"Revealing healthcare histories could have serious consequences"

 

What Happened: Citing reporting by ProPublica, eight Democratic U.S. senators have criticized the Trump administration’s demands to access the health data of millions of people as a condition of giving lifesaving aid to other countries. In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the senators, including minority leader Chuck Schumer, said the U.S. demands were “unprecedented and at odds with U.S. policy concerning the data of American citizens.”

The inquiry into the administration’s approach to foreign health data referred to a ProPublica story published in June about agreements the U.S. struck with African countries — and the risks they posed to people there. Experts told ProPublica that the deals are vague and lack language used in most data-sharing agreements to adequately limit what information is collected and how it can be used. As a result, they said, there is an increased risk that individuals’ personal data could be exposed, misused or commercialized without their consent.

The senators — who include Tim Kaine of Virginia; Chris Van Hollen of Maryland; Brian Schatz of Hawaii; Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; Christopher Coons of Delaware; Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who led the effort — requested a briefing on the healthcare agreements’ data requirements. They also asked Rubio to respond in writing to a list of questions by the end of August.

What They Said: In the letter, which was sent last week, the senators expressed concern that the requirement to access foreign health data might reverberate beyond the countries where the aid agreements were struck and “set international precedents that ultimately harm Americans.” They noted that the demands for data appear to be at odds with the Trump administration’s National Cyber Strategy, which emphasizes the right to privacy for Americans and their data.

“These new demands set an alarming precedent that is seemingly contrary to the Administration’s longstanding support for the privacy of U.S. citizens’ data,” they wrote.

The senators also laid out the details of a data-sharing agreement between the U.S. and Uganda that were first reported by ProPublica. The deal demanded that Uganda provide the U.S. — and its contractors — with logins “or other secure access mechanisms” to directly enter the nation’s health data systems.

“While global health programs have historically included data sharing components,” the senators wrote, “they have never required direct access to privileged electronic systems for U.S. government representatives.”

The letter ends with more than a dozen questions for Rubio, including why the State Department has not made the health care agreements public, as federal law requires, and whether any of the data will be shared with “U.S.-based third parties for any commercial purpose, including to train any artificial intelligence models.”

The senators also asked what privacy rights foreign citizens will have over data that is transferred to the U.S. and how those rights will be enforced in the case of a data breach or another unethical use of their personal information.

Background: After the Trump administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and drastically reduced funding for international health work done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Congress required the executive branch to continue providing foreign aid. The State Department has since faced the challenge of finding new ways to get the funding to countries, ensure that it was being spent wisely and address potential pandemics. The task has been especially challenging because the administration cut ties with most of the international partners and fired staff the government had previously relied on to carry out this complex work.

In the past, PEPFAR, the U.S. program that provides aid for treating and preventing HIV around the world, built its own systems to handle anonymized data, separate from foreign government health records. In contrast, the Ugandan agreement provides the U.S. with direct access to the government’s own health data systems.

Through separate agreements, the U.S. has also arranged for countries to provide it with specimens of pathogens that could cause pandemics, along with related information. The effort to establish these new aid arrangements was led by Brad Smith, an entrepreneur who founded three healthcare companies, one of which sold for a reported $2.7 billion. Before joining the State Department, Smith led the government efficiency panel that would become the Department of Government Efficiency and oversaw some $67 billion in cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The U.S. agreement with Uganda provides up to $1.7 billion in aid for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, among other diseases. As a condition, the deal calls for the sharing of aggregated data with all personally identifiable information removed and specifies that the information should be used for delivering and auditing healthcare services. But experts told ProPublica that it is possible to reverse-engineer data that has been anonymized.

The shift in the approach to health data is part of the America First Global Health Strategy, which is intended to make America “more prosperous” and “promote American health innovations.” Rubio explained in September that under this new strategy, aid will be given “in a way that directly benefits the American people and directly promotes our national interest.”

Why It Matters: Privacy experts say that, if health data is mishandled under the agreements, it could have serious consequences. Revealing healthcare histories, including whether someone has had an abortion, a mental health condition, substance-use treatment or a sexually transmitted disease can be devastating anywhere. In Africa, research has shown it can lead to discrimination and violence.

In the age of artificial intelligence, health data has become especially valuable. But the agreements reviewed by ProPublica provide no guarantee that Africans subject to them will have a say in how their data is used or whether they would receive any potential financial benefits.

Response: The State Department declined to answer specific questions about the senators’ letter, saying that it does not respond to questions about congressional correspondence. 

In a statement sent to ProPublica, a State Department spokesperson defended the data requirements in the health agreements. “Neither the U.S. government nor any private American companies receive or review any personally identifiable information (PII) under these data sharing agreements,” the statement said, going on to note that the new deals “share only the same kinds of aggregated, de-identified data that has been shared and used for years in the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases. All data sharing is consistent with each country’s laws and approvals.” The spokesperson also said no country has been coerced to sign the agreements with the U.S.

-Sharon Lerner and Anna Maria Barry-Jester for ProPublica

 

American Plutocracy

 

Donald Trump has assembled an administration with an unprecedented concentration of wealth, with 57 senior officials worth at least $100 million each, more than four times the combined number found in the administrations of his three immediate predecessors, according to a new analysis.

The report, released by the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, identified eight billionaires among Trump's appointees and found ultra-wealthy officials throughout the Cabinet, diplomatic corps, and federal agencies responsible for everything from financial markets and Social Security to education and housing.

The 57-person count excludes Trump himself and Elon Musk, who previously served as a special government employee during Trump's second term. By comparison, Public Citizen identified only 13 officials worth at least $100 million across the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden administrations combined. Bush and Biden each had five, while Obama had three.

Eight of the 23 members of Trump's Cabinet meet the $100 million threshold.

Among the most prominent are Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the former chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who co-founded World Wrestling Entertainment with her husband, Vince McMahon. Both are billionaires.

The list also includes Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a former hedge fund manager; Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler, a former U.S. senator and business executive; and Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, the billionaire co-founder of private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management.

Steve Witkoff, the real estate investor who has become one of Trump's most important international envoys, is also among the administration's wealthiest members.

But Trump's ultra-rich appointees extend far beyond Washington.

Seventeen of the 57 identified by Public Citizen are U.S. ambassadors, while another 40 serve in senior executive branch positions. The administration's wealthy officials hold positions across agencies including the Treasury, Commerce and Education departments, the Securities and Exchange Commission, NASA, Social Security Administration, Small Business Administration and Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Public Citizen argues that the extraordinary concentration of wealth raises questions about conflicts of interest and whose priorities influence government decision-making. "It is deeply concerning to see people with extraordinary wealth controlling the levers of power in our government," Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert said in announcing the findings.

Being wealthy does not prevent someone from serving in government, and affluent donors have long been appointed to presidential administrations, particularly as ambassadors. Trump has also openly defended selecting wealthy people for government positions, portraying their financial success as evidence of their competence and ability to negotiate.

The scale of his second administration, however, sets it apart. Public Citizen also examined the officials' political giving. It found that 30 of the 57 people on its list contributed more than $65 million between 2022 and 2025 to political committees affiliated with Trump, with most of the money donated during the 2024 election cycle. The finding does not establish that contributions resulted in appointments, but the advocacy group argues the overlap warrants scrutiny.

One example highlighted in the report is Warren Stephens, Trump's ambassador to the United Kingdom. Public Citizen found Stephens made millions of dollars in contributions to Trump-related political and inaugural committees around the period in which he was nominated.

Another is Tilman Fertitta, the billionaire businessman appointed ambassador to Italy, whose family has been a longtime source of political contributions to Trump. Public Citizen reported Fertitta contributed $1.4 million to Trump committees during the 2024 presidential election cycle.

The findings arrive at a politically sensitive moment for the White House.

Trump won the 2024 election in part by expanding Republican support among working-class voters, but dissatisfaction with his handling of the economy has grown as Americans continue to struggle with prices. Only 32% of Americans currently approve of Trump's handling of the economy, according to polling cited by The Associated Press.

That creates a striking contrast heading toward the November midterms: a president who built his political comeback around economic frustration among ordinary voters now presides over an administration containing a historically large group of centimillionaires and billionaires.

 -NewsBreak

"Doing the president's political bidding"

Newly anointed Attorney General Todd Blanche has been busy. But instead of doing justice, he’s been doing the president’s political bidding. A violation of the Hatch Act, if anyone believes the Attorney General should follow the law. One of the Act’s major prohibitions is against using a federal job to influence an election. Although federal employees can, technically, campaign on their own time, the Attorney General is on the clock 24/7. Presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed officials like Blanche can only participate in partisan political activity in a purely personal (not official) capacity.  

But here Blanche is, speaking at a Trump rally in New York yesterday. He endorsed Bruce Blakeman, the Republican County executive for Nassau County, New York, who is running against Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul to be New York’s next Governor. Donald Trump has also endorsed Blakeman, and he was there yesterday too.

It’s hard to see what Blanche’s endorsement adds to Trump’s or why he thought it was an appropriate thing for an Attorney General to do. When the Attorney General, the Director of the FBI (yes, he was there too), and the President of the United States are all at a campaign event, standing in front of a backdrop of law enforcement officers, talking about their government jobs, that’s hardly personal time. Blanche spoke about “his” Justice Department, saying, “In my Department of Justice, if anybody touches a federal law enforcement officer in any way inappropriate, we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.” (If only he felt that way about Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.)

Congrats to all of the Republican Senators who voted for Blanche. He showed you who he was from the outset, and you confirmed him anyhow. Blanche has also been busy overseeing a Justice Department that continues to persecute the president's political enemies, in the best tradition of dictators everywhere. 

A report this morning said the U.S. Attorney in Chicago has been looking into a political consulting business where Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter once worked. Merchan is the Judge who oversaw the New York State hush money prosecution connected to Trump’s liaison with Stormy Daniels that resulted in Trump’s conviction on multiple felony charges. 

Trump targeted the Judge and his family throughout the trial, making unsupported allegations Merchan’s daughter benefited financially from the trial. The U.S. Attorney in Chicago, Andrew Boutrous, was also involved in the Broadview 6 debacle that resulted in his being forced to dismiss charges against anti-ICE protestors after evidence of grand jury abuse came to light. He works directly for Blanche. The reporting suggests the case against Merchan’s daughter may have come up empty-handed, but that hasn’t stopped Blanche’s DOJ from seeking indictments in the past, when the President wants revenge.

Then there’s Ka$h Patel. Not to be outdone by Todd Blanche’s infamous “I love you, sir” paean to Trump, Patel had this to say at the same rally Blanche participated in: “Thanks to President Trump’s brilliant leadership, the American dream is not a dream anymore. It is a reality. I’m living it….”

The Solicitor General, too, although he managed to avoid the rally, is in full-on worshipful mode. You would think that the so-called “10th justice,” the Senate confirmed, fourth ranking official at DOJ, wouldn’t need to kowtow to the President, but in his brief trying to get Trump a better decision from the Supreme Court on the now-disallowed construction of the White House ballroom, John Sauer quoted an unnamed White House official who thinks Trump’s boondoggle “is already being adjudged to be one of the most beautiful of its kind, anywhere in the country,” before attempting flattery with the Court, based on its architecture of all things: “its magnificent Corinthian columns—considered the highest column order in architecture—have served as the inspiration for the monumental columns that front the military/ballroom complex.” And Sauer put all of that in his brief. It must have been music to Trump’s ears.

There is no case-related reason for the Solicitor General’s Office to scrape and bow like this, any more than there is legitimate reason for Blanche and Patel to be on the campaign trail with the President. But Trump makes it explicit, expressing mock “surprise” to see Blanche, as though there isn’t a formal plan in advance around both the President and the Attorney General’s movements. And coming in for the reputational kill shot, he admonishes Blanche that he will be great “if he remains tough.” We all know what tough means. It means doing Donald Trump’s bidding in all things.

The behavior of the three top Justice Department officials, Blanche, Patel, and Sauer, confirms that they understand the rules they are operating under: Trump rules, not the rule of law. 

After Pam Bondi’s demise as Attorney General and the forced departures of Bill Cassidy, John Cornyn, and Thom Tillis from the Senate after falling out of favor with Trump, they know that if they want to keep their jobs, they must keep currying favor with the president. Shamefully, they’re willing to do that.

We will not forget. We will keep following what happens at this Justice Department, even when stories disappear from the headlines. People who have been entrusted with power must be accountable for how they use it. Without knowledge and memory, that’s not possible. 

Paid subscribers let me keep doing this work while keeping the newsletter free for everyone. If you can subscribe, I hope you will. If you already do, thank you. You make it possible for hundreds of thousands of people to have access to independent legal analysis without a paywall.

We’re in this together,

-Joyce Vance

 

"From Friday through Sunday, Trump continued his now-habitual weekend flooding of social media with fantasies that he is smart, beloved, and powerful"

The post closest to reality on Friday touted the story by Steve Thompson, Federica Cocco, and Christoper Rowland of the Washington Post on Thursday, August 13, reporting that prescription drug prices have fallen 3.1% this year, the biggest rate of price decrease since 1963. While that drop is real, the journalists note, much of the drop reflects the falling price of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, whose price has dropped dramatically because of competition from generic versions.

For other drugs, experts say the price drop comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by Democrats without a single Republican vote in 2022, during the Biden administration. That law permitted the government to begin negotiations with drug companies for lower prices on ten commonly prescribed drugs, with the lower prices going into effect this year. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated that taxpayers would save $6 billion from those first changes.

Health policy scholar Stacie Dusetzina told the journalists that Trump’s TrumpRx program covers “a limited number of branded drugs” that “may not be high enough volume to be included” in the new figures. The desire to claim Biden’s success as his own may have been behind Trump’s resurrection of accusations that Biden was corrupt.

Trump’s morass in Iran also turned into fantasy on social media when he claimed the U.S. has built a “WALL OF STEEL,” complete with an AI wall through the water, of a blockade of Iranian ports. Trump then veered to declaring that “Pocahontas and ‘Abdul’”—Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), whom he portrayed in stereotypical Indigenous garb, and Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. senator from Michigan, “want to take your stuff, and Crash the Economy!!!” and that El-Sayed and women in hijab “are coming for your home and your belongings!”

Since an appeals court found that construction must stop, Trump has harped on the idea that the ballroom is crucial for national security. But as Will Hobson and Louise Radnofsky of the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, Trump began suggesting a ballroom back in 2010 for reasons of aesthetics and space. The national security argument, the journalists note, didn’t arrive until January 2026, after legal challenges to his authority to demolish the East Wing and build his ballroom.

Trump’s weekend fantasies put him in the same category as framers of the Constitution as he showed an AI-finished ballroom to George Washington, at one point writing: “Thank you, George, for some of your brilliant ideas on this great Military Complex/Ballroom!” In real life, Washington staunchly opposed royal luxury for the president.

By equating himself with George Washington, Trump appeared to entertain the fantasy that he is leading the country toward a second American Revolution, much as Heritage Foundation leader Kevin Roberts told Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in 2024. Trump’s vision for the country is literally dark: on Saturday his social media account posted a dark black-and-white image of him wearing a Trump 2028 hat, with the caption, in a German-style typeface echoing that of the Nazis, saying: “We are going to win.” In another post, he boasted that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “get along GREAT!”

Sunday evening, Trump declared that “[b]ased on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” the North Korean dictator, he had ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” traditional military exercises with key U.S. ally South Korea. The joint drills were scheduled to begin today.

Trump wrote that such exercises “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.” Trump suggested the change was retaliation for the refusal of South Korea’s president Lee Jae Myung to help the U.S. in Iran, but as political scientist Norm Ornstein noted, the decision comes just as North Korea is sending 50,000 troops to help Russian president Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine.

The idea that Trump is a powerful dictator making a victorious alliance with North Korea and Russia presents a darkly threatening posture but, like the rest of Trump’s social media dump, portrays a world different from reality.

Today is the day that the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran that Trump signed on June 17 expires. Rather than ushering in a permanent agreement that opens the Strait of Hormuz and stops Iran’s nuclear ambitions, today shows just how badly Trump is flailing.

This morning he lashed out, telling Trey Yingst of the Fox News Channel “that Iran should ‘put up the white flag of surrender.’ I have no time schedule,” Trump told Yingst. “I’m not in a hurry...the midterms have nothing to do with my thinking.” As for talks between Iran and Oman over control of the Strait of Hormuz, Trump told Yingst: “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.” Oman is a key U.S. ally in the region.

For Iran’s part, an Iranian leader told Reuters that if diplomacy fails, Tehran will shift from defense to offense. Benoit Faucon and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Iranian hard-liners have spent the past two months planning to widen the war and raise the cost for the U.S., inflicting enough pain that Iran can deter future attacks. Today Reuters reported that Iran-backed Houthis launched missiles at Saudi ships near the Bab el-Mandeb strait, another key international shipping route.

Meanwhile, Trump is caught in a domestic scandal over the condition of the U.S. military. In early August, news broke that the U.S. was running low on precision missiles after using the expensive weapons to shoot down inexpensive Iranian drones. 

Then we heard about the appalling conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier kept overseas without adequate resupply and with maintenance issues, including overflowing toilets. Multiple outlets have reported that despondent service members, months past the scheduled end of their deployment, have attempted self-harm. The U.S. is moving the USS George Washington from the western Pacific to replace the USS Lincoln, leaving the region near China without a U.S. carrier.

When a reporter began a question to Trump on Friday with, “Family members of U.S. service members are concerned about the conditions on board the USS Lincoln,” Trump interrupted to say: “No they’re not.” When the reporter followed up with “Has the deployment gone on too long? Are you worried about their mental health?” he blustered: “No, no, no. Not nearly long enough.”

Families of sailors reacted with fury, telling Ed Pilkington of The Guardian that sailors have bad water and so little food they have lost up to 30 pounds (13.6 kg). There is little mental health counseling despite the extended deployment. “Keep praying for us,” one sailor texted home. “We are doing our best to make sure we protect our country and our families.”

On Saturday, Aaron Parnas in MeidasNews reported on a supply crisis on the USS Boxer, as well, and today Brad Lendon of CNN reported that sailors on a U.S. guided missile destroyer spent four days in blistering heat last month without working toilets, cooked food, or air conditioning after the vessel lost power.

Trump’s contribution to military plans has been to order the U.S. Navy to alter the construction of new aircraft carrier USS Doris Miller—named for a Pearl Harbor hero—ordering the designers to replace the modern electromagnetic launch system for planes with an older, steam-powered catapult system. Kaanita Iyer of CNN reports the change will delay production of the craft for several years and could cost billions.

Noah Robertson and Tara Copp of the Washington Post reported on Sunday that the Navy is also considering redesigning the aircraft carrier fleet to reflect Trump’s preference for ships that look like those from World War II. That change, too, could cost billions.

On Sunday night, a social media user posted a video of Trump at a party at his Bedminster club blasting “Y.M.C.A.” on his iPad for the crowd. National security scholar Tom Nichols responded: “We’re losing a war to Iran, we’re alienating our allies, we’re emboldening our enemies, our stalwart service people are being subjected to deprivations...and this is what the Commander in Chief is doing.”

But, in fact, that’s not all Trump is doing.

Late Friday night, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, whose leader Trump appointed, approved a preliminary charter for World Liberty Financial (WLF) to become a bank. As Lawrence Delevingne and Pete Schroeder of Reuters report, the charter would permit WLF to issue USD1, a stablecoin tied to the dollar, and to manage and hold assets for customers and settle payments faster.

WLF is the cryptocurrency venture launched by the Trump family and their close allies the Witkoff family. Steve Witkoff is Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, and WLF has done at least one major deal with a national security advisor for the United Arab Emirates. Reuters estimates that as of April 2026, WLF had “funneled more than $1.6 billion to the U.S. president and his family.”

Strategic studies scholar Phillips P. O’Brien wrote: “They are going to steal everything they can while they have power.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, said: “President Trump is now the first President in history to approve, operate, and supervise his own bank. This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen—and Congress cannot allow it to stand.” She and nine other senators are introducing a bill to guarantee “that no President, Vice President, their immediate families or other senior government officials can exploit their positions to own or control a bank, which could serve as a major vehicle for corrupt dealings.”

At 4:09 this afternoon, Trump posted on social media an image of Kim Jong Un outside with several men standing around him, talking on a landline telephone. The caption read: “HEY DONALD, WE COOL… RIGHT?”

—Heather Cox Richardson

 

Oil Companies' Profits

 

The United States’ negotiations to end its war with Iran are at yet another standstill. Nearly six months after President Donald Trump announced military operations would last only a few weeks, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and Iran has demanded a list of concessions from the U.S. in order to reopen it. 

Oil companies have been making the most of the uncertainty. As The Guardian reported last week, eight of the largest oil producers together made more than $90 billion — double their combined profits from the same time span a year ago — in just three months during the first full financial quarter since the start of the war. 

At their peak, oil prices reached more than $126 a barrel. Based on available data, the paper reported, eight leading oil companies raked in more than $700,000 of profit “every minute over the spring quarter.” The most profits were earned by Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, whose recent “fossil fuel production has made it responsible for more carbon emissions than any company in history.” 

Other firms on the list are also pumping out more emissions, while at the same time cutting back on earlier pledges to transition toward cleaner forms of energy. BP, for example, according to The Guardian, has been cutting the amount it spends on green energy since it dropped its environmental ambitions in a “fundamental reset” early last year, reducing its annual energy transition budget from $5bn to $1.5bn-$2bn. …

In recent years BP has spun off its UK offshore windfarms into a joint venture and sold its US onshore wind business and [has] announced it would sell its $4bn US biogas business, which captures methane from landfill sites and is the largest renewable gas producer in the US.

In the U.S., meanwhile, Trump has given politically connected oil companies loans and access to strategic oil reserves, allowing them to make millions purchasing publicly owned resources. At the same time, the president — likely with November midterms and flagging approval ratings in mind — has criticized the companies for “making too much money” and warned that they may be forced to return their profits. 

This criticism does not extend to the oil companies’ role in driving this summer’s extreme weather, including historic heat waves in Europe, Japan and South Korea. In Europe, extreme heat has impacted one of the continent’s energy systems designed to be shielded from the vicissitudes of global petroleum supply. 

As described by the German news site Deutsche Welle, two French nuclear power plants were taken offline in July due to soaring temperatures. Whether this signals a trend that could “develop into a Europe-wide shortage” will notably depend, in part, on Europe’s “reserves of wind and solar power.”

Read more about the oil industry’s Iran war bonanza here and climate change’s impact on energy production here, here and here.

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"A Flailing president"

It’s been a summer of profound discontent for Donald Trump. As his poll numbers keep dwindling and he flounders in his war of choice in Iran, he continues to suffer a series of body blows in the courts, hampering his attempts to break the law, weaponize his power to punish the innocent, and use the government as a personal piggybank.... 

Perhaps the most embarrassing flop has been right in Trump’s backyard, where the Reflecting Pool fiasco continues. We at Democracy Defenders Fund, along with our co-counsel Washington Litigation Group and Steptoe LLC, represent Davey Hearn, the decorated Olympian who was falsely blamed for damage at the Reflecting Pool.

The Department of Justice charged Davey with a felony, threatening him with jail for doing nothing wrong. The case was finally dismissed last week, after Jeanine Pirro admitted they didn’t have evidence to support the charges and that the damage to the pool was because of contractor failure — a contractor selected by the Trump administration without the normal competitive bidding process.

But even after the case was dismissed, Trump and his acolytes, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, have continued to bash our client and promote the false narrative that vandalism, rather than shoddy construction work, is to blame for the mess. And this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Justice is looking into potentially bringing new charges against Davey. 

So, on Thursday night, we filed our latest brief, further demonstrating why the court needs to dismiss these charges with prejudice. If the case is dismissed without prejudice, as the government wants, that leaves open the possibility that the government could bring this case back, even after its damning admissions. 

As we said in our brief, “The record in this case demonstrates a substantial and specific risk that, if the indictment is dismissed without prejudice, Mr. Hearn will face renewed charges, however meritless, driven by political pressure rather than the evidence.”

That’s why Norm Eisen and I, along with our colleagues representing Davey, will be back in court in Washington, D.C., on September 4 fighting to make sure this case is closed for good.

This tussle comes on the heels of two other seminal victories that we, with our partners, secured against Trump at the Supreme Court this term: his unconstitutional attempt to outlaw birthright citizenship and his illegal endeavor to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Trump’s effort to unconstitutionally rewrite the 14th Amendment by fiat and eradicate our nation’s bedrock principle of birthright citizenship was one of the central missions of his administration. He signed an executive order purporting to outlaw birthright citizenship on day one of his second term.

But, just minutes later, we were in court with our wonderful colleagues to defend this essential constitutional protection. We immediately secured an injunction to prevent the order from going into effect, and after a winding road, with Trump fighting vigorously for this cruel and unlawful policy, we argued the case before the Supreme Court — and won. The court affirmed that the Constitution’s Citizenship Clause puts “the question of citizenship ‘once and forever [to] rest.’”

But, failing to take the hint, Trump has come back with another EO targeting birthright citizenship. And within moments, we went right back to court to stop that dead in its tracks and ensure that the protections currently in place — which the Supreme Court just affirmed — continue to protect all our clients and babies born in the United States.

And finally, after our second Supreme Court victory against Donald Trump this term, in which the court ruled that Trump could not peremptorily fire Cook, a letter from the White House last week indicated that the president was “considering” trying to remove her from her role again. 

As Norm said in a statement with our co-counsel representing Cook, Abbe Lowell: “These allegations are as baseless now as they were a year ago when President Trump tried to remove Governor Cook and interfere with the independence of the Federal Reserve. 

No matter what President Trump tries to do next, this much is clear under the facts and Supreme Court precedent — there is no valid cause for removing Governor Cook. As we did before, we will challenge this latest pretext and preserve her position and the historic role of the Fed.”

All told, this paints a picture of a flailing president, unable to accept defeat, making futile attempts to revive his dead darlings. But his losses, which aren’t just limited to these three cases, continue to pile up. And no matter how often he tries to come back, with your support, we will be there to stop him. Your paid subscriptions help us fight these battles... 

-Joshua Kolb, The Contrarian 

"Why November Matters So Much" -Heather Delaney Reese

 

After days spent largely hiding away from the public view, the President of the United States finally reemerged this afternoon for a campaign rally at the Nassau County Police Academy in Garden City, New York. With “God Bless the USA” already blaring from the speakers, Donald Trump soaked in the excitement as he gripped the handrail, pushed aside one side of the curtains, and thrust himself into the room full of cheering police officers.  

Once on stage, he clapped his hands, fist-bumped the audience, threw his hands out parallel to where his suit jacket had bunched at his waist, and puckered his mouth to make kissing faces towards the police officers in the stands.

The event was promoted as the unveiling of the FBI’s 2025 Crime Statistics Report, but it was really a highly produced campaign rally ahead of the midterm elections. Because over the 70 minutes that Donald Trump spoke, he praised loyalist politicians, while attacking the press and the Democrats. He lost his train of thought often, even sharing, “I hate reading these boring speeches… to be honest with you.”

He declared he would be taking over territories that do not belong to our country, and he said he is not sorry for the high prices we are paying because of his war in Iran. But the most disgusting moment of the entire event was when he became completely fixated on young women and girls in the White House and went into a bizarre tangent about how ‘beautiful’ they were and how he knows he shouldn’t say what he was saying but that he was going to say it anyway.

“Every day I come to the White House, people are thanking me. ‘Thank you, sir! Thank you! Thank you, sir!’ Now, these young, beautiful girls. These young, beautiful girls. These young, beautiful girls in the White House, you know, they come in. Now, I’m not supposed to say beautiful, but what the hell? These young, these gorgeous, beautiful girls, they want to be safe, and they come. ‘Mr. President, may I speak to you?’ Yes. ‘Thank you, sir, thank you.’”

That was the President of the United States speaking. An 80-year-old man whose name is referenced more than 38,000 times in the Epstein files, while he was standing in a room full of law enforcement officers. He spoke about young girls like that in front of all of them, including many women. He told the audience he knows he should not say it, and then he said it over and over again. He could not stop himself. On X, Aaron Rupar shared a clip of the president saying this and wrote, “Epstein’s best friend says what?”

The irony of his words at an event that was supposed to be about crime was not lost. His purpose for even being at this event was for the release of the FBI’s 2025 Crime Statistics Report, which showed a 9.3 percent drop in violent crime, an 18.1 percent drop in murder, and an 18.5 percent drop in robbery. Trump stood at that podium and took credit for every single one of them. He called it the largest single-year drop in violent crime since 1937 and added that “Every single number is the lowest number in recorded history.”

But what he forgot to mention was that violent crime has been declining since 2022, more than two years before he returned to office. He did not mention that the murders had already begun falling in 2022, and then dropped sharply in 2023 and 2024 while President Biden was still in office. He also said nothing about how during his 2024 campaign, he called these same FBI crime statistics “a lie,” “fake news,” “phony,” and “a fraud.” When a reporter from Time magazine presented him with FBI data showing a drop in homicides in 2023, Trump said, “There is no way that crime went down.” He has no shame and no conscience. He just says whatever benefits him in the moment.

I kept thinking about something today while I was watching the President’s speech. When we live our lives trying to tell the truth, it can actually be shocking to watch someone lie so easily. Lying makes most of us uncomfortable. 

We might worry about the consequences and about hurting someone. We feel that little knot in our stomach even thinking about lying because we physically can’t imagine being untruthful. But when lying becomes second nature, that discomfort disappears. There is no hesitation, and there is no shame. They don’t have a conscience that steps in and says to stop. The lies just come out one after the next.

And that is what I kept seeing today. Donald Trump would say something that was demonstrably untrue and simply keep moving. There was no concern that the police officers standing in front of him might know better. No respect for their training or intelligence. No apparent embarrassment that someone could check what he had just said or how it would make him look. He simply said whatever served him in that particular moment and trusted that the outlandishness of it would cover for the obvious lie.

With Donald Trump, there is no moral center underneath any of this. He is not bothered or concerned about truth or facts. He only cares that people are cheering for him. Everything is transactional and exists only to serve Donald Trump. And I think that is also why he is so comfortable surrounding himself with some of the worst people in the world.

They don’t require decency from him or ask him to become a better person. They don’t care whether he tells the truth because truth isn’t particularly useful to them either. They accept the hollow version of him exactly as he is, because that version is useful to them. They can manipulate and use him. And in return, he doesn’t just accept them, he elevates and legitimizes them.

The entire event was a performance in grandstanding. Trump and his enablers were attempting to position his administration as powerful men who have performed well in their positions. They were hoping this would distract from everything that is actually going wrong.

And the officers in that room played their part. They cheered when Trump called Democrats “Dumocrats.” They laughed on command, and they booed when he mentioned Kamala Harris. They booed the sitting governor of their own state. And when they did this, the harm went far beyond publicly aligning themselves with someone who has no regard for the rule of law. They weren’t just standing behind and cheering for someone convicted on 34 felony counts. They were sending a message that further divides our country.

Police departments across this country are constantly fighting for public trust and to prove that they serve all communities equally. They are supposed to be nonpartisan when they are in uniform and on the clock so that the public can trust that they protect everyone regardless of who they vote for. This is for everyone’s safety. The more the public trusts its law enforcement officers, the safer everyone is. In one afternoon, the officers in that room reinforced some of the deepest fears communities across this country already have about the people who are supposed to keep them safe.

And then he lied directly to them about their own area of expertise. Trump attacked New York’s no-cash-bail law, saying, “You kill somebody, you rob a store, you go right back out on the streets. It is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” 

Every single officer in that room knows that is not how cashless bail works. They know it does not apply to serious violent crimes, and they know that people charged with murder are not simply released to go kill again the next day. He was lying about the very system they operate within every day, and they stood there and let him do it. They just stood there while the President of the United States made a mockery of their training. He disrespected every single person there today.

And when Trump told them he would “always protect our qualified immunity,” he said it as if he were offering them a gift. “Would you like qualified immunity, everybody?” he asked, and they cheered. What he was really offering them was protection. The suggestion that if they stand with him, he will stand between them and accountability.

That is not what qualified immunity is supposed to mean. It is a legal doctrine meant to shield government officials from certain civil liability, not a blanket promise from a president that law enforcement can do whatever it wants without consequences. Donald Trump was not strengthening good policing today. He was encouraging impunity. He was telling law enforcement that he will protect them, and asking for their loyalty in return.

He also tested a new talking point today, repeatedly layering the phrase “common sense” throughout his speech. “I’m a commonsense guy more than a conservative guy,” he said. “It’s all about common sense.” He doesn’t want his audience to examine whether what he is saying is actually true. He wants them to accept his words as the obvious conclusion that any reasonable person should already understand.

Once people accept that, everything else he says becomes the logical response, even the unpopular culture-war distractions become “common sense.” Even policies that might otherwise sound extreme can begin to feel reasonable because he has already told the audience that respectable people agree with him.

That is what makes this kind of rhetoric so effective. It flatters the listener into believing they are part of the rational group, the people who simply “get it,” while anyone who disagrees must therefore lack common sense. Facts and scrutiny no longer matter because disagreement itself becomes evidence that the other side is irrational. He is making everyone who challenges him on anything at all seem unreasonable simply for asking questions.

Dividing people is one of Donald Trump’s favorite weapons, and he will use anything available to do it. He called Chuck Schumer ‘a Palestinian,’ adding that “The radical extremists has not been disavowed by Chuck Schumer, who’s a Palestinian. He’s a full-fledged Palestinian. In fact, I’m looking for Palestinian garb. I’m going to send it to him for his birthday.” Chuck Schumer is Jewish. He is the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in American history. Donald Trump used “Palestinian” as a slur to describe a political opponent who is Jewish.

This moment had nothing to do with Israel or Gaza. This was about Trump seizing the opportunity to take an entire group of human beings, strip away their individuality and humanity, and turn their identity into something his followers are supposed to fear, hate, or laugh at.

He does it to immigrants when he calls them animals and invaders. He does it to women when he reduces them to their appearance. And today he did it to Palestinians and to the Jewish people. Every one of these attacks pushes us a little further apart from each other. It teaches one group of Americans to look at another group of human beings as something beneath them, something to fear and to ridicule.

And he didn’t stop there. He called New York Attorney General Letitia James “a real slob” and “essentially a dirty cop.” He called communism and by extension Democrats “the greatest threat to our country in history, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11.” Then he pointed toward the press gathered at the back of the room and said, “Well, look at all that fake news,” encouraging a room full of law enforcement officers to turn around and boo the journalists covering the event. And they did.

He is trying to strip what we have in common. He wants us to remember that there is always someone we are supposed to hate and blame. He wants us to walk around always feeling like there is not enough for everyone here, that our resources are stretched too thin, and that some of us are less American than others and less deserving of dignity. And that the people he is telling us to hate are somehow responsible for everything that is wrong in our lives.

The targets keep growing, but the purpose never changes. He needs us to stay angry and suspicious of one another. If he can do that and keep us fighting among ourselves, we might never stop long enough to look at the power and taxpayer money he is taking from all of us.

When it came to the gas prices his war has created, he told the room, “For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a nuclear weapon... you’re at $4. It’s OK. I mean, it’s... I’ll never apologize.” According to AAA, we are paying the highest August gas price in recorded history.

Trump continues to present a version of the world that simply does not exist. He said once again today that we are the “hottest country” in the world. But that is not even close to being true. Not even inside his own company.

This week, The New York Times reported that traffic to Trump’s Truth Social platform plummeted 36 percent last month compared with the same period last year. Shares of Trump Media have fallen from a high of around $60 to roughly $9. The company reported a net loss of $238.1 million in the second quarter of 2026 alone.

And its grand strategy to monetize the platform by selling Wall Street traders early access to Trump’s posts for as much as $100,000 a month attracted just over ten customers. His loyal fans, the Americans who hang on every word he says, are even growing tired of him. And the big donors and businesses he expected would pay for this new membership simply because he offered it are jumping off his sinking ship and starting to distance themselves from him.

He rounded out his event today by telling those in the room with him that what is happening in their state is going to fail. He said,  “They’re destroying the city. They’re destroying the state. We want to be there for the state, but we don’t like... what’s happening is a guaranteed failure. It’s a guaranteed failure. It’s not like, oh, maybe it’ll work. It’s a guaranteed failure.” He might have been talking about New York, but he was describing himself and his presidency. He ended his time on stage with that awkward dance and then left the stage.

Looking around that room today, I just kept thinking about how different most Americans are from the man standing on that stage. Because for the average American, the people who are not getting richer from Trump or benefiting from access to his inner circle, life is actually pretty simple.

We want to do right by our neighbors. We want our families to be safe. We want to be able to afford our homes and groceries, send our kids to good schools, go to work, come home, and believe that if something terrible happens, the people around us will still care. Nearly everyone agrees that we don’t want to keep living like this. There are fringe people who enjoy the cruelty and like being entertained by watching other people suffer.

But I don’t believe that is most of the people. I think about the people we used to have relationships with, our friends and those we called family. Somewhere underneath everything they have been told to fear and hate, there is still a human being in there. And I have to believe that matters.

I don’t write every night because I think I am going to convert Donald Trump’s most devoted followers. I write these for you and for me. For those of us who see what is happening and sometimes feel completely alone, exhausted, angry, and frustrated, but know we cannot stay quiet in the face of what is happening to our country.

And maybe part of why I keep doing this is because I need the reminder too. I need to remind myself every single day that humanity still exists inside most of us, even when it doesn’t feel that way. Because beneath all of the propaganda and anger, the truth is still the truth. It remains true no matter how many times someone twists it, or how much money or power someone gains by convincing other people to believe a lie.

In two and a half months, we all get to decide what we want the future to look like. Because lies will not keep us safe. Turning against our neighbors will not make our families richer or our lives easier. Surrendering our judgment to an authoritarian will never give us the freedom he promises in return. It only makes us participants in whatever comes next. History has a way of catching up with people who convince themselves that they were only going along with it, and that they didn’t really mean it, or that they thought they would somehow be spared. In the end, we are remembered not only for what we believed we were building, but for what we were willing to help tear down.

And that is why November matters so much. We cannot control what Donald Trump says tomorrow or who he chooses to target next. But we can slow down his destruction of our country, and we can send a message to his enablers that we will never forget what they did.

Donald Trump wants us divided. He wants us looking across the street at our neighbors and seeing enemies instead of looking up at the people accumulating power while the rest of us fight over what remains. We do not have to participate in that. We can choose each other instead. He is trying to drag all of us down with him. But we are not going to let that happen. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather Delaney Reese

Summary of Illinois Gun Laws

Illinois is a shall-issue state, meaning that Illinois State Police must issue a concealed carry license if the applicant meets certain qualifications. However, Illinois differs from other states in that it still gives law enforcement the right to object to a concealed carry license being issued if they think the applicant is a danger to public safety or himself/herself. If the police do object, then the case is heard by the Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board, who will make the final decision as to whether or not a license is issued. The applicant is notified by mail of the Board’s decision. There is an appeal process.

Open carry of a handgun on your person or in a vehicle is illegal. An Illinois Concealed Carry License (CCL) is required to concealed carry a firearm in Illinois. 

Applicants must be 21 or older. The license permits the licensee to carry a loaded or unloaded handgun on or about the person completely or mostly concealed from view of the public or on or about a person within a vehicle. 

A 16-hour firearms training course conducted by a state-approved instructor is required for all new concealed carry license applications. Non-resident licenses are only available for residents of Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, Texas and Virginia. In terms of reciprocity, Illinois does not honor CCW licenses from any other state.      

Illinois law requires residents to have a Firearm Owners Identification Card (FOID) to possess a firearm or ammunition. FOID card holders (without a CCL) can legally carry unloaded firearms that are enclosed in a case. You must be 21 years old to apply or have a parent or guardian sponsor who is eligible for a FOID card. 

Use of Force in Defense of Other Property

A person is justified in the use of force when and to the extent that he or she reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to prevent or terminate such other’s trespass on or other tortious or criminal interference with either real property (other than a dwelling) or personal property, lawfully in one’s possession or in the possession of another who is a member of his or her immediate family or household or of a person whose property one has a legal duty to protect. 

However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force only if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

Use of Force in Defense of Person

A person is justified in the use of force when and to the extent that he or she reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or another against such other’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, he is justified in the use of deadly force only if he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or another, or the commission of a forcible felony.

Use of Force in Defense of Dwelling

A person is justified in the use of force when and to the extent that he or she reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to prevent or terminate such other’s unlawful entry into or attack upon a dwelling. However, one is justified in the use of deadly force only if the entry is made or attempted in a violent, riotous or tumultuous manner, and he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent an assault upon, or offer of personal violence to, oneself or another then in the dwelling, or he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent the commission of a felony in the dwelling.

Liability   

In no case shall any act involving the justified use of force give rise to any claim or liability, unless the use of force involves willful or wanton misconduct.

[720 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/24-1, 5/7-2 & 5/7-3]

Self-Defense

Illinois is a Castle Doctrine state. You are under no legal duty to retreat if threatened; using deadly force is justified.

-USCCA 

For other articles: glen brown: self-defense 

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The USS Abraham Lincoln

Disturbing anonymous text messages revealed the alleged lack of food aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as lawmakers demanded answers about conditions on the ship, which has reportedly seen sailors trying to jump overboard during a more than eight-month-long deployment.

Bleak conditions aboard the aircraft carrier have reportedly prompted desperate sailors to try to leap into the sea, and text messages from those aboard have shed new light on how gross things have become, according to a report by Meidas Touch’s Aaron Parnas.

More than 5,000 sailors and Marines set sail from San Diego on the Lincoln on Nov. 21, but the deployment — originally set to end in May — has been extended as the Iran war continues.

“This deployment is the worst one and I pray no other boat goes through the same,” one sailor wrote to a relative in a message shared with the outlet.

“Even people that have been deployed a hundred times claim this one to be the worst and believe it can get worse than this. The Navy does not care. The mission will always come first.”

“Haven’t had milk in 3 months,” the sailor said in another text.

“It takes so long for supplies to arrive, nothing fresh is included,” the sailor explained in another message.

“So, we haven’t had anything fresh except meat caused its freezed [sic],” they wrote. “Sometimes it gets here rotten.”

The messages come as lawmakers have begun demanding answers about reports of clogged toilets, mold or mildew in the showers, a lack of supplies and problems with the food supply.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sent a letter to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao Wednesday, asking for details on the deployment and how reported problems including lack of “hygiene products, mold, broken toilets or laundry facilities, inadequate water supplies, or other deteriorating living conditions” are being addressed:

"There have been widespread reports of shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, deteriorating mental health, deck safety concerns, and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages in route to the ship to be lost in transit for months. These reports warrant immediate attention, but they also raise a broader question: whether the Navy can sustain the operational tempo now being demanded of its carrier force, particularly as this Administration repeatedly commits U.S. forces to conflicts of its own choosing and increasingly relies on aircraft carriers to sustain those operations."

About 200 relatives turned out for a meeting with Navy officials last week, begging for help for their loved ones, MS NOW reported. One parent said that during that meeting, their sailor had told them they thought they would die on the ship, according to the outlet. Multiple families have reported similar instances, according to Navy Times.

The Navy has denied that any of the sailors are suicidal. “The health and well-being of every Sailor aboard Abraham Lincoln is a priority,” it said in a statement. “Based on information available to the command, we have not identified an increase in reported suicidal ideation or suicide attempts aboard the ship. We take every service member’s well-being seriously and have religious, medical and mental health professionals available to assess and address concerns as they arise,” the Navy said.

“Lincoln is providing a comprehensive support network, including onboard deployment-resilience counselors, chaplains, Fleet and Family Support Center services, Military OneSource, and medical professionals.”

The post Desperate Texts From USS Abraham Lincoln Sailors Reveal They’re Served Rotten Food: ‘Navy Does Not Care’ first appeared on Mediaite.

 

Iran Has Changed the Question by Vijay Prashad

For more than three decades, the United States has treated Middle Eastern diplomacy as an exercise in writing the terms for others. Iran’s emerging regional strategy is challenging that privilege. The immediate evidence is emerging in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran and Oman are negotiating an arrangement under which Tehran could oversee vessels entering the Gulf while Muscat manages outbound traffic. The proposal remains unsettled, but it represents something larger than a maritime agreement: Iran is attempting to move the diplomatic agenda away from the narrow question of its nuclear compliance and towards the wider architecture of Gulf security.

Since the end of the Cold War, US diplomacy in the Middle East has often begun with a conclusion: Washington defines the crisis, identifies the acceptable parties, and sets the boundaries of the eventual settlement. Negotiation then becomes less a discussion over the political order than a process through which weaker states are asked to accept it. The agreements produced under this system were not literally surrender documents. Yet they frequently carried the political logic of surrender: one side retained the power to decide what counted as compliance, while the other was required to prove its fitness for economic relief, political recognition or limited self-rule.

Iraq and Palestine

Iraq was the starkest example. After the 1991 Gulf War, comprehensive sanctions devastated an already battered society. The United Nations’ Oil-for-Food Programme, established by Security Council Resolution 986 in 1995, permitted Iraq to sell limited quantities of oil while the proceeds passed through a UN-controlled escrow system to pay for humanitarian goods. It was presented as relief, but its deeper message was unmistakable: Iraq could access its own principal resource only within a structure designed and supervised from outside. Sovereignty had become conditional and punishment – including punctual bombardment by the United States – became commonplace.

The Oslo process operated differently, but it reflected a similar imbalance. The 1993 Declaration of Principles was negotiated directly by Israelis and Palestinians through a Norwegian channel and signed in Washington. It brought mutual recognition and created Palestinian interim institutions, but the arrangement postponed the decisive questions (statehood, borders, Jerusalem, refugees and settlements) while leaving the occupying party in control of territory and facts on the ground. Washington sponsored a ‘peace process’ without correcting the asymmetry that made a just peace so elusive. Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank became structurally permanent.

In both cases, the United States and the institutions it dominated, exercised a powerful privilege: they determined the question everyone else was required to answer.

Iran

With Iran, that question has for more than two decades been the nuclear weapons file. Concern did not begin in 2005 (the International Atomic Energy Agency’s chronology traces intensive engagement to 2002 and 2003) but the confrontation hardened after 2005, as Iran resumed nuclear energy related uranium-conversion activity and the dispute moved toward the UN Security Council. Iran’s leadership said that it was uninterested in nuclear weapons but was ignored.

From then on, almost every discussion of Iran was organised around enrichment levels, centrifuges, inspections, breakout time, and sanctions relief. The framing of Iran’s nuclear energy programme as a nuclear proliferation issue was politically convenient for Washington. It reduced a broad struggle over Israel’s nuclear weapons programme, US military bases, sanctions, and maritime control to a test of Iranian compliance. The United States could maintain an enormous military footprint across the Gulf while presenting Iran’s capabilities as the singular source of instability.

Iran is now attempting to invert that debate. Through diplomacy involving Oman, Pakistan, and other regional states, Tehran’s position is that the nuclear issue cannot be separated from the architecture of regional security. The question is no longer simply what limits Iran will accept, but it is also what limits should apply to the military presence and coercive power of the United States and its allies.

This is why the issue of US bases in the Gulf matters. 

For Washington, those installations are infrastructure that protects allies, energy supplies, and navigation. From Tehran’s perspective, they are the forward positions of a power capable of attacking Iran while remaining insulated from retaliation at home. Iran’s argument is that no durable settlement can demand permanent restraint from Tehran while treating the military posture of the United States in West Asia as beyond negotiation.

The emerging discussion over the Strait of Hormuz makes this reversal concrete. Iran and Oman have reported progress on a new arrangement for maritime traffic through the waterway. According to accounts of the proposal, Iran would oversee inbound traffic to the Gulf and Oman the outbound lane, with some form of payment for security or environmental services still under dispute. The plan is not final, and Washington opposes any arrangement that compromises free passage or gives Tehran control over its own territorial waters. Even so, the political significance of this arrangement that is being discussed is considerable.

For decades, the United States has long cast itself as the ultimate guarantor of Gulf navigation. The Iran-Oman talks suggest an alternative principle: the states that border a strategic waterway can construct its operating order themselves. That possibility also exposes a contradiction in sanctions policy. If commercial vessels must enter the Gulf through a lane administered by Iran, shipowners, insurers, and banks will need to know whether required Iranian services, data systems or fees trigger US restrictions. Merely sailing through Iranian territorial waters would not automatically violate every US sanction.

The legal problem would arise not from passage alone, but from payments to Iranian entities, the use of sanctioned service providers, insurance exposure, and the processing of vessel data through an Iranian-administered mechanism. 

But a functioning Iranian-administered system could force Washington to issue licenses, tolerate narrowly defined transactions or risk obstructing the commerce it says it is protecting. Sanctions would no longer be an instrument applied in a political vacuum; they would collide with the practical requirements of maritime passage. What this means for the broader US sanctions policy will become clearer only afterwards for insurers and shipping companies.

The wider regional picture reinforces Iran’s argument. 

The 2023 reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brokered by China after earlier talks hosted by Iraq and Oman, restored diplomatic relations between the Gulf’s two main rivals. It did not settle their competition or erase their conflicts. But it demonstrated that de-escalation could be produced by regional bargaining and non-Western mediation (in this case, substantially, by China) rather than a US bombing campaign.

Pakistan’s mediation and the growing security dialogue among Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan point in the same direction, although they should not be mistaken for an Iranian-led bloc. These states have their own interests and, at times, deep suspicions of Tehran. Their significance lies elsewhere: regional governments are experimenting with overlapping arrangements in which Washington is no longer the sole convenor, guarantor, or author. 

US military action has repeatedly promised deterrence while producing escalation, displacement, and new grievances. Bombardment can destroy facilities and commanders, but it cannot create a legitimate regional order. Nor can a system be stable when one state (Israel) has undeclared nuclear weapons, continues to occupy a people and conduct a genocide against them (the Palestinians), and feels emboldened to attack its neighbours (Lebanon, Iran, Syria) whenever it wishes.

The real questions

The real challenge Iran has placed before Washington is therefore conceptual. Who defines the agenda? Who decides which weapons, bases, and alliances are destabilizing? Who controls the waterways through which the region’s wealth passes? And must every settlement be guaranteed from outside, or can regional powers (with all their rivalries) build enforceable arrangements among themselves?

The next Middle Eastern settlement will not be durable if it resembles a surrender document. It will have to address nuclear restraint, foreign military deployments, maritime access, sanctions, missiles, and mutual non-aggression as parts of one security problem. Iran’s achievement is not that it has solved that problem. It is that, after decades of being forced to answer Washington’s question, it has compelled the region to consider a different one. The issue is no longer only what Iran must surrender. It is what every power (including the United States) must be prepared to negotiate.

-Vijay Prashad is the Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His most recent book (with Grieve Chelwa) is How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa (from Inkani Books).

Iran Has Changed the Question

 Vijay Prashad