (drums). Talented group, but doesn't really take off (unlike, say, 2025's Trio of Bloom). B+(*) [sp]

Vance Thompson: Lost and Found (2024 [2026], Moondo): Trumpet player, founder/director of the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra, lost his ability to play due to focal dystonia, but has returned to music here, playing the vibraphone in a quintet with piano, guitar, bass, and drums. B+(*) [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

John Vanore & Abstract Truth: Easter Island Suite (1989-2024 [2026], Acoustical Concepts): Trumpet player, several albums since 1991, started composing this suite in the 1980s and recorded the first movement in 1989, returning to the studio for the middle sections in 2012, then the final movement in 2024. The groups evolved, but all are deep in brass. B+(*) [cd]

Old music:

Phil Collins: Face Value (1981, Virgin): First solo album by the former Genesis drummer, started a string of eight gold/platinum albums (up to 2010), none I've heard so far, which is unusual for someone being given serious consideration for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (but not the only 2026 nominee I have nothing in the database for: also INXS, Iron Maiden, and New Edition). Seems like an agreeable pop album, but the only whole song that caught my attention was the Beatles cover ("Tomorrow Never Knows"), and the only other bits I was impressed by were drum breaks. B [sp]

The Damned: Damned Damned Damned (1977, Stiff): English punk rock group, first album, Dave Vanian the singer, backed by guitar (Brian James), bass (Captain Sensible), and drums (Rat Scabies), produced by Nick Lowe. I recall the group getting a lot of hype at the time, but little respect. Sounds pretty good at first, a little short of material toward the final rave up. B+(**) [yt]

New Edition: New Edition (1984, MCA): Another RRHOF nominee I totally missed, released 7 studio albums 1983-2004, selling over 20 million copies. Boy group, conceived as successor to the Jackson 5, updated with some rap to coin the term "new jack swing," the five members on this second album went on to solo acts for Bobby Brown and Ralph Tresvant as well as the trio known as Bell Biv Devoe. (Later member was/is Johnny Gill.) B+(**) [sp]

The OKeh Rhythm & Blues Story: 1949-1957 (1949-57 [1993], Epic/Legacy, 3CD): Label founded 1918 by Otto Karl Erich Heinemann (1876-1965), recorded early "race" records including Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens. The label was sold to Columbia in 1926, sold off in 1934 and bought back by CBS in 1938, which periodically shut it down and revived it. This was their prime R&B period, with plenty of hot jump blues, but nothing I recognize from standard compilations (like Rhino's fabulous The R&B Box), and a shortage of star power (the "big" names here are Big Maybelle, Chuck Willis, Hadda Brooks, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins). B+(***) [sp]

Rosé: Rosie (2024, The Black Label/Atlantic): Born in New Zealand, raised in Australia, moved to South Korea (where her parents had emigrated from) and joined the bestselling girl group Blackpink, released a solo "single album" in 2021 (6:15, expanded on CD to 12:30), then this studio album, which belatedly came to my attention thanks to the Bruno Mars feature "APT." That single sound pretty good, but it's hardly helped by an overload of ballads, even if they're not bad. B+(*) [sp]

Neil Sedaka: Sings His Greatest Hits (1958-62 [1963], RCA): Brill Building songwriter, an original member of the Tokens (which had a 1961 hit with "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"), recorded a half-dozen top-ten singles 1959-62, which loom large here. Seems like he should have a memorable period compilation. This comes close. B+(***) [yt]

Neil Sedaka: Neil Sedaka and the Tokens (1956-57 [1963], Guest Star): Short compilation (10 songs, 21:54), unclear exactly when recorded (Google says that Sedaka left to go solo in 1958), but 6 songs are credited to Sedaka alone, 2 with the Tokens, and 2 (twisters) to Joe Martin and His Orchestra. B [sp]

Neil Sedaka: Sedaka's Back (1972-73 [1974], Rocket): Elton John's label compiled this from three UK-only LPs, including songs that were hits for others, and one that became his first since 1962, and set him up for years to come. B+(*) [sp]

Unpacking: I have stuff but haven't logged it yet.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Friday, February 27, 2026

This is an occasional collection of newsworthy links and comments, much less systematic than what I attempted in my late Speaking of Which posts. The new name comes from my extensive use of browser tabs. When I get around to cleaning up, I often find tabs opened to old articles I might want to comment on and/or refer back to. So these posts are mostly housecleaning, but may also serve as a very limited but persistent record of what 20+ years ago I started calling "the end of the American empire" and nowadays feels more like "the end of civilization." I collect these bits in a draft file, and flush them out when periodically (12 times from April-December 2025). My previous one appeared 34 days ago, on January 24.

I have a little-used option of selecting bits of text highlighted with a background color, for emphasis a bit more subtle than bold or ALL CAPS. (I saw this on Medium. I started with their greenish color [#bbdbba] and lightened it a bit [#dbfbda].) I'll try to use it sparingly.

Table of Contents:

• Epsteinmania
• Melania
• The Washington Post
• Super Bowl LX
• The DHS Shutdown
• The Supreme Court rules on tariffs
• Threatening/Attacking Iran
• Trump's State of the Union speech
• Israel
• Around the world: Ukraine, Europe, Africa
• Trump goes to war (international edition)
• Trump goes to war (domestic edition)
• Trump regime
• Trump
• David Klion: The war on the liberal class.
• Eric Levitz: Why politics is broken.
• Jonquilyn Hill: Are we getting stupider?
• Jeffrey St Clair: Roaming Charges
• Stefano Tortorici/R Trebor Scholz: Socialist co-ops against Silicon Valley.
• Dolly Li/Jordan Winters: The House of Representatives is too small.
• Alfred McCoy: Accelerating Amerian (and planetary) decline
• Zach Beauchamp: How to stop a dictator
• Books
• Other media/arts
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Topical Stories

Sometimes stuff happens, and it dominates the news/opinion cycle for a few days or possibly several weeks. We might as well lead with it, because it's where attention is most concentrated. But eventually these stories will fold into the broader, more persistent themes of the following section.

Last time: Thanksgiving; Epsteinmania; Zohran Mamdani; ICE Stories; Venezuela; Iran; Jerome Powell.

Epsteinmania: After numerous delays, the Department of Justice finally released a "large cache" of documents and media related to its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein: this one an overwhelming dump of 3 million pages and 180,000 images.

• Philip Weiss [12-19]: The New York Times ignores an essential part of the Jeffrey Epstein story — Israel.

• Cameron Peters [02-02]: 3 million new Epstein files, briefly explained.

• Nia Prater [02-03]: DoJ makes appalling mistakes in release of new Epstein files.

• Michael Arria [02-03]: Newly released Epstein files reveal further ties to Israel: "Further connections between the late, convicted sex criminal and the state of Israel."

• Branko Marcetic [02-06]: Ehud Barak had a very close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

• Jeet Heer [02-06]: From Epstein to Bezos, the ruling class is rotten to the core: "Let this week be yet another reminder that plutocrats are a threat to democracy, not its saviors." But doesn't "threat" imply future peril. Plutocrats already exist, and their existence demonstrates that democracy isn't working for nearly everyone it's supposed to. Part of the problem is that people keep making excuses for billionaires as if their wealth is independent of the world it's been derived from. For example:

  • Matthew Yglesias [2025-12-29]: Let's all practice billionaire positivity: While he's right that "it's not a zero-sum world," and for that matter his implication that you can't change anything important by just singling out a few "bad apple" billionaires, his habit of sucking up to the rich leaves him no critical ground to stand on, however profitable it may be for him personally (perhaps even beyond his main gig of writing for Bloomberg).

• Caitlin Dewey [02-04]: Epstein gave America a common enemy: "His case has become a vehicle for a strain of anti-elite populism that's growing across the political spectrum."

• David Futrelle [02-11]: What Peter Thiel saw in Jeffrey Epstein: "In the extensive correspondence between the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and the late pedophile, both men expressed a deep aversion to democracy."

• Zachary Clifton [02-12]: The Yale professor who e-mailed Epstein about a "small goodlooking blonde" student is no longer teaching: "After outcry from students over e-mails showing David Gelernter's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the computer science professor is under review by the university." Before jumping to the conclusion that Gelernter is a victim of "cancel culture," you might want to consider reports that he was the lowest-regarded professor of all at Yale. Gelernter is one of the more interesting cases to have gotten caught up in the Epstein tarbaby. It's not clear to me whether his work in computer science is notable or not, but it gave him academic standing and business contacts (like Epstein and Peter Thiel) that allowed him to spin off dubious socio-political theories, and paved his way toward becoming a Trump prop. He's written a couple books that seem to raise big questions, like Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion (his notion there is not just that Americanism has taken on the air of religious dogma, but that it is a form of "secular zionism"), and the more jaundiced America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats), which Russell Jacoby reviewed as Dreaming of a world with no intellectuals.

  • Isaac Chotiner [2018-10-23]: "The idea that he's racist is absurd": Interview with David Gelernter on why a rich guy with a Jewish son-in-law can't be a racist. Trump's just an exaggerated version of an average American. He has a slippery excuse for any charge you might lob at Trump, but he doesn't shy away from generalizing about the left, who hate Trump because they hate average Americans, and indeed the whole idea of America.

• Dave Zirin [02-13]: The NFL owners and Olympic organizers in Epstein's inbox: "The sports media is ignoring the story, but wealthy sports figures are all over the Epstein files."

• Melinda Cooper [02-14]: Epstein family values: "The billionaire patriarchs of the American far-right want to rule an economy of masters and servants."

• Elie Honig [02-20]: The new Epstein list: celebrities named; predators redacted. "The lesson, as always, is that Bondi and this Justice Department are simply not to be trusted."

• Ana Marie Cox [02-22]: The paranoid style of Jeffrey Epstein has come for us all: "The pedophile plutocrat has some peculiar predilections — especially for academics and thinkers who showed a potential to further his grand experiments in inhumanity."

  There's a pattern to Epstein's consumption of ideas and to the kinds of people he found compatible. It wasn't a wish to brush shoulders with the famous and well-regarded — generic star-fucking. Epstein didn't collect people for status; he identified and aligned himself with the intellectual machinery now justifying our current dystopia, including the academic rationalizations and motivated reasoning that hover behind the most terrible excesses of the Trump administration: glorified phrenology, violent misogyny, genetic determinism, and elite impunity.

  It is not a coincidence that Epstein was also interested in crypto, in AI, in right-wing populism, in trad Cath extremists, and anti-trans ideology, in addition to creepy experiments in pain tolerance, psychopathology, and advantageous genetics. Epstein gravitated toward fields and figures that rank humans, explain away cruelty, or biologize inequality. He did not forge connections with these people: He saw they were already in alignment.

• H Scott Prosterman [02-24]: Former Israeli PM, in Epstein files, dreamed of Israeli eugenics and pretty converts.

• Dan Mangan [02-24]: DOJ withheld documents about claim that Trump sexually abused minor. [Weird how this story vanishes under creeping Javascript. Probably a better source elsewhere?]

• Jelinda Montes [02-24]: DOJ withheld Trump-related documents in Epstein files.

• Maureen Tkacik [02-26]: Newspapers did not kill themselves: "New docs say Jeffrey Epstein collaborated with the Russian mob to loot the New York Daily News, then tried to help Mort Zuckerman discard it when reporting became inconvenient."

• Elie Honig [02-27]: The British are putting Trump's DoJ to shame on Epstein accountability: "While the UK makes arrests, the US Justice Department offers weak explanations for inaction."

• Noam Chomsky: The famous linguist and anti-war intellectual, a consistent critic of American and Israeli foreign policy, got caught up in Epstein's web, and so got singled out for concern.

  • Vijay Prashad [02-03]: On the emails between Jeffrey Epstein and Noam Chomsky.

  • Christ Knight [02-06]: The Chomsky/Epstein puzzle.

  • Valéria Chomsky [02-09]: "Ensnared" and "manipulated": Official statement by Valéria Chomsky regarding Jeffrey Epstein.

Melania: The movie Jeff Bezos spent $75 million on to flatter the Trumps. This is, of course, a lightning rod for critical ridicule — which, sure, is a big part of why I'm reporting on it at all. Given the subject and circumstances, I'm not surprised that at Rotten Tomatoes the average of scores given by recognized critics is 8% (50 reviews). It's likely that most film critics are anti-Trump to start with, but even if there is a bit of selection bias, that's a pretty low score, suggesting that the film isn't very good, at least by common critical standards. (The sample size is pretty decent: it may be slightly inflated by critics out to slam Trump, but not much. Moreover, one shoudn't assume that anti-Trump means anti-Melania, as a lot of people like to think that Melania is secretly anti-Trump too.) What's much more suspect is that the viewer ratings appear to be ecstatic at 99% (1000+ verified ratings), for a largest-ever discrepancy between the ratings of 91 points. I don't know how to prove this, but intuitively the self-selection bias here must be huge. Who, after all, would buy a ticket to this particular movie? No one I know, except perhaps to write a nasty review, and those people would show up in the critics column. But I find it hard to understand how anyone would pay money to see Melania. It's not unusual for right-wingers to mass-purchase books to plant them on the New York Times bestseller list. Same thing could be happening here. Indeed 1000 tickets for party operatives promising to follow up on Rotten Tomatoes would be a drop in the Bezos bucket.

• Margaret Hartmann:

  • [01-31]: Movie review: Does Melania dream of AI-generated sheep? "The First Lady's weirdly soulless MAGA lullaby is going to put a lot of Amazon Prime viewers to sleep."

  • [02-02]: The Melania movie, explained: box office, reviews, & what she made. "Why did the notoriously private First Lady film a Brett Ratner-directed documentary? It might have something to do with the $28 million paycheck." When asked why Amazon is paying $40 million, when the second highest bidder topped out at $14 million, a "person close to Bezos" said: "He is doing a deal, offering money to buy the Trump Family's affection and flattering the president. If you think about it in terms of costs versus benefit, it is pretty low. It's a smart investment."

• Nick Hilton [01-30]: First Lady is a preening, scowling void of pure nothingness in this ghastly bit of propaganda.

• Maureen Dowd [01-31]: Slovenian sphinx flick nixed! "It turns out there is no riddle, no enigma, no mystery, no dark anguish, Melania is not Rapunzel in the tower, pining to be saved from the ogre imprisoning her. She is comfortable in the frosty vertical solitude of the tower, swaddled in luxury."

• Monica Hesse [01-31]: Melania promises to take us behind the scenes. There's nothing to see: Anyone searching for hidden layers will be disappointed: "we were dealing with a situation that was not an onion but a potato. Yes, there's a thin protective skin. But after you breach that, no matter how many times you go after it with a peeler, you're dealing with pretty much the same pulp."

• Sophia Tesfaye [01-31]: Why MAGA won't rally for Melania documentary.

• Matt Labash [02-01]: Is Melania the worst film ever made? "It's no small wonder it's taking such a drubbing. Melania is a personality-study of a person who doesn't actually have one."

• Tom Brueggemann [02-01]: Five box office results this weekend more important than expensive vanity doc Melania.

• Coleman Spilde [02-01]: The "Melania" movie is empty, foul and worse than we imagined.

• Chas Danner [02-02]: What critics are saying about the Melania documentary: "Here are the highlights of their lowlights." This pointed me to several other pieces cited here, but has much more (and is being "continuously updated"). Some more sample quotes:

  • Lauren Collins [The New Yorker]: "For his comeback, [Brett Ratner] has summoned all the artistic ambition of a local Realtor who just got a drone." Also revealing:

    We are told, for instance, that Melania's father, Viktor Knavs, is an avid videographer, but the film is devoid of baby pictures, family mementos, or any of the other low-hanging archival materials that typically serve to humanize a distant subject. She is a woman without a past, effacing biography just as her husband erases national history. (As I noted in 2016, their four-hundred-and-fifty-person wedding included all of three guests from Melania's homeland: her mother, her father, and her sister.) Melania says that everything she does is for "the children," but no actual children appear in Melania. Nor do pets, friends, hobbies, or music, except in a sad little scene in which she struggles to sing along to "Billie Jean," supposedly her favorite song. You almost wince when her towering adult son, Barron, brushes her off without so much as a peck on the cheek.

  • Rick Perlstein "recommends watching the film (if, like him, you are endlessly fascinated with how the pageantry of the American presidency is staged)."

  • Alexandra Petri [The Atlantic]: "The movie reveals how well insulated she is from anything resembling human life, like a cheetah in the house of a Russian oligarch."

  • Heather Schwedel [Slate]: "I'm not sure anyone else could have made a movie that taught me so remarkably little about its main subject."

  • Sonny Bunch [The Bulwark]: "The target audience seemed to enjoy it fine; the 12:40 p.m. showing at the AMC NorthPark in Dallas was 80 percent full and laughed in all the right places. It preaches to the faithful with great reverence and they were thrilled to bask in the golden glow of Trump Tower. But it's fascinating to see so pure and naked an instrument of graft and propaganda deployed to great effect on an audience happy to lap it up."

  • Michael Clark [The Epoch Times]: "In a few days, it's possible I could be the only U.S.-based critic on RottenTomatoes.com with a positive review of Melania. As of Saturday morning, the 31st, the film's critical consensus sits at 6 percent. Under normal circumstances, this would suggest that I was out of touch and don't know how to do my job. However, the audience rating is 98 percent, making Melania the biggest ratings-gap title in Rotten Tomatoes history."

• David Yearsley [02-06]: Melania's music: A view from Berlin, thinking of Bach . . . and Leni Riefenstahl.

• Eboni Boykin-Patterson [02-06]: Rotten Tomatoes desperately claims 'impossible' rating for 'Melania' is real.

• Katie Rosseinsky [02-07]: Rotten Tomatoes addresses 'fake' user score claims for Melania movie after documentary sets new record.

• Catherine Bouris [02-09]: Melania box office plummets in second weekend.

• Daniel Parris [2025-08-20]: Is Rotten Tomatoes still reliable? A statistical analysis. This predates Melania, but offers some context, and some hints as to the underlying business models.

The Washington Post:

• Garrett Owen [02-04]: Washington Post lays off a third of its staff in "bloodbath": "The sweeping layoffs come amid a steep decline in readership under the leadership of Jeff Bezos."

• Chris Lehmann [02-04]: Jeff Bezos's destruction of The Washington Post is a disgraceful plutocratic crime: "It turns out that democracy doesn't die in darkness at all — it succumbs to repeated group meetings at the hands of the moneyed power elite."

• Brian Karem [02-06]: What happens when democracy loses its watchdogs: "Layoffs at the Washington Post under Jeff Bezos are a dire warning for journalism and government accountability."

• Brian Faler [02-06]: Amazon's tax bill plunges after GOP tax cuts: The 87 percent drop is largely due to a more generous depreciation break in the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act.' This occurred "even as its profits jumped by 45 percent to nearly $90 billion."

Super Bowl LX: For the first time in several decades, I watched (and mostly enjoyed) the game, was perplexed by the half-time show, and suffered through enough commercials to fill a new screed like Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, but no time for that now.

• Marissa Martinez [02-06]: Bad Bunny is taking over the US. Does he want Puerto Rico to leave it?

• Sean Illing [02-07]: Enjoy the Super Bowl while you can. Football won't last forever: "The sport feels unstoppable — yet also doomed." Interview with Chuck Klosterman.

• Izzie Ramirez [02-08]: Bad Bunny's knockout halftime show, explained by a Puerto Rican: "All of the cultural Easter eggs you might have missed."

• Ophell Garcia-Lawler [02-09]: How Bad Bunny shut down his haters at Super Bowl.

• Cruz Bonlarron Martínez [02-09]: Bad Bunny's Super Bowl show was political art at its best.

• Alfred Soto [02-09]: The boricua quotidian: Bad Bunny.

  When MAGA has to coax a barely functional Kid Rock into alternative Superbowl programming, then you know Bunny is lucky to have such feeble adversaries. The show itself? Wobbly at first. Bunny looked like he'd realized several hundred million spectators were learning about him. Then, as he played subject and object for a staged recreation of life in a blighted U.S. territory, his confidence swelled; the recent tracks that nodded towards the boricua quotidian gained resonance. Pedro Pascal and Gaga came across as eager fellow travelers. Past and future Billboard chart toppers Ricky Martin and Cardi B served as reminders of the scope of Puerto Rican popular music. "I appreciate Bad Bunny for bringing the Telemundo Saturday afternoon variety show ethos (dancers, inapt sets, let's-try-this attitude) to global TV," I wrote on Bluesky. The dancers, for many watchers the show's kitschiest part, come straight from the twilight zone that is Spanish language television on a weekend at 4 p.m. Hell yeah. The last two minutes played as much as an elegy to an endangered hemispheric comity as an Epcot parade.

• Josh Fiallo [02-09]: Kid Rock's lip-synced halftime show brings MAGA pundit to tears.

• Constance Grady [02-10]: Woke isn't dead. Bad Bunny's halftime show proved it. "Maybe the right didn't capture the culture as much as they thought."

• Addy Bink [02-08]: Trump calls out this 'sissy' NFL rule a lot. Why? I hadn't watched football for decades, but had little trouble following the game. I didn't notice anything on the initial kickoff, except that the the ball was spotted on the 35-yard-line after the end-zone touchback. I looked up this one after Trump complained about the "sissy" rule. Seems OK to me, but some assholes are primed to complain about anything. Kickoff returns always seemed like a randomizing function to me: a possible (but unlikely) lucky break as opposed to the usual methodical grind. In addition to reducing injuries, it also seems likely that the rule reduces flags away from the play, and good riddance to them.

• Aaron Ross Coleman [02-13]: The only solution capitalism has is to sell us more useless junk: "Ad makers will never say the quiet part loud, but they increasingly know that we're unhappy and looking for solutions." I've long regarded advertising as one of the fundamental sins of modern life, and I've worked hard to arrange my life so I hardly ever have to face it. So I was far from prepared to watch the Super Bowl, in real time, with full state-of-the-art ads. I was overwhelmed, so I've been hoping to find some clear analysis. This barely glances the surface, but does suggest an explanation for the how hard I found it to figure out who's selling what: if the selling is always implicit, perhaps the best you can do is to just lodge an indelible image. Over the course of the show, I probably recognized 50+ actors in cameo bits, paid just to register their faces in some context. Beyond that, there were dozens (maybe hundreds) of pop culture references, many of which I couldn't pin down. It would take a whole new volume of Cultural Literacy to decipher all the references advertisers assume we know (or perhaps just hope we recognize).

The DHS shutdown: Funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, ended on February 14, causing a "shutdown" of the Department (which doesn't seem to include ICE). As of Feb. 24, the shutdown remain in effect. Seems like this should have been a bigger story, but I've seen very little mention of it (at least that I care to include here). It doesn't even seem to have its own Wikipedia article, although some basic info is available under 2026 United States federal government shutdowns.

• Ed Kilgore:

  • [02-11]: DHS shutdown will spare ICE, punish everyone else.

  • [02-13]: The DHS shutdown is on. Don't expect it to end anytime soon.

The Supreme Court rules on tariffs: Or some of them, some of the time, using some definition of "ruling." The days of the Court doing us favors by clarifying the rule of law seems to be long past.

• Cameron Peters [02-20]: Trump's tariff defeat, briefly explained.

• Elie Honig [02-20]: Trump's tariff fantasy just exploded.

• Ian Millhiser [02-20]: Why a Republican Supreme Court struck down Trump's tariffs: "Trump loses, and the Democratic justices didn't need to concede anything." In particular, the Democratic justices didn't endorse the "major questions" doctrine that Roberts tried invoking, pace Honig above.

• Eric Levitz [02-20]: The Supreme Court's tariff decision could save you $1,000: "The Court just did Trump a huge favor. Will he take it?" The assumption is that everyone but Trump understands that tariffs are bad, so the Court ruling is saving Trump from self-harm. But it's possible that Trump's focus was always more about enhancing presidential power than anything economic. That's certainly why he's fighting the ruling. Moreover, the whole refund angle is a mess, not least because you can't roll back every consequence of the tariff decision.

• Greg Sargent [02-20]: Trump's epic loss on tariffs is even worse for him than you think: "The Supreme Court's stunning invalidation of most of the president's tariffs is another sign that Trumpist populist nationalism is in crisis." That's not my take at all. It reduces a bit of the drag that tariffs are taking on the economy, while creating a messy problem of restitution that isn't likely to be handled at all well. (Personally, while I agree that Trump abused the law in implementing his tariffs, I'd write the losses off, except for purposes of blaming Trump.) But more importantly, it gives Trump an excuse for his failed policies, and turns the Supreme Court back into part of the deep state swamp conspiracy that is dead set on stopping Trump from saving the nation. That's a political argument he can, and will, run with. My main hope here is that by stressing the nefariously political nature of the Court, it bites him back.

• Joshua Keating [02-20]: The Supreme Court just blew up Trump's foreign policy: "How will Trump get countries to do what he wants without tariffs?" Trump has regularly threatened countries to tariffs, demanding "policy concessions on a host of issues that often had little to do with trade." Tariffs were his "big stick," and pretty much the only tool he had, since "soft power" and good will were beneath him.

• Karthik Sankaran [02-20]: Why SCOTUS won't deter Trump's desire to weaponize trade: "Today's Supreme Court decision only closes one avenue for the president to unilaterally impose tariffs."

• Harold Meyerson [02-23]: Trump's tariffs weren't really about trade policy: "They were about his nostalgia, his ego, his bigotry, and his greed." Sure, but more than all that, he discovered in them a source of instant presidential power, which he could use for its own sake, as well as to shake down bribes.

• David Sirota [02-23]: On tariffs, Neil Gorsuch is hardly apolitical.

• Matt Ford [02-24]: Clarence Thomas has lost the plot: "The associate justice's dissent in the tariffs case deserves some extra attention, because it is hopelessly uncoupled from law, history, and the Constitution."

• Elie Mystal [02-24]: The giant mess behind the Supreme Court's tariffs ruling: "The 6-3 decision was a rare victory, but it was crafted out of conflicts that leave almost nothing certain — including future tariff rulings."

Threatening/Attacking Iran: As has been standard policy since 1991 — for how and why this happened see Trita Parsi's book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (2007) — Israel is once again pushing the US into war with Iran. Reminds me of the Iraq War-era quip about how "real men go to Tehran."

• Joshua Keating [02-19]: It really looks like we're about to bomb Iran again.

• Kelley Beaucar Vlahos [02-19]: Military tankers for Iran attack deploying near Iraq War levels: "'Strikes could occur any time now,' say experts who explain what id-air refuelers mean for sustained operations."

• Nick Turse [02-19]: Trump menaces Iran with massive armada capable of prolonged war: "The amount of military forces gathering near Iran dwarfs even the monthslong build-up before the US coup in Venezuela."

• Trita Parsi [02-20]: No, even a 'small attack' on Iran will lead to war: "The deal Trump wants is a no-go for Tehran, which is resigned to retaliating if bombed again, limited or otherwise."

• Ryan Grim/Jeremy Scahill/Murtaza Hussain

  • [02-20]: Trump privately dreams of Iran regime change glory as Democrats cynically weigh political benefits of war: "Trump says he wants to be the president who takes down the Islamic Republic. Democratic leaders see him walking into a political trap of his own making ahead of the midterms."

  • [02-23]: Iranian officials to Drop Site: Tehran is showing "unbelievable level of flexibility" in talks to prevent US war: "Iran understand it is dealing with an erratic US president, but its negotiators still believe they can thread the needle with Trump." Two probably unsurmountable problems with a possible deal: Trump cannot be trusted to honor even his own deal; and Israel still has effective veto over any deal (even if they give in for the moment, they know they can kill it later).

• Eldar Mamedov [02-21]: Why Arab states are terrified of US war with Iran: "They see the military build-up and now that bombing and regime change can have consequences, especially geopolitical ones." Especially because they are much more vulnerable to Iranian reprisals than Israel or the US is.

• Chris Hedges [02-21]: The suicidal folly of a war with Iran: While I agree that attacking Iran would be complete and uttery folly, I don't quite buy the word "suicidal." It's folly because the only way to achieve the stated goals is to get Iran to agree to something satisfactory, which probably means the US has to give up some points that don't really hurt and may even be for the better. And there's no real scenario where bombing Iran gets one closer to such an agreement. Indeed, the more you attack Iran, the more insistent you are on dictating a change of government and power, the more resistant you are to treating Iran with any degree of respect, the harder negotiation becomes. Given all the effort the US and Israel have already put into backing Iran into a corner from which they can only lash out in spite, it's remarkable how level-headed their leaders have remained. And that's why another attack doesn't seem likely to be provoke Iran into a response which inflicts serious harm on its attackers. It's not really clear how much harm Iran could inflict, but it's not something that should be dismissed out of hand. US bases and ships in the region are vulnerable, as is a lot of US-friendly oil infrastructure (and the latter is pretty conspicuously vulnerable, as is any shipping going through the Straits of Hormuz). And while Iran has consistently denied any desire to develop let alone use nuclear weapons, it's pretty widely agreed that they could if they wanted to. That mere fact should act as a powerful deterrent, but the US seems determined to push Iran into a corner where they have no other option. A sufficiently large attack could tip that balance. Also, while Iran's leaders clearly want to avoid provoking the US into a massive attack — that's probably why their responses to previous attacks have been muted and advertised — at some point the leaders may decide that their own survival matters more than their people, and risk the latter to save their own skins. (Iraq, Syria, and Libya offer recent examples of regimes that turned on their own people rather than giving up power.) So while the assumption so far has been that Iran's leadership is too responsible to respond to attacks irrationally, is that really something the US wants to depend on in the future? And if it is a dependable assumption, why all the fearmongering about a useless Iranian nuke?

• James A Russell [02-22]: All aboard America's strategic blunder train. Next stop: Iran: "Our stumbling into war with Tehran would be the latest in a self-inflicted 30-year road to nowhere."

• Dave DeCamp:

  • [02-22]: Witkoff says Trump is 'curious' why Iran hasn't 'capitulated': "Curious" implies that he would like to find out. I think the word they're looking for is "dumbfounded."

  • [02-23]: Joint Chiefs Chairman warns Trump of significant risks if US attacks Iran.

• Sajjad Safaei [02-23]: What if today's Iran is resigned to a long, hellish war with the US? "Tehran learned from the June attack and its comparative advantage now is to drag Washington into a protracted regional conflict."

• Sina Azodi [02-24]: History tells us coercion through airpower alone won't work: "Donald Trump won't commit troops because he knows it would hurt him politically. But that's what it would take if he wants Iran to capitulate." Iraq and Afghanistan are examples where air power alone failed, and ground troops were needed to seize the capitals. Whether ground troops worked is arguable: temporarily perhaps, but the US struggled to remain in control, and ultimately lost. The Nazi Blitz of England in 1940-45 and the US bombing of North Vietnam are also examples of air power failing to win. Still, Iran is roughly three times the size and population of Iraq. And while the regime has been weakened by sanctions, there is no reason to believe that the legacy of supporting the Shah, imposing sanctions, and sporadic attacks and subversion has made many Iranians long for a US-imposed, Israeli-directed puppet regime. Maybe Lindsey Graham still thinks that "real men go to Tehran," but I doubt that Trump could line up anyone in the actual Army leadership to sign up for a ground invasion. Even in Venezuela, they made no effort to occupy anything: that was just a snatch and grab operation, leaving the old system in place and hoping they can extort some slightly better deals. I could see Trump thinking he'd like to do something like that, but it's going to be much harder, for lots of reasons. The thing is, he could have cut a deal with Iran (and for that matter with Venezuela) if he only showed them some respect and allowed them to settle differences with dignity. He didn't do that, because he wants to show the world he's really a leg-breaking mobster, someone who can reduce his enemies to ash and dictate terms. The world doesn't work like that. (Although Netanyahu also thinks it does, and with America backstopping his every move and funding his perpetual war machine, he's been able to get away with it so far.)

• Blaise Malley [02-25]: Who are the Dems giving tacit green light to Iran attack and why? Schumer and Jeffries, for instance.

• Ori Goldberg [02-26]: Israel's lonely push for war with Iran: "Internationally isolated, restrained in Gaza, and unraveling at home, Israel sees another escalation as the only way to maintain its aggressive regional agenda." Iran doesn't want war with the US. Neither do the great majority of Americans. The only one who wants this war is Israel: they need an enemy to justify their permanent war machine (which provides cover for their continued usurpation of the West Bank), they fear that their right-wing political order will collapse without continued war, and they believe that trapping the US in conflict with Iran will keep American support coming.

Trump's State of the Union speech: The Constitutionally-mandated annual speech is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 24. That's approximately when I hoped to post this, so the section starts with speculation, including much Trump is unlikely to say anything honest about, and will be added to if need be.

• Michael Tomasky [02-23]: The real state of the union: millions of Americans are just disgusted: "Yes, we're angry about what Donald Trump is doing to our country. But even more than that, we're heartsick over the countless ways in which he is destroying this nation."

• Jeet Heer [02-24]: The state of the union will be even worse than Trump's polling numbers: "What's a flopping demagogue to do?"

• John Nichols [02-24]: Summer Lee knows the real state of the union: "The progressive representative from Pennsylvania will speak truth to Trump's power tonight." I gather the Democrats' "official" state of the union response will be from centrist Abigail Spanberger, but this one should be more interesting.

• Alex Galbraith:

  • [02-24]: "These people are crazy": Trump uses State of the Union to attack Democrats, SCOTUS. "I'm not sure this word is the dagger to the heart Trump thinks it is. It's rather like "weird," in that it not only attacks one party, it also shows the attacker to be an elitist, thin-skinned and super judgmental, a prig. I think that Walz calling Trump (and his supporters) "weird" backfired, for many reasons, including that it made Trump look like a possible alternative to a system that was being choked by the dictums of what respectable politicians can say. I doubt Democrats will try to play this by embracing the charge, but one can at least look askance at who's making the charge.

  • [02-24]: "Is the president working for you?": Spanberger hammers Trump on affordability. While Trump mocks them, Democrats have finally found a word which consolidates inflation, debt, wages, and costs into a single concept that better fits one's lived experience. The following is a useful primer:

    • Dylan Gyauch-Lewis [02-11]: What is affordability? "It's more than just prices." It's also more complicated, but perhaps not complicated enough. It's hard to factor in increasing precarity, partly because it strikes so hard in individual but rather random cases. Also the sense of powerlessness more and more people are feeling (because those in power are always pressing their advantages: that alone is enough for a "vibecession"). Quality also factors into affordability: while tech is generally improving, the transition is rarely smooth, creating losers as well as unintended consequences; on the other hand, business is always looking to cut corners, and shirking on quality is one way to do that.

• Zack Beauchamp [02-24]: The most important line from Trump's State of the Union.

  It came during a discussion of the SAVE Act, a Republican bill designed to combat the fictitious scourge of noncitizen voting. Democrats, Trump claimed, only opposed the bill because "they want to cheat." And then he took it much further.

  "Their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat," Trump said on Tuesday night. "We're going to stop it. We have to stop it."

  Think about that for a second. This is the president of the United States, speaking to the country in a ritualized national address, claiming that the opposition party is not only wrong on policy but fundamentally illegitimate, so much so that if they win an election it must be because they cheated.

  Taken literally, that is the president announcing that the stated policy of his administration is preventing the opposition from winning any future election.

  Of course, the odd thing here is that most of the actual instances we can think of where a party tries to rig elections for their own advantage occur on the right-wing side: today's Republicans, or for white Democrats during the Jim Crow era. The purpose of the SAVE Act is to make it harder for poor people to vote. What Trump really wants is a system where Democrats can never win an election, no matter how unpopular Republican policies are. That's because, well:

  But Trump doesn't see Democrats as opponents. He sees them as enemies. . . . And indeed, this was how Trump talked about Democrats in the State of the Union.

  "These people are crazy. I'm telling you, they're crazy. Boy, we're lucky we have a country with people like this," he said. "Democrats are destroying our country, but we've stopped it, just in the nick of time."

  Beauchamp relates this to Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt, but the Nazis studied America's Jim Crow laws for precedents. It's tiring to have to keep talking about democratic principles, but that's the line Republicans insist on drawing. The problem for Democrats is not that they lack moral high ground, but that a great many Americans simply dismiss the notion of moral high ground (except inasmuch as they claim it themselves, ideally as a grant from God), but also the principle allows for either side to win, and leaves it to the people to decide which. In defending that principle, which the other side flat-out rejects, Democrats tend to undermine what should be their real mission, which is to show that it is the Republicans who are the enemies not just of the political system but of the people the system is supposed to represent.

• Ed Kilgore [02-25]: Trump's State of the Union was a bloated awards show. Much discussion before the speech about Trump's record low approval numbers, and how he desperately needs to turn a corner. No one seems to think that he did with this particular speech. Kilgore thinks it at least "thrilled his base," even if it convinced or much impressed anyone else. I'm left with two thoughts: that for someone who claims to love America, he sure hates an awful lot of actual Americans; yet he seems to sincerely believe in not just the righteousness but the inevitable success of his program. As Kilgore put it: "It appears he will go into difficult midterm elections standing pat on his record, his message, and his unshakable belief in his own greatness." I'm not really sure how Trump could rig the 2026 (and 2028) elections, but as long as he thinks he's winning, he's unlikely to try (at least beyond his habitual complaining about mail-in ballots, voter id, etc.).

• Meagan Day [02-25]: Pay close attention to Trump's affordability rhetoric: "Donald Trump's State of the Union was mostly lies and grievances. But his aggressive play for economic populism — borrowing progressive ideas and branding them as his own — should be a warning for Democrats to get serious about affordability."

• Paul Heideman [02-25]: Donald Trump is staying the course: "Donald Trump's inane self-aggrandizement made listening to his State of the Union speech an exercise in endurance. It was also a reminder of how lucky the nation is that Trump's pathologies prevent him from more ably seizing his historical moment."

• Christian Paz [02-26]: How Democrats reorganized their State of the Union resistance: "The Democrats tried something new to rebut Trump's address." Aside from the "official" response by Abigail Spanbarger, there were others, plus two counter-programming events, one dubbed the "People's State of the Union," the other the "State of the Swamp."

• Alec Hernandez/Dasha Burns [02-26]: The SOTU moment that Republicans hope saves the midterms: "Americans have soured on the White House immigration enforcement tactics, but the president's speech has the GOP strategizing on how to regain momentum on a favorite issue." Their initial is this 30-second ad, which shows Trump saying: "If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens." It then shows Republicans applauding en masse, and pans to various Democrats who look bored out of their minds. Given Trump's lackadaisical delivery, buried deep within a speech that rambled on for nearly two hours, who wouldn't be bored? Even had they been hanging on every word, Trump's challenge scarcely makes any sense — if you asked me, I'd say that the first job is to ensure equal justice for all, which no one would say ICE is doing. (Then I'd add a few more things, like regulating the economy, protecting the environment, and making war unthinkable. Granted, do those things and American citizens would be safer — most likely "illegal aliens" would neither be illegal nor aliens.) Trump then points to the Democrats, and says "These people are crazy." Really sick burn.

• Harold Meyerson [02-26]: The SOTU clips that should prove disastrous for Trump and the GOP: "Democrats should stream and broadcast the president's odes to our economy over and over again." Jimmy Kimmel's 60-second edit gives you a taste, but jumps around too much.

• Corey Robin [02-26]: On the Democratic Party style: Just focusing on style/rhetoric:

  I don't think I've ever encountered, outside academia, people with such a bottomless appetite for mountainous piles of meaningless, unnecessary, empty words and phrases, each genetically engineered, in whole or in part, to make any sentient being stop paying attention. Reading this speech, that is the only conclusion I can come to: that the sole purpose of this speech is to make people stop paying attention.

• Sasha Abramsky [02-27]: For 108 minutes, Trump gives a tedious Mussolini impersonation. I've never listened to Mussolini, but I'm skeptical that he was ever so offhandedly wry and lackadaisical.

Major Threads

Israel: Enter "stage two" of Trump's Gaza War Peace Plan, which we can now safely say that Trump is implementing in the worst way possible, through his so-called Board of Peace. It is worth recalling my [10-21] piece on Making Peace in Gaza and Beyond, which lays out a different approach (one which cuts Israel considerable slack, arguably much more than they deserve, but which could be tolerated if the Trump and other key Americans decided the war had to end). As I noted last time, the minimal requirements for any serious peace plan are:

1. Israel has to leave Gaza, and cannot be allowed any role in its reconstruction.
2. The people who still live in Gaza must have political control of their own destiny.
3. The UN is the only organization that be widely trusted to guide Gaza toward self-government, with security for all concerned.

Trump's Board of Peace not only bypasses the UN — forget that it's theoretically sanction by UN Security Council Resolution 2803, because Trump already has — it suggests a new alignment under Trump's personal control, excluding any nation not willing to bow and scrape up tribute money. This is reminiscent of Bush's "Coalition of the Willing," but where Bush's ad hoc club was mere propaganda, this is styled as a plot to control the world. Not even Ian Flemming has managed to concoct a villain as megalomaniacal as Trump.

• Omar H Rahman [01-13]: Israel's Somaliland gambit reflects a doctrine of endless escalation: "By projecting power into the Horn of Africa, Israel aims to increase pressure on rivals, undermine regional stability, and narrow the space for diplomacy." Somaliland is region in northern Somalia, along the coast of the Gulf of Aden, that has broken away from the beleaguered Somali Republic (which Trump has bombed over 100 times). Israel is the only country to recognize Somaliland's independence. One speculation is that Somaliland could be used as dumping grounds for exiling Palestinians from Gaza.

• Sam Kimball [01-27]: Zionist expansion: a first-hand account of Israel's illegal occupation of southwestern Syria.

• Muhammad Shehada [01-29]: How Netanyahu is sabotaging phase two of the Gaza ceasefire: "By undermining a new Palestinian technocratic body, Israel is trying to make Gaza appear ungovernable — and prove the need for its sustained military rule." Many details loom large, especially the return of the spectacularly corrupt Mohammad Dahlan masquerading as a neutral "technocratic" functionary.

• Basel Adra [01-30]: Inside a coordinated, multi-village settler-soldier pogrom in Masafer Yatta: "As settlers set homes ablaze and looted livestock across three villages for over five hours, Israeli soldiers blocked ambulances, arrested victims, and even took part in beatings. This is how it unfolded."

• Jamal Kanj [02-02]: Weaponizing America's economy in service of Israel: Not only does the US subsidize Israel's wars, especially against "their own people"[*], but the US uses its financial power to punish dissent around the world. Thus, the US has "sanctioned international courts, punished UN officials, pressured humanitarian organizations and national leaders who dared to insist that Israeli crimes be judged by the same standards applied to all nations." In this context, US sanctions against states like Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and North Korea are not just acts of war "by other means," but are threats to other countries of what could happen to them should they stray too far from US dictates in support of Israel.

  [*] One of the most effective propaganda lines used against Saddam Hussein was that he had "gassed his own people": Kurds resident in Iraq, suspected of sympathies with Iran during the ongoing war, and later in open rebellion against Iraq's regime, but still counted as "his own people." Israel bears at least as much responsibility for its Palestinian residents, some nominally citizens but most denied legal rights and standing. Israel is the only nation in the world where we accept that the political elite can divide the people who live there into a favored group of "citizens" and others that can be discriminated against.

• Deema Hattab [02-03]: A catalog of Gaza's loss: "Recording what has been erased — and making sense of what remains." Part of a series on "A Day for Gaza."

• Ramzy Baroud [02-06]: On the menu: how the Middle Powers sacrificed Gaza to save themselves.

• Neve Gordon [02-09]: Demographic engineering connects record murder rates in its Palestinian towns and the weaponisation of antisemitism.

• Qassam Muaddi [02-11]: Israel just started legalizing its annexation of the West Bank. Here's what that means.

• Abdaljawad Omar [02-13]: How Israel is eroding life for Palestinians in the West Bank: "Israeli violence in the West Bank isn't as dramatic as in Gaza, but it is methodical, durable, and sometimes harder to understand. Here's how Israel is using settler terror, financial policies, and legal tactics to suffocate Palestinian life." One problem with focusing on the clear cut genocide charge in Gaza is that as far as Smotrich and Ben Gvir (and quite possibly Netanyahu) are concerned, Gaza is just a side show: the real battlefront is the West Bank. Gaza is a test of how much violence Israel can get away with (which has turned out to be quite a lot). Israel clings onto Gaza because no one that matters has told them the obvious, which is that they have to give it up and leave. If the US did make such a demand, I suspect that Israel would have no choice other than to accept the loss. Israel has, after all, already turned the strip into a wasteland. But Israel is unlikely ever to consider withdrawing from the West Bank. Their project there is to make so burdensome for Palestinians that they eventually give up, leaving Israel with the "land without a people" they've always longed for.

• Mira Al Hussein [02-19]: In widening Saudi-UAE rift, Israel is at the heart of a narrative war: "Saudi accusations that Abu Dhabi acts as Israel's proxy have ignited a media firestorm. But similar anti-Israel sentiments circulate within the UAE itself."

• Tom Perkins [02-23]: How data on the crackdown on Gaza protests reflects the increasing repression of activist movements in the US: "Data shows Gaza protesters faced harsher punishments than Black Lives Matter protesters did just a few years ago. Experts tell Mondoweiss this is the result of pro-Israel bias and a backlash against protest movements that has been building for years."

• Farid Hafez [02-24]: Why Israel is joining hands with Europe's far right: "Tel Aviv is courting the same movements that once peddled lies about a global Jewish conspiracy — only now their target has shifted to Islam."

• Brett Wilkins [02-24]: Huckabee accused of inciting murder after Israeli settlers kill Palestinian-American teen: "The US ambassador to Israel is engaging in empowering and allowing for actions that lead to the targeted lynching and killing of US citizens."

• Nicholas Liu [02-25]: How the Gaza war changed America: Interview with Bruce Robbins, who "argues Gaza has shifted the debate over how and when the label is used." The label he focuses on is "atrocity," which is the subject of his recent book, Atrocity: A Literary History.

• Michael Arria [02-26]: International outcry over Huckabee claim that Israel can control from Egypt to Iraq: "The Trump administration is in damage control mode after Mike Huckabee claimed Israeli has the biblically mandated right to stretch from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq." Fallout from a Tucker Carlson interview of Trump's Ambassador to Israel — a Baptist minister and an especially devout and belligerent Christian Zionist.

  • Yousef Munayyer [02-26]: Did Mike Huckabee just green-light Israel to invade half the Levant? "A remark in an interview with Tucker Carlson has set off a firestorm in the Middle East."

  • Jonathan Ofir [02-24]: Israeli 'liberal' opposition leader agrees with Mike Huckabee that the bible gives Israel the right to land from Egypt to Iraq: "Israel supporters tried to dismiss the idea as nonsense, but Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid says he agrees." This just reminds us that there is no serious political opposition to the genocidal ruling bloc in Israel. By the way, the comments here include some interesting bits of biblical study, not that any ancient scripture should have any bearing on who is entitled to live where, or how the people living there should be treated.

• Trump's Board of Peace: The coalition of the willing to pay has had their first meeting, and the coalition of the vulture capitalists are licking their chops. Everyone understands that Israel's destruction of Gaza has been so total that the world community will have to chip in billions of dollars to restore even the bare necessities for modern life today. The purpose of the Board is to raise this money, and to make sure that as little as possible goes to the Palestinians, who remain (as Israel has long insisted) unwanted and unnecessary people. The obvious way to do this is to imagine Gaza as a blank slate for profitable real estate scams, where most of the money will ultimately be siphoned off by the insiders who control the purse strings. Chief among these is "chairman for life" Donald Trump, but the real brains behind this appears to be son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose Saudi-financed investment fund turned out to be the single biggest grift of Trump's first term.

  • Mohammed Haddad/Mohammad Mansour [01-27]: Map shows what would happen to Gaza under the US 'master plan': "The plan treats Gaza as vacant beachfront property, proposing glass towers and industrial zones over historic sites." The "plan" was unveiled at Davos, which was kind of like addressing the Balfour Declaration to the Rothschilds.

  • Tariq Kenney-Shawa [01-30]: Jared Kushner's "plan" for Gaza is an abomination: "Kushner is pitching a 'new,' gleaming resort hub. But scratch the surface, and you find nothing less than a blueprint for ethnic cleansing."

  • Ellen Ioanes [02-09]: Board of Peace is a Board of Profits.

  Thomas Cavanna [02-19]: How Trump's Board of Peace is set up for a multibillion dollar fail: "A vague mandate and pay-to-play model suggest it'll become a bloated boondoggle in search of an expanded ission lacking full international legitimacy."

  • Dave DeCamp [02-19]: US plans to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza for international force.

  • Nick Cleveland-Stout [02-20]: Board of Peace will be a bonanza for wealthy board members: "Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner downplayed the potential for profiteering but that's not exactly the case." This is worth quoting at some length, although this only hints at the extent of the coruption.

    Companies are already jockeying for contracts. This week, The Guardian reported that the Board of Peace issued a contract to build a 5,000-person military base for an international force tasked with protecting civilians and training "vetted Palestinian police forces." It's not clear who the contractor is.

    In December, a leaked document revealed that U.S. officials were searching for a "Master Contractor" that would "earn a fair return" for trucking. A U.S. disaster response firm, Gothams LLC, submitted a plan to the White House that would guarantee the company 300% profits for work in Gaza. The company would move goods into Gaza in exchange for a fee, as well as a seven-year monopoly over trucking and logistics for the Board of Peace.

    Administration officials and businesspeople affiliated with the Board have also promoted a new "Gaza supply system" which, according to a January slide deck, offers sovereign investors between 46% and 175% returns in the first year of investment.

    "Everybody and their brother is trying to get a piece of this," one long-time contractor told The Guardian. "People are treating this like another Iraq or Afghanistan. And they're trying to get, you know, rich off of it."

    Israel's representative on the Board of Peace, billionaire Yakir Gabay, said that Gaza's coastline should be "developed as a new Mediterranean Riviera with 200 hotels and potential islands." Gabay made his money largely through real estate, though he claims he will refrain from building hotels in Gaza himself.

    Another member of the Executive Board, Marc Rowan, runs one of the world's largest private equity firms, Apollo Global Management. Rowan touted the money to be made during yesterday's meeting. "The coastline alone? 50 billion in value on a conservative basis," he said. "The housing stock — more than $30 billion . . . The infrastructure — more than $30 billion." Altogether, Rowan said, Gaza contains some $115 billion in real estate value, but "it just needs to be unlocked and financed."

    The dominance of private equity and real estate moguls on the Board, combined with a lack of transparency surrounding policies and timetables for Gaza's reconstruction, raise concerns about abuse. Hugh Lovatt, a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that the role of businesspeople such as Rowan and Kushner is "completely at odds with what the Palestinians in Gaza need."

    I'd edit that last line to change "need" for "want." This notion that other people (Americans, Israelis, Saudis), qualified exclusively by their wealth and hubris, are entitled to decide what Gazans need is profoundly not only disrespectful, it is a recipe for class war (even assuming the ethnic and religious "deradialization" proceeds according to plan, which I wouldn't bet on). Let's say, for the sake of argument, that some of this gets built, and some Palestinians are hired to work in these foreign-owned palaces and factories. Workers could strike for better wages and working conditions, but the Board is also running its own private police (think of the 19th century US Pinkertons), and many of the Board members (especially the Saudis and Israelis) are quite comfortable with the idea of importing foreign scab labor, which will further imiserate the Palestinians and kindle new conflicts (on top of the old). This probably ends in Israel leveling Gaza once more, hoping to drive the Palestinians out. And while this might seem like a setback for the war profiteers, they're taking their cut up front, and can always resurrect their graft with a new Board promising another new Peace. I may still be of the opinion that the Trump Plan is better than the naked genocide that preceded it, and perhaps is the best one can hope for given the unchallenged power of Netanyahu and Trump, but it it still far short of the very modest proposals I made back in October.

  • Ishaan Tharoor [02-21]: Donald Trump's pantomime United Nations: "The Board of Peace might be destined to fail, but it still threatens to undermine an international system in which the US was once the linchpin." First paragraph begins: "It didn't take long for the flattery to begin."

  • Michael Arria [02-25]: Meet the companies and billionaires looking to make a massive profit off Trump's plans in Gaza: "U.S. companies are aiming to make huge profits from the Gaza reconstruction plan, with several billionaires on Trump's Board of Peace openly discussing the opportunity to make billions."

  • Matt Wolfson [02-25]: The Gaza Plan's 'sick kind of detachment' and its dangers for America.

  • Ben Armbruster [02-26]: The White House wants Iran to attack Americans: "Trump officials are searching for ways to get into a war with Tehran.">

  • Jehad Abusalim [02-26]: Gaza does not need new overlords: "The U.S. plan for Gaza is the final stage of Israel's genocide. Bombs and bulldozers obliterated Gaza's landscape, and now skyscrapers and data centers aim to dismantle its social fabric and capacity to resist."

Around the World: Formerly "Russia/Ukraine," and that's still going on, but Trump seems to think the US is enjoying a unipolar moment like some Americans fantasized about after the Soviet Union dissolved, and that's having repercussions around the world. For Trump's own activities, see the next section. This one will look at the world is reacting, or sometimes just minding its own business.

• David Broder [12-18]: The new Europeans, Trump-style: "Donald Trump is sowing division in the European Union, even as he calls on it to spend more on defense." He's probably confusing several different trends, in part because Trump's own foreign policy is so incoherent. I expect his threat to Greenland will spur the re-armament crowd, but not to buy more American arms. (If they're going to buy arms, they shouldn't they build up their own arms industries?) Moreover, the far right, which he has clear sympathies with, is more likely to turn against the US than nearly anyone in the despised center.

• Dan M Ford [2025-12-31]: 6 stories that defined Trump's approach to Africa in 2025: "Minerals, peace deals, and a complete dissolution of relations with at least one country."

  1. Diplomatic scuffle with South Africa: This doesn't mention Israel, but does mention "genocide," which Trump claimed "was being perpetrated by the country's black population against white farmers."
  2. Massad Boulos' role as Senior Africa Advisor: Boulos is the father-in-law of Trump daughter Tiffany.
  3. Peace agreement between Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda: all the better to tap into the region's "vast mineral wealth."
  4. Effort to end the war in Sudan: ineffectively so far, but Trump has some leverage with outside forces (UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia) and, well, there's oil at stake.
  5. Economic engagement with Africa: Where he "secured a record $2.5 billion in business deals."
  6. The US bombs Nigeria: Merry Christmas!

• Robert Skidelsky [01-30]: Much ado about a Chinese 'mega-embassy' in London: "British newspapers and politicians have taken to fighting an imaginary war with Beijing."

• Joshua Keating [02-03]: Is a new US-Russia arms race about to begin? "We're about to lose our last nuclear arms control treaty with Russia. What does that mean?" New START, the last of several arms control treaties the US and Soviet Union negotiated, expires on Feb. 5. The treaty limited the US and Russia to 1,550 deployed warheads. As both already have many more warheads in storage, the arms race could be rapid, if either side count think of a rationale for deploying more. I can't think of one, but the US nuke industry has been pushing a multi-trillion-dollar "modernization" for some time.

  • Garrett Owen [02-05]: US-Russian nuclear arms treaty expires.

  • Eric Ross [02-08]: Eight decades later, it remains one world or none: "The end of New START and the enduring nuclear nightmare."

• Evan Robins [02-13]: Keir Starmer's failure is nearly complete: "The wildly unpopular UK prime minister is likely doomed in the wake of an Epstein-related scandal entirely of his own making. He deserves every bit of hell he's in." The Epstein connection was through Peter Mandelson ("a longtime Labour power broker and Starmer's handpicked former ambassador to the United States"). Starmer's takeover of the party from Jeremy Corbyn seemed doomed from the start: he purged Corbyn and jettisoned the last vestiges of democratic socialism, leaving the party with no principles other than corrupt compromise with financial power and US militarism. Not only couldn't he make it work, he had no defense when it failed.

• Johnny Ryan [02-17]: Europeans are dangerously reliant on US tech. Now is a good time to build our own: Actually, now is the time to go open source, and not let any country or company tell you what you can or cannot do, let alone how much tribute you have to pay to keep the lights on.

• Laura Wittebroek [02-20]: Profit over people: How the world fuels Sudan's war. Since 2019, Sudan has been torn apart by a civil war between two militia factions, each supported by an array of outside opportunists (especially the UAE, but everyone in the international arms trade seems to be involved), although this follows decades of conflict between whoever controlled Khartoum and the outer provinces.

• Tanya Goudsouzian/Ibrahim Al-Marashi [02-20]: How Pakistan is busting the Great Power monopoly on air power: "The industry here is showing how emerging states are gaining leverage through the democratization . . . of weapons." Long dependent on the US for F-16 aircraft, Pakistan is now building its own fighter-bombers, dubbed the JF-17, co-developed with China, and available for export.

• Anatol Lieven [02-23]: Ukraine marks biggest evolution in military tactics since WWII: "The transformation in weapons and conventional warfare has resulted in the bloodiest stalemate in generations." This, by the way, led me to a couple of earlier articles, also on futility:

  • Alex Vershinin [2025-06-18]: How NATO military doctrine failed Ukraine on the battlefield: "in part, because these forces were trained to wage the Cold War, and Russia has evolved." But wasn't the Cold War designed to never be fought anyway?

  • Ian Proud [05-30]: The 2026 bill for the Ukraine war is already in the mail: "With talks stalled, Zelensky says he needs more money for next year."

• Martin Di Caro [02-23]: What does Putin really want? "Four Russia-Ukraine experts tell us if aything has changed as the war enters its fifth year without resolve." Nikolai Petro, Sergey Radchenko, Sumantra Maitra, Nikolas Gvosdev. I have little confidence that any of them know. This is part of an anniversary series, along with the already cited Lieven piece, and:

  • Mark Episkopos [02-20]: After four years, Russian inflation may be key to ending the war: "The prospect of lifting sanctions and sustained economic cooperation is one of the most powerful levers the West has right now."

  • George Beebe [2025-10-16]: Trump risks going full Biden by giving Tomahawks to Ukraine: "He needs to follow his old diplomatic instincts for ending the war, no matter how unpopular with Kyiv and the Europeans."

  • Marcus Stanley [02-24]: Ukraine War at 3: The victory we demanded and the attrition we got: "Our maximalist goals have led to a high cost in human life and economic destruction, with no clear gain."

  • William Hartung [02-24]: 'Arsenal of democracy'? Arms makers the only winners in Ukraine.

• Peter Rutland [02-24]: Ukraine's dilemma: "The nation has fought bravely but will it have the support to keep going, externally and internally, for a fifth year?" The problem is under Biden you had a president who refused to negotiate. Under Trump you have a president who cannot negotiate. Zelensky and Putin are just following their assigned roles, especially given that neither leader can afford to look like a loser, both can sustain what they're doing indefinitely (although Ukraine is in much more precarious shape, with limited resources and dependent on outside help), and outsiders aren't ready to sweeten the pot (end sanctions, offer reconstruction funds, take some steps toward disarmament). I've long believed this would be easy to solve, but the US and Europe have to value peace and cooperation more than division and war. Russia needs to meet them part way, too, but until the West is willing to settle this dispute, it matters little what Putin does.

• Jason Ditz [02-26]: US demands Iraq end Maliki nomination by Friday: Iraq is another country where Trump feels he should be able to dictate its leader.

Trump Goes to War (International Edition): Formerly "Trump's War & Peace," but not much of the latter anymore. On opening this file, this includes actual or threatened wars in Venezuela, Iran, and Greenland.

• Heather Digby Parton [01-08]: War has become fashionable again for the GOP: "The right's detour into pacifism under Trump was never going to stick."

• Pavel Devyatkin [01-13]: Tech billionaires behind Greenland bid want to build 'freedom cities': "As Europeans try to redirect Trump, his Silicon Valley supporters have ideas of their own, involving low-regulated communities and access to rare earths."

• Sara Herschander [01-30]: America's culture wars are killing people overseas: "When 'pro-life' foreign aid hurts women and children the most."

• Martin Di Caro [02-02]: Geo-kleptocracy and the rise of 'global mafia politics': "Expert Alex de Waal explains how the capture of Maduro, leaving his corrupt regime in place, is a 'crystalline example' of regime change in the new era."

• Rachel Janfaza [02-03]: The quiet reason why Trump is losing Gen Z: "They wanted fewer wars. He didn't deliver." Pull quote from a 22-year-old woman in Ohio: "The 'no new wars' thing is now the biggest joke of my life." But why is this just a "quiet reason"? Probably because Democrats don't talk about it. Harris blew the 2024 election by expressing no qualms about the major wars Biden (Gaza, Ukraine) boosted, let alone the piddly strikes that had become so routine they're rarely reported. Clinton blew the 2016 election by trying to come off as the tougher, more belligerent commander-in-chief. Democrats desperately need to find a way to stop looking like warmongers. They could start by relentlessly attacking Trump's tantrums. They could expand on that by developing a broad vision that puts American interests firmly on a foundation of peace and human rights.

• Tara Copp/David Ovalle [02-03]: Pentagon warns Scouts to restore 'core values' or lose military support: "The relationship dates back decades, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has criticized the organization for allowing girls to join and changing its name from Boy Scouts." The new name is Scouting America. I haven't paid any attention to them, and had no idea that they were supported by the military. (Evidently, the military provides "medical, security and logistical support" for their National Jamboree, which I only recall due to a spectacularly off-color speech Trump gave them a few years back. Article includes a photo of Trump after his 2017 speech.) I joined the Cub and Boy Scouts in my youth, and some of what I learned there has stuck with me (as well as some trauma). In my annual music lists, I routinely note: "As the proto-fascist organization of my youth insisted, one should always be prepared."

• Leah Schroeder [02-04]: Hegseth to take control of Stars & Stripes for 'warfighter' makeover: "Critics, including veterans and First Amendment advocates, say the proposed overhaul would usurp the storied military newspaper's independence." I suspect its "independence" has always been a mere "story." Still, Hegseth's vision for the "War Department" is uniquely disturbing.

• Joshua Keating [02-13]: Trump's biggest war is one he almost never talks about: "Why did the US bomb Somalia more than 100 times last year?" The bombing started under Bush, increased under Obama, much more so in Trump's first term, continued at a lower pace under Biden, and accelerated under Trump II.

• Rubio Goes to Munich: The Secretary of State gave an address to the Munich Security Conference:

  • Eldar Mamedov [02-14]: Rubio's spoonful of sugar helps hard medicine go down in Munich: "The Secretary of State' message on civilizational renewal and self-reliance wasn't too different than Vance's the year before, but it landed much softer." Author agrees that Rubio delivered "a peculiar mix of primacist nostalgia and civilizational foreboding," echoing Vance's more confrontational message a year back, but his "spoonful of sugar" was appealing to Europe's own post-imperial chauvinism, instead of writing it off.

  • AlJazeera [02-14]: Rubio slams European policies on climate, migration as he calls for unity.

  • Mehdi Hasan [02-17]: Forget Maga. Welcome to Mega: Make Empire Great Again: "Marco Rubio arrived at the Munich security conference with a disturbing message for European governments: empire is great." Quotes Rubio as saying: "We do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who, together with us, are willing and able to defend it."

  • Carol Schaeffer [02-17]: The Munich Security Conference marks the end of the US-led order: "US politicians flooded the summit — but Europe no longer sees the United States as a reliable partner."

  • Nick Turse [02-19]: More US troops are headed to Nigeria: "The Trump administration is sending more troops to a region where US military presence has coincided with increased violence."

  • Zak Cheney-Rice [02-19]: Heirs to plunder: "Marco Rubio's Munich speech made a sinister case for shameless western imperialism."

  • Jonathan Cook [02-19]: Rubio declared a return to brutal western colonialism — and Europe applauded: "Old-school, white-man's burden colonialism is unapologetically back." Not the way I would put it, but while they are unapologetic about their moral and military superiority, their divine right to lead a world that exists only to serve them.

  • John Quiggin:

    • [02-21]: The US state has proved itself dispensable: I doubt that the US was ever indispensable to its allies. At most, it was a convenient crutch, simple-minded enough in its initial anti-communism and later megalomania that it was easier (and more profitable) to humor it than to risk displeasure. But the net value of NATO security was never much, at least as concerned the Russians — more important was that it kept France, Germany, Britain, and maybe Italy from rearming against each other, which would have been a dangerous waste. The dollar, capital and trade flows weren't worth much either, but as long as the US was generous enough to pay for its primacy, it was easier to just go along. But "America First," with Trump's shakedowns and extortions, served notice that such a game couldn't last long. We're seeing some of that now, and will see more over time. One big change Quiggin notes is that Europe has already made great strides in arms development and production, as they've largely taken over supply to Ukraine. Trump's erratic tariff policy has further undermined their interest in America. As Quiggin notes, Rubio's ovation in Munich was mostly polite. But it also came from people who are tightly integrated into the decomposing alliance. Outside the room, the speech wasn't nearly as well received.

    • [2025-02-01]: The dispensable nation: Quiggin refers back to this piece he wrote a year ago. One thing I'd add is that while the notion that the US is uniquely virtuous has obvious attraction to the people who nominally run it, and through it imagine themselves as the natural rulers of the world, this conceit has little practical value to the overwhelming majority of Americans, and is at best humored by the leaders of other nations.

  • Steve Howell [02-24]: Rubio, rodeo, and tall tales of empire: "The secretary of state has provoked the ire of Britain's first black woman lawmaker and put the spotlight once again on how the US has historically treated people of his own heritage."

Trump Goes to War (Domestic Edition): This will carry on from "ICE Stories," and will also pick up skirmishes in the courts. It isn't a stretch to say Trump's waging war against his own people, except inasmuch as he doesn't consider most of us to be his own people.

• Andi Zeisler [01-12]: in Renee Good's killing, ICE's misogyny isn't a side note — it's the point: "The words of the man who shot Renée Good speak to the Trump administration's fixation on masculinity."

• Robert Willis [01-27]: ICE's terror campaign is part of a long American tradition: "As a Black man, I know firsthand how often state violence is used to perpetuate white supremacy in this country."

• Nicholas Liu [01-28]: Private prisons are cashing in on Trump's ICE crackdown. They're just getting started: "Over 90 percent of detained immigrants languish in prisons that aren't actually run by the government."

• Connor Echols [01-29]: Why Israeli counterterrorism tactics are showing up in Minnesota: "A decades-long partnership has included resource sharing and a lot of joint training for ICE and CBP with their counterparts in Israel."

• Chas Danner [01-30]: How the Trump Team's botched shooting response and blame game played out: Useful time line here.

  • Saturday, 10:05 AM: Alex Pretti is shot by CBP agents
  • 10:10: Bovino texts DHS and White House officials
  • 10:59: DHS says suspect was armed
  • 11:30: first draft of DHS statement circulates internally
  • 12:31 PM: DHS suggests Pretti sought to 'massacre law enforcement'
  • 1:22: Stephen Miller calls Pretty a domestic terrorist and assassin
  • 2:06: Trump shares photo of gun and asks, 'what is that all about?'
  • 2:12: Bovino repeats 'massacre' claim
  • 5:35: Noem calls Pretti a terrorist who was 'brandishing' a gun and attacked agents
  • Sunday, 9:13 AM: Bovino says the CBP agents are victims
  • 10:11: Patel claims Pretti broke the law by bringing a gun to a protest
  • 11:10: Noem changes her tune
  • 6:54 PM: Trump says 'at some point we will leave' Minnesota
  • Monday, 8:31 AM: Trump says he's sending in Homan
  • 9:07: Noem praises Homan
  • 1:32 PM: White House distances itself
  • 3:24: Bovino is out
  • 6:36: The Atlantic reports Noem and Lewandowski could be next
  • 10:16: report says Trump pivoted because he didn't like what he saw on television
  • 10:48: news of Trump-Noem meeting emerges
  • Tuesday, 9:22 AM: McLaughlin dodges questions about domestic terrorist claim
  • 12:30 PM: Trump says Pretti was not an assassin
  • 3:34: Noem camp throws Miller under the bus
  • 4:18: Trump announces de-escalation, calls Bovino 'pretty out there'
  • before 5: Miller throws CBP and Bovino under the bus
  • 5:13: Miller's wife promotes his defense
  • 11:19: report details internal war between Noem/Lewandowski and Miller
  • Wednesday, 7:29 PM: White House officials try to dismiss reports of internal turmoil
  • Thursday, 8:28 AM: Homan announces 'drawdown plan' for Minnesota
  • 7:12 PM: Trump denies there's a pullback
  • 9:24: Noem says 'we were using the best information we had at the time'
  • Friday, 1:26 AM: Trump attacks Pretti

• Elie Mystal [01-30]: The Trump administration arrested Don Lemon like he was a fugitive slave. They also arrested a second journalist and two demonstration organizers, charging them with "conspiracy to deprive the congregants of the church of their rights and to interfere with religious freedom in a house of worship."

• Ian Millhiser:

  • [02-04]: Trump's occupation of Minneapolis has broken the Justice Department: "The DOJ is no longer capable of doing its job."

  • [02-09]: The MAGA court decision that just supercharged ICE: "America's Trumpiest court just gave Trump a dangerous new weapon." The Fifth Circuit decision "encourages ICE to round up immigrants and ship them off to Texas."

  • [12-24]: The Republican justices are fighting over who should really run the government: "There are three camps: The judicial supremacists, the GOP partisans, and Amy Coney Barrett."

• George Payne [02-06]: Arresting the witness: Don Lemon, the DOJ, and the chilling of press freedom.

• Sophia Goodfriend [02-12]: ICE operations increasingly resemble Israeli occupation. That's no coincidence: "US immigration enforcement has long cultivated ties with Israel. Now it adapts algorithmic surveillance tactics from Gaza for use on American streets."

• Nick Turse:

  • [02-12]: Pam Bondi admits DOJ has a secret domestic terrorist list: "After the DOJ dodged questions for months, Bondi acknowledged in a House Judiciary Committee hearing that she had a list of targets under NSPM-7."

  • [02-23]: Kristi Noem repeatedly claimed ICE deported a cannibal: It was "completely made up."

  • [02-24]: Donald Trump's death cards: ICE brings the war home: "Immigration agents mimic past US dealers of death."

• Elie Honig [02-13]: The Georgia election raid was even worse than it seemed: "The answer to all the above questions in a word: Politics. (Or, in another word: Ego.) . . . If we endlessly insist there was major fraud, perhaps we can make it so."

• Eric Levitz [02-13]: The real lesson of Trump's failed prosecution of 6 Democrats. The Trump administration sought indictments against Democrats including senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin for releasing a video where they advised active soldiers and intelligence operatives that they "must refuse illegal orders."

• Nia Prater [02-13]: The 5 wildest anecdotes from the WSJ report on Kristi Noem and DHS.

  1. Noem, Lewandowski had a pilot fired over . . . a blanket?
  2. Trump "uncomfortable" with Lewandowski and Noem's rumored relationship
  3. Noem vs. everybody
  4. ICE officials punished for ignoring Lewandowski's badge quest
  5. DHS slow to get money to states for disaster relief, other projects

• James D Zirin

  • [02-19]: Bail for all, except undocumented immigrants: "The Fifth Circuit embraces a radical vision of endless detention, as does the Trump administration. Will it be too much even for the Roberts Court?" The ruling only applies to Texas-Louisiana-Mississippi, so ICE has tried to funnel detainees into those states.

  • [02-05]: Trump's 2020 election obsession enters new phase: "The president's denial that he lost to Joe Biden now turns to a Tulsi Gabbard-led fishing expedition." This got me wondering whether there is some way we could concede the point, declare Trump the rightful 2020 winner, pay him his lost salary, and declare his third term unconstitutional? Of course, back salary wouldn't satisfy a person who makes most of his money on the side, and he did miss out on four years where he could further destroy the country and possibly launch WWIII, which would have been much more fun for him than fending off indictments.

• Hady Mawajdeh/Noel King [02-21]: The mess that Kristi Noem made: "The drama at the Department of Homeland Security, explained." Interview with Michelle Hackman ("one of the authors behind a viral story detailing the firing of a Coast Guard pilot").

• Zak Cheney-Rice [02-26]: Why Trump put a clown in charge of the FBI: "Kash Patel's beer-soaked ineptitude shows how a lack of standards for top law enforcement has insidious consequences."

Trump Regime: This is for stories about what the supplicants and minions in the Trump administration are doing day-in, day-out to make America less enjoyable and livable. This includes bad policies as well as bad actors, but some of the worst are dealt with in other sections. Trump himself merits his own section, a bit further down.

• Kenny Stancil [01-26]: The Trump regime is making disasters worse: "DHS Secretary Kristi Noem sat atop millions of dollars in flood prevention grants while the West Coast was being inundated. Now she's slashing FEMA disaster response staff."

• Jelinda Montes [01-29]: South Carolina measles outbreak hits record high: "This is the largest measles outbreak since the United States declared measles eliminated in 2000."

• Kenny Stancil/Julian Schoffield/Chris Lewis [02-05]: DOGE lives on through Russell Vought: "Trump's White House OMB director has quietly institutionalized the government demolition agenda set in motion by Elon Musk's wrecking crew."

• Annie Levin [02-10]: How the far right won the food wars: "RFK's MAHA spectacle offers an object lesson in how the left cedes fertile political territory." I'm not sure I'm buying any aspect of this argument.

• Umair Irfan [02-12]: Trump just blew up a load-bearing pillar of climate regulation in the US. What happens now?

• Matt Stieb [02-12]: The prediction-market scandals are getting bleaker: I'm not sure where to file this. If people can bet on anything anytime, it's very near certain that those with insider knowledge will try to take advantage. In high-class casinos like the stock market, the SEC at least tries to punish gross instances of insider trading, not that the last 50 years give us much confidence in their ability.

• Hannah Story Brown/Toni Agular Rosenthal [02-13]: Doug Burgum, the regime today of our time: "Dashing the hopes of establishment Democrats, Trump's interior secretary and 'energy czar' has adopted his boss's excesses as his own."

• Clyde McGrady [02-13]: Trump nominates an apostle of 'white erasure' for the State Department: "Jeremy Carl, President Trump's nominee to lead the State Department's outreach to international organizations, had a rough confirmation hearing, but he stood by his views on 'whiteness.'" Last section offered a list of "who opposes his nomination?" But then the piece ended by noting:

  Others appointees have weathered the storm, including Darren Beattie, a senior State Department official who was fired from the first Trump administration after speaking at a conference attended by white nationalists.

  "Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities and demoralizing competent white men," Mr. Beattie once wrote on social media.

  Still, some on the right are rallying to Mr. Carl's side.

  The conservative activist Christopher Rufo defended Mr. Carl, writing that Americans have been bullied into believing that "white culture" is "inherently shameful or evil," which leads them to "pretend that it doesn't exist."

  Actually, "competent white men" would be an improvement over many of the Trump nominees, including some who are not men and/or not white (not that I'm recalling many of the latter). As for Rufo, it's fool's errand — an act of deliberate self-crippling — to try to separate "white culture" out of American culture. While the result may not be "inherently shameful or evil," the parts that are shameful and evil will be much concentrated.

• Nia Prater [02-13]: USAID's remaining funds are paying for Vought's security detail.

• Ed Kilgore [02-14]: Revoking climate-change regulation may be the worst thing Trump has done.

• Hayley Brown [02-20]: The Trump administration's catastrophic census proposal.

• Abdullah Shihipar [02-23]: The staggering costs of Trump's war on public service: "The administration's steep cuts to public service jobs and research opportunities are saving Americans very little money — but they're having a detrimental impact on society." While I share the headline alarm, the stats here about career choices have me wondering if the ideological campaign to deprecate pubic service won out 20-30 years before the mass firings. One factor here is education debt, which has pushed graduates toward more lucrative careers in predatory finance, and away careers in public service. (The military is the exception that proves the point. It has long featured education credits as compensation, and is widely seen as a way relatively poor people can get an education. However, it is nearly useless as public service.) Rekindling the notion of public service, and making it an attractive and fulfilling career choice, is essential for any decent post-Trump recovery. It's going to take more than just rehiring people Trump fired.

• Emmett Hopkins [02-26]: Trump is threatening to cut transit left and right. This is totally in character:

  Taking away transit funding will also increase congestion and deliver chaos to the streets. It will not only hit people's household budgets but also ripple through small businesses, medical facilities, schools, and grocery stores, all of whom rely on functioning transportation systems — including transit — to move goods, customers, and employees smoothly. Drivers and nondrivers alike will feel the impacts. Transportation is also the largest sectoral source of US greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing public transit would make that even worse, adding further fuel to the climate crisis.

Donald Trump: As for Il Duce, we need a separate bin for stories on his personal peccadillos -- which often seem like mere diversions, although as with all madness, it can be difficult sorting the serious from the fanciful.

• Sophia Tesfaye:

  • [12-13]: Jared Kushner is at the center of Trump's corruption: "From media mergers to foreign policy, Trump's son-in-law is consolidating power — and making millions." Thanks to his Middle East portfolio, he bagged much more graft in Trump's first term than anyone else. Now he's back as part of Trump's Board of Peace. And he's involved in "the biggest media merger in years."

    After leaving the first Trump administration, Kushner raised over $3 billion for Affinity Partners, including $2 billion from the Saudi government's Public Investment Fund. The Saudis' own advisers reportedly warned Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Kushner's record did not justify such an investment, but the crown prince overruled them. The UAE and Qatar soon followed, adding another $1.5 billion to the pot. As of late 2024, Kushner had still not produced meaningful returns for these foreign governments, yet he had paid himself at least $157 million in fees. Forbes now calls him a billionaire.

  • [02-11]: MAGA blame game shows Trump in retreat: "Trump and Vance back down and blame unnamed staffers for controversial posts." The buck always stops . . . somewhere else.

• Toby Buckle [2025-12-18]: The Americans who saw all this coming — but were ignored and maligned: "Call them Cassandra: the people — mostly not white and male — who smelled the fascism all over Trump from jump street. Why were they 'alarmists,' and how did 'anti-alarmism' become cool?" Minor point, but even some elderly white blokes saw this coming. I could measure this not just by what I wrote before the event, but how literally sick I felt on election night, 2024. Sure, I advised against using the word "fascism" during the campaign, but only because I didn't see the practical utility beyond people who already sensed what Trump was planning. I'm reminded here of the term "premature-antifascists," which was applied to leftists in the late 1930s, who in mainstream eyes were only vindicated with the war declarations of 1941. We'll be hearing much more about Trump the Fascist. For example:

  • Robert J Shapiro [02-17]: Hannah Arendt understood the forces behind Donald Trump: "The late scholar of mass movements, charismatic leaders, and government violence foreshadowed the president's rise and the MAGA movement in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Recent polling proves her prescience."

• Bill Scher [01-19]: The ephemeral presidency: "Except for the damage, nothing Trump is doing will last." That's a pretty big exception, but it seems almost flippant to assume that executive orders can be rescinded at will, or that Democrats will find the will. The courts that helped Trump seize power won't be equally disposed to reversing him. And the world will have changed: mostly for the worse, but those who benefited from the changes will resist giving them up. Then there are the things that shouldn't be reversed. Scher is particularly keen on reverting to a Biden-Obama foreign policy, but they didn't have one worth saving, and their fumbling was a big part of the theory that even Trump couldn't do worse.

• Jonathan Rauch [01-25]: Yes, it's Fascism: "Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny." Mostly buried under the paywall, but I take his point. Before the 2024 election, I cautioned against using the F-word for two reasons: one is that it only resonates with people who understand the history but don't need the word to clarify why they oppose (or in rare instances support) Trump; the other is that historically-minded leftists are so sensitive to tones of fascism they tend to overuse the word, sometimes reducing its insight to a mere indictment, and that tends to be taken as too much "crying wolf." On the other hand, our ability to understand what's happening is strongly influenced (or simply limited) by our command of historical precedents. And what the Trumpists have done since the election has been so extreme that the only historical antecedents that come close to having the same impact are the fascists. We have, in short, moved from a state where associating something with "fascist" could suggest a dire future to one where it broadens out understanding of what's actually happening. One effect of this is that it no longer matters if the signs and analogies are precise. It only matters that the tone matches, and that the gravity is comparable. And the current tone and gravity is incomparable to damn near anything else that humans are experienced.

• Andrew O'Hehir [01-25]: A fake presidency, but real tyranny: "Trump'slazy, crumbling regime values viral AI memes more than actual policy. But the brutality is real." Or as Marie Antoinette would have put it, "let them eat memes."

  By now it's become clear that content creation — feeding the beast, in an all-too-literal sense — is a principal driving force behind all this Nazi-cosplay street theater. The memes will continue, as indeed they must: Over and over again, we see ICE officers stage unnecessary confrontations, smashing car windows or pepper-spraying unarmed demonstrators in front of liberal observers and camera crews.

  Viral videos and meme-worthy images, whether they thrill the loyalists or outrage the libtards or both at once, are not byproducts of these blue-city occupations. They are not incidental to this moment of fascist terror but among its most significant instruments. They are deliberate injections of ideological poison meant to sow division, spread misinformation and render the truth valueless or irrelevant. . . .

  Hateful and stupid social media memes can serve to justify or excuse despicable acts of political violence. Just as important, they also serve to conceal them, as in the "King Trump" video, beneath an unstoppable downpour of crap. When millions of people have persuaded themselves that elementary-school shootings are staged by "crisis actors," the Jan. 6 insurrection was an FBI false-flag operation and the COVID pandemic was the work of a vast global conspiracy, the distinction between verifiable real-world information — an imperfect standard, but in my profession, the only one we've got — and paranoid or narcissistic delusion has become unsustainable. . . .

  I'm not sure any of that is meant to be convincing. It's the blatantly fake ideological wrapping of a crumbling regime built around a rapidly failing con man. His only actionable agenda is nihilistic rage, acted out as a brutal but incompetent reign of terror directed at his own people. Trump's version of fascism barely made it off the couch, and is still more comfortable there. Its vision of the past is imaginary and it has no future, but its destructive energy has changed the world.

• Chauncey DeVega [01-29]: Vice signaling explains Trump's enduring appeal: "Minneapolis reveals why outrage alone fails to loose Trump's grip." This is a play on the notion of "virtue signaling," where people do good deeds just to appear more virtuous — a charge typically leveled at liberals by people who can't imagine anyone acting altruistically. Vice signalers want to impress on others how bad they are, often to intimidate others into submission as well as to elicit approval from people who yearn to see power used against their supposed enemies. A big part of Trump's popularity owes to his credibility as someone who's willing and eager to abuse his power.

• Garrett Owen [01-30]: Trump and sons seek $10 billion taxpayer-funded payday in IRS lawsuit: "Leaked tax returns caused the Trumps 'public embarrassment' and reputational harm, lawsuit says."

• Elie Mystal [01-30]: Want to support the fight against fascism? Boycott Trump's World Cup. Not much of a sacrifice for me, but I know people this would be a big ask of. The difference makes me think this would be a bad idea, but I should note that he's talking about teams boycotting (and even then, just US-hosted events, as opposed to events in Canada or Mexico).

  • Dave Zirin [01-27]: A call is rising for nations to boycott the Trump World Cup.

• Heather Digby Parton [02-03]: Trump is openly cashing in on the presidency.

• Cameron Peters [02-06]: Trump's racist post, briefly explained: More specifically, since this isn't the only time, the one "depicting Barack and Michelle Obama's faces superimposed on apes."

  • Jelinda Montes [02-06]: Trump posts and deletes racist Obama video, sparking outrage across the political spectrum: "Multiple Republican lawmakers denounced the post on social media."

• Algernon Austin [02-06]: Trump get spectacularly richer, while putting the country on a path to poverty. The graft you know about, even if the numbers are hard to fathom. Also unsurprising is Fred Wertheimer's assertion that in terms of monetizing power, "the president most similar to Trump is Russian President Vladimir Putin." As for future poverty, there are many points, including:

  About 25,000 scientists have been cut from government agencies. Joel Wilkins of Futurism concluded that the administration's actions have resulted in a "colossal exodus of specialized expertise from institutions important to public health, environmental protection, and scientific research" and that "[t]he effects are likely to be catastrophic — and the reverberations could be felt for decades."

• Eric Levitz [02-09]: Trump has a plan to steal the midterms. It will probably fail. "The nightmare scenario for American democracy is no longer unthinkable." Sure, he would if he could, but what I'm seeing here looks less like a plan than a set up for a rationalization for a probable loss.

• Kelli Wessinger/Astead Herndon [02-09]: Just how healthy is Donald Trump, really?: "Why it's so hard to know whether the president is okay." Well, it took almost 200 years to figure out that George III had porphyria, although even that seems to be doubted these days. That he was a narcissistic asshole should have been more obvious at the time. Not that knowing helps much with Trump.

• Toni Aguilar Rosenthal [02-13]: The antidemocratic zelots presiding over Trump's makeover of US history: "The administration's sketchily funded Freedom 250 project, which will oversee the celebration of America's semiquincentennial, is a pageant of right-wing extremism." This is going to be hugely embarrassing:

  This makeover has mostly been the handiwork of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who serves as ex-officio director of the NPF board. Burgum swiftly set about stacking the board with Trump loyalists, including top Trump fundraiser Meredith O'Rourke and Chris LaCivita, Trump's 2024 campaign co-manager. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, NPF isn't required under federal tax law to disclose its donors and is even empowered to grant donors anonymity. Donations to the foundation are also tax-deductible — an added bonus for anyone seeking access to Trump's fundraising ecosystem.

  If that sounds like a recipe for grift dressed up as a charitable donation, that's because it is. The New York Times recently unearthed documents showing that Freedom 250 is a clearing house for donor perks. A cool $1 million gift offers photo opportunities with the president; $2.5 million can land you a speaking slot at the marquee July 4 celebration in Washington. And because of the NPF's opaque standing as a 501(c)3, the public may never know who its well-heeled benefactors are.

  There's also a wave of federal funding sluicing into the NPF's coffers. The Trump administration has redirected a $10 million grant initially earmarked for America250.org to the NPF. Another $5 million grant was shuffled out of the National Park Service and to the National Park Foundation to fund "A250 events."

  But these events are more than just vessels for influxes of cash — they're promoting a right-wing bid to whitewash the history of the country, and promote the dogmatic worldview of Christian nationalism.

• Cameron Peters [02-19]: Trump's ballroom blitz, briefly explained: "How Trump is signing off on his own new ballroom."

• Shawn McCreesh [02-19]: Why is Trump dumping East Wing rubble in a public park? "The East Potomac Golf Links is a municipal course that has been a fixture in Washington for decades. President Trump is turning it into something else."

• Tad DeHaven [02-20]: Trump's dream is a giant slush fund Congress can't touch: "From Venezuelan oil to the Board of Pece, Trump is constantly looking for new sources of cash he can control."

  But the long-term risk is not just that Trump might be doing something illegal. The long-term risk is that his presidency is normalizing treating the receipt and disbursement of money as instruments of personal power.

  This is followed by a rhetorical hypothetical about the bloody murder Republicans would scream if a Democratic president was doing this sort of thing, but that misses the point. Democrats may be corrupt, but in the sense of doing favors for donors, possibly with some eventual kickbacks. In short, Democrats are servants of corruption. But what Trump is doing is trying to control the whole casino, so he gets a piece of every transaction, and that only adds to his future power.

• Naomi Bethune [02-23]: Whitening American history: "Trump's efforts to remove Black people from America's story have been countered by scholars, activists, judges — and history itself." And yet the continue, a relentless effort to hide history that discomfits a few racist fabulists like Trump. There's a link here back to Robert Kuttner [2025-04-15]: Trump's Orwellian assault on Black history.

• CK Smith [02-22]: Armed intruder shot dead at Mar-a-Lago: "An armed an was killed by Secret Service agents after entering a restricted area of Mar-a-Lago, officials say." Trump was in DC, far away from the site, so it's hard to credit this as an assassination attempt.

• Alex Galbraith [02-23]: Friends, family of man killed at Mar-a-Lago say he was engrossed by Epstein files.

• Margaret Hartmann: This month in Trump trivia (aside from the Melania movie, op. cit., and some Epstein bits):

  • [01-28]: Trump responds to Ilhan Omar attack with admittedly evidence-free smear: "After a man sprayed liquid on the Minnesota Democrat, Trump accused her of staging the attack — while acknowledging he hadn't watched the video."

  • [02-06]: White House defends Trump's wildly racist Obamas post before deleting it: "Karoline Leavitt slammed the 'fake outrage' over depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys in Trump's now-deleted post."

  • [02-09]: Trump's Bad Bunny halftime review: 'absolutely terrible': "So much for watching his pal Kid Rock at the Turning Point halftime show."

  • [02-09]: Turning Point halftime got big ratings (if you round way up): "TPUSA is proudly touting its 20 million-plus viewers across various social channels. It's just a tad shy of Bad Bunny's estimated 135 million viewers."

  • [02-17]: Trump uses Jesse Jackson's death to insist he's not racist: "And attack Barack Obama."

  • [02-19]: Is Trump going to get into Heaven? Live updates: "The president can't stop publicly musing the afterlife. Here are the latest odds on Trump going to Heaven, according to Trump."

  • [02-22]: All about the White House UFC fight on Trump's birthday: "The UFC is holding a cage match to celebrate America's 250th birthday (or maybe Trump). Here's what we know about plans, tickets, and the fight card."

  • [02-23]: Trump gets back at 'supreme court' by revoking capital letters: "Trump's latest Truth Social rant suggests the justices should brace themselves for juvenile antics at the State of the Union."

  • [02-25]: Trump calls his foes 'deranged' in rant on deporting Robert De Niro.

Republicans: As bad as Trump is, I worry more about the party he's unleashed on America. Here are some examples, both bad actors and dangerous and despicable ideas.

• Sasha Abramsky:

  • [01-30]: An open letter to Congressional Republicans of conscience: "For the good of the country, it's time to cross the aisle." I have no doubt this plea is falling on deaf ears, even among the very short list he mentions. "Conscience" is a dead letter among Republicans. The last one to claim such a thing was Barry Goldwater, and he was just striking a pose in defense of the indefensible.

  • [02-13]: The Republican crack-up has begun: "Even conservatives are fleeing the GOP as more and more Americans turn against Trump's authoritarian project." Don't get too excited here. His poster boy is "Gary Kendrick, a GOP council member in the red town of El Cajon, on San Diego's eastern outskirts." What we've seen repeatedly is that the few Republicans who have broken ranks have dissolved into nothingness almost immediately. Few of them have even dared run for reelection.

• Jake Lahut [02-02]: Nancy Mace is not okay: "Something's broken. The motherboard is fried. We're short-circuiting somewhere."

• Ian Millhiser [02-02]: Republicans are normalizing the one reform they should fear most: "The Supreme Court is the GOP's most durable power center. It makes no sense for them to endanger that source of power." He's referring to efforts at the state level to go to extraordinary legal means to pack courts in their favor: one example is adding two seats to the Utah Supreme Court, which has "sided with plaintiffs challenging Utah's GOP-friendly congressional maps," and "blocked Utah's ban on most abortions, temporarily stopped a law banning transgender girls from playing high school sports, and found the state's school voucher program unconstitutional." He could have mentioned efforts in Kansas, which thus far have been less successful. Republicans seem convinced that any power they grab will be permanent.

• Ed Kilgore [02-25]: Cornyn's nasty attack on Paxton may haunt Texas Republicans.

Democrats: In theory the people we trust to protect us from Republicans. In practice, they're not doing a very good job, so I tend to latch onto stories about how to do better (then scoff at them).

• Amanda Marcotte [02-06]: Shock Democratic upset in Texas shows voters still hate book bans: "Running against Moms for Liberty is a winning 2026 strategy." Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a state senate district that Trump carried by 17% in 2024, a "eye-popping swing of 31%."

• Norman Solomon [02-06]: The actual Gavin Newsom is much worse than you think.

• Michael Tomasky [02-12]: What the Democrats need to do now: "To win back working-class voters, then need to signal ore clearly to working people that they are on their side. That means picking fights on their behalf with the bad actors who are making their lives harder — and the democracy-hating billionaires." This is a long article which raises a lot of important questions regarding political strategy. As I've given these same issues considerable thought, I could see writing a whole Substack essay on the subject. I've read Tomasky's 2022 book, The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity, and some of his earlier work, including many essays. The book is a strong defense of Biden's economic agenda, or what it could have been had Biden not been hobbled (by Republicans, by retro-Democrats, by his own advisers, by the media, and by his own incoherence — a personalized spin on problems that pervade the Democratic Party). Tomasky starts with "four core problems":

  1. Why don't the Democrats fight more? Meaning, against Republicans.
  2. Why do the Democrats fight so much? Among themselves.
  3. What the center gets wrong
  4. What the left gets wrong

  That's followed by sections on:

  1. Stories — and Villains
  2. What Biden Did — and Didn't — Do
  3. Targets
  4. An Economic Bill of Rights
  5. Conclusion: The Democrats' Third Great Challenge

  This is all pretty good, but doesn't quite get out of the mental ruts, especially between center and left. As Tomasky notes, "the left has become the chief source of energy and creativity in the party." The center needs to understand and appreciate that, but also they need to understand that the principles that drive the left are principles that they can and should also subscribe to (more equality; less corruption; peace and broader cooperation; less prejudice and discrimination; more personal freedom; public service; a more robust safety net; opportunity for all). And they need to let the left be itself, committed to principles regardless of consequences, and not demand conformity to the compromises that the center regards as pragmatically necessary. The left needs to think of itself not as an advocate for certain interest groups, but rather as the aspirations for virtually everyone. To do that, the left has to break a bad habit, which is the tendency to dismiss and disparage people they disagree with. This is wrong in principle and self-defeating in practice.

• Perry Bacon [02-13]: Instead of pandering, Democrats should try changing voters' minds: "How can the party of liberalism make liberal ideas more popular? By creating a more liberal electorate. Yes, it can be done. Here are five ways how." Chapter heads:

  1. Use their bully pulpits
  2. Align with movements
  3. Work the refs — and seed new ones
  4. Become a more civic party
  5. Get more young people voting

• Ross Barkan:

  • [02-17]: AOC's Munich stumble is a warning to the left: Her "stumble" seems to have been that she "stalled for about 20 seconds" when asked whether "the US should send troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion." As she later explained, making a point that most Democrats as well as Republicans find hard to grasp, "we want to make sure we never get to that point." I've tried to make this point before: that war should ever break out testifies to a catastrophic failure of diplomacy, and an even more fundamental misunderstanding of world politics. Democrats need to totally rethink foreign policy: the first point is that war is never an option (a stronger statement than that it is a "last resort," but not one that refuses to fight if one really does have no choice — I'm not personally disagreeing with the pacifist position, but I'm not insisting on it as policy, not least because I recognize that some people will take defenselessness as an invitation to rape and pillage); the second is that we need to build international cooperation through voluntary (not coerced by the dictates or leverages of power). I take these two points to be obvious, but they run counter to virtually every respected voice in US foreign policy — a bipartisan claque constantly spouting nonsense, including such leading questions as "would you commit to sending troops to defend Taiwan against China?" Even Barkan, who is a long-time critic of US foreign policy, gets sucked in to the logic of deterrence (which only deters those disinclined to war in the first place; otherwise the policy aggravates and provokes).

  • [02-23]: The Democratic Party's breakup with AIPAC is almost complete.

• Jason Linkins [02-21]: There's only one way to eradicate Trumpism for good: His keyword is "accountability," but what does that mean? The examples here are all negative, like Obama's disinterest in holding the Bush administration accountable for its wars and economic disasters. I'm not particularly keen on putting people in jail, but we need to be very clear about what Trump has done, including his extraordinary personal enrichment. Otherwise, Democrats will continue to be punished for sins of their predecessors, as happened to Obama and Biden.

• Conor Lynch [02-22]: Zohran Mamdani wants to reclaim efficiency from the right.

• Hafiz Rashid [02-23]: DNC's 2024 election autopsy blames Kamala Harris's stance on Gaza: I've said all along that if Trump won in 2024, the main reason would be Biden's wars. Still, it's surprising to see the DNC admitting to any such error. By the way, the author previously wrote [2024-08-23]: The black mark on the Democrats' big party.

The Economy: Another old section, brought back recently as I needed to talk about the AI bubble. Now it occurs to me that I should split that section in two, so tech gets its own following section, and this deals with the rest of the economy, and what economists have to say about it.

• Ryan Cooper [12-15]: America can't build homes anymore: "Cities stopped building not by accident but by design. Our housing system is constructed on scarcity, speculation, and private veto power."

• Vivek Chibber [12-23]: Power, not economic theory, created neoliberalism: Interview: "Ideas become influential when they're latched to the correct constellation of interests. Without that, they remain in the wilderness forever."

• Eric Levitz

  • [01-23]: Wall Street buying up houses is good, actually: "The surprising truth about corporate investment in housing." Really? First he argues that mega-investors are insignificant so have little effect on prices, then he changes the subject and argues that they're better because they discriminate less ("corporate investment in single-family homes is good for integration"). Levitz has been struggling for some time trying to get a handle on housing costs — e.g., see [2025-08-26]: What far-left cranks get right about the housing crisis, which is a defense of YIMBY-ism that admits it doesn't solve everything. There are lots of problems with housing and its unaffordability, but one of the deepest, and most politically intractable, is the idea that houses should function as long-term investments, indeed that for most people they represent most of their savings. If we get to where we have a housing surplus, the immediate effect will be not just to drive rents down but to reduce the nominal wealth of a big slice of the middle class. That's going to be a tough sell, and it's going to require much deeper thinking than YIMBY considers. (Side point: because Democrats spend nearly all of their time with donors and lobbyists, they only look for fixes that open up more profits, and they never consider savings that are too widely dispersed to organize their own lobbies. Thus, for instance, they subsidize more green power, but pay little attention to reducing energy use.)

  • [02-18]: Why voters hate Trump's (pretty decent) economy: "The data is solid. The vibes are atrocious. What gives?" Perhaps because even better data did so little to enamor voters to the Biden economy?

• Heather Long [02-03]: We're in an economic boom. Where are the jobs? "AI is sending stocks soaring, rich people are spending big, and hiring is at a crawl."

• Caitlin Dewey [02-12]: 2025 was a dismal year for jobs.

• Joseph Stiglitz/Mike Konczal [02-13]: Trump's tariff fantasy collides with economic reality: "The president claims an 'economic miracle.' The data tell a different story." The article is paywalled, but a synopsis notes that "the administration's policies are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of economics, specifically regarding trade, and are leading to higher costs for Americans and long-term structural harm." Key points:

  • Tariffs as a Tax on Consumers: Stiglitz and Konczal argue that tariffs are not a strategic tool paid by foreign countries, but rather a "blunt tool" that functions as a roughly $1,000 tax on the average American family, fueling inflation.
  • Persistent Inflation: Despite claims of an "economic miracle," they note that inflation in early 2025 remained high (around 2.7%) rather than meeting targets, with tariffs contributing significantly to increased consumer prices.
  • Squandering Economic Advantages: They argue that the administration is "squandering" long-term competitive advantages by cutting funding for research, education, and public institutions while simultaneously damaging key trade alliances.
  • Uncertainty and Reduced Investment: Stiglitz notes that the erratic, "on-off" nature of tariff policies, combined with a disregard for the rule of law, creates a "scary place to invest," increasing volatility and decreasing confidence in the U.S. economy.
  • Missed Growth Targets: Stiglitz previously highlighted that, despite large deficits and low interest rates, the economic performance under these policies has failed to deliver the high growth rates promised, falling short of previous administration averages.

• Ryan Cummings/Jared Bernstein [02-26]: Crypto is pointless. Not even the White House can fix that. "Nearly $2 trillion of wealth has evaporated from the global crypto market since October." But was it ever real in the first place? This also led to an older article:

  • Finn Brunton [2025-10-24]: How a fringe movement of gun nuts, backwoodsmen and free marketers paved the way for autocracy.

• Paul Krugman [02-27]: The economics of faltering fascism: "Unfortunately for Trump, and fortunately for us, he didn't inherit an economic crisis." Charts compare unemployment rates for Hitler, Putin, and Trump, showing how the first two came to power against a dire economic backdrop, whereas despite much bitching the Obama and Biden economies were relatively solid and stable.

  In the end, if Trumpist fascism is indeed defeated, I believe that there will be three sources of that defeat. First is the courage and basic decency of the American people, who refuse to bow down. Second is the egomania and malign incompetence of Trump, who tried to bludgeon and gaslight Americans into submission. And last is the weakness of a fascist movement that just can't deliver the goods.

Technology: Big boomlet here is AI. Some of this will be on business, and some on the technology itself, not that it's easy to separate the two.

• Sophie McBain [10-18]: Are we living in a golden age of stupidity?: "From brain-rotting videos to AI creep, every technological advance seems to make it harder to work, remember, think and function independently." I've seen cascades of short videos that qualify as brain rot and found it very hard to pull away from them, but eventually I did, probably because I have some deeply embedded protestant ethic which keeps me forever working, allowing entertainment only if it adds to my store of knowledge and reason. Maybe the problem is that my sort of work ethic has gone out of most people's groundings. While the traditional explanation for this is the temptation of sin, I think there's also a pragmatic consideration: why pursue knowledge if there's nothing you can do with it? People don't keep up with technology because it's hard, but also because it's been black-boxed and trade-secreted and esotericized to the point where you have no control over it, even if you do mostly understand it. Same with politics, business, law, even medicine. These, and much more, are dedicated not just to shaking you down but to keeping you powerless. After all, powerlessness begets indifference and incuriosity, which is the secret formula for stupid.

  If brains need friction but also instinctively avoid it, it's interesting that the promise of technology has been to create a "frictionless" user experience, to ensure that, provided we slide from app to app or screen to screen, we will meet no resistance. The frictionless user experience is why we unthinkingly offload ever more information and work to our digital devices; it's why internet rabbit holes are so easy to fall down and so hard to climb out of; it's why generative AI has already integrated itself so completely into most people's lives.

  We know, from our collective experience, that once you become accustomed to the hyperefficient cybersphere, the friction-filled real world feels harder to deal with. . . .

  Human intelligence is too broad and varied to be reduced to words such as "stupid," but there are worrying signs that all this digital convenience is costing us dearly. . . . In the ever-expanding, frictionless online world, you are first and foremost a user: passive, dependent. In the dawning era of AI-generated misinformation and deepfakes, how will we maintain the scepticism and intellectual independence we'll need? By the time we agree that our minds are no longer our own, that we simply cannot think clearly without tech assistance, how much of us will be left to resist?

• Eric Levitz [02-11]: AI's threat to white-collar jobs just got more real: "You've become increasingly replaceable."

• John Herrman [02-13]: Oops! The singularity is going viral. "Insiders and outsiders are both feeling helpless about the same thing."

• Russell Payne [02-26]: Hegseth threatens Anthropic over killer AI limits: I'm not sure which is more troubling: that the War Department has a $200 million contract for AI, or that Hegseth wants the software stripped of any "safeguards." I doubt if he even knows what the technical term means, but wimpy and nonlethal to him, so it's gotta go.

  • Bryan Walsh [02-26]: The Pentagon's battle with Anthropic is really a war over who controls AI. Evidently the points of contention are described here:

    Anthropic's policies allow its models to be used as part of targeted military strikes, foreign surveillance, or even drone strikes when a human approves the final call. But it has maintained two specific "red lines" it won't cross: fully autonomous weapons, meaning AI systems that select and engage targets without a human involved, and mass domestic surveillance of American citizens. Amodei said in his statement that "AI-driven mass surveillance presents serious, novel risks to our fundamental liberties," while frontier AI systems were "simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons."

  • Maria Curi/Dave Lawler [02-26]: Anthropic rejects Pentagon's "final offer" in AI safeguards fight.

The Free Press (for lack of a better term): Note that the recent sacking of the Washington Post has its own section this time.

• Chris Lehmann [01-30]: The smug and vacuous David Brooks is perfect for The Atlantic: "The former New York Times columnist is a one-man cottage industry of lazy cultural stereotyping." I haven't read him in so many years I may not have noticed the move, and the new paywall is just one more reason to not care.

Miscellaneous Pieces

The following articles are more/less in order published, although some authors have collected pieces, and some entries have related articles underneath.

David Klion [2025-04-17]: The war on the liberal class: As the author tweeted: "Seems like a fine time to re-up this piece I wrote a year ago, about how the Trump Administration and its Silicon Valley oligarch allies are murdering liberalism as a class along with the cultural and intellectual institutions that sustain it." Back in the late-1960s, I grew up to be very critical of the era's liberal nostrums, but lately my views have softened and sentimentalized, now that we risk losing even their last few saving graces. I can now admit that, like the Stalinists of the 1930s they so loathed, they started with fairly decent intentions, before they allowed themselves to be adled and corrupted by power. Astra Taylor had a similar idea when she wrote Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone.

Klion locates liberalism in a "new class" (borrowing from Djilas, although one could also refer to Reich's "symbolic manipulators"), which gives the "war on liberalism" targets which can be attacked without having to grapple with concepts: universities, nonprofits, bureaucracies, publications — organizations that can be starved of funds and denied audiences. Klion provides numerous examples, including the promotion of right-wing alternatives, which help suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere sustaining independent thought. What isn't clear is why these fabulously wealthy individuals want to live in a world where most people are denied even the basic idea of freedom.

The crisis facing liberalism begins with the crisis of basic literacy. It was the expansion of literacy after World War II that made the ascent of the New Class possible in the first place, and it's only slightly hyperbolic to say that liberals today confront a society in which no one under 30 reads serious books or newspapers. A much-discussed article in the Atlantic last fall flagged that even undergraduates at the most elite universities struggle to read whole books that their counterparts a decade ago were able to handle. Their attention spans have been eroded since childhood by social media addiction, and now the social media they consume is no longer text-based.

In the 2000s and 2010s, the dominant social media platforms were Facebook and Twitter, both of which, whatever their faults (including Facebook's central role in bankrupting traditional news media), primarily circulated the written word. Both of these platforms are currently controlled by Silicon Valley billionaires in hock to Trump, and both have become increasingly degraded, poorly functioning, and saturated with scammers and hatemongers. Even more salient, both are losing market share to the Chinese social media platform TikTok, which prioritizes short-form videos that obviate any need for more than nominal literacy, much less for the critical-thinking skills that liberals have always regarded as essential to a healthy democratic polity. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is increasingly copying TikTok's approach.

Meanwhile, tech firms in both China and the U.S. aggressively compete to develop AI, which functions in part by plagiarizing, synthesizing, and undercutting the reliability of original written work while promising to render human-generated writing redundant and unmarketable. The combination of video-based platforms, AI, and algorithmically "enshittified" text-based social networks that suppress links to actual writing has rendered the internet fundamentally hostile to anyone who crafts words for a living. This is a threat not just to the basic finances of professional writers but also to their ability to socially reproduce a receptive public for what they're selling.

The same tech oligarchs who bankrolled Trump's victory have been using their unprecedented fortunes to fund alternative institutions to compete with, and ultimately sideline, the established ones. As Eoin Higgins documents in his recent book Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left, venture capital-backed platforms like Substack have been instrumental in creating lucrative new career opportunities for veterans of mainstream media, especially those who parrot the reactionary views of their funders. While these platforms are available to writers of any political persuasion, it is reactionaries who disproportionately get the most lucrative deals: Independent blogging doesn't tend to reward robust newsroom cultures and traditional editorial standards as much as invective and audience capture.

Eric Levitz [01-20]: A very simple explanation for why politics is broken: "Entertainment got too good." That's a bit too simple, but covers the right, which as long as Republicans still receive a competitive share of votes suffices to break the whole system. But it's only entertainment on the right. The center-left has its own fissures and chasms, but the only time we get entertainment is on the late-night comic shows, which serve as a palliative against the everyday horrors of the Trump mob. I took a break from Kimmel-Colbert-Myers after the election, and have only recently returned. It is comforting to know that not just these hosts but also their crowds are staunchly on our side. As for the right, I'm simply immune to their "entertainment": I can't recognize it as true, as honest, even as just sincerely misguided. It's based on an instinct for self-flattery, cult-worship, dominance, and cruelty I never acquired (not that I didn't notice its appeal to quite a few folks around me). But the entertainment didn't win over anyone who wasn't prepared in the first place. And the preparation was simple cynicism: first show that no one can be trusted, admitting everyone is crooked, even your own guys; but their guys are even worse, often working not just to feather their own pockets but as supplicants to even more diabolical conspiracies. To fight such people, you need your own fighters, willing to get dirty and bloody.

By the way, this opens with a series of charts showing the split of white presidential vote by income quintiles going back to 1948, each normalized to the national margin. Republicans won the upper two quintiles every year up through 2012, but lost it three times with Trump (small Democratic edge on 2nd quintile in 1956, 1960, 1968, 2000, and maybe 2012, but in each of those cases the top quintile broke strongly R). On the other hand, Democrats won the bottom two quintiles in all of the pre-Trump races except 1960 and 1968 — where the far-from-patrician Nixon was aided by some unusual splits. As for 2016-24, Levitz says:

This development surely reflects Trump's personal imprint on American life. Yet it was also made possible by long-term, structural shifts in our politics.

Aside from the somewhat muddled Eisenhower and Nixon elections, the pattern of Democrats winning the poorer quintiles and Republicans the richer ones has been pretty consistent. The clearest examples were from 1976-88, with 1984 the strongest correlation, but 2008 is nearly as strong. The pattern still held for 2012, but the divide was reduced, partly because right-wing media fanned white racial backlash, but also because the Obama recovery worked much better for the rich than for the poor. Not coincidentally, Obama seemed to identify (or at least socialize) much more with the rich than with the poor. I wouldn't call this a "structural shift," but it did offer Trump an opening that someone like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would have had trouble navigating. But Trump also had the advantage of running against Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, who spent all of their energies cultivating the rich and famous. Even so, Trump was a dumb choice, but Democrats had squandered whatever credibility they once had to point such things out.

When I think of "structural shifts," I think of things that are beyond individual conscious control: technology, capitalism, mass culture, aspirations for freedom and self-determination. Even so, many of them are consequences of political decisions, as when the Democrats decided not to restore let alone expand support for labor unions after Taft-Hartley weakened them, or their decisions to cut taxes on the rich and loosen up regulations constraining finance, or their wrong-headed and mendacious war in Vietnam.

Those structural shifts have blighted the lives of many whites, stranding them in stagnant areas, with limited skills and vanishing opportunities. That many such people would turn against a Democratic Party that seemed to care little and offer less isn't surprising. Unfortunately, in Trump they've found a "savior" who will only make their lot worse, at most giving them hollow flattery, some kind of emotional release at seeing their supposed enemies attacked and/or ridiculed.

Jonquilyn Hill [01-26]: Are we getting stupider? "Technology is rotting our brains — but there are ways to stop it." Interview with neurologist Andrew Budson, "who specializes in and researches memory disorders." Title is broad enough we probably all already have answers, which will be seen to have little bearing on the very narrow subject broached here. Budson focuses on mental decline among individuals, and his main take is "use it or lose it." His main insight is that brains are meant for social networking, not compiling facts or computing results, so he sees isolation and loneliness as major contributing factors. He also notes that watching more than one hour of TV per day "rots your brain," but that's because it's a solitary activity — content seems to be irrelevant, but I'd guess that most people who see this headline will be expecting yet another critique of mind-devastating content. As I read along, I found myself thinking about assisted-care living, and how to better structure those organizations for sustained mental health. I think it's safe to say that's not a high criterion for our current mix of providers and customers, where economics rules, making quality of life an option few can afford. But that's a subject for a future essay.

It's commonly understood that people learn voraciously when they are young, a rate that slows down over time (although accumulated knowledge and insight may still produce qualitative breakthroughs), then usually declines in advanced age, sometimes catastrophically. Plot this out on a line and you'll find that most people most of the time are in decline. A different question is to compare generations using common sample points: how to 30-year-olds today compare to 30-year-olds in 2000 or 1980 or 1960 or 1940? I don't know, maybe because I'm skeptical of metrics (like IQ[*]). But my impression is that the totality of knowledge has only increased, and continues to do so, which makes it impossible for individuals to keep up. We depend on an ever-increasing division of labor to manage all this knowledge, but our inability to keep up with the whole falls ever farther behind, making us feel stupider, or at least less in charge. So it's possible to be smarter than ever before, yet less and less competent to check the intelligence of others. That would be less of a problem if we could trust the experts not just to know their stuff but to do the right thing with their knowledge. Unfortunately, the last 40-50 years has witnessed a boom in fraud and greed with little or no moral or political checks. When those people screw up, as happens pretty often these days, it's often unclear whether it was because they were crooked, or stupid.

[*] The data for IQ suggests that it increased steadily from 1900 to 2000, correlating with broad gains in education and science, but has since declined, which is often blamed on automation, although I could see the same correlation with inequality (time-shifted a bit).

Jeffrey St Clair:

• [01-30]: Roaming Charges: Bored of Peace: Eventually gets to Trump's insane counter-UN racket, but first half deals with ICE, Minnesota, and other instances of Trump fascism.

• [02-06]: The story of Juan Hernández.

• [02-09]: Roaming Charges: If you're not a scumbag, you're a nobody: "One of the world's richest jerks is gutting the once-storied newspaper he bought as a vanity project, used to promote his own narcissistic and predatory brand, ran editorial interference for Trump, eventually grew bored with the shredded like yesterday's news."

• [02-13]: The Nazi origins of the South American drug trade: Klaus Barbie, cocaine and the CIA.

• [02-16]: Roaming Charges: Trick or retreat in the Twin Cities?

  • On a chart of "% who are extremely/very confident that Donald Trump acts ethically in office," the score among white evangelical protestants has dropped from 55 to 40%; for white non-evangelical protestants, the drop is from 38 to 26%. The only group not showing a decline is black protestants, who have held steady at 7%.
  • Quotes Kristi Noem: "When it gets to Election Day, we've been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country."
  • After "CBS Evening News loses nearly a quarter of its audience after editorial takeover": "Bari Weiss buries CBS News, which, like the emasculation of the WaPost, was probably the goal."

• [02-27]: Roaming Charges: State of the empire in extremis. Just found this as I was trying to wrap up, so I didn't initially cite anything here, but there are various items on Trump's war threat. The one I was most struck by was a tweet from Robert A Pape: "This represents 40-50% of the deployable US air power in the world. Think air power on the order of the 1991 and 2003 Iraq war. And growing. Never has the US deployed this much force against a potential eney and not launched strikes." I'm reminded of the WWI story about how even if mobilization was meant as a threat, none of the powers could back away from war once they did. Also of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which the US anticipated on much the same evidence. Still, even with repeated evidence of how wrong people are to enter into war, I find it hard to expect that they would consciously blunder like that. Until it happened, I was skeptical that Russia would invade Ukraine, and suspected that the reports were just a taunt by the Biden administration hoping that Putin would fall into their trap. Trump's attack on Iran wasn't unannounced: it was repeaed so often that at some point he may have backed himself into a corner where no other option seemed possible. Still, it was a very stupid and careless maneuver, but it's only the last in a long string of totally avoidable mistakes.

• [03-02]: Preliminary notes on a planned decapitation. The keyword here is "whacked": for Trump, that's all it comes down to, the solution to all problems. And if it doesn't work, just whack again.

  Trump has done the world a service. He has abandoned pretense and clarified the true nature of American power. There is no longer any need to manufacture a case for war, to make an attack seem conform to international law and treaties or to demonstrate its righteousness by acting as part of an international coalition. Now America can do what it wants to whomever it wants solely because the people who run its government want to. This has, of course, almost always been the case behind the curtain of diplomatic niceties. But Trump has ripped those curtains down and now the world is seeing American power in the raw: brazen, arrogant and mindless of the consequences, which will be borne by others and if they complain, they might be whacked, too.

Stefano Tortorici/R Trebor Scholz [02-11]: Socialist co-ops against Silicon Valley empires: While there is much to be said for cooperatives in general, they could be developed as an alternative to the big tech companies, where the fundamental flaw is that the services they offer are merely bait for their main purpose, which is collecting and exploiting user data.

Matt McManus [02-07]: Thomas Mann and the temptations of Fascism: "The resurgence of right-wing populism has set the table for the far right's renewed fortunes. Published in 1947, Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus offers a guide to the mythmaking and rejection of reason that continues to animate authoritarian politics today." My wife read (or possibly re-read) Mann's book recently, and was so struck by the timeliness of his description of the onset of Nazism that she posted an excerpt, which I logged in my drafts file (and might as well move here):

No, surely I did not want it, and yet — I have been driven to want it, I wish for it today and will welcome it, out of hatred for the outrageous contempt of reason, the vicious violation of the truth, the cheap, filthy backstairs mythology, the criminal degradation and confusion of standards; the abuse, corruption, and blackmail of all that was good, genuine, trusting, and trustworthy in our old Germany. For liars and lickspittles mixed us a poison draught and took away out senses. We drank — for we Germans perennially yearn for intoxication — and under its spell, through years of deluded high living, we committed a superfluity of shameful deeds, which must now be paid for. With what? I have already used the word, together with the word "despair" I wrote it. I will not repeat it: not twice could I control my horror or my trembling fingers to set it down again.

McManus notes:

A well observed feature of the far right is its strange tendency to combine indifference to factual accuracy, or even honesty, with soaring rhetoric about truth, beauty, and greatness. Beyond just a well-documented willingness to obfuscate, bullsh*t, and lie, many of the far right's core ideological convictions seem like bloviated imaginaries and outright fabrications. Often figures on the far right openly acknowledge this tendency, as in a 1922 speech where Benito Mussolini admitted his adulation of the rejuvenated Italian nation was a manufactured myth:

We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality. It is a reality in the sense that it is a stimulus, is hope, is faith, is courage. Our myth is the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And it is to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total reality, that we subordinate everything else.

This willingness to conjure patently artificial values into being, while still insisting all else be subordinated to the products of one's fantasy, is hardly unique to the early twentieth century right. In 2004, a George W. Bush administration official widely believed to be Karl Rove dismissed the "reality based community" for failing to realize that, as an empire, "we create our own reality." In The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump anticipated his political style by admitting he engaged in "truthful hyperbole" that "plays to people's fantasies" and desire to "believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular." More recently J. D. Vance, himself well-versed in far-right thought, has insisted that if he has to fabricate stories to attract people to his cause, then by God, he'll do so.

Dolly Li/Jordan Winters [02-19]: The House of Representatives is too small: The size has been fixed at 435 for more than a century, during which US population tripled. The "one way to fix it" seems to be simply adding more members, each with more compact districts. I have alternative proposal, which I call "Representative Democracy," where districts of whatever size (larger, smaller, doesn't matter, nor do they even have to be all the same size) each elect two or more representatives, where each representative wields a vote weighted by the number of voters who backed he candidate (the weights could be 1-for-each-vote). Typically, this means that each district would have both a Republican and a Democratic representative. If the winner got 60% of the vote, and the runner-up got 40%, both would go to Washington, but when they voted, the winner would cast a vote of 60%, and the runner-up of 40%. This could get more complicated with third parties, and it is an open question whether one wants to promote or retard such things. But this solves several big problems. For starters, it takes away the incentives for gerrymandering. Also, by ending "winner take all" this should dampen the amount of money poured into competitive races. It also, perhaps most importantly, means that everyone will have a representative dependent on one's vote. Elections will still matter, as they will shift relative power, but they will be less susceptible to landslides, as well as other machinations.

Alfred McCoy [02-22]: Accelerating American (and planetary) decline: I'm starting to tire of stories about how America is in long-term decline, and how Trump is only accelerating that decline. But here it is again, in broad outlines. Even before Trump:

While the U.S. was pouring its blood and treasure (an estimated $4.7 trillion worth) into those desert sands, China was enjoying a decade of warless economic growth. By June 2014, in fact, it had accumulated $4 trillion in foreign currency reserves — and in a major strategic miscalculation, Washington had even lent a hand. In deciding to admit Beijing into the World Trade Organization in 2001, Washington's leaders proved bizarrely confident that China, home to a fifth of humanity, would somehow join the world economy without changing the global balance of power in any significant way.

In 2013, as Beijing's annual exports to the U.S. grew nearly fivefold to $462 billion and its foreign currency reserves approached that $4 trillion mark, President Xi Jinping announced his historic "Belt and Road Initiative." Thanks to that initiative and the lending of a trillion dollars to developing nations, within a decade China would become the dominant economic player on three continents — Asia, Africa, and, yes, even Latin America.

While Trump has personally skimmed extraordinary profits from his America First/Make America Great Again racket, tangible benefits to ordinary Americans are less than zero. More troublesome has been his stifling of innovation within the US economy, which not only means that the US is falling behind its old rivals, but crippling its ability to ever catch up. Even the much vaunted US military is nothing more than overpriced, faulty-performing high-tech crap that is useless for any practical purposes but which risks war and moral hazard, while wasting talent and money that could be used for something actually useful. McCoy is especially damning on how "Trump has essentially smothered America's infant green-energy economy in its cradle (and ceded a future green-powered global economy to China). But he has no way of reckoning the final costs of Trump's fossil fuel gambits. Another variation on this:

• Richard D Wolff [02-25]: An empire (and economy) in decline.

Zack Beauchamp [02-23]: How to stop a dictator: Compares case studies from Brazil, South Korea, Poland, and Trumpist America. This piece is part of a series Vox is running on America After Trump. Seems like premature optimism, but it's not much fun considering the alternative, which is how much worse things could get if "after Trump" turns out to be just more of the same. Some pieces in this series:

• Zach Beauchamp [02-18]: How one country stopped a Trump-style authoritarian in his tracks: "What Brazil got right that America got wrong."

• Julie Myers [02-18]: The Brazilian playbook for defending democracy: "The fall of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and what it proves about Trump-style authoritarians."

• Jolie Myers/Noel King [02-24]: You got your democracy back. Now what? "What the United States can learn from Poland's experience with autocracy." One lesson: "once democratic norms are broken, they're hard to rebuild — and the temptation to stretch those norms doesn't disappear when power changes hands." Interview with Ben Stanley, who's written a book about Poland and the challenges of undoing the illiberal "Law and Justice" regime. He points to a "trilemma": "Voters want you to reform quickly, legally, and effectively, but it's almost always impossible to achieve all three at the same time." Democrats are gaining political ground by emphasizing the illegality and unconstitutionality of many Trump initiatives, but restoring norms, guard rails, checks and balances won't suffice to undo the damage, and may make it harder to show any effectiveness.

• Zack Beauchamp [02-25]: Did the Constitution doom American democracy: "In 2015, Matt Yglesias predicted America's political system would collapse. Did Trump prove him right?" The Yglesias essay referred to is here: American democracy is doomed. Interview with Yglesias. I'd be more inclined to argue that the Constitution, with its snarl of checks and balances, was intended to keep democracy safe for the propertied interests (which initially, conspicuously and infamously, included slaveholders). But just because America was never able to develop as a democracy doesn't mean that what passed for democracy was doomed, except perhaps to disappointment. I attribute Trump's ascendancy to frustration: as the system precluded real reform, why not try to break the logjam by investing the guy who promised to break the rules? That the people made a rash and ill-advised choice should be obvious by now. But what better choice were they allowed?

• Lee Drutman [02-26]: US democracy has repaired itself before. Here's how we can do it again. His argument "why the Progressive Era is the most like our own" has some resonance, in that systemic problems of oligarchy were treated with top-down reforms meant to prevent any major shifts of power (stifling the challenges of populists and socialists). The analogy to the 1960s is less clear, but maybe that's a cautionary tale. By the way, while I've always admired the progressive era reformers, I'm not very happy with many leftist's habit of calling themselves progressives. While I'm more up than down on progress, I don't like the idea that it is inevitable and necessarily good, and I suspect that we're losing votes by not acknowledging the need to limit or at least tone down its excesses. Right now, my preferred self-description is small-d democrats: its distinction from capital-R Republicans is crystal clear, and it reminds us that everything we propose should be aimed at majority support. On the other hand, the alternative of populists has been spoiled by right-wing demagoguery.

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