We Need a Real Congress to Stop the Illegal War

 

Should Democrats win control of even one house of Congress (and both is increasingly likely), the most urgent issue will be to head off resumption of the illegal, reckless, and fruitless Iran war. Donald Trump has been itching to resume his unilateral war, insistent that with just one more round (just a short one!) of random destruction, he can “win.”

There is zero evidence that additional military action (let alone one advertised in advance as brief) will force Iran to release its grip on the Strait of Hormuz and/or topple the regime. It therefore remains a mystery what plan could produce a result that anyone other than a deluded, addled president would consider victory. (Besides, he keeps saying we already won, so why is further action required?!)

According to news reports, Trump, ominously, received an in-person briefing last week on the resumption of active military operations from Adm. Brad Cooper, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine. Meanwhile, the potential that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who egged Trump on to fight a preposterous regime-change war and sees his own legacy as tied to the (impossible) attainment of that goal — will remain in power after the inconclusive Israeli elections increases the likelihood for another joint operation.

The prospect of further war — never authorized by Congress (and opposed in multiple War Powers Act votes), overwhelmingly unpopular with voters, and likely to deepen the energy crisis and inflationary spiral — should alarm all Americans. And how Trump intends to wage this fiasco should be even more alarming.

Speaking at the Middle East Institute last week, Sen. Murphy, fresh from a visit to the region, told the audience, “I think we are seeing the president ready another devastating military campaign after the election, just as illegal as the first iteration was at a time where Americans are fed up with this war.” Denied access to damaged bases, he reported on “a cover-up that is underway — a dizzying and coordinated attempt to try to hide from the American people and from Congress the costs and the consequences of this war.” 

Most frightfully, he warned: "In one of these briefings, we did get the chance to have a fairly detailed conversation about what the war plan would be if we restarted military operations. You’ve heard a preview that it would be a short-duration plan. I will just say this: their plan is insane. It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law. …

"There’s been open reporting as to what we may be planning and the civilian infrastructure that we may be targeting. They’ve been asked by the President to develop a plan. Whether they believe it will work or not, I do not know. But the plan that they have developed will lead, in my view, to a prolongation and an escalation of this war that will be devastating for our security interests.

"We do not know if that is the plan about which Trump was briefed last week, but we do know that any military action absent congressional authorization would be unconstitutional, further deplete our munitions (already critically low), endanger our troops at bases we are apparently unable to defend, kill and injure more people (including civilians, about whom the Trump regime has shown shockingly little regard), cause further physical destruction in the region, imperil our regional allies (whose oil facilities we are also unable to protect), and ultimately reinforce the image of the United States as a hapless, weakened oaf toddling around the region, unable to defeat a second-tier power."

Should Trump order our military to engage in massive war crimes, he would imperil them personally and further erode the standing of the U.S. military (which has already alienated allies because of its extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean).

As Murphy made clear, “this is the textbook illegal war.” He explained, “They are fighting a war without congressional authorization. They haven’t sought congressional authorization. There hasn’t been a hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee.” He added that “it is also clearly in contravention of international law and commitments that we have made to the rule of law to deliberately target civilians and to use the harm or potential harm of civilians as leverage in war. And it is also violative of commitments we have made to target political leadership at scale.”

The first order of business for lawmakers after the election therefore should be a vote to bar further offensive action against Iran, deprive the Trump administration of any funding for this outrageous gambit, and make crystal clear that anyone engaged in this illegal escapade — up to and including the president — will be held fully accountable to the greatest extent of the law (be that impeachment, prosecution for war crimes, court martial for senior brass, etc.).

Will Congress act, either before or after the new Congress is sworn in? Well, we will find out. Even if Democrats are outvoted on a party-line vote before January, their unity on these items is essential to make clear what will transpire as soon as new legislators are sworn in on January 3. Going on record unanimously may slow down military action, encourage Gulf allies to push back against Trump, and give military leaders additional arguments to dissuade Trump from acting.

It would be unfathomable for Democrats not to try to mount a furious effort to stop the resumption of the war. “We become an illegitimate body, especially with respect to our foreign policy powers, if we do not use our spending power to end the war,” Murphy reminded us. “The president has ignored the Constitution and ignored us. He has gone to war repeatedly in the Middle East, illegally, without congressional authorization.” He added, “The natural consequence of that should be for the Congress to deny funding for the war if you are not prepared to come to us and get authorization.”

Murphy is right that it is Congress’s “sacred responsibility as a co-equal branch to use the spending power to end the war.” And it is the sacred obligation of democratic citizens, whose obligations do not end with casting of ballots, to hold elected leaders to the promises they made and to abide by the unequivocal mandate of the American people to end the war.

Mass, peaceful protest may be required to bolster Democratic opposition. No Democratic lawmaker, whether just elected or considering future runs, should expect to hold power if he or she cannot wield the most consequential powers in Article I: the powers to declare war and to make appropriations. No Democrat serious about running for president in 2028 can remain on the sidelines. The election is tomorrow, but the most fateful decisions for the country, for the Middle East, and for the international world order will come after the votes are counted.

---

The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now!

 

"The Framers of the Constitution thought they had designed a system that would prevent the rise of a tyrant"

 

Yesterday, Lingling Wei, Alex Leary, Thomas Grove, and Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal reported that Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has proposed a meeting next month with Trump and China’s president Xi Jinping to decide the fate of Ukraine.

The reporters explained that a three-way summit with China and the U.S. would cement Russia’s status as one of the world’s three great powers, a status Putin has sought since 2000 when he entered the Kremlin. 

Such a summit would formally acknowledge that the U.S. had broken from Europe and allied with Russia, a goal for Putin as he tries to take control of Ukraine.

A former Russian intelligence officer told the reporters that the summit would replace the rules-based international order established by the United States and its allies and partners after World War II with a system that divides the globe into spheres of influence.

After ten years of Trump insisting that reports of his cooperation with Russia were a hoax, here we are, watching one profoundly unpopular man tear apart the global system under which we have lived for eighty years in order to climb into bed with Vladimir Putin.

In just over a week, Trump has lifted sanctions on the sale of Russian oil on the global market, a way both to send desperately needed money to Russia to fund its war on Ukraine and to begin the process of reintegrating Russia into the global economy. 

Either Trump or Musk or both appear to have slowed down Starlink and Starshield—the two systems that manage communications for defense and offensive drones, respectively—making them inoperable during one of the worst Russian bombardments of the war.

And on Friday, Trump waived additional sanctions Congress demanded in a recent law named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) two days before the sanctions were to go into effect. Putin confidant Kirill Dmitriev, who manages Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, reposted an AI-generated image of the U.S. eagle standing next to a Russian bear, snarling at a British lion standing next to the flag of the European Union—the U.S. and Russia standing shoulder to shoulder against the United Kingdom and Europe—with the caption “Things Have Changed…”

Over the post, Dmitriev wrote: “Together.” He cheered on Trump’s waiving of the sanctions imposed by the Graham Act and, in response to a post claiming that Trump’s move to bolster Russia had caused panic in Europe and Ukraine, posted: “Checkmate.”

In The Atlantic, national security scholar Tom Nichols noted with evident disgust: “The American commander in chief has abandoned the Western order, the most successful—and powerful—security arrangement in human history.” 

This decision, Nichols wrote, appears to have had nothing to do with the national interest of the United States. Instead, Trump appears to have thrown out the world order because of his own personal interests, his admiration for Putin, his resentment of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, “and quite possibly other factors that so far have remained obscured from the American public.”

Outrage over Trump’s actions has come from across the political spectrum. Nichols notes that former federal prosecutor turned conservative commenter Andrew McCarthy wrote that Trump is giving Putin “aid and comfort.” Those words echo Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution, which defines treason against the United States, as “levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

McCarthy’s blistering article in the National Review on Saturday reminds readers that Putin is a murderous dictator who is actively supporting Iran’s military operations against the United States with both intelligence and drones and provoking U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). And yet Trump is siding with him against Ukraine, a U.S. ally. McCarthy demanded Congress hold “immediate hearings about this week’s shocking escalation of the Trump-Putin alliance.”

The backlash appears to have pushed Trump to try to justify his gutting of the Graham Act, at least. This afternoon, he posted on social media: “My decision on Russia is a very simple one.” He went on to claim that he didn’t want “to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table” in the quest for a peace deal with Ukraine.

He shrugged off Russia’s support for Iran in its war against the U.S. by suggesting it “is doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared to what they could be doing, and I want to keep it that way.” 

And then he attacked Zelensky, blaming Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries rather than his own war on Iran for the high cost of diesel in the U.S. and claiming that Zelensky “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”

Nichols tore through this screed, calling it a pathetic admission of Trump’s weakness “in his relationship with the Kremlin boss.” “The leader of the most powerful nation on the planet,” Nichols pointed out, “is trying to get everyone else, including the American Congress, to avoid antagonizing Putin, instead of warning Putin not to even think about aiding Iran.”

Until now, Nichols wrote, “[a] world in which the White House is allied to the Kremlin was…the stuff of paranoid fiction. Manchurian candidates and red presidents were fantasies.” Now that alliance exists. Nichols laments that Trump and Putin have fulfilled the dreams of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and the Cold War leaders who followed him, humbling and humiliating the mighty United States.

The Framers of the Constitution thought they had designed a system that would prevent the rise of a tyrant. They believed U.S. representatives would be so fearful of a leader's abuse of power that they would impeach any president who overstepped his authority, and that U.S. senators would be so jealous of their own power they would convict, and tyranny would not be able to take root. The Framers especially did not anticipate that senators, to whom they deliberately gave longer terms than they gave the president, would put party over country and stand aside as a president and his appointees captured the prerogatives of the Senate.

And yet, here we are.  But even given the evidence of the past ten years, it is truly astonishing to see Republicans, who for more than forty years have championed President Ronald Reagan for his stance against the Soviet Union, stand aside as Trump trashes the post–World War II system of global security in order to ally the United States with a Russian dictator.

-Heather Cox Richardson

 

"He is deranged and dangerous!" Impeach Him!

 

Leaders in California have denounced Donald Trump as “reckless” and “deranged” after the US president suggested Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego – two liberal cities in the blue state that has been a frequent target of his administration.

At a rally in ruby red Nebraska on Monday night, Trump told supporters that he hoped to see a “tremendous victory” in the fast-approaching November midterm elections. He then suggested high prices due to the war with Iran were a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe – keeping our country safe”.

“They can take out a city,” Trump said in Grand Island. “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” The crowd applauded. “It’ll be over very soon,” Trump said of the war.

The governor and the cities’ mayors quickly condemned the comments. “After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego,” the California governor, Gavin Newsom, said on X. 

“He is deranged and dangerous.”

Newsom, a Democrat who has repeatedly clashed with Trump over his two terms, said from his press office account: “Let’s be clear: The President is advocating for an attack on 10+ million U.S. residents in two of America’s largest cities. This is not normal. None of this is. And we will continue to remind folks of that every day.”

Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, assailed the president for making what she called “irresponsible threats” that “could potentially compromise” the safety of America’s second-largest city. “The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” she said in a statement.

Todd Gloria, the mayor of San Diego, said his city was “not collateral damage” in the president’s war. “We are not expendable. And we are never a “small price to pay,” he wrote on X “Keep our city out of your reckless war talk.”

San Diego, the nation’s eighth-largest city, is home to critical US military infrastructure.

Online, the comments – part of a rambling, nearly hour-and-a-half speech – set off a debate about what the president actually meant. Was it a crude joke about two blue cities or had he, accidentally perhaps, disclosed confidential intelligence about potential Iranian targets?

Some conservative activists argued that Trump, in his elliptical way of speaking, was referring to high gas prices when he argued that it was a “small price to pay”, and not the capacity of Iran to “take out” a US city.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

US defence officials have previously stated that Iran currently lacks the capability to launch a direct missile attack on the US mainland.

Trump has argued in previous speeches that allowing Iran to develop a nuclear weapon would threaten US cities. In his last state of the union speech, he claimed that Iran was working to build missiles that would “soon” reach US soil...

“Thirteen million Californians call LA and San Diego counties home,” said Xavier Becerra, the Democratic nominee for governor who has sought to take up the anti-Trump mantle carried by the outgoing Newsom. “Their lives are not a ‘small price to pay’ or a punchline for Donald Trump.”

-The Guardian

 

U.N. Speech May Signal the Next Chapter of American Hegemony

Iran showed the limits of American coercion. Trump may turn back to the Western Hemisphere, where those limits remain the weakest. Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations on Tuesday was many things, but it should not have been surprising to anyone.

Certainly not the Iranians, whom Trump threatened to “annihilate” if they refuse his terms for ending the war. Not the Cubans, whose government he called “an absolutely failed state” that will soon fall. Not Greenlanders or Danes, who have spent more than a year listening to threats to seize Greenland by force. Not America’s allies, who have learned that treaties, institutions, and decades-old relationships hold little sway with this president who treats them more like vassals within an American sphere.

Reactions to the speech have been and will be parochial and diverging. Some will dismiss it as performative, typical of this president. Others will cite the threats and exaggerations as further evidence of cognitive decline. His defenders will hear strength, resolve, and a president willing to say aloud what weaker leaders would not. The more useful question is what the speech portends for how Trump will use American power abroad as the pressures on his presidency mount.

One answer has become almost conventional. Trump’s tried-and-true cycle of bluster and retreat will continue, though he faces a world now accustomed to waiting him out. Trump threatens, markets panic, allies scramble, opponents brace themselves, and then he backs away. The Wall Street-assigned acronym TACO — “Trump Always Chickens Out” — and the market’s repeated willingness to recover from his threats and missteps suggest that investors still trade as though the label has merit.

Greenland offered another example this week. After months of demands that the United States acquire the territory, Washington, Denmark, and Greenland reached an agreement that gives Washington little that it could not already have pursued under a 1951 defense agreement still in force.

That outcome — as with many others — may look reassuring only if we ignore what happens between the threat and the retreat. Trump can abandon an objective without erasing the costs accumulated while pursuing it. Relations with Denmark and Greenland absorbed months of unnecessary strain. Tariffs can disappear, but businesses and consumers absorb the disruption that preceded their removal. The Iran war has shown the problem on a far greater scale: oil trading near $100 a barrel, depleted American munitions stocks, and regional governments absorbing retaliatory strikes from Iran and its proxies.

The smaller episodes — whether the White House ballroom, the renaming of the Kennedy Center, or the proposed 250-foot triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery that Trump now wants to turn into a military complex housing drones, snipers, and ammunition — are no less reflective of what comes next. His attention remains locked on initiatives that offer a visible display of presidential authority, even as more consequential national-security problems remain unresolved.

That is why I am not persuaded by James Carville’s prediction that Trump is “just gonna walk away” by Easter of next year. Carville argued that a political rebuke in the midterm elections could leave Trump frustrated enough to resign — just walk away. That argument, however, assumes Trump judges the presidency largely by his ability to govern successfully through Congress.

Even a hostile Congress would leave Trump commander in chief, head of the executive branch, wielder of the pardon and veto powers, conductor of American foreign policy, and the dominant figure inside his political movement. Leaving office would surrender all of that.

That distinction also makes me less convinced by the familiar argument that Trump will become more dangerous because he senses the walls closing in. His speech at the United Nations did not sound like that of a man preoccupied with shrinking authority. It sounded like a president oblivious to constraints and signaling where he will apply his power next.

The Western Hemisphere stood out. Trump celebrated the American operation in Venezuela, predicted political change in Cuba, and promised to use America’s “unmatched military might” when necessary to protect U.S. interests in the region. His administration has simultaneously worked to organize Latin American governments around its campaign against cartels.

Whatever one thinks of those policies, the pattern deserves attention. Trump appears increasingly focused on a region where the United States enjoys enormous military and economic advantages and where most governments possess limited means to resist sustained American pressure.

Iran offers almost the opposite lesson. Tehran can retaliate. It can disrupt energy markets, threaten American bases, and work through partners across the region. Russia possesses nuclear weapons and conducts a war that the United States cannot end by declaration. China combines military power with economic leverage on a scale no Latin American state can approach. Europe can frustrate Washington through institutions, regulations, and collective action even as it remains dependent on American security guarantees.

The Americas, on the other hand, offer Trump something increasingly difficult to find elsewhere: leverage without an equal counterweight. Trump’s United Nations speech matters for reasons that have little to do with whether it sounded presidential or unhinged. We already know how Trump talks. The important signal was where he directed his attention.

Trump still appears convinced that American power can compel outcomes if he finds the right place to apply it. On Tuesday, he gave the world an indication of where he intends to look next.

Brian O’Neill, a retired senior executive from the CIA and National Counterterrorism Center, is an instructor on strategic intelligence at Georgia Tech. His Safehouse Briefing Substack looks at what’s ahead in global security, geopolitics, and national strategy.

Brian O’Neill

 

"Our imperial overreach began 25 years ago with the War on Terror. It is being brought to a grim conclusion by Donald Trump’s war on Iran"

Donald Trump, whose war on Iran is the greatest strategic blunder in United States history, is not responsible for triggering the decline of the American empire, but he is responsible for its fatal denouement. This is the end. Hundreds of U.S. bases in the oil-rich Persian Gulf have been damaged or destroyed and I expect will not be rebuilt. Our allies, even those in Europe, are abandoning us. The decadence and immorality of American society, embodied in the vulgarity, stupefying ignorance and cruelty of Trump, are the defining characteristics of the Empire. The Global South, horrified at the Empire’s flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law, including the enabling of genocide in Gaza, sees us as the enemy. Abu Ghraib Prison may have receded from our consciousness, but for the rest of the world, its images of U.S. soldiers and contractors sadistically humiliating and torturing imprisoned Iraqis has replaced the Disneyfied version of America we once exported. The war on Iran, which has disrupted the world’s oil supply, is rapidly pushing the global economy over the cliff. We are going down. And we will bring many with us. Osama Bin Laden may be in a watery grave in the North Arabian Sea. Al-Qaeda may be a shadow of itself. But Bin Laden’s most fervent dreams have been realized in the last twenty-five years of gross miscalculations of the Empire — its squandering of trillions of dollars on military debacles and the ascendancy of our version of Ubu Roi, Donald J. Trump. Rather than defeating supposed enemies, the U.S. has swelled their ranks. It and its colony, Israel, are the most reviled nations on the planet. Every advance by Iran in its asymmetrical war against the Empire is cheered across the globe. The humiliating defeats, the diversion of resources and at least $8 trillion to mount one war after another, which has killed an estimated 4.5 to 4.8 million people, has hollowed the Empire out. Its infrastructure is crumbling. Its democratic institutions are impotent. It survives on an unsustainable $ 40 trillion debt. The jewels of its democracy, including its education system, fair elections and a free press, are discredited and degraded. An abandoned working class, crippled by economic insecurity and a government that steadily strips away social programs that keep those in distress afloat, is propagandized to believe the palpable decline is the work of traitors and enemies within. It has led Trump supporters to turn on the very institutions and ideals designed to sustain democracy. The usual targets of fascism — the “radical left,” Muslims, migrants, intellectuals, artists, people of color and journalists — are persecuted under laws such as The Espionage Act. Lies permeate the airwaves buttressing the self-delusion that once internal enemies are silenced, or eradicated, the glory days of the Empire, defined by hyper-nationalism, patriarchy, stable jobs and white supremacy, will return. Violence against internal enemies along with election fraud are openly advocated by Trump and his court of sycophants, buffoons, grifters and Christian fascists. Attempting to bribe voters by promising them $5,000 if Republicans win the midterms, along with Trump’s contempt for the constitutional order, is the transparent admission that U.S. democracy is a farce. George W. Bush, who was appointed to the presidency by judicial fiat planted these seeds of lawlessness and impunity. Trump has brought them to floraison. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons, masked and offered the kind of impunity that allowed the torture and killing of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorize U.S. cities. They carry out military-style raids against unarmed civilians that look no different than those the Empire carried out in Fullujah or the Helmand Province in Afghanistan. They are setting up a network of squalid internal concentration camps. The tools of subjugation the Empire used abroad, including the stripping of civil liberties and the implementation of mass surveillance, were legalized at home with the passage of The Patriot Act, with its watchlists, informants and racial and religious profiling. Empires in decay impose the tyranny familiar to those subjugated abroad on their own citizens. I was in the Middle East when it all went wrong. Nearly all of the Muslim world was appalled by the attacks of 9/11. There were massive public expressions of solidarity, including candlelight vigils in Iran. If we had built on this empathy rather than demonizing Muslims and inflicting suffering and death on millions in the Middle East, we would be far more secure today. Instead, we drank deep from the poisonous elixir of nationalism. We foolishly believed we were attacked, as Bush said, because “they hate our freedoms,” not because of our support for the apartheid and genocidal state of Israel, our callous indifference to human life beyond our borders, including the killing of over a million people in Iraq by U.S. sanctions, and our propping up of brutal Arab dictatorships. The wreckage we have left behind from our forever wars include the obliteration of whole cities, along with 940,000 direct deaths in post-9/11 war zones, 3.6 to 3.8 million indirect deaths and 38 million people displaced. The hijackers chose massive death and destruction on a city skyline to send a message. They spoke the language we taught them. It is the message our warplanes, missiles and drones have delivered from Vietnam to Iraq. We did not listen. We naively believed we could use our military to remake the Middle East in our own image. The failure of the War on Terror is not simply a moral failure. It is a strategic failure. We refused to ask the obvious question. Why did many outside our borders feel so much hostility towards us that they were willing to kill themselves and thousands of our fellow citizens? Those of us who dared to raise these questions twenty-five years ago were vilified as supporters of terrorism and silenced. The only way to defeat terrorism is to isolate those who carry out acts of terror within their own societies. It is to build networks of understanding and solidarity. We did the opposite. We became the terrorists we claimed we were seeking to defeat. We did what Bin Laden wanted us to do. We defeated ourselves. Trump is presiding over the last act. The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 

The Iran War Is the Biggest Strategic Blunder in US History (w/ John Mearsheimer) | TCHR John Mearsheimer breaks down the current state of the Iran War, and how the conflict increasingly appears to look like the most dire strategic mistake in US history. Chris Hedges and John J. Mearsheimer Aug 29 President Trump Makes an Announcement and Signs Executive Order From the Oval Office WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 05: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (C) speaks as U.S. President Donald Trump announces plans to host the 2026 G20 summit in Miami, Florida during a press availability in the Oval Office of the White House on September 05, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Trump detailed his administration’s plans to host the 2026 Group of 20 summit of world leaders at his golf course and spa in Doral, Florida.  President Trump Meets with Visiting Israeli PM Netanyahu at the White House WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 07: U.S. President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he arrives at the White House on April 07, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Trump is meeting with Netanyahu to discuss ongoing efforts to release Israeli hostages from Gaza and newly imposed U.S. tariffs.  Israel Launches Strikes Against Iran TEHRAN, IRAN - JUNE 13: The view from a living room of a residential building that was destroyed in an attack by Israel on June 13, 2025 in Tehran, Iran. Early this morning, Iran was hit by a series of Israeli airstrikes targeting military and nuclear sites, as well as top military officials.  Russians Celebrate 80th Anniversary of the Victory Day in Moscow MOSCOW, RUSSIA - MAY 9 (RUSSIA OUT) Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) talks to Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) as President of Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (R) looks on during the wreath laying ceremony to the Unknown Soldiers’ Tomb, marking the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazi’s Germany, May 9, 2025, in Moscow, Russia.  Iranian Revolution A group of men carrying arms and ammunitions raise their hands victoriously while driving around the city after having looted army garrisons in the late afternoon on the victory day of the Iranian Revolution in Tehran, Iran, 11th February 1979.  IRAN-US-ISRAEL-WAR-TRANSPORT-HORMUZ In this picture obtained from Iran’s ISNA news agency and taken on May 2, 2026, the Gambia-flagged tanker vessel Bili is pictured anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas in southern Iran. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on May 4 denied that any commercial ships had crossed the Strait of Hormuz, after the US military earlier said two US-flagged merchant vessels had transited through the vital waterway.  First Inflation Report Of 2025 Released AUSTIN, TEXAS - FEBRUARY 12: The Labor Department is expected to report today on January prices as measured by the consumer-price index, with a separate report on wholesale prices delivered tomorrow.  US-POLITICS-TRUMP US President Donald Trump and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth listen to questions from the press during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David in Maryland, on July 31, 2026.  Senators Speak to the Press Following Policy Luncheons on Capitol Hill WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 24: Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent speaks to reporters during the weekly luncheons at Capitol Hill on June 24, 2025, in Washington, DC. Secretary Bessent spoke on the current situation in the Middle East with Israel and Iran, along with the ongoing One Big Beautiful Bill Act in Congress.  U.S. Conducts Blockade Operations Near Strait of Hormuz ARABIAN SEA - APRIL 16:  USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) conducts U.S. blockade operations related to the Strait of Hormuz on April 16, 2026, in the Arabian Sea. The ship’s embarked carrier air wing includes eight F-35C stealth fighters, F/A-18 fighter jets, EA-18G electronic attack aircraft, E-2D command and control planes, MH-60 helicopters and CMV-22B Ospreys for logistics support.  QATAR-IRAN-ISRAEL-US-CONFLICT Smoke rises from an area in the direction of Al Udeid Air Base, which houses the Qatar Emiri Air Force and foreign forces including the US, in Doha on February 28, 2026, following a reported Iranian strike. The United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28, with Israel’s public broadcaster reporting that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been targeted, as the Islamic republic retaliated with barrages of missiles at Gulf states and Israel.  ISRAEL-IRAN-CONFLICT The Israeli flag flutters in front of a destroyed building at the site of an Iranian missile attack in Ramat Gan in central Israel near Tel Aviv, on June 19, 2025. A hospital in southern Israel was hit during a barrage of “dozens” of Iranian missiles on June 19, officials said, while another impact was reported by emergency services in the Tel Aviv area. Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth Holds Pentagon Press Conference On Iran Strikes ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA - JUNE 26: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon on June 26, 2025, in Arlington, Virginia. Top officials from the Department of Defense gave an update after three Iranian nuclear facilities were struck by the U.S. military last weekend and Iran countered by launching missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.  Israel-Iranian-Ballistic-Missile-June-23 Members of the Israeli security forces check the apparent remains of an Iranian ballistic missile lying on the ground on the outskirts of Qatzrin, Golan Heights, Israel, on Monday, June 23, 2025.  TOPSHOT-SKOREA-US-MILITARY-MISSILE05 TOPSHOT - A US Airforce OA-10 airplane passes near a Patriot PAC-2 missile system at the South Korean Air Force base in Suwon 18 September 2003. The United States is upgrading its missile defense capabilities in South Korea as part of an 11-billion-dollar plan to beef up its deterrence against North Korea.  U.S. President Trump Visits USS George Washington in Japan YOKOSUKA, JAPAN - OCTOBER 28: Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi reacts to a compliment by U.S. President Donald Trump as they arrive aboard USS George Washington at Fleet Activities Yokosuka on October 28, 2025, in Yokosuka, Japan. Trump is visiting Japan, fresh off an appearance at the ASEAN summit in Malaysia and will next travel to South Korea for the APEC meetings.  TOPSHOT-IRAQ-US-OILFIELDS-SMOKE-SOLDIERS TOPSHOT - U.S. soldiers from 1st Marine Expedition Force patrol a road as heavy black smoke from a burning oil well drifts past at the Rumaila Oilfields March 23, 2003, in Iraq. Several oil wells have been set ablaze by retreating Iraqi troops in the Rumaila area, the second largest offshore oilfield in the country, near the Kuwaiti border. US and British forces have requested Kuwaiti help to extinguish some oil wells in Iraq, torched as coalition forces advanced into the country, a Kuwaiti official said in remarks published 23 March.  IAEA Board of Governors Meets to Discuss Situation in Iran VIENNA, AUSTRIA - JUNE 23: Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), arrives for an IAEA Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters on June 23, 2025 in Vienna, Austria. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors is convening a meeting at the agency’s headquarters to discuss the situation in Iran, following strikes by the United States on June 22, which targeted nuclear facilities in Iran.  Israeli Head of Mossad David Barnea (Dadi) attends funeral HOLON, ISRAEL - 2025/05/12: Israeli Head of Mossad David Barnea (Dadi) attends the funeral of Sgt first class Zvi Feldman at the military cemetery. Hundreds gathered at the Holon military cemetery to pay their respects to Sgt. First Class Zvi Feldman whose body was repatriated more than four decades after he went missing during the 1982 Israel Lebanon war. His remains were located in the heart of Syria during a special operation by the IDF in coordination with the Mossad intelligence agency.  Arab League Summit in Amman, Jordan on November 11, 1987. JORDAN - NOVEMBER 11: Saddam Hussein in Amman, Jordan on November 11, 1987.  SAUDI-YEMEN-CONFLICT-ENERGY-ARAMCO A damaged silo at the Saudi Aramco oil facility in Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea city of Jeddah. - Yemen’s Huthi rebels launched a missile attack on the facility on November 23, triggering an explosion and a fire in a fuel tank, officials said.  Ukrainian Farmers Harvest New Wheat Crops Whilst War Blocks Exports MYRONIVKA, UKRAINE - JULY 29: A stork flies above a wheat field as a combine harvester of TVK Seed agricultural company harvests wheat on July 29, 2022 not far from Myronivka, Ukraine. Commodity exports from Ukraine, one of the world’s largest producers of wheat, corn and vegetable-oil, have been stalled since the Russian invasion on February 24 affected important port infrastructures.  UKRAINE-RUSSIA-CONFLICT Journalists and residents stand as smoke rises after an attack by Russian army in Odessa, on April 3, 2022. - Air strikes rocked Ukraine’s strategic Black Sea port Odessa early Sunday morning, according to an interior ministry official, after Kyiv had warned that Russia was trying to consolidate its troops in the south.  UAE-IRAN-ISRAEL-US-WAR TOPSHOT - A plume of black smoke rises from an ongoing fire near fuel depots at the port of Fujairah in the gulf emirate of Fujairah on March 4, 2026. Iran’s strikes on Gulf neighbors since February 28, following the US-Israeli attack, forced the UAE to shut its airspace, blindsiding travelers who thought they were headed to one of the region’s safest holiday destinations. Recep Tayyip Erdogan - Benjamin Netanyahu meeting in New York NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - SEPTEMBER 19: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) who is in New York for the 78th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, receives Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) at the Turkish House in New York, United States on September 19, 2023.  ISRAEL-US-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT US President Joe Biden (L) listens to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he joins a meeting of the Israeli war cabinet in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas.  ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT Israeli army battle tank at a position along the border with the Palestinian territory on March 19, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militant group Hamas.  A guest post by John J. Mearsheimer John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Documents and interviews reveal Trump’s war on Iran is rapidly draining US navy budget

 

USS Abraham Lincoln to visit port in Thailand after more than 250 days at sea

Experts and former officials say accounts are running dry, and funding a war with no clear endgame is the main challenge.

Donald Trump’s war on Iran has driven the US military into a severe financial crisis, with the US navy forced to transfer money from its payroll and other sources to cover the costs of combat, according to documents obtained by the Guardian, and interviews with navy officials, contractors and defense analysts.

The US-Israeli operation, which has depleted US munitions stockpiles and prompted retaliatory Iranian strikes that have wrecked strategic bases across the Middle East, is piling pressure on budgets across the military. One Pentagon memo about navy funding seen by the Guardian warns that there are “shortfalls in payroll” accounts due to the department “raiding” them to fund combat operations.

Experts and former officials say the accounts are running dry. “The piggy bank is broken,” said Harlan Ullman, a retired naval officer. Ullman is a member of the National Commission for the Future of the Navy but he said he is not speaking on the commission’s behalf. One official and one navy contractor said non-emergency maintenance on shore-based facilities has been deferred because of the cash crunch.

When Trump started the war on 28 February, it quickly strained the military’s existing budgets – particularly that of the navy, which not only helped launch the initial wave of attacks but was later responsible for an extensive naval blockade. The White House eventually asked Congress for emergency funding to pay for the war efforts, but prospects that the request will be approved are dim amid the unpopularity of the war.

A navy official who was briefed on how the service is planning to address the shortfalls said money is shifted around in imaginative ways. “The money for payroll,” he said, “was robbed to pay for overseas contingencies and is being backfilled by money that hasn’t been spent. They are backfilling payroll, so we get enough money in our paycheck.”

The navy’s budget for 2026, almost $300bn, has different batches of money allocated by Congress for various requirements: personnel, shipbuilding, procuring specific weapons systems and “operations and maintenance”, the day-to-day running of the fleet and its bases. The law limits how money can be rejiggered throughout all those batches of money.

The issue has occasionally surfaced in some hearings on Capitol Hill. Susan Collins, in a 21 July hearing of the Senate appropriations committee, said: “I’m told some military services face near-term solvency challenges.” A staffer said the navy was one of the services Collins was referring to.

In a statement, a navy spokesperson said maintenance and operations funds have not been depleted. “The Department of the Navy,” the statement said, “is actively managing its resources to meet current pay obligations on time. We continue to work closely with Congress to address ongoing operational demands and sustain our personnel and readiness throughout the fiscal year.”

Inside the service, the cash shortage is no secret. “They’re just not speaking publicly about it,” said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.“

And I suspect that is a deliberate decision of the civilian leaders in the Pentagon, starting at secretary, that this is for political reasons, that they don’t want to look like they’re damaging future military readiness over a war that is becoming increasingly a political liability.”

The military knew the crisis was coming. In mid-May, Adm Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations, cautioned Congress that the crunch would hit in July. “The FY ’26 budget didn’t bake in Epic Fury,” he said. “I do fear that I’ll have to start making decisions in the July time frame on how I do force generation. That could make differences between how I do exercises, how I do routine operations in order to make sure that I … have the funds necessary to continue the war effort for Epic Fury.”

Pete Hegseth has pushed Congress for emergency funding, without which, he said in July, “we face critical shortfalls”. The defense secretary testified that the Iran war cost $35.7bn, but it’s unclear if that is a full accounting of the war’s costs.

View image in full screen A Tomahawk missile is launched from the USS Thomas Hudner in Mediterranean Sea on 5 March 2026. Photograph: US navy/Getty Images 

When the Trump administration asked Congress for $67bn in emergency funds for the defense department, it didn’t break down how much would be for the navy. The House passed a $1.15tn defense bill in July and a separate budget authorization that would provide $73bn for the war in Iran, but it’s unlikely either will become law.

Ullman noted that during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, funding was more forthcoming from Congress because those conflicts were authorized by a resolution. “There is no authorization to use force in this case. Is Congress obliged to pay for a conflict it did not authorize?” he said.

The fact that the navy is broke – or at least out of money for now – may be something of a slap in the face for Trump. The president has often evoked what he sees as his affinity with Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909 and presided over the expansion of the US navy, deploying the so-called “Great White Fleet” that steamed around the world. 

Instead of a Great White Fleet, Trump’s administration has embraced the term “Golden Fleet”. Among his naval ambitions: plans for mammoth “Trump class” ships – the largest battleships in US history.

Trump’s micromanagement has included directing the navy to redesign an aircraft carrier, so it launches jets with a steam and hydraulic catapult system rather than by an electromagnetic system. As the Guardian reported, every year since 2017 he has opined about his preferences in carrier launch catapults.

At this point, however, funding a war with no clear endgame is the main challenge. A former military officer now working for a navy contracting company, who has been briefed on the shortfalls, said: “They’re fucked. They shot all their weapons; they trashed all their ships; they ran out of their money.”

...In a statement, a navy spokesperson said maintenance and operations funds have not been depleted. “The Department of the Navy,” the statement said, “is actively managing its resources to meet current pay obligations on time. We continue to work closely with Congress to address ongoing operational demands and sustain our personnel and readiness throughout the fiscal year.”

Inside the service, the cash shortage is no secret. “They’re just not speaking publicly about it,” said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “And I suspect that is a deliberate decision of the civilian leaders in the Pentagon, starting at secretary, that this is for political reasons, that they don’t want to look like they’re damaging future military readiness over a war that is becoming increasingly a political liability.”

The military knew the crisis was coming. In mid-May, Adm Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations, cautioned Congress that the crunch would hit in July. “The FY ’26 budget didn’t bake in Epic Fury,” he said. “I do fear that I’ll have to start making decisions in the July timeframe on how I do force generation. That could make differences between how I do exercises, how I do routine operations in order to make sure that I … have the funds necessary to continue the war effort for Epic Fury.”

Pete Hegseth has pushed Congress for emergency funding, without which, he said in July, “we face critical shortfalls”. The defense secretary testified that the Iran war cost $35.7bn, but it’s unclear if that is a full accounting of the war’s costs.

When the Trump administration asked Congress for $67bn in emergency funds for the defense department, it didn’t break down how much would be for the navy. The House passed a $1.15tn defense bill in July and a separate budget authorization that would provide $73bn for the war in Iran, but it’s unlikely either will become law.

Ullman noted that during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, funding was more forthcoming from Congress because those conflicts were authorized by a resolution. “There is no authorization to use force in this case. Is Congress obliged to pay for a conflict it did not authorize?” he said.

The president has often evoked what he sees as his affinity with Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909 and presided over the expansion of the US navy, deploying the so-called “Great White Fleet” that steamed around the world. Instead of a Great White Fleet, Trump’s administration has embraced the term “Golden Fleet”. Among his naval ambitions: plans for mammoth “Trump class” ships – the largest battleships in US history.

Trump’s micromanagement has included directing the navy to redesign an aircraft carrier, so it launches jets with a steam and hydraulic catapult system rather than by an electromagnetic system. As the Guardian reported, every year since 2017 he has opined about his preferences in carrier launch catapults.

According to a leading global watchdog, American democracy is now more imperiled than at any point since the 1960s, marked by a precipitous decline in press freedom – driven by mounting pressure from the Trump administration in the form of threats, criminal investigations, politicized regulation, frivolous lawsuits and, for public media, catastrophic funding cuts ....

-The Guardian

"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