Column: Trump lately obsesses about getting into heaven. Hint: Stop wishing that so many fellow citizens go to hell. The disconnect between Trump's dreams of heaven and his earthly avenging was never plainer than in his hateful message at Charlie Kirk's memorial. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: Each day since the Trump-Putin summit shows that worse than nothing came from that failed bro-fest. Putin arrived to a red carpet even as Russian kept bombing Ukraine and left with license for Russians “to do whatever the hell they want,” as Trump once put it. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: Democrats’ leverage on spending bills is pointless if senators don’t use it. They were right in March not to force a shutdown but they can no longer help fund a government that's become a plaything for Trump's power lust, enrichment and retribution. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: Troops patrol the National Mall--"America's Front Yard"--as Trump normalizes a police state in DC. If he sends masked feds & more red-state troops to other blue cities, protests will grow. That's good but probably just what he wants: an excuse for more troops. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

“I am not a crook,” Nixon said in 1973. “I’m not a dictator,” Trump insisted on Monday. And with that, another famously false presidential proclamation entered the annals of memorable statements no president should ever feel compelled to make. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: It's time to quit tuning out Trump's Big Lie that he won the 2020 election (validated by Putin!). It's his pretext, along with trying to ban mail ballots & militarize Democratic cities, to disrupt the '26 midterm elections lest he lose control of Congress. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: Trump's showy obsession with redoing the Oval Office & Rose Garden, his plane & even golf cart (!), and adding a White House ballroom reflects something much bigger--his unchecked makeover of the nation's government & institutions, all in service of his power. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

'The president’s rigging goes beyond elections, to all aspects of governance, if his cruel, chaotic maladministration can be called that.' @jackiecalmes.bsky.social on the rigger in chief www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: After retribution, Trump's guiding principle is projection: Falsely projecting his sins onto enemies. Everything is "rigged" against him, he vents--even as he works to rig the '26 midterms, jobs data, tariff law, DA appointments & more. Even golf! www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Israel's heinous policies in Gaza are taking their toll on Israel's own: Haaretz reports today the 7th death by suicide THIS MONTH of an Israeli soldier. The soldier, 24, had just ended a stint in Gaza. Because he died at home, the IDF won't consider him a fallen soldier. Shame.

Column: By starving Gaza, Netanyahu is hastening a break in bipartisan US backing for Israel that endured for the entire lives of most Americans--until he arrived, denying Palestinians’ humanity and overtly courting US Republicans. It's not only shameful, it's stupid. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

‘In pre-Trump times, Bove’s nomination would be an easy call: No. And if ever there was a time for the Senate to use its power to send a president that message, it’s now.’ Via @jackiecalmes.bsky.social @latimes.com www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

. @jackiecalmes.bsky.social: ‘For a president… to falsely allege a former president is a traitor, and to suggest that his lickspittles at the Justice Department and FBI should act against that former president, is a distraction that must command Americans’ attention.’ www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: Trump now has completely sullied the office of president & I'm not referring to the Oval's gilt excess. His latest outrage--lying that a former president is a traitor--is one distraction from his Epstein mess that demands attention, and condemnation. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: It’s bad enough that Senate Republicans shirked their advice-&-consent power to confirm Trump’s Cabinet of crackpots, saying he should get to pick his posse. But now they seem poised to okay one of the worst nominees ever for a lifetime court seat: Emil Bove. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: It's no blame game over the Texas tragedy: Trump's sacking of the government, not least agencies for weather warnings & disaster aid, means he's accountable for each tragedy that might've been averted or mitigated by fed action. He can't say HE wasn't warned. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

A conservative Arizona Supreme Court justice is warning that the Trump administration is "doing violence" to the Constitution and publicly expressing his concerns about the emerging risk of "authoritarianism." www.azcentral.com/story/news/l...

Column: The juxtaposition was apt: one big ugly bill in DC & one big garish wedding in Venice. What Trump's bill has in common with Bezos' nuptials: The excess of a new gilded age. More tax cuts, debt, income inequality & preventable deaths among the newly uninsured. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: Federal judges, including Trump picks, have been a bulwark against his lawless reign. They've repeatedly stood up for the law & Constitution to constrain him, at demonstrable danger to themselves. You’d think the Supreme Court would have their backs. But no. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: After a lifetime reading about antidemocratic countries abroad—despots, masked agents, disappearances, troops in streets, arrests of opposition figures, military parades, political killings--this month I was abroad & that country was my own. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: The Trump Doctrine in foreign policy is less "America First" than "Me, Myself & I." He's making deals alright, but not the ones he's promised in the Mideast, Ukraine & China. There, he's getting played. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: Trump began the week with yet another attack on federal judges ("scum," "monsters")--just after a WSJ report that fearful judges talk of forming a security unit & before an NYT story on a spike in threats against judges since Trump took office. He's a danger. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: We’ve seen false advertising in naming bills before; take Dems' 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Yet none was so misbranded as the GOP's "One Big Beautiful Bill," named by the branding aficionado himself, Trump. It's a debt bomb that indeed F's w/Medicaid. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: The real value of Trump’s grift, er, gift, of a Qatari jet could be what it reveals to Americans about the brazenness of his global grab for wealth & its trappings. Crypto & foreign deals are eye-glazing; he's made it easy to fathom his corruption. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: I figured Trump, after claiming Biden 'destroyed' the economy, would take credit for fixing what wasn't broken. Instead he broke it & blames Biden. It won't work: the mess is too ID'd with his tariffs. And next: The GOP's fiscal follies over taxes & Medicaid. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: The United States' brand was 250 years in the making. Trump, the supposed master of branding, trashed it in just 100 days. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: It couldn't have been a coincidence that Pope Francis' Easter message came just after he met with JD Vance. His last public words appealed to politicians to end their "contempt" toward the world's migrants. Few have shown contempt like Vance and his boss. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: In a sorry spectacle, strongmen Trump & El Salvador's Bukele yuck it up about the erroneously deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia & claim they're powerless to free him from a Salvadoran gulag. Now Trump's defiance of courts extends to the Supreme one. It's a crisis. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Judge Boasberg's finding of probable cause that Team Trump could be held in contempt for defying his order against deporting migrants to El Salvador w/o due process is a must-read--a sprightly written account of events that led to a constitutional crisis. ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

Column: Comparing Hitler & Trump is of course fraught. Trump’s world war is over trade; his lawless roundups of migrants & targeting of enemies aim to deport or hurt, not kill. Yet parallels are plain, as a film on Hannah Arendt, chronicler of totalitarianism, shows. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: Less noted amid Trump's tariff chaos & extrajudicial deportations is another travesty undermining the nation's legacy of global leadership: His neocolonial bid to extort brave Ukraine of its resources wealth to repay past U.S. support against Russia. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

As a young Congress reporter in the late 20th c, I recall being stunned, talking with ex-segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond, that decades later he remained so damn proud of his filibuster record against the '57 Civil Rights Act. How sweet to see it broken by a Black senator.

Column: Congress is cowed, so now Trump is taking on the other branch of govt. Lame denials aside, his administration 2x this month ignored court orders. Trump mocks "unelected" judges, but that's how the founders wanted it: so courts can resist power grabs like his. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: Amid Trump's tariff madness, businesses are 'fessing up to just how wrong they were to think he'd cut taxes and regulations, but be talked out of his "beautiful" tariffs. Just who did they think would dissuade him when he's surrounded by yes-men? www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: Trump often says that, thanks to him, the US is respected in the world again. Never was that less true. By abandoning Ukraine, appeasing Russia, assailing allies & hitting neighbors with high tariffs, he's ceded leadership of the free world -- and respect. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Column: It's a break-glass moment just weeks into Trump's term, amid the constant, cruel and unconstitutional chaos at home and abroad. Yet nothing seems to be behind the glass -- none of the responders is proving up to the emergency. That leaves one group. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Brave to @jeffstein.bsky.social, WaPo's chief economics correspondent, for not wasting any time in stating what must be stated. Hopefully the first of many.

Traditionally, the deputy FBI director has been a career FBI agent. Donald Trump tonight announced he is appointing as deputy director Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and conspiracy theorist who has never spent a day inside the FBI.

Column: Trump has “a hyper-fixation” about winning a Nobel Peace Prize, as an aide said. He shouldn't count on adding that gold to his gilt-laden digs, not when his way of peacemaking is ethnic cleansing in Gaza, appeasing Putin in Ukraine & breaking the world order. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

A quick search of Cotton’s accounts show that the first time he posted a single word critical of USAID was 5 days ago, despite serving in the Senate for 10 years and the House before that.

COLUMN: Varying his MAGA mantra, Candidate Trump liked to say he'd make America safe again. Promise broken: By purging the FBI, CIA & USAID; putting toadies in charge of nat'l sec; freeing 1/6 extremists; rifling our data, & alienating allies, he's made us less safe. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

The WH press sec vowed not to lie but she did that here: “Today’s jobs report reveals the Biden economy was far worse than anyone thought..." Virtually NO economist would agree. Biden left a "Goldilocks economy," said one. As for jobs, Trump is killing 'em with his purges & tariffs.

News today from Mississippi Today: -8 county health depts no longer provide immunizations, preventive screening & reproductive health services. -New report details disproportionately high death rate from cervical cancer for Black women in the Delta. But Trump wants to own & make Gaza a Riviera.

Column: Trump wasn't joking when he said he'd be a dictator just on Day 1, but he did undersell his plans: He's acted like one daily, breaking laws & constitutional amendments with his orders & sowing chaos with oligarch pal Elon Musk, unchecked by a GOP-run Congress. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

More evidence of just how much more respected the USA is under Trump. NOT.

Seconding Robin. I'm now told the author was aware of the edits pre-publication. BUT...the LATimes owner's posting of a link to Reinhart's op-ed implied that the author, like the owner, is pro-RFK Jr. Which he is NOT so, of course. This LAT columnist is sorry, too, @EricReinhart

Outrageous. Trump comes out and rotely reads a prepeared statement of sympathy re the DC air tragedy, and now he's riffing that Democrats & DEI are to blame. Buttigieg? "good line of bullshit...he's run [Transportation] right into the ground with his DEI." Beyond shameless, utterly inappropriate.

Column: It’s a truism of politics: If any issue transcends partisanship, it’s disaster aid. Only Trump, who doesn't see himself as a POTUS for all Americans, just for those who voted for him, would condition aid to a blue state. It's unprecedented. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Ex-FBI chief Chris Wray warned that DVEs--domestic violent extremists--were a top threat & “not going away anytime soon.” Trump made sure of that by his Jan. 6 clemency, egged on by his FBI pick, Kash Patel. Their focus on Trump's enemies will distract from real ones: www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Nancy Leftenant-Colon, who in 1948 became the first Black nurse to serve in the regular U.S. armed forces after years of being barred from a segregated military, died on Jan. 8. She was 104.