For Donald Trump to endorse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for reelection to a seventh term exacted no price, resurfaced personal loyalty over the issues at hand, and likely will prove to have little outcome on an already close election on Oct. 27.

To have done so with as much enthusiasm as Trump mustered is of note, however, a signal as much for U.S. voters as for any Israelis harboring misgivings about returning Netanyahu, even as a coalition government leader, to office. It is Trump’s signal of aggressiveness against Iran, against Muslim restiveness and for the perpetuation of authoritative government figures who simply should be rewarded for telling others what to do.

Lost in Trump’s endorsement are the very real complications that Netanyahu and his increasingly right-wing, religious government partners are perpetrating regularly now in the West Bank, in Gaza, in southern Lebanon and Syria. Lost are the concerns in Israel itself about a leader who seems so drunk on using war powers that he will not answer basic questions about how the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas fighters came about despite warnings or about how diplomats and journalists – including Americans – are being beaten in the West Bank while Israeli defense forces look away.

Poll after poll in Israel reports the top issue as security, and Netanyahu plays on the theme to offer himself and his coalition as the only way to guarantee safety. Ignore his own criminal cases before courts or his manipulation of allies or looking away when things seem inconvenient.

As with Trump himself, Netanyahu finds himself in jagged disputes with the courts, with dissidents, with the role of non-Jews in a Jewish state, and even with religious Jews seeking continued exemption from military service. Forget that the political opposition to Netanyahu is splintered among many parties and a single, differentiating figure has not emerged in the election. What matters to Trump is to have a reliable partner who agrees with him, who shows his loyalty to him, at least most of the time.

Value of Endorsements?

By all political accounts, Trump’s endorsements domestically have been hit and miss. Largely, Trump has been successful in deciding who gets to wear the Trump/MAGA banner in races across the country, but some of his choices have made for tight races.

There is no doubt, for example, that Trump’s decision to shun Sen. John Cornyn for reelection and to choose Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who seems a bad candidate all around, has put the Texas Senate seat in play to a well-regarded Democrat, James Talarico, in a tight contest that never should have been close.

Part of the nonstop political talk on television has been about Trump’s insistence on voters pretending to put himself and his policies on the November ballot rather than the actual candidates and whatever they may be talking about.

Trump is doing the same in Israel. Indeed, to hear Trump talking, one wonders why he talks about appending Canada when what he really may want to do is to make Israel a U.S. state.

Over and over, Trump shows us he wants to boast of a successful military blitz or campaign, and he wants the spoils of war. He wants to settle wars, including Russia-Ukraine and the Middle East conflicts, with a phone call and a business deal or ten among the big authoritarian players at some mythical world chessboard,

What he does not want is the hard work of disarming Hamas or making Gaza livable for Gazans. Despite what Trump has said, it clearly is easier for him to step aside as Netanyahu makes military occupation of 70 percent of Gaza permanent without step one about feeding or providing regular medical treatment or jobs for a Hamas-free Gaza. What he does not want even to acknowledge is that Jewish settlers in the West Bank are bulldozing homes, towns and olive trees belonging to Palestinians, all to meet some perceived Biblical idea of a Judea and Samaria that has changed geographic hands a zillion times in a millennium.

What Kind of Country?

Those who write thoughtfully about the Israeli election are saying this is a referendum on what kind of a country Israel wants to be.

What is the role for Arabs in an officially Jewish state? For that matter, is this the election that overthrows the idea of a secular state that offers haven for Jews to a theocracy? What relationship other than as a constant source of money and weapons does the United States have with Israeli democracy, and will democracy itself last in Israel with yet another would-be authoritarian in charge?

That should strike a chord even in the U.S., where we too look at our elections as directional, not as anointment of a would-be royal.

None of these are concerns for Trump, of course. He wants pomp and parades, a welcome that says he has been Israel’s best friend despite 80 years of U.S. backing across party lines. It was Netanyahu who presented the Iran attack plans, and Trump who overrode the obvious concerns raised by U.S. intelligence and diplomatic advice. Trump appears to ignore when Netanyahu brushes his concerns aside, raising questions about who is the super power in this relationship.

The world – including the U.S. – is in a mess created by a lack of strategic thinking and reliance on belief in flash-bang dramatics. Where are any of the considerations of how we got here or how we are stuck in a constant cycle of Middle East violence in the issuance of a Trump election endorsement in another country?

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

Moving towards November is affecting more than the elections. The seasonal changeover from gasoline refining to home heating will be transferring the high cost of oil fuel to home heating.

Already, the prospective rise – massive in some areas of the Northeast – has emerged as an elections issue in the Maine senatorial race with harsh words for Sen. Susan Collins from Democratic opponent Troy Jackson.

An Axios analysis finds prices jumping at least $2 per gallon for home heating oil over this time in 2025 from around $2.50 to $4.63 now, and projected to cross the $6 per gallon price by deep winter. Families that heat with oil could pay about 50% more this winter than last, according to from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA), up from its 31.3% projection in mid-September.

The average cost of heating a home with oil is expected to rise by about $878, costing over $2,600 this winter.

The reasons are the same as those for price hikes for gasoline at the pump – wars in the Middle East, and to a lesser extent, between Ukraine and Russia, which has depressed global output.

By comparison, the Energy Information Administration’s Winter Fuels Outlook projects electricity bills will rise 4% nationally, while natural gas bills will fall 9% and propane spending will drop 3%. EIA expects a smaller increase on heating oil than NEADA, projecting a 21% increase in household expenditures.

Hitting the Northeast

More than 80 percent of home heating oil is consumed in the Northeast, where some states lack robust natural gas pipelines, according to NEADA data. Overall, about 3% of U.S. households use oil as their primary heat source, compared to about 45% using natural gas and 43% using electricity, EIA’s report says.

Global oil markets have been struck by the distribution patterns through the Strait of Hormuz and now through the Red Sea, where Houthis are battling with Saudis. Refinery activity has declined in Iran, the result of U.S. embargoes on Iranian oil export.

As a practical matter, some families will cut back on other expenses or turn the heat down to potentially unsafe levels to cover their bills. There will be pressure on states to offer aid for heating oil or look at requiring utilities to offer discounts, affordability programs or winter shutoff protections. Those generally have not applied to independent heating-oil dealers.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey declared a State of Energy Emergency over rising winter energy costs, unlocking nearly $150 million in relief and expanding assistance to middle-class households that heat with oil. Rhode Island has also declared an energy affordability emergency and directed $28 million in reserves toward winter electric-bill relief, and Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced $40 million in automatically applied electricity discounts for low-income residents.

Of course, the energy affordability issues are compounded by the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP. The administration fired LIHEAP’s federal staff at the Department of Health and Human Services in April 2025 and proposed eliminating funding for the program.

LIHEAP is still running, but state administrators are operating without dedicated federal staff.

The White House has HHS, which said it “will carry out its responsibilities for funding Congress has made available” and that “HHS has the staff and capacity to distribute these funds in a timely manner.”

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

Let’s accept that very little information has been revealed about at least one death, and perhaps two, of workers at a Russian plague lab in Siberia that killed within 24 hours of exposure. The death or deaths have been reportedly linked to some form of pneumonic plague.

Isn’t the next logical question what is being done to quarantine the reported disease and to revisit U.S. preparations for what seems like inevitable travel-borne communicable illness.

Amid all the fuss still being stirred over responses to Covid, including the endless campaign of Republican senators and Donald Trump to find some reason to prosecute virologist Anthony Fauci for his role in directing Covid response, one might think there would be just a tad more concern about the appearance of a “plague.”

Apart from all else, this apparently involved a lab leak of the sort critics repeatedly suggested caused the escape of the Covid menace, late recognition of a public contagion, and all sorts of presidential dismissals by Donald Trump about the seriousness of a pandemic that ended shutting the country. In this case, there are undisputed reports that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. approved funding for research in the very lab about diseases among foxes, the parallel to Fauci’s investment in trying to understand species-crossing contagion.

All that has been disclosed formally so far is that a 28-year-old woman working at a Russian plague lab was exposed to “some sort of plague” and died within 48 hours. Maybe there was a second death. Russian authorities are reportedly monitoring and quarantining the people with whom the woman came into contact. Her death has been reportedly linked to some form of the pneumonic plague.

U.S. Response

Trump last week asserted that U.S. officials did not believe that a Russian lab worker’s reported death was linked to a bioweapon or biological weapons research. “We’re going to find out soon enough, but we don’t think so,” Trump told reporters, adding that he was planning a call soon with Russian leader Vladimir Putin over the matter.

Trump said that Russian officials had reassured their U.S. counterparts that the situation was being contained. The president acknowledged some similarities to how Chinese officials in early 2020 initially claimed they had contained the covid-19 virus before it caused a global pandemic.
World Health Organization officials — Trump has cut ties between the U.S. and WHO — said they still do not know what pathogen caused the first worker’s fatal illness, which pathogens Russian laboratories tested for or why authorities placed roughly 200 contacts under quarantine or medical observation. Without those answers, officials said, they cannot fully assess the public health risk.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it has established measures to “identify and assess” any travelers from the Russian region where a possible plague case was reported, again counting on halting travelers who rarely come directly from Siberia to the U.S., but rather go to international stops in between, including Istanbul. The CDC said only 200 travelers from the region arrive in the U.S. each year.

The White House has shut down its pandemic response units, fearing association with Covid shutdowns as politically toxic.
One Russian news report said that the technician “allegedly broke a test tube containing the pneumonic plague pathogen” on Sept. 25, that she soon fell ill and died in a local hospital. Pneumonic plague is almost always fatal when untreated, but many patients recover with a prompt course of antibiotics. The incubation period for this type of plague is up to six or seven days. And, we know that Kennedy has canceled much of the CDC’s ability to track communicable disease and to issue warnings.

The Kennedy Research

According to an investigation by animal testing watchdog White Coat Waste, which claims it was the first to raise questions about Covid escaping the Chinese lab thought to be a possible origin for Covid, Kennedy has overseen nearly $800,000 in federal funding for a research project involving a Russian laboratory with ties to the Siberian facility at the center of a suspected plague outbreak.

It’s of interest by itself, of course, but more directly because it so parallels the exact arguments that selected Republican senators and the administration have pursued against Fauci.

The National Institutes of Health awarded $779,689 to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2025 and 2026 for research conducted in partnership with Russia’s state-run Institute of Cytology and Genetics.

Federal records obtained by the group and reported on Wednesday show that the project received $389,943 in July 2025 and another $389,746 in September 2026. The NIH-funded research was to examines the genetic underpinnings of social behavior using foxes raised at a Siberian breeding facility. According to documents, Russian researchers euthanize the animals and transport biological samples to the United States for analysis.

In 2022, Joe Biden’s administration ordered a winddown federally supported scientific partnerships with Russian government institutions following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Nervous yet?

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Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

Just how War/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is going to immediately improve the U.S. military by firing up to 20 percent of its generals and admirals remains a question.

But then, put it on the building heap of unanswered issues on the Pentagon’s front table.

Rather than stress military brainpower and effective management at a time when drone inventiveness and artificial intelligence are showing us the new battlegrounds, Hegseth remains on alert for what ideal military members look like, and the elimination of anything smacking of diversity and inclusion.

Even as Hegseth brags about U.S. dominance over Iran, in the Middle East or in Asia, he seems to be taking the military on a circuitous tour to talk about “lethality” while just leading a series of unexplained and odd strategic and tactical consolidations. It remains unclear how threatening any of this is to Iran or Russia or China.

In recent days, the U.S. has hurriedly removed a dozen B-52 and B-1 bombers operating out of RAF Fairford in Britain since the opening days of the Iran war (and for decades before), following a foiled terror attack on the base by a handful of Iranian British dual citizens and belief there could be a drone attack on the base. Still, withdrawal – or retreat – hardly seems the signal for military dominance, even as 50,000 American service members remain on under-defended bases in the Middle East and hardly seems to reflect the warrior-above-all approach that Hegseth espouses.

At the same time, Donald Trump is talking about deploying a third aircraft carrier group within striking distance of Iran, presumably to back up his tough talk about “annihilating” a country of 93 million.

Hegseth delivered a “state of the force” address to selected military troops that said he was now after a fit, lethal army. “No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals—just warriors,” emphasizing strict enforcement of fitness, grooming, and uniform standards, as if that is the main issue facing the military. On Thursday, he promised to livestream a Gladiator-like military execution from Fort Hood, an unneeded, anti-humanitarian decision that seemed embarrassing to those in the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, Trump wants weapons, nuclear reactors and a Space Force in space while talking about taking oil fields from vanquished foes.

Our military conversation is out of whack.

Who is Hegseth Persuading?

In Congress, the members from both sides of the aisle increasingly are asking publicly what Hegseth is doing and questioning why Trump won’t act to bring him under control. For himself, Hegseth sees no bounds in speaking out against all tradition about partisan politics – indeed to talk of promoting himself as a presidential candidate.

It is widely believed that Hegseth is being kept in office, in part, because he refuses to rule out deploying troops to polling places or to U.S. streets if the election does not follow Trump’s wishes – not because he sees strategic advantages that others do not, or even leads brilliant military tactics.

This is the same Hegseth who will not be honest with the public about casualties among American service members or among Iranians or other targeted groups. This is the same Hegseth who is either in denial or resistant to acknowledging the rate of using the most expensive U.S. weaponry in Iran, drawing down defenses elsewhere on the globe.

This is the same Hegseth who sees the next target just over the horizon in Cuba or Greenland without follow-up of where the U.S. already has launched combat. This is the same Hegseth who is widely cursed by troops held without basic services for months in the Middle East with no understood purpose for being there.

Should the November election result in a Democratic change in majority in one or both houses of Congress, Hegseth is emerging as the top candidate for public roasting over the outstanding questions he has created with divisive hiring and promotion policies and short-term strategic thinking.

New initiatives introduced by the secretary have included the development of autonomous warfare technology and partnering with non-Ivy League universities for officer recruitment. Most of his initiatives have concerned culture within the military as seen by Hegseth personally as opposed to studies of trends.

Who is Hegseth’s intended audience, because he sure has trouble focusing on current forces, recruitment targets or management of a hulking Department of Defense.

The Wall Street Journal saw his recent address as a polarizing attack, even accusing the press of ‘treason’ for publishing what’s leaking out of the Pentagon because Hegseth will not answer straight questions for fear of public criticism. For Hegseth, revived culture-war grievances mean that the Pentagon is “no longer the woke department or the weak department.”

Does it feel as if the U.S. military is feared around the world?

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

Isaias, rapidly intensifying into a hurricane, will hit the Gulf shore sometime today or overnight.

In Alabama, it is now law that the storm will strike from the Gulf of America rather than the Gulf of Mexico.

Of course, if you happen to be on the Mobile coastline, it hardly matters what name is used, what may matter more is whether this government engages with Federal Emergency Management Administration.

However, if you sit in the state Legislature, what you call the Gulf apparently is a matter of priority.

Alabama’s House Bill 2, which took effect last week, requires “all state and local entities and their employees” to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” following Donald Trump’s preference to reflect this “terminology in all newly created maps, documents, educational materials, websites, official communications, and other resources.”

Apparently, state is issuing instruction that the law covers anyone working in the state university system, journalists running WBHM, the University of Alabama at Birmingham-sponsored NPR affiliate radio station, or state working with a statement affecting, say, hurricane damage.

Republican lawmakers say faculty can call it the Gulf of Mexico “for historical purposes” during instruction.

Understandably, various university faculty have told publications like Inside Higher Ed this sounds, well, restrictive to academic freedom, though it is unclear just how often classroom professors talk about the Gulf with a label at all.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham has ordered journalists at WBHM, NPR affiliate, to comply, according to emails obtained. Neither the Associated Press nor NPR, which supply news information to the radio station, accept the name change, which came about by a Trump executive order based on, well, nothing. Workers at the radio station said they will follow the law, but don’t understand how they are supposed to monitor mentions of the Gulf, as suggested by the university’s top lawyer.

Do We Need a Law?

A spokesperson for Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, said, “The state of Alabama refers to the Gulf as the Gulf of America, period. It is not hard to see that these so-called ‘free speech’ complaints are just a cover up for blatant bias against the Trump Administration.”

The law requires public employees to “make reasonable efforts to update all pre-existing resources owned by state and local entities” under their jurisdiction—including maps, educational materials and communications—to reflect the name change “where practicable,” making an exception if doing so “would impose an operational or financial burden.”

Jason Senkbeil, a tenured professor in the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa’s Department of Geography and the Environment, said “been calling it ‘the Gulf’ and not saying which one for years because I didn’t know where this was going.” Now he will do as ordered.

Others said if state professors can be mandated to use Trump’s name for the Gulf, why not for other elements of teaching and research? Indeed, is there a difference between a professor discussing some aspect of the Gulf environment and a state mapmaker? Is the extension to what the NPR station says on the air an abridgment of freedom of speech and of the press?

Mostly, the case raises the other question: Why is this the issue before a midterm election in which voters are angry about runaway prices from tariffs and the unwanted war with Iran, excesses in mass deportation, and concerns about government corruption?

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

Christa Pike, the woman who survived two execution attempts in Tennessee earlier this week, remains hospitalized in critical condition, where presumably medical staff is at work trying to keep her alive.

If she wakes from the coma she had entered, Tennessee officials want to start anew to inject lethal drugs into her seemingly too-small veins to kill her and carry out the state death warrant. Pike also is being treated for “significant injuries to both arms” sustained when two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her. If she dies, there will be no need to try again.

As we know by now, Tennessee tried to put Pike to death Wednesday night by lethal injection for a murder she committed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in 200 years.

There is just a simple, if total disconnect in the actions. When the state missed – twice – with its lethal injections, at what point did Tennessee become subject of inflicting “cruel and unusual punishment,” as barred by the Constitution? If we don’t know how to carry out an effective lethal injection on a 32-year Death Row inmate, would a few days make a difference to figure out how to do the job right.

Is anyone bothered by the idea that millions protest in the street to protect the unborn, but no one in official circles even thinks there is a question about keeping Pike artificially alive so that we can kill her all over again?

Legal, Medical and Moral Issues

Sure, there are legal issues here. Pike’s lawyers have told the state to preserve all its records on the botched execution attempts. As the details emerge – Pike was known to have small veins that might not handle the injection, the state had no emergency oxygen nearby if the execution attempt went south, that Pike apparently lay in the death chamber whimpering – the story just gets worse.

The execution process lasted more than two hours, allowing her lawyers time to file emergency legal papers to stay the process to no avail. Even then, “attorneys for the State of Tennessee argued that (the Department of Corrections) had no obligation to render life-saving care to Ms. Pike,” argued the lawyers.

Doctors were telling news reporters – not the state or the courts – that Pike’s condition was such that the pentobarbital was flowing into her arm instead of straight into her veins, making for an unusually painful, if ineffective, process.

In May, Tennessee was forced to call off the planned execution of Tony Carruthers, who killed three people in 1994, after the medical team failed to find a vein to insert the pentobarbital used under the new execution protocol

Pike was convicted in 1995 murder case with two other teenagers.

Generally, execution misses have made finding the supply of legally acceptable death injections more difficult, and there are newer procedures in place in some states other than Tennessee to require practice injections.

What’s Happened

Frank Strada, the prisons chief, resigned on Saturday, and Gov. Bill Lee announced an independent investigation into what went wrong. Strada had been in the job since 2023, moving from a top prison job in Arizona, where had overseen three problem-plagued executions.

Nevertheless, Marsha Blackburn, who is favored to replace Lee as governor in November, said the state would seek to kill Pike anew. She said she would follow recommendations for process changes, but not for Pike.

Capital punishment in Tennessee has been criticized since 2022, when Gov. Lee was forced to cancel an execution because the drugs had not been properly tested.

This summer, The Gallup Poll found that a slight majority — 52% of U.S. adults — consider the death penalty morally acceptable, hovering near historic five-decade lows. The Pew Research Center says about two-thirds of Americans (66%) favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while 32% oppose it, marking an uptick compared to prior recent years.

Support for the death penalty is much higher among Republicans than Democrats, the opposite of, say, abortion law. Younger adults show significantly lower support. Only about 41% of adults aged 18 to 34 favor the death penalty, compared to higher approval among older generations.

Botched executions are not going to help any moral debate here. As a society, we are confused about who should live and who should die, with all the legal – and now medical – complications to make it more difficult to decide what is “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

We’ve seen any number of public political blowups lately in which, whether out of frustration, intention or distraction, one side just seems to make up allegations in hopes that the facts will catch up.

From vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that turn out to be bad contracting work to criminal cases alleging wide anti-Donald Trump electoral conspiracies that repeatedly fall apart for lack of evidence, we allow ourselves to get much more focused on the shiny new allegation than on building the case towards finding blame.

Roy Cohn-trained Trump has made a political career or two of doing so, of course, with public campaigns against the Central Park Five’s pre-judicial guilt findings and Barack Obama’s birth certificate, but continuing even this week with resignation of yet another would-be prosecutor who cannot find evidence to match Trump’s insistence of a “Grand Conspiracy” to have launched an investigation of Russian attempts to influence his 2016 election campaign.

Trump Trump’s focus on finding criminal fault with “enemies” include the case alleging that former FBI director James B. Comey Jr. wanted to assassinate him by photographing seashells arranged as “86 47” on the beach, and the unending efforts to seek perjury charges against former chief government virologist Dr. Anthony Fauci and former Special Counsel Jack Smith.

It is the nature of what our politics have become.

Each step downward toward blame-first politics makes the next yet more slippery and easier.

Ludicrous Jack Smith Hearing

Whatever the intended purpose of bringing Smith before riled Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, the effort was a laughable failure. Republicans angrily pursued Smith for obtaining congressional phone toll records – not their content, a standard investigative tactic to verify testimony about those calls before and on Jan. 6, 2021, but they never came close to challenging the meat of Smith probe of Trump’s leading role in the insurrection attempt.

Indeed, charges were dropped after a Justice Department order following a Supreme Court decision effectively granting Trump preemptive immunity for official acts. Still, the facts have never changed despite Trump’s attempts to rewrite history either about Jan. 6, 2021, nor about Trump’s holding classified information held in bathrooms and ballrooms at Mar-a-Largo.

The hearing was so short of evidence that Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri embarrassed himself and colleagues as he accused Smtih of perjury over attending a basketball game in Georgia as a pretext for some conspiratorial link-up with state prosecutors there also pursuing Trump. Schmitt cited emails and smirked, until it became clear through questions from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. that the game was wrong. Smith had not been at a basketball game played by the Atlanta Hawks, but in Maryland, at another game involving the University of Iowa Hawkeyes.

Even if it had been true, Schmitt looked foolish proving a point that went nowhere.

On Wednesday, Attorney General Todd Blanche attacked federal judges in Minnesota, accusing them of bias after they spoke out in news interviews against evidence-free immigrations that they had been forced to hear.

Meanwhile, it is Blanche who has called his own fight with courts a “war.” Blanche wants an investigation of those judges and for them to recuse themselves in immigration cases but sees no hypocrisy in having been Trump’s personal defense lawyer. As deputy attorney general, Blanche told a Federalist Society event in 2025 that the administration was at “war” with judges he called activists, Bloomberg Law reported.

Meanwhile, of course, there are no federal charges in the fatal deaths of citizen protesters at the hands of border patrol agents in Minneapolis.

Of course, it is Blanche who has oversight of that case in Florida where now two prosecutors have walked away claiming that there is no evidence of a conspiracy that Trump wants to find.

Pretending at the Institutions Too

The Washington Post brings us reporting to show that the Kennedy Center was solvent when Trump took over. Trump removed the professional staff, insisted on choosing the entertainment offered, and was surprised to see revenue, donations and bookings plummet.

Now we face Trump demands that because the law won’t allow him to put his name on the building, he may just raze the institution, which he claims is hopelessly in debt and failing.

The Post examined 15 years of the institution’s confidential board documents and tax filings, showing that since taking over the center, the institution has borrowed everything its bank would lend it, dipped into money donors had given on the condition it never be spent and written off pledges from supporters who stopped paying. Trump said the center was “losing hundreds of millions of dollars” when he took over, and his board has warned of “bankruptcy.”

Not to get lost in the details, there are kernels of financial dispute here, but Trump’s version does not account for his own role in cutting development staff or spending the endowment money of the National Opera or many other things that The Post lays out.

Suffice it to say, it is a lot easier to make up the financial problems than it is to document them. In like fashion, a Federal Reserve watchdog found no criminal wrongdoing by former chair Jerome Powell in its investigation of the central bank’s expensive headquarters renovation, according to a report released on Wednesday. The findings effectively clear Powell after the Justice Department opened an unprecedented criminal investigation into then-Fed chair, which became public in January.

The report did find need for better supervision, but no criminal violation, as Trump had pressured to determine.

Naturally, there is no apology to Powell nor to those fired from the Kennedy Center, to the former Olympian who faced criminal vandalism charges for examining peeling paint, nor to Fauci or Special Counsel Smith.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

By now, we all probably have seen ciips from of these three Donald Trump television campaign ads “paid for by the U.S. government.”

And while we’ve seen some bipartisan criticism for Trump blatantly violating federal campaign law, what we haven’t seen is anyone acting to stop him.

Indeed, Trump insists that the ads – at least one of which is mostly video imagery from his own 2024 presidential campaign, thundering against “warmongers” and “communists” – are a benign prod to Americans to vote in the Nov. 3 congressional elections.

Using public tax dollars for a campaign commercial is flatly illegal. Moreover, doing so intentionally is government propaganda, the preferred tool of authoritarian regimes that know they can act with impunity. And apparently, they are just getting started, with $2.5 million worth so far, but plans to spend up to $100 million.

But obviously, a Justice Department remade to protect Trump and aggressively prosecute his political foes is not going to bring charges against the White House or even request a legal injunction to stop them. Where are the state attorneys general to demand that courts pull the ads as illegal interference? For that matter, why do the networks allow the sale of commercial time to what clearly are illegal campaign ads?

Why is the Senate passing a bill about straightening a messy system about paying college athletes but ignoring a blatant campaign violation that even Republicans like Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana say is outrageous.

Backed by a largely compliant Supreme Court, Trump has cracked the code on doing whatever he wants in the name of the presidency – despite the tradition that campaigns have been regarded as beyond government behavior. We have Attorney General Todd Blanche and Defense/War Secretary Pete Hegseth openly campaigning – with Hegseth broadly suggesting to military troops to vote Republican – in violation of separate Hatch Act prohibitions.

Apparent Target: Voter Turnout

The Trump push — however late, however desperate – to get Republicans to pretend that he is on the ballot and vote anew for Republican candidates who will not question his presidency is aimed at voter turnout, of course. Turnout is pivotal, even in elections where manipulation seems part of the accepted game.

Apparently, the thinking is that incessant talk of “blue wave” outcomes based on polling that has systematically shown Trump’s backing to be falling and “generic” support for Democratic opponents rising will prove overconfident miscalculation if huge numbers of Trump supporters show up on Election Day.

It is true that national polls don’t accurately predict local elections, particularly in a period of voter anger over high prices and concerns about the war with Iran, tariffs, international isolation, the excesses of the Trump mass deportation policies, and the runaway “corruption” and self-adulation projects from Trump.

Still, it does not answer why, If Trump is sitting on hundreds of millions in Republican contributions, he insists on using millions of our tax money for these ads to promote himself?

The plain fact is that polling is the best tool available to collect people’s transient political ideas, but is no gauge of how many people will turn out to vote – particularly in states where Trump-friendly election officials are closing selective voting precincts and the White House is engaging in wild schemes to limit who can vote, how they can vote and when. Democrats and defending lawyers are working overtime to block each new voter limitation. Poll results are best used as a comparative snapshot rather than a scientific image of the current state of play.

More importantly, serious students of voter behavior, including the influential Cook Political Report, see plenty of evidence in sufficient numbers of local elections that match the national unhappiness with Team Trump. Together with an enthused Democratic voter base and an angered Independents’ reaction, Trump may have reason to rally his would-be supporters.

Trump’s latest ploy – using our tax money to promote himself – seems ludicrously desperate. He wants his base, his backers to “pretend” he is on the ballot, but then defends the use of taxpayer money to pay for them by his absence on the ballot. It’s a reminder to watch what politicians do rather than what they say.

The very presence of these illegal taxpayer-paid ads should be raising questions about the anti-democratic principles driving Trump’s presidency.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

Crossed storms are hitting the FBI simultaneously. The question is how much of the trouble the FBI’s Kash Patel pushing Donald Trump’s agenda is responsible.

Andrew Bailey this week became the second deputy FBI director to walk out in a year. It came after an internal dispute that seems to involve reassigning two veteran counterterrorism supervisors who had challenged an order to investigate harassing phone calls to conservative podcaster Katie Miller, wife of White House deputy Stephen Miller.

But the departure also followed what now has emerged to be a serious breach of the FBI’s own personnel files by a global hacking group that is putting the lives of past and present FBI agents and their families into personal danger. The break-in and data theft by ShinyHunters, which appears to operate across the world but independent of any state direction, itself follows the significant cutbacks by the Trump administration to the nation’s counterterrorism efforts in the FBI, Justice and Homeland Security.

Bailey, the former Republican Missouri attorney general, had been recruited by Trump to take the unusual co-deputy director job after the departure earlier this year by Don Bongino, a former Secret Security agent, who wanted to return to his life as a podcaster over doing the work of crimefighting. Bailey was silent about his departure, though it was known that he and Patel did not work well together.

The cutbacks against serious efforts to enforce cybercurrency rules ordered by the White House also showed up in a report by Democrats on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which found that Iran has been using trades in stablecoins to elude U.S. sanctions on its oil sales. The investigation uncovered that 84% of 846 sanctioned crypto wallets linked to Iran transacted exclusively or near-exclusively in US-backed cybercoins. Where is the FBI?

Of course, Kash Patel himself constantly seems to be running to keep his job, refusing to share with senators answers to questions about FBI operations or to explain the use of agency money and resources on his personal life.

It Wasn’t Me

Patel, the Miller couple, and the White House also say they knew nothing about demoting Michael Burgwald and Courtland Rae, who led counterterrorism operations at the FBI’s Washington Field Office after the pair challenged orders to investigate harassing calls to Katie Miller. We are supposed to believe the field office itself demoted the pair.

The veteran FBI officials said that harassing phone calls received by Katie Miller did not meet the legal threshold for an FBI investigation and had no connection to terrorism.

They were not fired, as other agents have been, but removed from their roles overseeing counterterrorism efforts.

According to CNN, White House and senior FBI leadership asserted that the agents were stifling investigations into serious threats and made a unilateral decision to oust them. The move drew internal friction, and Bailey subsequently resigned. It is unclear whether Bailey supported removing the veteran agents.

The Millers have criticized the FBl’s lack of concern over their personal security. Previously, career agents reportedly pushed back against using bureau resources to investigate critical neighborhood paper flyers targeting Stephen Miller, for example. The Millers and their young children moved from their Arlington home into military housing last fall while law enforcement was investigating protest activity targeting the family, which the Millers viewed as criminal threats.

Patel apparently told subordinates that he was displeased with the office’s progress on the Millers’ case, but that he did not order the decision.

The Hack

Meanwhile, the concerns about an FBI not being able to protect itself against a major cyber hack seems like some kind of black humor.

By all accounts, the FBI is still trying to determine how hackers got access to tens of thousands of files with personal identifiable information or what the hacking group intends to do with the data. Only portions have been released, though there are fears that wide portions could be offered or sold to enemy nations. The group itself said its intent was not to put lives at risk but to get the FBI to back off investigation against the group itself.

The hack was being compared with China’s breach of more than 20 million records from the Office of Personnel Management over a decade ago, which prompted official vows to never allow it to happen again. Of course, that was before Donald Trump would bring his anti-U.S. intelligence attitude to bear. Hundreds at the U.S. counterintelligence systems have been fired, and Justice, Homeland Security and FBI have largely abandoned counterterrorism efforts to move personnel to immigration deportations.

In an email to The New York Times, ShinyHunters said that the bureau had until the end of Tuesday to fulfill its request to withdraw an advisory aimed at their group. There was no indication that the deadline meant anything had happened.

“Since the very beginning we had made our decision that we would never publish this data,” the group said. “We have never intended to, nor have we ever planned to.” It wanted to protect itself, the email said.

Security experts said that the breadth of the records would make them valuable to foreign spies, who could build elaborate dossiers on FBI agents.

Most of the information about the breach has been through internal memos to the FBI staff itself. Patel has been mostly silent.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

In yet another would-be power move, the Trump administration has rescinded spending a billion dollars already approved by Congress – towards assuring to protect undocumented immigrants and unaccompanied children in court.

Using a process known as “pocket recission,” Donald Trump’s office of management and budget has refused to spend the money, insisting that there is no problem worth spending on because the administration has reduced illegal immigration to zero.

“These funds previously went to pro-illegal immigration programs and Non-Governmental Organizations that provided services to refugees, asylees, and other non-citizens and put unaccompanied children in harm’s way,” the White House explained. The decrease in border crossings meant funding toward these programs became excessive, warranting their recission.

Trump’s bureaucratic move, less flashy than some of his recent projects, sounds as if it is based on contempt for any positive help for young, unaccompanied migrants whom he is seeking to arrest, detain and deport as quickly as possible, so there are obvious policy questions here. There seem to be an unending supply of border agent grabs of young, unaccompanied migrants whose treatment at the hands of border guards consistently reflect formalized cruelty, lack of representation and minimal health and education standards.

But whether justified or not on substance, once again we are forced to view this action on the continuum of the slide towards total control of government and a stomping on Constitutional balance-of-power concerns. In that context, the “pocket recission” takes on a different meaning. Even to the extent that stepping on Congress’ powers of the purse are close legal questions, this one happens to violate the time limits established for such procedures. The only way to see Trump’s desire to usurp Congress’ role is through his authoritarian bent.

Even Senate Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., was calling the move “unlawful,” and vowing Senate action to stop it. It also seems silly. With Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress, Trump should be able to get a congressional vote to achieve what he wants in spending.

But as with declaring war or not with Iran but allowing U.S. troops to participate in conflict without a Congressional vote, this Congress is moribund by choice – underscoring some of the voter anger about failures to act about high prices, tariffs, turns against international allies and the excesses of deportation.

Other cuts of funds being sought by Trump reflect his anti-DEI agenda. OMB wants to forgo spending on HHS gender-affirming care research, minority business development and the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Services, which the White House said promoted identity-conscious law enforcement practices. The administration described these initiatives as “wasteful and harmful.”

Trump last used the same tactic in 2025 to cut roughly $5 billion in congressionally approved funding. The Supreme Court voted at the time to allow the Trump administration to keep the money that was set to expire the following week.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

The word of the week for this Trump government seemed to be “contempt.”

There was Donald Trump’s contempt for the United Nations on display — for the United Nations General Assembly. In blatant and plain language, Trump assaulted the very reason for having created and maintained a world organization devoted first to international peace and second to resolution of outstanding global obstacles.

In its place was Trump’s assertion that it is he and whoever he chooses to let into his circle who will decide how we live, along with other countries that have wealth and military power to make it so.

We witnessed a Trump magic trick, turning years of Trump-fueled China hate into a lovefest for the arrival of its leader, Xi Jingping, in a state visit choreographed to extremes meant to sidestep all of the supposed issues with “Communism,” international trade cheating and even Covid blame into a fully upside-down acceptance of rising Chinese military, diplomatic, technological and economic effects. The contempt it all may well have reflected best was for American-style democracy, which was on simultaneous display.

Trump is playing out his spiritual and practical sneer of democratic principles just short of a finding of legal contempt from a judge by banning selected news outlets because he doesn’t like questions and criticism that challenge his often-incorrect assertion of fact, history, self-contradiction or policy with ill public effects. In barely meeting a court order to reissue press access to Politico, CNN and MSNOW only to bar them from a news event at the White House is to wave a legal red flag at the courts, which may be forced to react.

There were plenty more Trump policy challenges this week, more formal sneers against government healthcare, environmental protections, even disclosure that the vaunted ballroom project had spawned the architect’s resignation over lack of fire exits as required anywhere by the White House. The answer to the fire exits, and, in effect to the rest, is that it is Trump himself who determines what is code.

Contempt Contagion

Trump’s brand of contempt for anything that he now proudly admits is not a self-serving transaction devoid of any understandable principle except that of his gut is being dispensed in a way that is contagious.

Other voices, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, picked up where Trump left off with the United Nations, calling the dozens of nations walking out as he argued for continued fighting in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and with Iran “moral cowards.” The voices of Palestinians, Ukrainians and others facing assault from large powers effectively were muted or ignored, and we heard Netanyahu save special sneer for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for having an international rights opinion more complicated than Netanyahu’s own.

The language of our own election campaign, never a high bar, seems to be declining anew into statements of complete contempt for anything that does not fit into a complete red-blue allegiance test. Still, a month out, Trump appears to be readying himself and allies for more anti-election actions to unfold challenging the voters, the vote count, the certification and the seating of at least one house in Congress that will change majorities.

What will follow will be struggles about how much contempt to show in return against Team Trump as much as it will be towards seeking policies that overturn tariffs, war with Iran, controls over corporate behaviors and limits on the pace of technological development running faster than we seem able to comprehend or corral it.

The Daily Struggle

Increasingly, the daily struggle with prices, with White House orders that reach further into our lives, and with hearing a constant fire hose of Trump-inspired limitations are numbing us for what feels like more abuse.

What remains unexplained throughout the loads of executive orders and state-sponsored cruelties is who is better off now than two years ago. The clearest answers, as we keep hearing in campaign ads, are billionaires and corporations who were doing well before and now are doing phenomenally well, and the Trump family itself.

Even with reduced eyes on the specifics of the Chinese visit, there is no suggestion anywhere that this rivalry will produce any positive effects for this country. The clear winner was Xi, who effectively told Trump to stay in his lane and out of China’s way. Taiwan, trade issues, tariffs, jobs, military bumps in the night in the South China Sea and continued Chinese help for the Iranians who target our bases in the Middle East all are uninterrupted. Atop those results, we learned most about the Chinese visit from the Chinese press, which, unlike our own, faced no barriers. Trump, who has declared his ballroom a “military installation” requiring classified information, even offered to walk Xi through the construction site.

Likewise, we’re seeing Trump reaching out to bring Russia’s Vladimir Putin back into the international leadership over the expressed wishes of European allies.

There are no plans in this White House, whose handling of its own press ban was comically inept, to address any of the myriad issues that are fueling citizen anger. That takes too much work – or a lot more than renaming bodies of water and wishing away corruption challenges with contempt.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

Apart from the absurdity of Donald Trump’s suddenly announced desire to turn a self-aggrandizing triumphal arch in Washington into a bristling military complex, the announcement itself went a long way towards explaining why Trump-positive news is so hollow a call.

Of course, the announcement that the 250-foot arch overshadowing the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery would now house “drones and snipers” to qualify as a national security proposal came in a Trump Truth Social post.

No questions asked, none answered. Nor were they answered at the downsized press conference in the Oval Office the next day, when press pool coverage was pulled after Trump had banned three news outlets from stepping foot into the White House.

I suppose this is Trump’s idea of “positive” news coverage. An announcement without details about who sees need for a new military complex inside Washington, with snipers perhaps to hold off an invasion from Virginia, without explanation about why or how it changes the design needs, the staffing, the cost or even the potential new dangers of a drone-facility in the flight path of Reagan National Airport.

Despite Trump’s best efforts, however, within a day there were lots of questions, including whether Trump had made up the entire request for a military facility. Reporters calling Pentagon sources found no one who knew about the supposed need for snipers in Washington and they expressed surprise at having learned about the plan changes through the news media, not some official war-gaming proposal.

Nor, even now, are there White House explanations for how many drones, or the size of drones, or even the internal layout of the arch to provide the supposed storage space for weapons storage that the proposal now is supposed to provide. There are no descriptions of how a militarized arch would be populated with snipers, who would oversee the new facility, or why the arch was a better repository for ammo than, say, the existing military facility less than a mile away or at the Pentagon itself, just over the bridge.

For that matter, there is not even a posting on the White House’s website to address the issues.

Military Complex Raises Issues

Indeed, The Washington Post noted that the decision to push for the arch as a military complex rather than a tourist facility, as had been the case for a year, is even complicating the required federal reviews because the change raises new legal and safety concerns.

Congress has responsibility for the construction on the site a mile away from the White House.

Historic preservationists participating in a required federal review process said they could not move forward until the administration can clarify the plans for the arch. Administration officials had pressured Washington and Virginia preservation officials to reach a memorandum of understanding last week to allow development to proceed, but the announcement has blown away whatever had been on the table.

Aviation experts warned that using drones at the planned arch could pose risks in the region’s crowded airspace, which last year saw a crash between a military helicopter and a landing passenger jet.

Military and safety experts have questioned the implications of storing ammunition in the middle of a heavily used traffic circle. There were questions about whether tourists could still enter the arch as previously planned.

Trump’s insistence that his proposals for immigration, war and peace, tariffs and economics, education, environment and climate are all wonderful and ruined only by “negative” news coverage. It seems a lot closer to the truth to say that Trump’s ideas arrive by thunderbolt without sufficient seasoning and that by answering questions about what he intends, he gets the chance to spell out what might change – regardless of being “positive” or “negative.”

The polls tell us that his decisions about war with Iran, the resulting price hikes, the effect of tariffs, the excesses of a mass deportation campaign and more have proven unpopular. To blame that on how they are depicted in the news as opposed to their practical effect seems, um, bogus.

It is more likely that Trump snatched this military complex idea from thin air because he could see opposition to a massive, self-referential, Arch de Triomphe knock-off as having trouble getting the required support from Congress. Cloaking it in military camo may make it more palatable but raises new issues.

In any case, welcome to Trump News – some assembly and context required.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

It may be that society is often described as being built on “lies,” which can refer to the collective myths, social constructs, and commercial narratives that keep civilization functioning rather than literal malicious deceptions, as a Quora.com online discussion has batted around.

But that is about cultural lies we tell ourselves about the shared American Dream, for example, not about intentional lying of the sort we see daily from the Trump administration. We even expect self-promoting “spin” from our politicians, whether we accept it or not.

For the Justice Department to have dropped its inane criminal charges of vandalism against Olympian David Hearn for noticing the big paint chips floating in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pools is not just admission that the “damage” was from a botched painting job rather than criminal act. It was another in the long series of public policy lies that we endure from Donald Trump, who had insisted without evidence on his version of Truth. (Trump later criticized U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, his appointee, and insisted anew that there had been extensive vandalism at the pool.)

So too announcing a roadmap to peace in Gaza without the sign-on of the warring parties, or the ever-repeated election rigging schemes never proved or posts about prices going down when they are going up.

Truth – or denial of verifiable fact — is the ultimate prime product of the Trump Era.

While lying and moral outrage against lying are human universals, a society built on public policy lies pays an ever-expanding price across economic, social, and political dimensions. When foundational data, risk assessments and policy promises are falsified, and the eventual consequences can manifest as severe systemic failures. Policy based on lies can lead to trillions of dollars in misspending or cuts to basic services, to unconstitutional abridgment of rights and invented new powers for a president whom his party majority in Congress refuses to check.

Trump wants us to believe only what he says – before he changes it to a new theme for an attention-depressed voter population. The Washington Post and other news organizations have tracked tens of thousands of Trump’s public lies.

We’re seeing wars started and widened over purposeful misstatement of fact or considered omission of whatever has passed as rigorous intelligence. We see ruination of Head Start over propaganda over diversity and equity concerns among three-year-olds. We see lies about criminal records of undocumented immigrants, a conspiracy to ruin women’s sports with trans athletes, the unpatriotic criticism of late-night comedians amplified to tidal-wave proportions to justify the building of an authoritarian state.

That Donald Trump lies is not a question. News outlets, lawsuits and court orders, research and the result of everyday reality show oodles of his policy statements – never mind his more personal opinions – to be based on nothing but gut and venomous targets of revenge. Call it misstatements or propaganda or political spin, it’s based on acceptance of public lies.

We should call them that – lies, intentional misstatement of facts for some gain.

All Lies Are Not Equal

Naturally, some lies are plain silly, including crowd sizes when we can see video of the event. Some lies are just about braggadocio and self-promotion, as with declaring polls of adoration rather than rejection. Some lies are whoppers, including statements about supposed fraud or hoped-for criminality in finding seashells captured by an opponent’s phone camera.

Here’s my guide to sorting out the misstatement from the mis-fact .

–Lies that substitute meaning for fact. Whether the 2020 election results, the Capitol riot/attempted insurrection, the cause of reflecting pool woes or whether polls are consistently showing American rejection of the war of choice in Iran, for years, Donald Trump has insisted on reflecting only his own “alternative” facts. As a nation, we have always agreed to disagree, though the usual place to begin is with whatever just happened. Over a decade of Trump in our public life, we have managed to shuck any need for facts.

–Lies that omit the context, background. The basic statement may reflect a specific truth but may miss the point. War/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is not lying or even incorrect when he says that U.S. military strikes (mostly) struck intended targets in Iran, but he offers that as if it is a proper assessment of where we stand strategically. Obviously, doing so is a “lie,” or we would not still have conflict. Similarly, the entire Epstein Files discussion is more than whether Trump himself spent partying time with Jeffrey Epstein. So too is committing random spending cuts for foreign aid certainly have resulted in deaths linked to disease and hunger, Elon Musk’s dismissals notwithstanding.

–Lies that misstate the significance or create unbalanced comparisons. In the entire country, there likely are under 100 high school or college trans athletes who want to compete in gender-separated sports. Yet to listen to Trump, we are expected to believe that Democrats – or “Communists” – want “trans for all,” and that we have an epidemic of gender fluidity among teens that somehow is a problem only if it there is use of a school bathroom or locker room that likely should be supervised in any case. Similarly, the number of undocumented migrants who have been convicted or even charged with violent crime, the number of election fraud cases altogether, never mind those that might affect a vote total, the number of countries “ripping off” the U.S. by selling us goods that we choose to buy all are examples.

–Lies that twist language – whether legal, diplomatic or political. Trump’s cutesy, ridiculing names for his opponents are hidden tells about his fears of criticism. The gap between what he tells the American public about immigration, education or tariffs vary regularly and mightily from what his lawyers tell federal courts after someone challenges the truth of affected outcomes. What would you call telling a judge that the deportees’ plane did not leave the country when it had if not a lie? How can Trump ballyhoo a directed Justice Department indictment when it cannot even persuade a grand jury that hears only the government side of a case because the presentation only persuaded jurors the allegations were lies?

Add to this the constancy of Trump changing his mind about things small and large, including apparently calling off renewed strikes against Iran this weekend to cite “progress” in negotiations that no one else can confirm.

Most pundits, critics, and news reporters, behind recent books about Trump, those who follow the Pentagon’s doings, and those who follow the ups and downs of Business say the going-in assumption has shifted to believe first that what Trump says about the country is wrong, uninformed, propaganda – a lie. Even those television voices that support Trump unquestionably simply omit mention of where he steps over the Truth line.

We have been warned by plenty of Big Brother critiques and experiences of real people hurt by Trump lies. The question is why Congress, courts and the public put up with it.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

Whether by intention, error or force of law, the Trump administration has owned up that Donald Trump sees himself president of MAGA, not of the nation.

A New York Times report this week disclosed a month-old court filing in which federal officials acknowledged that they cut $7.5 billion in clean energy programs selectively among states “based solely” on whether those stated had voted for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

In court answers about a lawsuit challenging the stated reasons of cuts based on “waste and fraud,” the government copped to the real reason – partisan politics. Indeed, the administration funded grants for states that had backed Trump in 2024, even though the Energy Department had recommended they be cancelled.

It may not be a specifically impeachable offence, but it certainly shows that Donald Trump is abusing his office, his oath – and weirdly even punishing the Trump voters in the states taking the cuts.

Trump certainly has been acting in a variety of ways as if he wants to target states that voted against him, but this court filing seemed a public acknowledgement that should get some serious attention.

As The Times concluded, “The admission showed how Trump has weaponized the provision of federal education, energy, health, housing and infrastructure aid in his second term. Far from rooting out the sort of misspending that Trump sees as rife in Washington, the White House has instead sought to leverage the budget as a tool to assist its allies — or as a cudgel to hurt the president’s foes.”

Trump certainly has no hesitation about collecting taxes from blue states or demanding voting rolls or demanding special treatment, just in spending the money disproportionately raised from those states.

President for Some, Not All

The White House and Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget , have remained silent about the government’s court arguments in a suit brought by the affected states. At the time of the cuts, Vought posted that “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled.”

Now, a government lawyer told the court that none of the cancellations were “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor.”

Apart from all else, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright repeated the waste argument in sworn congressional testimony, telling House members in June, “No decisions (about the cuts) were made on politics.”

Someone might tell Jim Jordan, chair of the Judiciary Committee, who referred former special prosecutor Jack Smith to the Justice Department for investigation of perjury for not answering a question that Jordan had never asked.

Vought is seeking to finalize rules that would make political appointees the final arbiters of how the government would award more than $1 trillion in annual grants. He wants the power to block or revoke money if states do not conform to administration priorities. The White House has also sought to layer additional restrictions on grant recipients, limiting their political activities, memberships along with vague requirements that they cannot use the money for certain purposes, including those deemed “anti-American,” reported The Times.

Rather than combatting waste, it appears Trump and his cronies are trying to take control of the United States government, using the power of the American people for their own ends, argues historian Heather Cox Richardson in Substack.

Sen. Patty Murray. D-WA., and Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, said that politically minded grant cuts amounted to an “outright un-American” weaponization of government.

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker pointed out that the cancelled grants included $583 million intended for Illinois “that would have gone toward lowering energy costs, strengthening grid reliability, and creating energy jobs.” He demanded the funds be restored. “Despite what he might think, Donald Trump is not the president of MAGA,” Pritzker said in a statement, but “the president of all America.”

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

How much more blatant could Donald Trump’s abuse of office for self-interest be?

Trump Media & Technology Group, parent company of the microblogging platform, announced this week it will sell a data feed to Wall Street companies who want just milliseconds of notice on Trump’s Truth Social posts that may affect the economy. For a fee, Trump Media will offer the “fastest” access to posts “from the highest-ranking Truth Social accounts.”

Corporate traders should recognize this as sanitized “insider trading,” whatever euphemism is used. Voters should recognize this as an abuse of the Oval Office, a violation of the Constitution’s “emoluments” clause, and, more broadly, part of the Trump self-enrichment use of the White House.

Trump Media may be a private enterprise, but Trump is a public employee, subject to ethics rules even if not specifically barred by law from this action. It is Trump who chooses to make policy announcements for the government on his personally owned online chat service. Trump owns 41% of Trump Media through his revocable trust, so he would benefit personally.

It is Trump grift. Period.

Posts from Truth Social’s 10 most influential accounts would reach customers paying the extra bill — reportedly up to $100,000 a month — significantly faster than the usual push notification. Trump’s posts to 12.9 million followers already frequently touch off market reactions, and Trump or his family already have been found to make market investments just before policy announcements. Federal filings show hundreds of investments by Trump a day before tariffs were made public, for example, or before defense contracts or for semiconductors.

Companies and organizations generally offer application programming interfaces (APIs) for swift information transfer. Federal agencies, including Treasury and Labor large financial and economic data through APIs. But with this arrangement, Wall Street traders would have time to complete computerized trades before you or I could do so. That’s the heart of insider trading.

Moving Markets

Many presidential posts have upended markets. Last year, hours before Trump announced that he would pause most tariffs he imposed for 90 days, Trump posted that it was a “great time to buy.” Every announcement about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz moves oil markets.

Naturally, the “transparent” White House has had no explanation about ethics.

By contrast, Democratic critics have erupted, suggesting that it could be illegal. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-CA, said, “Hard to keep pace with the President’s corrupt profiteering off the presidency, but here’s yet another scheme, this time to save his failing social media business.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called it “another example of flagrant corruption, trading access to the White House for Trump’s self-enrichment.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom added, “Where is the investigation? And how are spineless Republicans okay with this? Disgusting.”

Recent White House filings show that Trump made more than $1.4 billion in 2025 from, cryptocurrency businesses alone, and they raised questions about other profiteering from his own policies. Federal law prohibits executive branch employees from participating “personally and substantially” in government matters that will directly or predictably affect personal or family financial interests, though Presidents and Vice Presidents are exempted.

“He’s selling expedited, privileged access to information about what he is doing as president,” Kathleen Clark of Washington University School of Law and an expert in government conflicts of interest rules told Fortune. “It’s yet more brazen corruption, an improper exploitation of government power to enrich himself.”

Trump Media has had financial troubles. Stock in Trump Media & Technology has plunged more than 70% since the president took office last year, erasing $6 billion in shareholder wealth. The Truth API is expected to become a meaningful recurring revenue source as the company expands beyond social media into cryptocurrency, streaming and a proposed nuclear fusion merger.

Mark it as another move that helps Trump and billionaire traders but does nothing for you and me.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

Listening to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Wednesday on whether to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General was akin to stepping into another dimension, Twilight Zone-like, in which what we are told is not what we see.

Unlike other Donald Trump Cabinet appointees, Blanche faced no substantive questions about his background – though court opinions, judges and now bar associations have plenty of issues with the legality of various actions he has ordered as acting Attorney General.

Instead, questions from Democrats on the split committee went right after whether Blanche can show any independence from Trump on using the Justice Department as a vehicle for Trump's constant and continuing retribution campaign against political enemies and for clearing legal hurdles for his favored friends. Sharply worded questions from Democrats were a nonstop set of challenges to the record already built by Blanche, while much of Republican questioning was in support of his least offensive actions – would he support antitrust work in agriculture, for example.

Questions from some Republicans, including John Cornyn of Texas, spurned for reelection by Trump, focused on poor decisions based on legal tenets even more than political ones. Thom Tillis, outgoing senator from North Carolina, jumped on pardons for those convicted of violence against Capitol police on Jan. 6, 2021, and pardons for others.

Blanche's nomination may not make it out of the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley. With Lindsay Graham's death, there are 11 Republicans, including Cornyn and Tillis. There are 10 Democrats.

Listening to Blanche
To listen to Blanche was to accept that the Justice Department has been wiping out violent crime, removing political focus from within the Justice Department, pursuing antitrust monopolies, and pushing to prosecute "anyone" who did harm to Jeffrey Epstein victims – all inside-out readings on what we see unfolding every day.

At times, it sounded as if Blanche, who, like Trump himself, seemed to live in another dimension marked by the opposite experience of reality.

On Epstein alone, Blanche was insisting that he, other Justice Department officials and the FBI all have been and are open to meeting with Epstein victims who say they have not gotten a meeting for years. Blanche told senators that he and Justice have fully complied with the law passed by Congress requiring disclosure of millions of documents never released. Blanche defended meeting with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell after her conviction, but said he did not discuss clemency or her move to a minimum-security prison camp.

On his leadership role in signing off on Trump's $1.776-billion slush fund, Blanche insisted that it is not moving ahead but not explaining why he would not put that statement in writing. Blanche defended his agreement on exempting Trump, his family and businesses from outstanding tax obligations worth upwards of $100 million even though the judge in the case has ruled that the lawsuit and its settlements were illegal and unethical manipulations of the court.

There were like sort-of denials about decisions to pass on prosecutions of border agents in deportation-related shootings or refusing to share evidence with local prosecutors in Minnesota and other communities.

Blanche ducked questions from Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI, about numerous reports of abuse of office by FBI Director Kash Patel.

What tied them together was Blanche's consistent self-belief and confidence that the Justice Department has been an effective and fair law enforcement agency amid now-daily concerns about acting solely on behalf of Trump loyalists and against perceived enemies.

Blanche was protected by committee rulings that held all questioning to 10 minutes per senator – less time than afforded for other Cabinet members – and by using "still under investigation" language to dance around anything remotely controversial.

The Independence Question
Anyone listening would have to say that Blanche sees no conflict with running Justice as acting essentially as Trump's personal law firm. In any sane political world, that should be enough to sink his confirmation. As reminded by Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, his job is to represent the American people, not Trump.

But this is a highly partisan Senate divide, and, in the end, it will be the slight majority rule that will prevail.

As Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney and legal commentator notes: "Blanche has refused Trump virtually nothing," including support to the insurrection, pardon Rudy Giuliani and the fake slates of electors, and all those convicted. "It has only gone downhill from there" to the Epstein files mess, a pardon process that has eliminated review, Blanche's prosecution of Trump-demanded cases against perceived enemies, and the abandonment of Civil Rights, antitrust, white collar crime, counterintelligence cases and more from a Justice Department that is either firing or losing prosecutors by the dozens.

Christopher Swartz of Democracy Defenders Action simply argues that during Blanche's tenure the Department has gone from a beacon of competent, independent, and impartial law enforcement to a political attack dog of the president with investigations of James Comey, Letitia James, Lisa Cooke and others. Under Blanche, Justice has brought several cases that lacked probable cause or that failed to adhere to basic prosecutorial requirements, earning rebuke from judges who have found that Justice is no longer entitled to a presumption of trustworthiness.

Statements from senators who say they are withholding judgment to hear how Blanche explains his relationship to Trump are ignoring how Blanche has been doing the job in his acting role – which Vance sees as "unprecedented and deeply disturbing."

Even if the nomination fails to advance, Senate Majority Leader John Thune could file a discharge motion to put Blanche's nomination before the full Senate – minus Mitch McConnell, who remains in a rehab center.

As a single image of the state of law in the U.S. as providing equal protection, this hearing offered a shattered mirror of disfunction.

The Intelligence Hearing
Meanwhile, a similar confirmation hearing was underway before the Intelligence Committee to confirm Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney in New York, as a permanent director of national intelligence, coordinating the work of 18 intelligence agencies. He would replace acting DNI Bill Pulte, who is using the office at Trump's direction, to re-investigate 2020 election allegations about "rigging."

In his short time as acting DNI, Pulte has fired intelligence officials and sent others back to their home agencies.

Much like the Blanche hearing, the questioning was partisan and pointed. It ranged from general questions about the appropriate size of the DNI staff to more focused concerns about Clayton's issuance of subpoenas among New York Times reporters towards learning the sources of government leaks. At one point Clayton said he was "not an election denier," but would not concede that Trump had lost in 2020 to Joe Biden.

We understand that politics can bring on self-delusion about reality when it flies in the face of ideological goals, but the Supreme Court's purposeful turn away from the racism behind Donald Trump's immigration policies is both absurd and angering.

In twin decisions this week, the right-leaning majority on the Court allowed Trump to end "temporary protective status" for Haitians, Syrians and eventually others, including Afghans who helped our war efforts, and to eliminate access to asylum procedures at the border for whomever he chooses. They were bad decisions for a variety of reasons, but what really stung were the arguments offered that simply struck away any racial bias in our immigration policies.

Justice Samuel Alito's ruling for the 6-3 majority had to determine legally that race had played no role before removing the humanitarian protections to shield Haitians. His ruling said that Trump's many statements about Haitians were not "overtly racial," and that it was unlikely that race had been a motivating factor in the administration's decision to end the protections.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan suggested Alito was wearing blinders, adding "The statements fairly shout in their racial undertones and overtones alike" and to prove her point, she listed many, including discredited Trump statements that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio had been eating neighbors' pets, that Haiti was a "s-------" country and that he wanted immigrants from Norway instead. Haitian immigration is "like a death wish for our country." Haitians are "poisoning the blood" of the nation. Trump's remarks were "so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print," she wrote. Actually, Trump has invited White African immigrants from South Africa, but the point is all about race.

That Trump has an unwarranted obsession with immigrants and a strong liking for all efforts to remake this into a White Christian Nation are well established. What has become problematic is that in its zeal to support Trump, those six justices on the right apparently cannot see real racial impact in cases that range from immigration to unequal treatment by social services to policing and imprisonment cases to election redistricting issues.

Deportation to Violence
Even mindful that the Court decides how to so narrow the legal cases that it decides to consider, this court is building a distrust with the public for its failure to recognize the practical and very real impact of its rulings.

Haiti is in freefall; this week even a national police figure was kidnapped by rebel gangs. What does Trump or those justices think is going to happen to the hundreds of thousands of Haitians that the White House is panting to put on planes to Port-au-Prince? The whole reason for temporary protective status is to shield refugees from prosecution and social harm.

How does sending Haitians who have lived here for years "home" to chaos comport with the State Department warnings to Americans to stay away from Haiti as a dangerous place?

Alito did acknowledge that "political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago." But he concluded that the administration opposed immigration generally and had not used racial criteria in its decisions.

The same court majority said the same thing in allowing redistricting to eliminate Black-majority voting districts and in settling various recent policing cases. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has been outspoken about a "post-racial" era that ignores the reality of college admissions, hiring and promotion practices, Justice department prosecution and punishment practices, mortgage redlining and other cases.

As The Huffington Post noted, Alito doesn't notice bias of any kind unless it is perceived to be anti-Catholic, his own religion, or anti-Christian in its effect. In this week's opinion, Alito said there were neutral reasons for lifting the Temporary Protected Status protections for Haitians, noting that temporary protections had been lifted in more than a dozen countries, including Nepal, Burma, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Cameroon, Nicaragua, Honduras and Venezuela. "Most would regard this as a racially diverse group of countries," he wrote. The plaintiffs contended that they were all "nonwhite."

When the case was argued in April, Alito suggested that "nonwhite" was not a meaningful category. Alito had told the plaintiffs' lawyer, "I don't like dividing the people of the world into these groups." Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who adopted two children born in Haiti, joined Alito's majority opinion along with Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Not What Was Promised
Roll back the clock and remember that what Trump said he wanted to tackle were the presence of undocumented migrants with backgrounds of violent crime. We are way beyond that now, evidenced by the botched campaigns to rebuild huge holding facilities for immigrants rounded up in courtrooms, from workplaces and schools for visa overstays and traffic violations.

The current crop of immigrant law cases concerns legal immigration methods, as ICE and border patrols pursue de-naturalizations, end legal asylum procedures, rush deportation cases through overloaded courts or skip legalisms altogether. The current cases involve humanitarian treatment of migrants and separation of families.

This case will prompt disarray in health care industries, where Haitians have found work, and in urban areas. In New York city, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is already declaring a campaign against rules that "are putting so many people's lives in jeopardy."

It's not limited to courts. Behind the deportation program are ideologies that are specifically racial and nationalistic in the most peculiar way. Support requires actively looking the other way. At the same time, Texas education officials requiring St. James version Bible readings clearly have chosen not to look at the feelings or considerations of non-Christians.

One wonders why Trump is rushing aid to Venezuela after two devastating earthquakes to help the very people he had consistently demeaned as mentally ill criminals until the U.S. military grabbed former leader Nicholas Maduro. Oh yeah, Trump took control of that nation's oil industry, and suddenly we care about the Venezuelans we deported there six months ago.

On this 250th birthday as a nation that proudly displays a Statue of Liberty, we ought to be finding ways to celebrate our diversity, not to trample it.