The Aftermath of Trump’s War Against Iran

Posted on March 10, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 10, 2026

In 1960, comedian Bob Newhart recorded his new comedy routines in an album called The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, that quickly shot to the top of the charts. He’d invented a brilliant gimmick. Each routine was one side of a telephone conversation, a marketer talking to someone trying to sell something to the public. (My favorite was Abner Doubleday trying to market baseball.) If you never heard them, they’re all on YouTube.

Newhart’s genius was describing things we took for granted in a perfectly literal way that made them sound absurd. Donald Trump’s war against Iran would have been a perfect subject. As Newhart would have said, “If Donald Trump called a marketer to sell his war on Iran, the conversation might go something like this.”

Hello, Donald is it? You want to Trump things? Oh, I see, that’s your name. Well, you may be selling the wrong thing. Why don’t you try selling special Bridge or Pinochle cards? The players would have to say your name every few seconds.

What’s that? You want to sell them a war? I hope your idea is original – we’ve tried that before. Remember The Mouse that Roared  and Wag the Dog? Oh, you meant a real war. With bombs and missiles and lots of dead and maimed people? Tell me about it.

Who do you want to fight with? Iran? Wow, that’s a pretty tall order. Don’t they have thousands of missiles and drones? What if they shoot your missiles and drones down? Oh, I see, you’re going to destroy all of Iran’s missiles and drones first so they can’t fight back. That doesn’t sound very fair.

Because if you don’t strike first they’ll attack us? And they’re building nuclear weapons? They’ll have as many as eleven of them within two weeks if we don’t attack now? How do you know? Your intelligence people said they’re ten years away from being able to do that. Didn’t you say last June that we had obliterated them? Well, which is it. You’ll never be able to sell this if you keep changing your mind. No, Donald, I don’t see how making a deal will help.

What’s that? You’ll win the public over by not telling them about it until the bombs are falling because you think that once we’re at war, everyone will back you and let you do anything you want to? How long will the war last? Until you say it’s over? You really think people will buy that when Americans start coming home in body bags? And what about oil? Oh, your intelligence folks are telling you Iran would never attack the Gulf oil states or shoot at oil tankers? Wouldn’t that create serious disruption in the world economy and really piss off China? Really? They wouldn’t dare?

Okay, so your plan is to blitz them and wipe out their ability to fight back and then destroy their industrial capacity so they can’t rebuild? All this so you can brag that you got Iran to unconditionally surrender and let you pick their new leaders? Okay, let’s say you accomplish all that. Won’t our forces be left vulnerable everywhere with supplies and munitions depleted? What happens next? Donald, did you hear me? I asked you what you expect to happen after you destroy Iran’s ability to defend itself and build more weapons after you kill countless thousands, many of whom are innocent civilians? Are you still there Donald? Are you alright? You sound like you’re choking.

Honestly, Donald, who sold you this pile of crap? Who the hell is Hegseth? You mean that clown from Fox News? How the hell did he ever get to be in charge? He really kisses it every day? That’s a pretty stupid way to select a Cabinet, Donald. Don’t you understand that if you break a country like Iran, assuming they don’t break you first, you’ll own them? You’ll have bought into years, perhaps decades of nation-building that will almost certainly fail and wreck your economy. You’ll wind up with a far more dangerous situation than you were in when you started bombing them.

With all their natural resources, a defenseless Iran would create a power vacuum that its predatory neighbors will rush to fill. Imagine Russia, China, the Sunni Arab nations led by Saudi Arabia and a completely unfettered Israel bent on revenge all coming together to fight over what’s left after the bombing.

You think that won’t happen? You don’t even have a plan. Are you really as ignorant as you sound? Sorry, Donald, I wouldn’t touch your war with a ten-thousand-mile pole, and neither will anyone else who knows anything about warfare. Continue down this path and you’ll cause a civil war that could destroy what’s left of law and order in Iran, leave ninety million people destitute and hungry, and put the entire world at risk.

Listen to me, Donald. Attacking Iran without support from either Congress or our allies, is not only stupid, it’s illegal and unconstitutional. What? You’ve already ordered the bombing to start?

Let’s continue this tomorrow from my bunker.

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The Real Issues Raised by Trump’s Attack on Iran

Posted on March 6, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 6, 2026

It’s essential that we maintain our focus on why a striking majority of Americans are opposed to our war against Iran. There are two issues that are completely distinct from each other, and Trump, like other presidents before him, would love to blur the line between them. Let’s be clear. There are few if any Americans who are mourning the loss of the Supreme leader and nearly fifty of his senior leaders.

It was inevitable that Israel and the United States, and therefore the world would have had to confront Iran’s murderous regime one day, and there’s logic to the argument that since the conflict was inevitable, we should embrace it at a time of our choosing. Hardly anyone disagrees that Iran in February, 2026 was weaker than it’s been in decades, while there was considerable uncertainty about how long it might take them to be a serious threat with nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles.

None of the above is in dispute regardless of politics and ideology. The point of contention, which is part of the much larger concern about the future of America, is whether our president can be permitted to recklessly ignore the Constitution. That document reserves the authority to declare war exclusively to Congress, which seems to ignore the reality that as Commander on Chief of the armed forces, the president can create a state of war simply by ordering an attack on another country. Donald Trump has repeatedly said that as president he believes he has the right to do anything he wants to. His imperial ambitions combined with his narcissistic mental illness make Trump himself the greatest existential threat to our future.

Yet, as has been the case since Trump’s first term, the MAGA-dominated Republicans in Congress have once again failed to do their jobs. Typical of this abject abrogation of their responsibilities was Senator Susan Collins (R, ME.) For years, Collins has talked a good game about being a centrist who believes in reining in extreme policies at both ends of the political spectrum. But her statement, yesterday, that she would vote against a war powers resolution limiting Trump’s ability to wage an unfettered, unconstitutional war, once again demonstrated that when really put to the test, self-interest about a likely close re-election race made all her words meaningless. Shame on her and her disingenuous colleagues!

Collins and the others who folded gave Trump exactly what he hoped for. Conventional wisdom says that when we’re involved in a major military conflict, we can never take actions that weaken the president’s options. A better description in this case is conventional stupidity. All during 2025, a majority of Americans feared that Trump would go to war with Iran for political reasons, whether to distract from his domestic failures, to give him potential options for controlling the midterm elections, or simply to gratify his psychological need to be the toughest badass in the world. He’s done exactly that, for all of the above reasons.

By failing to obtain Congressional approval for the attack on Iran and by ignoring entreaties by our allies to use restraint, Trump changed what might have been viewed as a righteous war by virtually all Americans into an issue that could tear the country apart from within. It’s clear that the administration did not expect Iran to attack the Gulf nations that host American interests and never gave any thought to the safety and likely need to evacuate nearly a million Americans who were in the region when Trump ordered the attack. And as the June attacks on Iran depleted our stock of defensive options and laser-guided munitions, many experts warn that an extended campaign will leave America vulnerable all over the world.

Never to be deterred, however, Trump is now threatening Ecuador and Cuba while we have no idea how long the war with Iran will last. Energy prices are soaring, our labor market has stagnated, and investment markets are extremely volatile. As Trump suggested we might have to rely on a ground troops to finish the job in Iran, Americans are reminded of the 7,000 American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. All this has voters opposed to Trump’s war in Iran by surprisingly large majorities, and that makes it even more likely that the midterm elections will be disastrous for MAGA and Trump.

Trump never admits weakness and never backs down. As the midterm elections near, he will become even more desperate than his erratic behavior suggests he already is. All this points to eight months of increasing chaos as Trump tries to impact, if not delay or cancel the election. As we’ve noted before, the Supreme Court may be our republic’s last line of defense, since Congress has defaulted once again.

And then, there are the Epstein files, and the memos released by DOJ today which detail an accusation of sexual assault against Trump by a woman who claims she was thirteen at the time. 2026 is going to be the most turbulent year we’ve seen since nine-eleven.

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The Attack on Iran in the Perspective of History

Posted on March 1, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 1, 2026

In 1940 and 1941, World War 2 was already underway with a divided America attempting to avoid direct involvement. The Germany-Italy Axis was intent on subjugating all of Europe under Fascist regimes like their own, and Japan had been ravaging China and French Indochina (Vietnam) for a decade. The Roosevelt administration was split on how to proceed, as was the Japanese government. Neither side wanted to be at war with the other, and military leaders in Japan believed they could not win a long-term conflict with the United States.

In an eerily familiar scenario, Roosevelt reacted to Japan’s aggression by imposing sanctions that included suspending oil shipments which were essential to Japan’s success in China. Unlike Germany and Italy, Japan was a resource-poor nation that depended on vital imports. Japanese Prime Minister Konoye elected a two-fold approach to dealing with the United States: attempt to negotiate an end to sanctions in exchange for limiting Japan’s aggression in Asia, while secretly engaging in Naval war games in preparation for a sneak attack on Hawaii.

Negotiations stalemated, leaving the Japanese resigned to war, but knowing they could only endure if they eliminated the American Navy. Thus, with a negotiating team in Washington pretending to seek a solution, Japan launched the attack on Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt’s Day of Infamy speech did more than ask Congress to declare war on Japan. It claimed that the Japanese had approached him duplicitously when they claimed to want to avert war, while his administration had sincerely wanted peace.

Of course, the reality was a lot more complicated, but overall it appears that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and American President Trump approached their attack on Iran in much the same manner as the Japanese approached Pearl Harbor. So much for the moral high ground and Trump’s questionable claims that Iran was only months away from being able to attack us with missiles possibly tipped with nuclear warheads after declaring in June that we had obliterated them.

Neither Netanyahu nor Trump would ever have been satisfied with a newly negotiated nuclear deal with Iran. They were both intent on regime change from the outset, and as many commentators have noted since the attacks began, lacking a credible threat of impending attack by Iran, and without support from either Congress, the United Nations, or a coalition of allies, Trump and Netanyahu’s decision to go to war was a violation of both international law and the U. S. Constitution.

There is no doubt that the world will be safer place if the oppressive theocratic Iranian government is replaced with one that prefers to coexist with its neighbors and forego religious fanaticism. There is no doubt that the current Iranian regime was evil and responsible for terrorist acts and insecurity all over the Middle East. It’s also extremely likely that at some point, pre-emptive action to neutralize the threat Iran posed was inevitable. There is no debate about any of that, nor is our obligation to defend Israel in question. The critical issues today are how the decision to attack Iran was made and in the absence of any clear path forward after the decapitation of Iran’s leadership, whether the spectacular show of force that produced our early successes will ultimately improve conditions for either the Iranian people or the region.

The American and Israeli militaries have proved themselves to be efficient and effective, seeming to vindicate their claims of being the best in the world. Our political leaders, however, have not. Both Netanyahu and Trump had competing self-serving motives for initiating the attack. One might justify acting preemptively based on the opportunity to take our much of Iran’s leaders in a single strike, but opportunism isn’t either a sound military or diplomatic strategy.

In the hours following the attack, many important questions have been raised that require answers before we’re drawn into a wider conflict we can’t control. Is there reason to believe that the Iranian people are either prepared or able to overthrow their authoritarian government as Trump urges them to? Can that be achieved without American troops in combat in the Middle East again? Will the precedent of initiating and carrying out operations that could lead to open-ended conflict without Congressional support do permanent damage to the constitutionally required separation of powers?

Finally, what of Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi? What effect will impulsive, unlawful military strikes by the United States and Israel have on the credibility of Trump’s pretense of wanting a fair resolution to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Is the attack on Iran an invitation to China to invade Taiwan? Trump fantasizes dividing the world into three spheres of influence with his two principal adversaries. In such a world, three supreme monarchs would be free to do anything they pleased, unaccountable to anyone.

The real threat to our future is Trump’s dream of an expanded Trump-Monroe Doctrine that grants him complete dominion over the Western Hemisphere and oil interests in the Middle East, which differs only in detail from Putin and Xi’s lust to control Europe and Asia without interference from the United States.

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Donald Trump: War President

Posted on February 28, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Znedell, February 28, 2026

Our crack negotiating team of billionaires Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner have been talking to Iranian diplomats for months. Their discussions have been mediated by Badr Albusaidi, the Foreign Minister of Oman. When the Friday, February 27th talks ended, Albusadi told the international press that there had been significant progress.

This morning, after Israel and the United States launched coordinated attacks against Iran, Albusadi posted on social media: “Active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined…[n]either the interests of the United States nor the cause of global peace are well served by this. And I pray for the innocents who will suffer. I urge the United States not to get sucked in further. This is not your war.”

It’s hard to know what message to take from that. Presumably, Albusadi was a neutral mediator whom both sides found acceptable, so there’s no reason to dismiss his obvious dismay that the attacks were launched as biased. Rather, as a representative of the smaller nations in the region, he was expressing the feelings of the millions of people in countries like Oman. Diplomats from those nations have worked tirelessly for years to help resolve our differences with Iran, only to see their own countries attacked by Iran in retaliation.

It’s no secret that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natenyaho and Trump have been itching for this fight. It’s fair to ask, in hindsight, if the negotiations with Iran were always just a pretext for military action rather than a serious attempt at resolving anything. That’s not to say that Iran isn’t a potentially dangerous adversary that threatens the stability of the Middle East. Iran has been sponsoring terrorist groups throughout the region and threatening both Israel and the United States for forty-seven years, since the Shah was overthrown in 1979 by the radical Muslim regime that now rules Iran with an iron fist.

But that’s old news. There are a lot of opinions on all sides about how we’ve handled the situation over that time. The Iran Nuclear Deal that was negotiated in 2015 by the Obama administration was a typical example. In the fog of chaos that defines war and most diplomacy, there has never been a consensus about whether that deal accomplished anything. Most observers believe it at least slowed down Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, but there were many accusations that Iran was violating the agreement.

Trump muddied the waters by making Iran part of his hate campaign against Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He promised to trash the deal as part of his campaign for re-election. But his tendency to lie and exaggerate, and his total lack of integrity when it comes to balancing his responsibilities as president against the need to show the world how tough he is makes everything he said about Iran suspect. Combine that with the fact that both Trump and Netanyahu face severe opposition at home, and both badly needed a distraction to turn public attention away from their own questionable actions. Netanyahu has been under indictment for fraud for years, and we’re all aware of Trump’s history with courts.

Beyond those questionable motives for attacking Iran at this particular moment, with the Epstein files possibly about to erupt with accusations of sexual assault by Trump against a woman who claims she was thirteen at the time, we must also consider the remarkably strong influence Netanyahu has had on Trump. Netanyahu is a believer in preemptive strikes, which in the case of beleaguered Israel has made sense over the last eight decades. But does it make sense for the strongest military in the world?

The debate over whether and under what circumstances preemptive strikes are justified will probably never be resolved. But the fact that a majority of Americans have predicted and feared that Trump would involve us in a war to distract attention from his failures at home and possibly allow him to influence or cancel the midterm elections cannot be ignored. Trump has been a cheat and a liar for his entire life. Why would we believe him now?

The president who campaigned against Democrats he accused of perpetuating wars, who bragged that he ended eight wars that none of us even knew were happening, and who then demanded that he be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has proved that he will do anything to stay in power. We’ve all seen that repeatedly. Now, he has demonstrated that he’s willing to start a war that can only be viewed as open-ended and unpredictable. The hubris required to assume that he can control the outcome when dozens of countries are involved is classic Trump. If military action against Iran is truly justified, it should be carried out by a coalition like the one George W. Bush and Colin Powell forged after nine-eleven.

Any other approach makes Trump’s motive suspect, and every American or foreign civilian casualty that results from this is on him. It makes a mockery of Trump’s Board of Peace, which so far appears to be nothing more than a fund-raising scheme for Trump’s empire. Far worse, Trump’s use of the military as his own personal toy opens the door for further aggression by Russia and for China to invade Taiwan. Is that the future you want for your children?

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Defending the 2026 Midterm Elections

Posted on February 27, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 27, 2026,

People who fear Donald Trump’s attempts to undermine our democracy recognized from the start that our greatest vulnerability might be the 2026 midterm elections. This is not hyperbole or speculation. Trump has been very clear that he considers a Republican victory the only evidence of a fair election, which he self-righteously points to as a mandate to ensure that Republicans use any means to maintain their majorities in Congress. That’s the circular reasoning of an extreme narcissist who believes his only obligation is to his own beliefs.

Trump has a number of election-related weapons in his tool bag. The first is his ongoing campaign of lies, distortions, and outright fantasies about election fraud and his oft-debunked contention that Democrats have been rigging elections for decades, and it’s his mission to stop them. The only people who still believe that are either too stupid or lazy to look at the facts, or who, having invested their fortunes or political futures in Trump are too mired in self-interest to do the right thing although they know the truth.

It’s clear from recent polling that the lies no longer influence the vast majority of Americans. Human nature being what it is, once a life-long deceiver is revealed, there’s no going back. Once people see Trump for the self-absorbed sociopath he is, he loses them for good. That won’t stop the lies or the fanatical influence on Trump of the White Nationalist Stephen Miller who continues to have Trump’s ear daily, but that approach doesn’t have the effectiveness it once did.

Thus, Trump turned to gerrymandering, something entirely unsurprising, yet foolish. In doing so, he fell into the trap that often upends zealots and extremists. Openly trying to convert blue seats to red in the most extreme manner is the kind of overreach that offends serious, fair-minded people. It exposes Trump as willing to use any immoral ploy to achieve his aims, and Americans don’t like that. Moreover, the move was not properly thought out and overlooked some obvious flaws.

First, Trump’s influencers assumed that the courts would back their gerrymandering in red states but somehow block similar efforts in blue states. Which idiot came up with that idea? And the result, according to most respected pollsters, is a two-fold loss for Trump. Our largest states are now gerrymandered beyond any reasonable measure, and the result appears to have benefitted Democrats rather than Trump, because the strategy relied, among other things, on Hispanic voters continuing to support him despite ICE’s racial profiling which Trump and his appointees fully support.

The next ploy people feared was Trump creating a crisis so severe it would (1) distract voters from his other misdeeds, like the apparent withholding of accusations against Trump in the Epstein files, and (2) possibly provide him with justification for declaring a national emergency that would give him extraordinary powers that could include postponing or canceling an election. Thus, he has spent months engaging in belligerent saber-rattling with both allies and adversaries.

He hasn’t given up on acquiring Greenland from Denmark, one of our most reliable allies. He is attempting to take over the government of Venezuela, with the implied threat that he can do the same to any nation in our hemisphere that offends him. He is loudly threatening a war with Iran that his generals warn might have open-ended consequences beyond our control and result in many American casualties. Finally, he’s talking about forcing a regime change in Cuba. All this from a president who accused Democrats of involving the United States in endless wars.

Finally, there’s a draft Executive Order going around, written by some of Trump’s most extreme handlers that would declare a national emergency based on China allegedly planning to hack the midterm elections. The Order would be an attempt to wrest control of the election away from the fifty states, to which our Constitution grants sole control of it.

How serious is this? That depends on a number of things. There’s no question that an attempt to undermine our election process has existential implications for our republic. The Supreme Court can stop it in its tracks if it chooses to, and the recent decision ruling Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional suggest they may do that. Conservative Justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch are now on record as valuing the Constitution over Trumps political shenanigans. But we can’t put all our eggs in that basket. The midterms are the red line on which Americans of all races, colors, and political persuasions must stand firm.

Every American citizen must be willing to defend fair, open voting this year, which includes the right to vote by mail, and the right to authorize their states to enable early voting, neither of which has ever shown evidence of fraud or cheating. You can write letters demanding action from your elected representatives. You can support peaceful demonstrations. And perhaps most important and effective, you can break through the barriers we’ve erected to interpersonal communication. Engage with people, especially those who don’t want to discuss politics. Make them hear you.

If we bury our heads in the sand, Trump wins.

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Neil Gorsuch Tells Congress and Trump the Court will Defend Separation of Powers

Posted on February 22, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, Frberuary 22, 2026

When Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court on January 31, 2017, he described Judge Gorsuch as having, “a superb intellect, an unparalleled legal education, and a commitment to interpreting the Constitution according to its text.” In other words, he described Gorsuch as a traditional, conservative Republican. His description was accurate, but it was also one of many examples of Trump practicing Orwellian Doublespeak.

As with the nominations of Justices Barrett and Kavanaugh, Trump cared about their education and other credentials only as a cover for his real reason for selecting him. Always transactional, Trump’s criteria were their loyalty and their commitment to strike down Roe v. Wade, guaranteeing Trump’s support from evangelists. But striking down Roe, while it reversed fifty years of precedent wasn’t a challenge to the Constitution, which doesn’t even mention abortion.

Trump throws around words like Conservative as if he actually were one, but he has no ideology at all except greed and an obscene lust for power. He proved that, yesterday, when he attacked Gorsuch for defending the Constitution because he joined five other Justices to rule that Trump’s tariffs were illegal. Gorsuch lived up to Trump’s 2017 words, but Trump had other intentions. He doesn’t want the Court to defend the Constitution, especially the part that assures Separation of Powers. He wants it to demonstrate its loyalty and gratitude by allowing him to do anything he wants to.

Yesterday, Trump described Gorsuch as a FOOL and a LAPDOG. The same Gorsuch whom he praised for being an originalist who would interpret the Constitution literally, he now labeled a RINO, Republican in name only. That, too, was classic Trump, who changed the definition of “Republican” to suit his narcissistic personality. Gorsuch is the same kind of Republican Barry Goldwater was. And like Goldwater, whose integrity assured that Richard Nixon was held accountable for Watergate and the ensuing coverup, he defended our democracy.

Gorsuch also went the extra mile to lecture Trump about bypassing Congress. His message was clear if indirect. He told Trump and his Heritage Society handlers that the Court will not permit them to skirt or undermine the Constitution. The Guardian put it differently. ”After an agonizing year in which the U.S. Supreme Court has stood aside and allowed Trump to run roughshod over the constitutional separation of powers, [it] has finally stirred itself to set boundaries on the president’s increasingly regal pose.”

The Guardian noted that in 2025, the Court issued twenty-four emergency rulings from its “opaque shadow docket…collectively [giving] the benefit of the doubt to Trump…[allowing] Trump, at least in the short term, to trample over powers reserved for Congress.”

Justice Gorsuch did more than join Justices Roberts and Barrett to vote with the three liberal Justices. He issued a concurring opinion of his own which directly rebuked Congress for failing to defend itself against Trump’s power grabs, and subtly told Trump the days of his imperial presidency are over, a moment the great majority of Americans were awaiting. He also attacked Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh for abandoning the “major questions doctrine,” under which any attempt by the executive to wield extradinary power must be preceded by an unambiguous delegation of the authority to do so.

The New York Times described Gorsuch’s concurring opinion as “a paean to Congress that read like a requiem for a bygone era of legislative power.” Gorsuch was explicit about the behavior of the Trump administration. “…[I]t can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design.” The deliberative nature of the legislative process is also the polar opposite of the knee-jerk whims of Donald Trump, who once changed the level of tariffs he imposed on China four times in one day.

America’s power in the world has depended on the stability and dependability of its policies. But that is anathema to Donald Trump who prefers feints and bluffs. Note to Donald: the future of the world is not a poker game. He brags that his unpredictability is his most powerful weapon. That might work when he’s being sued for breach of contract or fraud, but it’s not the way powerful nations conduct diplomacy. Diplomacy, and by implication, respect for other nations’ sovereignty, requires that diplomats understand each other. In 1962, lack of clarity over Nikita Khrushchev’s statements about removing missiles from Cuba almost led to a nuclear confrontation.

Trump’s governing is a reckless, high-risk attempt to change the structure of the American government and rework the world economic order. The hubris of a small group of right-wing extremists is remarkable. To succeed, they had to hijack a major political party, intimidate both the Congress and the Supreme Court, and then bully their way through the rest of the world, threatening other nations with our economic and military power.

They almost got away with it, and we can only hope that the Court’s decision on tariffs and Justice Gorsuch’s remarkable rebuke of both Congress and Trump will be enough to turn the tide for good.

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The Supreme Court’s Decision on Tariffs May Be a More Powerful Warning to Trump

Posted on February 20, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 20, 2026

On November 5, 2025, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about President Trump’s tariff policy. Six of the nine Justices, including Conservatives John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neal Gorsuch all expressed pessimism that the tariffs were legal. Today’s six to three decision confirming that they are illegal was exactly what most people expected.

The Justices’ reaction to oral arguments was clear enough that most observers predicted a decision could be released shortly after New Years. That it took so long suggests that the Court was concerned with Justice Kavanaugh’s warning that having to refund as much as $200 billion to the nations who paid the illegal tariffs and the complicating effect the ruling could have on trade agreements that stemmed from them could throw the government into chaos.

In a perfect world, Supreme Court decisions are always based on nonpolitical interpretations of the Constitution, but Courts have often let considerations of possible civic disruption or economic trauma influence their decisions. This decision came against a backdrop of Trump’s belief that presidents ought to be able to do whatever they want. He hasn’t been shy about beating that drum. Even if Trump’s approval rating were a hundred percent, allowing a president that kind of power would set a precedent that any unscrupulous successor in the White House could use to undermine the Constitution.

In today’s world, in which Trump’s policies are focused on changing our American democracy into a white Christian-dominated fascist oligarchy, the president’s approval rating is below water in every major category. The Court had to be aware that bending with his illegal tariffs would be a signal that it had no intention of trying to reign in Trump’s autocratic ambitions, and it would be opposed by at least two-thirds of Americans. Imagine Trump, J. D. Vance, and Stephen Miller with no guard rails and their own get out of jail free cards. On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t.

This view is supported by the opinions of Kavanaugh and many other legal experts that the president has several other legal avenues that might support most of his tariffs, which makes it clear that the Court’s ruling wasn’t about tariffs, but telling Trump that if he violates the Constitution, they will stop him. In a more subtle way, the decision divided the Court in two parts, one of which includes Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, both of whom have been enjoying lavish vacations and other gifts provided by right-wing billionaires. The six to three decision is a statement to Trump and the world that a strong majority of the Court will not permit Trump to tear up the Constitution.

It’s also interesting that the Court’s decision occurred just as Trump was teasing the idea that he would create a new pan-American trade bloc that excluded Canada, which has steadfastly rebuked his policy and seems on the verge of a major trade agreement with China. Perhaps the saner heads on the Court clearly saw that allowing Trump to weaponize tariffs whenever anyone opposed him was undermining both our diplomatic and economic standing in the world. That’s especially frightening, because with those powerful forces blunted, Trump can only achieve his fantasy of sharing the world with Putin and Xi militarily, which brings us, again, to Iran. Let’s not forget that in Trump, we have a president who will never give up trying to control everything. If he believes the Court is disloyal to him, and he only hears advice from Yes-people, we may find ourselves involved in a major war in the Middle East that could spread to the entire world.

Of great interest to many Americans is what this decision portends for other issues before the Court. Will the Court support Trump’s attempt to outlaw birthright citizenship? Will it give the White Supremacists pause in their quest to kill immigration from nonwhite countries to assure that white Americans are always in the majority? If Trump knows the Court will make him obey the law, perhaps his handlers will realize that it’s time to reconsider the bipartisan immigration bill he ordered House Majority Leader Mike Johnson to kill before the 2024 election. There was never any doubt among objective observers that that bill would have gone a long way to solving our immigration and border problems. But by scuttling the bill, Trump created a pretext for expanding ICE into a federal domestic strike force that answered only to itself.

Once again, we see evidence that the Trump administration is rapidly losing its mojo. Independents have turned on him, and he knows evangelists will when they realize the full implications of the Epstein files. Republicans have been pummeled in every special election since Trump took office, and now, MAHA mothers who have followed HHS Secretary Kennedy’s push to eliminate vaccines and change the way Americans view health and nutrition are turning against him. Relax, it’s only a matter of time.

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Congress’ Silence Over Iran

Posted on February 19, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 19, 2026

In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers resolution over President Nixon’s veto. It’s purpose, as the Vietnam conflict came to an embarrassing close, was to limit a president’s power to go to war without Congressional approval. It’s a conundrum I’ve never understood. The Constitution grants the exclusive power to declare war to Congress; yet, as Commander in Chief of the armed forces, the president can create a state of war simply by ordering an attack on another country.

The War Powers resolution requires a president to report to Congress within forty-eight hours of ordering an attack and to withdraw any forces involved in such an attack within sixty days if Congress does not declare war. It’s a situation that might have been designed for someone with Trump’s lust for power. In practical terms, he can start a major war any time he wants to, and given the scale of weapons likely to be used, there might be nothing left after sixty days. In the nuclear age, this is untenable. With someone as unhinged as Donald Trump often appears controlling things, eighty years of avoiding World War 3 could be completely undone with a single unwise presidential decision.

When Trump ordered an attack on Venezuela in January, Congress attempted to modify the War Powers Act to prevent just such an event. But the Republican majorities prevailed, barely, meaning that every Congressional Republican except for a handful voted to give Trump free reign over the lives of every human being on this planet – a terrifying prospect.

This would be a horrifying situation under any conditions, but against the backdrop of the administration’s panic over the Epstein files it’s worse. Celebrities, billionaire CEOs, diplomats, and politicians are falling at an accelerated pace. All it takes is for their names to be revealed in the Epstein files released by DOJ. The arrest in the UK of Prince Andrew over his association with Epstein, and the statement by his brother, King Charles, that no one is above the law and justice will be served must have Trump soiling himself.

In the list of prominent people falling every day, we’re seeing a developing picture of a world of wealthy elites that is rotten at its core. Most people would agree that there are few crimes more heinous than trafficking women and sexually abusing children, yet that is precisely the picture emerging of how these elites spend their time. They are the people who believe laws and basic rules of conduct do not apply to them. They represent the circles Trump has always moved in, the people he associated with and befriended. With only half of the Epstein files released and most of those heavily redacted, the fact that  Trump’s name has already been found in them over a million times makes his claim that he knew nothing about Epstein’s business or social activities seem absurd.

That’s why Republicans now fear major losses in November’s midterm elections. If the Democrats emerge with a majority in either house of Congress, Trump will be an impotent lame duck for the rest of his term. Thus, the obvious panic over the elections, with Trump sounding more desperate every day, trying to take control of them. His gerrymandering gambit backfired, with most polls now predicting that the effort will more likely net extra seats in the House for Democrats.

Do the math yourself. With a toothless War Powers Act, fear growing every day over the election, and Trump’s frequent assurances that he will treat any election he or his supporters lose as rigged and corrupt, it’s not hard to read between the lines. If Trump could get away with declaring a national emergency and canceling the election he would do so without batting an eye. Given all that, the military buildup in the Middle East and the implied and overt threats against Iran look increasingly ominous. What better pretext could exist than a prolonged war with Iran?

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are reportedly plotting a major strike against both Iran’s nuclear facilities and the regime’s leaders that will be nothing like the surgical strikes that damaged those facilities in January. The administration has been hinting that an attack could begin within the next couple of days. Even if such action is required to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, that is not a decision that should be made without the involvement of Congress and our NATO allies.

Yet Congress is largely silent, as are our news media. Are we really all going to all sit by and watch a terribly dangerous precedent be set as a president risks involving the United States and possibly the entire world in a major war based solely on politics? If that occurs, the rules-based world order we have lived with since 1945 will have been replaced by a future of chaos and uncertainty.

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Getting Tired of Hearing About the Epstein Files?

Posted on February 16, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 16, 2026

If you’re sick of hearing about the Epstein files, hang in there a little longer. They may be the quickest way to defang Trump. Judging by how people are reacting to the heavily redacted versions released by DOJ, we can make a pretty good guess about where this is leading.

In Europe, prominent people are dropping like flies. Apparently, Europeans, who have always been cavalier about things like affairs and mistresses have lines they won’t cross, and trafficking of women and pedophilia are high on that list. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emanuel Macron are both reeling because people at the ambassadorial level were found to have close ties with Epstein. The diplomats are gone, and public sentiment is so negative, the governments of those two allies might fall.

Today, the New York Times reported that my alma mater, Columbia University, the first major school to fall to Trump’s extortion to the tune of $221 million, punished two people in the Columbia Dental School for allowing Epstein to influence them to accept his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, into the school. “…Columbia said it was cutting all ties to Dr. [Thomas] Magnani and stripping Dr. [Letty] Moss-Salentijn of her administrative duties at the dental college, where she remains a tenured faculty member. Several other people implicated in the episode had already ended their affiliations with the school…”

Then there’s Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick. The Hill reported that “Republican senators are worried that revelations around Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein could balloon into a bigger political liability for the GOP heading into this year’s midterm elections.” Yet, Trump, who may never have admitted he was wrong in his entire life, is projecting indifference, posting support for Lutnick.

You can’t trust a word Trump says whether it’s spoken or incompetently typed on his Truth Social platform. More than likely, he’s scrambling with his fixers over this. Trump doesn’t give a damn about Lutnick any more than he cares about anyone else he’s ever done business with. What worries him is that a simple search of the released electronic Epstein files turned up Trump’s name more than a million times.

We don’t know whether Trump is guilty of a crime, but now that the unredacted files are available to Congress, we’ll find out before long. It may not always be true that where there’s smoke there’s fire, but Trump’s history and the remarkable number of women who have gone public to accuse him of various forms of sexual misconduct suggest otherwise. Remember the infamous hush-money payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels?

Former rabid Trumpers like Kentucky’s Thomas Massie and Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene have already broken with Trump over the Epstein files. All the major press outlets have reported that a significant group of other Republican Representatives and Senators agree with Massie and Greene but are laying low to avoid Trump’s ire. Trump’s hold on the Republican Party and his ability to intimidate any Congressperson who fails his loyalty test are declining. The accumulation of outrageous attempts to re-write our Constitution and undermine our democracy have unleashed unprecedented anger against the administration, even worse than the backlash Richard Nixon faced over Watergate.

Hang in there. This will take time, but Trump’s hold on his Congressional majorities is looking more and more fragile. The midterm elections are in nine months, and they will either end Trump’s reign of terror, or enable him to continue causing havoc in the United States and all over the world.

The Times editorial Board today published a warning that with the expiration of the last nuclear arms limitation treaty, this month, Trump appears determined to ramp up production of nuclear weapons, triggering another nuclear arms race. There are many in Congress who believe the same thing. While the Epstein files have no direct connection to nuclear weapons, if The Times is correct, anything that reduces or nullifies Trump’s influence must be taken seriously.

Trump has already shown his desperation about the midterms, making wild statements about federalizing the election, although the Constitution grants control of elections to the states. And his attempts to force Congress to pass a law requiring every voter to prove their citizenship is being rebuffed by red and blue state election officials. Like most of Trump’s bluster, the talk of taking over the election is just noise. It’s also misguided, since the percentage of people who have easy access to birth certificates and passports is much higher in blue states than red.

Republican Congress people in swing districts and some formerly red districts now fear defeat in November, which means that as the midterms approach, Trump will lose his razor-thin majority in Congress. The same spineless wimps who caved to him will now cave to the polls. If the Epstein files demonstrate that Trump was involved in the sickness perpetrated by Epstein, he’ll be done. Hang in there, folks. If they believe Trump is guilty of trafficking or pedophilia, his own party will impeach him this time.

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Report Card

Posted on February 5, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 5, 2026

Much like Donald Trump’s first term, his sole major accomplishment in term two was passing his Big Beautiful Bill, which assured that his billionaire supporters would pay little or no tax on their income and people truly in need would see all the programs designed to help them either cut or eliminated, at least until a different Congress changes that. And even that may turn out to be partly an embarrassing failure.

Even if Trump isn’t, his supporters at the Heritage Society are smart enough to have understood on day one that he really only had about eighteen months to effect their agenda of white Christian nationalism. They knew from the start that when Americans finally woke up to the reality of Trump’s attempt to increase presidential power (meaning his own) to a Putin-like kleptocracy of the rich, his policies would horrify many of them. That meant that if the 2026 midterm elections actually happened as the Constitution requires, he would likely lose his majority in the House and possibly the Senate as well. And that meant that his ability to bully everyone else would come to an end.

Never shy about cheating or stealing, it was clear that Trump was going to make a lot of noise about elections. He still hasn’t stopped whining about the 2020 election, insisting that it was stolen from him despite both partisan and nonpartisan recounts that proved he lost and there was none of the widespread corruption he claimed. When Trump began suggesting that he would clean up the imaginary corruption, conspiracy theories abounded.

Would Trump use RFK’s madness to undermine Americans’ confidence in science and medicine, which, compounded with our withdrawal from the World Health Organization suggested that he was hoping for a new pandemic which he could use as a pretext for canceling the election? Would he use the twenty-fifth anniversary of nine-eleven to declare a national emergency based on a fantasy of terrorists planning something worse? Though grandiose, sick plans like those surely appeal to his narcissistic character, neither of those trial balloons survived.

Instead, he seized on gerrymandering and demanded that Texas redistrict their electorate to add five more Republican seats. He also began pressuring other red states to do the same, and Missouri took action that would add another seat. But Indiana said Hell No, and California and New York retaliated. The Supreme Court ruled that both Texas and California could use their new maps, and CNN’s statistician, Harry Enten, now projects that Trump’s gambit is likely to give the Democrats at least two more seats. The recent upset of a State Senate special election in Texas, in which a Democrat won by fourteen points in a district Trump won by seventeen, makes the map even more ominous for Trump, because Texas’ redistricting assumed Trump would retain the Hispanic vote he got in 2024. But it was Hispanics that drove the Democratic upset.

Trump believed he could re-write the world’s economic and trade relationships by using the power of the American economy to impose tariffs. That plan had a couple of flaws. First, it almost surely violates the Constitution, which grants the power to levy tariffs to Congress. On top of that, while Trump has signed a few deals with countries that probably would have happened anyway, most of the industrialized world chose not to play Trump’s game. The first and most obvious casualty was our relationship with Canada, which has smartly been disengaging from the United States and signing trade deals with China and Europe. Today, we learned that Canada’s automobile industry is extricating itself from dependence on the US and investing heavily in electric vehicles, an industry sector Trump is trying to kill.

The Supreme Court has strongly suggested that Trump’s tariffs are illegal, but they have a real problem over what to do with the $200 billion that was collected improperly. No wonder their decision is taking so long.

Trump’s most glaring failure has been turning ICE into a federal thug force with clear instructions from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem that Americans’ First Amendment rights were no longer in play. Trump, who only knows how to use force to get things done, and really believed that his tough guy act would win out, badly miscalculated. His lack of respect for average Americans, especially his base, which he repeatedly lied to and stole from, came back to haunt him. Americans by margins of four to one reject an American Gestapo, enabling the Democrats to hold DHS funding back in last week’s budget vote.

I promised you a report card:

                Chutzbah – A plus

                Fulfilling his oath to support and defend the Constitution – F

                Reducing the cost of living – C minus

                Transparency – D (D instead of F because negative correlations are as meaningful as positive ones, so all the lies and misdirection are eventually seen through)

                Uniting America – F minus

                Ending the war in Ukraine – D minus

                Ending the war in Gaza – F for giving free reign to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to pursue genocide and physically destroy most of Gaza.

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