Photos at Dawn by Glen Brown

 

"Trump is under the gun to end his misbegotten war"

 

The “deadline” for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face destruction of its power plants works like Donald Trump’s “concept of a plan” on healthcare: it’s always two weeks away. Trump surprised no one with his decision Friday to extend the deadline (the second such postponement) until April 6. When that date arrives, Trump almost certainly will punt again. His ever-moving deadline strategy (on healthcare, tariffs, war, etc.) has become his predictable fallback when a pressure tactic (e.g., threats to bomb Iranian power plants or impose tariffs) proves impossible, too expensive, or just pointless.

The New York Times reported that the excuse Trump gave this time was “what he claimed was progress in talks to end the war.” There is no evidence that “talks,” direct or otherwise, have progressed. Savvy observers, including traders on U.S. markets, which reached new lows, rolled their eyes. Trump’s declaration that Iran is “begging” for a deal had all the telltale signs of projection. Trump’s deployment of ground troops — without congressional authorization or public support — suggests “talks” are not progressing much, if at all.

The Iranians understand Trump much better than anyone in the Trump regime (devoid of any Iranian experts) understands them. For decades, Iran has prepared meticulously for what to do if a U.S. president was daft enough to attack: Batten down the hatches, close the Strait of Hormuz, and fire away at Israel and the Gulf allies. Only an ignorant narcissist like Trump could be so willfully blind and ignorant enough to imagine he could wipe out an Iranian regime — ensconced for 47 years in regional warfare — with a few weeks of bombing.

Now, the Iranians can see that Trump is desperate to end the war quickly. (They know enough that Trump’s lie that he “doesn’t care” if a deal is reached actually means he ‘really, really wants a deal.’ The Iranians are watching U.S. financial markets, oil prices, and even Trump’s approval polls. They follow U.S. media reports on rumbling discontent in the MAGA movement. They therefore reasonably can conclude that Trump can be snookered into a deal remarkably accommodating to Iran.

Moreover, the Iranians may be in a stronger position than they would have been under prior U.S. presidents, thanks to asymmetric warfare (e.g., drones, cheaper missiles) that can readily inflict damage, depleting the defenses of more expensive interceptors.

Evidence abounds that Israel and the U.S. are swiftly depleting their supply of interceptors. It’s a matter of math: Iranian drones can be quickly and cheaply replaced; their opponents’ defenses are extremely expensive and limited in number. Israel has already begun to ration interceptors, leading to more direct hits on Israeli towns. 

On the U.S. side, the “military has fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles in four weeks of war with Iran, burning through the precision weapons at a rate that has alarmed some Pentagon officials and prompted internal discussions about how to make more available,” The Washington Post reports. 

The U.S. military is scrambling to find Tomahawks from other hot spots. This is what happens when impulsive, ignorant men — intoxicated with blowing things up — utterly bungle a war. “The dilemma has laid bare broader concerns in both the Pentagon and Congress about the Trump administration’s war in Iran, its shifting explanations for why the conflict is necessary, and the risks a shortage could pose to the United States as it balances the potential for future conflict in other parts of the world.”

In addition, Israel is coming up against manpower limitations. The Jerusalem Post reports: The IDF could soon collapse if there is no solution to the shortage of manpower, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir warned in remarks during a security cabinet meeting held on Wednesday.

“I am raising 10 red flags before the IDF collapses into itself,” Zamir said during the cabinet meeting…. IDF sources also told the Post that there is tremendous concern due to the severe manpower shortage, especially amid the ongoing war.

After 2 ½ years of wars on multiple fronts and the Haredi conscription issue unresolved (i.e., approximately 66,000 ultra-religious men claim exemption from service), the IDF’s chief of staff’s warning spurred opposition parties to accuse Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of ignoring a looming disaster (a reference to the October 7 debacle) that could amount to “a major security crisis in the country.”

Thus, Trump is under the gun to end his misbegotten war — not only to stave off public anger over gas prices, but to stop the ticking clock counting down to the point at which Iran can penetrate defenses and inflict substantial damage and casualties on depleted U.S. and Israeli forces and munitions. In other words, time is on Iran’s side.

In addition to the limitation on the U.S. and Israel’s ability to wage war indefinitely, another factor may convince the Iranians to hold out for a very favorable deal: Trump’s ability to convince himself that an embarrassing failure is actually a roaring success. Self-delusion makes him an easy target for a lopsided deal when he hungers for the war’s end.

Trump’s predilection for self-deception may enable Iran to pull off a diplomatic coup that offers him empty, unenforceable promises (e.g., Iran won’t export terrorism, Iran won’t build a bomb) in exchange for very tangible benefits (e.g., no Israeli or Gulf attack, lifting of sanctions). Trump will trumpet Iran’s empty words (e.g., it has always denied it was building a bomb) without acknowledging that the war achieved very little at a huge cost.

Certainly, Iran has incentives to end the war. Its devastating domestic damage greatly worsens its pre-existing infrastructure problems (like insufficient water to sustain the population). The regime remains, but it is shaken and diminished. And although widespread domestic discontent may have gone to ground during the fighting, it remains a potent threat. Iran, therefore, cannot be entirely intransigent; it too wants to move on (if only to rebuild and sprint to the development of a bomb).

In sum, Trump did not get regime change or an unconditional surrender. His lack of strategy gave Iran advantages (e.g., control of the Strait of Hormuz, asymmetric missile/drone capacity) that neither he nor his yes men anticipated. He therefore flails about, desperately trying to end this debacle without total humiliation. Thanks to the considerable leverage Trump’s blunders have given them, the Iranians surely expect to avoid Trump’s most draconian demands. They want the war to end, but not at any price.

If only the U.S. had competent negotiators and a sane president, a deal might be reached soon. We don’t. Tragically, more lives will be lost, billions more spent before the war’s end.

 

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"The nighttime attack resulted in the deaths of two people and injuries to 12 others, including a nine-year-old boy"

Toys are scattered among the ruins of a house destroyed in Odesa on March 28, 2026. The nighttime attack resulted in the deaths of two people and injuries to 12 others, including a nine-year-old boy. Ukraine secures 10-year defense deals with Gulf states amid Iran war. "The first priority is weapons — their production, exchange of experience," President Volodymyr Zelensky said in Qatar. Russia surveilling US military assets in Middle East to aid Iran, Zelensky says. Russia took satellite photographs of the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia the day before Iran launched an attack on the facility that injured 12 U.S. troops, Zelensky said. Zelensky responds to Rubio's accusation of lying. President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 28 clarified his understanding of Washington's position on security guarantees for Ukraine, in response to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling his previous statement on the issue "a lie." Russia announces gasoline export ban as Ukrainian strikes hammer oil infrastructure. Russia will ban gasoline exports from April 1 in order to meet domestic demand, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced on March 27. Russians dubious as bomb shelters appear 1,000km from Ukraine. Local officials framed the move as a safety measure, but residents were less convinced. 'Explosion in production area' — Ukraine confirms Flamingo missiles hit explosives plant in Russia's Samara Oblast. The Flamingo missile, built by controversial defense manufacturer Fire Point, has only been used by Kyiv on a handful of occasions since being first unveiled last summer, with its reported use increasing since November 2025.

(Photo by Nina Liashonok/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Just Another Pathological Narcissistic Announcement

 

The U.S. Treasury announced Thursday that trump's signature will appear on all new American paper currency, a first for any sitting president in the nation's history. Starting with $100 bills in June, his name will replace the Treasurer's signature for the first time since 1861, erasing an unbroken 165-year tradition. That, apparently, was just another thing standing between trump and a mirror.

It gets worse. A federal arts panel, stacked with trump appointees, recently signed off on a 24-karat gold commemorative coin bearing his image, timed to America's 250th birthday. Here's the kicker: the people who spent years screaming about "trump derangement syndrome" have now branded the nation's entire currency supply with one man's face and autograph, which is about as deranged as it gets.

George Washington refused to appear on the first U.S. silver dollar specifically because putting a leader's face on money is what kings do. A member of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee said it plainly: only nations ruled by kings or dictators put a sitting ruler's image on their coins.

The administration calls this a patriotic tribute to the Semi-quincentennial. But trump has already plastered his name on the Kennedy Center, Navy battleships, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. The presidency, for trump, has always been less about governance and more about brand extension. The Founders warned us exactly what this would look like. Turns out they were right.

-The Other 98%

No Kings Day

 

Let us continue to rebel against his autocratic abuse of presidential power, his felonious behavior, his constitutional ignorance, his obstruction of justice and concealment, his lawless demagoguery, his pathological narcissism, his grandiose delusions, his anti-social personality disorder, his malignant arrogance, his moral relativism, his white nationalism, his perfidious nationalism, his hateful racism, his infectious nihilism, his outrageous iconoclasm, his ruthless competition, his puerile dereliction, his embarrassing stupidity, his provocative transgressions, his mocking disrespect, his impetuous vulgarity, his sexual predation; his belligerent intimidation, his incessant lying, his conspiratorial gaslighting, his obsessive vindictiveness, his hypocritical cowardice, his compulsive xenophobia, his callous misogyny, his insufferable bigotry, his disgusting buffoonery, his histrionic rallying, his sociopathic bullying, seditious behavior and dangerous fascism... .

-Glen Brown

Trump is "feeling 'bored' after starting a war that has killed thousands of people, created chaos across the Middle East, and raised prices for US consumers"

 

…In a social media post, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) called the president “beyond despicable” for feeling “bored” after starting a war that has killed thousands of people, created chaos across the Middle East, and raised prices for US consumers.

“Donald Trump is now ‘a little bored’ with his ‘little excursion’ in Iran, as if war is nothing more than passing amusement to him,” said Beyer. “War is not a game. It’s not a spectacle. It’s not something you pick up and drop when it stops entertaining you.”

Beyer then highlighted the human costs of Trump’s war, which he launched at 4 a.m. on a Saturday morning without any authorization from Congress.

“Real people have paid the price of this war,” he wrote. “We’ve already lost 13 Americans killed in action, with many more seriously wounded. Civilians have been killed throughout the Middle East, including the US missile strike that killed more than 150 schoolchildren.”

Trump and allies such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have signaled that after the US is finished with Iran, they will next attempt to topple the government of Cuba, where the White House has caused a catastrophic fuel shortage in recent weeks with its ramp-up of the blockade that’s been in place for decades. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this month that “the embargo is tied to political change on the island.” […]

-Common Dreams

"The sense among ordinary Americans has been that the law does not apply to members of the ruling class in the way it does to everyone else"

 

Here’s a litmus test for Democratic presidential contenders in 2028: Where do they stand on elite impunity and bringing justice to lawbreaking Trump officials and the “Epstein class”? 

Back in 2009, after nearly a decade of Republican misrule, there was a lot of talk about “accountability.” With the economy in shambles and the country embroiled in two quagmires, many were hopeful the Barack Obama administration would reverse George W. Bush policies and hold those responsible for the devastation accountable.

Writing for The Nation, attorney and Watergate-era Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman implored the new president to investigate the rife “constitutional and criminal misbehavior” of his predecessor. “To fully restore the rule of law and prevent any repetition of Bush’s misconduct,” she said, “the abuses of his administration must be directly confronted.”

In The New York Times, prominent human rights attorney Michael Ratner argued, “Unless government officials know that consequences follow from such abuses, they will break the law again.” High-ranking members of the president’s party in Congress similarly called for investigations and “truth commissions” to look into the many alleged constitutional violations and human rights abuses that had been sanctioned by senior Bush officials over the previous eight years. 

Nothing ever came of these demands. Under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder, the Obama Department of Justice failed to criminally prosecute any of the high-level government officials involved in authorizing illegal torture and surveillance programs, just as it failed to prosecute a single Wall Street executive after the 2008 financial crisis. 

Despite widespread demands for accountability, the Obama administration ultimately chose a posture of forgiveness and closure. Fast-forward almost a decade, and the folly of Obama’s “look forward” doctrine is unmistakable. By declining to pursue accountability more aggressively, the Obama administration did not close a dark chapter in American history; it simply left the door open for even more egregious abuses in the future. Just as many critics had warned at the time. Few imagined just how egregious those abuses would be, or how faithfully the next Republican president would embody George W. Bush’s worst instincts. 

While the parallels between the Trump and Bush administrations have been evident for some time, President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a war with Iran earlier this month effectively cemented his place in history as the second coming of Bush. In “politics as well as policies,” observes Michael Lind in UnHerd, “the Trump administration increasingly looks like a continuation of the post-2000 Republican norm: pro-war, pro-business.” 

The main difference between the two administrations is not in policy or politics but in style. As Lind notes, Trump’s “bizarre and abrasive style … couldn’t be more different than that of the Bush dynasty.” The president and his top officials are also far more brazen and shameless in their misconduct than the “Bushies” ever were.

Compare Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to the self-styled secretary of war, Pete Hegseth. While Rumsfeld authorized war crimes behind closed doors and then denounced those crimes as “un-American” after they were brought to light, the current defense secretary has openly endorsed war crimes in his public speeches, vowing to show “no quarter” and “no mercy for our enemies.” 

Hegseth hasn’t just advocated war crimes in his blustery speeches. His alleged order to kill all survivors of the shipwrecked boats struck by American drones in the Caribbean last year was a brazen violation of international and U.S. military law. He also bears responsibility for the bombing of a school in Tehran that killed 175 civilians, most of them young girls.

As ProPublica reported, the secretary shut down a program to reduce civilian harm last year as he made “lethality” the military’s top priority, reorganizing national security around the principles of “more aggression” and “less accountability.” The former Fox News host has deplored “stupid rules of engagement” and called for “maximum lethality,” advising U.S. soldiers that their job is to “kill people and break things.” 

Hegseth has shown little concern about exposing himself to legal risk by publicly endorsing and privately ordering war crimes. And why should he? No senior U.S. official has ever been criminally prosecuted for war crimes or human rights abuses, despite the large body of evidence implicating past officials like Rumsfeld. The defense secretary flaunts his lawlessness, confident that he will never face any kind of consequences for his actions. 

This sense of inviolability is evident across the entire Trump administration — from the Pentagon to the Homeland Security Department to the Justice Department — and ultimately reflects the president’s own belief that he is above the law. 

The sheer scale of criminality and corruption on display in the U.S. government today would have been inconceivable in an alternative timeline where powerful government officials had actually faced repercussions for their actions. The Obama administration’s unwillingness to prosecute the architects of the Bush‑era abuses bred a dangerous moral hazard, much like the failure to punish white-collar criminals for their role in the financial crisis. 

Trump’s own evasion of accountability for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election continued this trend of injustice. 

While the Biden administration at least pursued criminal charges — a meaningful departure from the Obama precedent — the case was ultimately doomed due to the apprehensions of main justice and the “maddeningly slow” pace of the investigation. Under Attorney General Merrick Garland, who waited nearly two years to appoint a special counsel to investigate the former president, the DOJ approached the case with little sense of urgency and a “wariness about appearing partisan.” As one commentator later observed, it was clear that Garland had “little desire to investigate and potentially prosecute Trump.” 

America’s accountability crisis has entered its terminal phase, with the rule of law itself on life support.

Since Trump’s reelection, America’s accountability crisis has entered its terminal phase, with the rule of law itself on life support. While the Justice Department has been weaponized against the president’s foes, the administration has further undermined any efforts to hold political and economic elites — the so-called Epstein class — accountable (unless those elites find themselves on the president’s enemies list, of course). 

Trump himself has mounted a one-man assault on the rule of law, employing his pardon power to further entrench elite impunity. Just one year into his second term, he has already issued twice as many individual pardons as Joe Biden did throughout his entire four-year presidency, not including his mass pardon of the Jan. 6 rioters.

The recipients of Trump’s pardons have mostly been elites, whether corrupt politicians or white-collar fraudsters. Altogether, over half of Trump’s second-term pardons have been for white-collar crimes like money laundering, bank fraud and wire fraud. In just one year, these pardons have wiped out as much as $2 billion in fines and restitution for victims.

One thing is clear at this point in Trump’s second term: As long as the president and his circle remain convinced of their own impunity, their abuses will grow more audacious. This makes it all the more urgent for Democrats to show their real commitment to holding officials like Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem accountable this time around.

Last month, author Cory Doctorow proposed that congressional Democrats form a “Nuremberg Caucus” to signal their seriousness about accountability. In Doctorow’s conception, this caucus would maintain a public archive documenting the full body of evidence for any future prosecutions of Trump officials: “Each fresh outrage, each statement, each video-clip — whether of Trump officials or of his shock-troops — could be neatly slotted in, given an exhibit number, and annotated with the criminal and civil violations captured in the evidence,” Doctorow wrote. 

Ever since the 2008 financial crisis, the sense among ordinary Americans has been that the law does not apply to members of the ruling class in the way it does to everyone else. The Jeffrey Epstein revelations have hardened that perception, with Trump standing as the most recognizable face of this untouchable elite. Almost 20 years after Obama’s ascent, the Democratic Party needs a new kind of promise — not hope, but accountability.

-Conor Lynch, Truthdig