This is extremely similar to what Duterte did in the Philippines. Killing of supposed drug dealers without due process. Dictator level stuff, scary.

I wrote in my book that "Trump had learned the foremost lesson of 9/11: the terrorists were whomever you said they were." Now "terrorism" is what he's using to apparently provoke a war with Venezuela.

I can't speak for Ukraine, but the fact that Europeans feel compelled to call their proposed force for post-war Ukraine a "reassurance" force suggests it is not gonna be backed by a credible threat and won't be reassuring at all. apnews.com/article/russ...

Blowing up a boat and killing 11 people and in the name of stopping a drug shipment is a depraved act of needless violence. If it's a drug shipment, stop it with the Coast Guard. www.reuters.com/world/americ...

This news is a throwback to the aughts, with Marco Rubio doing his best to resurrect the dumbest parts of the war on terror, conflating Islamism and terrorism. www.jns.org/muslim-broth...

Despite everything autocratic thing that's happened this year, it's still shocking to me that these huge law firms are agreeing to be subordinated to Trump: working pro bono on an insane protectionist agenda. Corrupt, autocratic, and barely even a scandal. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/u...

This article asserts baselessly that Putin is already reordering the world in Russia's favor just by having a summit with Trump. The implication is Russia isn't a major power unless we treat it as one, an idea Ukraine war should have disabused people of. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

For @forward.com, I wrote about how we know that Israel has been withholding food as a military tactic because Israeli officials have said versions of “we are withholding food as a military tactic” for the entirety of the war and pretending otherwise is willful ignorance forward.com/opinion/7586...

Both the US strikes on Iran and their retaliation today seem partly theatrical. The US didn't do the sustained campaign likely in the can to really cripple Iranian nuclear weapons program, and the Iranians shot at well-defended bases with warning. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06...

This binary view is wrong. The third choice is to live with Iran as a nascent nuclear weapons state, as we've been doing for a while, or fully nuclear one, and pressure Israel to not destabilize the situation by bombing. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/u...

Under no circumstances should we get sucked into Israel's preventive war on Iran, which will likely prove counterproductive. The question is how bad it gets.

If Israel bombs Iran in an attempt to kibosh US negotiations and drag us into a war, can we stop underwriting their military? Or at least acknowledge we shouldn't pay them to screw us? www.timesofisrael.com/us-begins-ev...

Long and short of this is Israel is considering striking Iran in order to screw up US diplomacy and expecting US help if they do. What is stronger than chutzpah? www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/u...

News article advocating endless US war in Somalia, in part by overstating Al Shabab's threat to the west. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

If Trump indeed agreed to get the last US hostage freed in exchange for getting the blockade of Gaza lifted and then ignored the obligation, it's no favor to the remaining hostages. If the US won't honor its own agreement, who will push Israel to honor theirs? www.dropsitenews.com/p/witkoff-ha...

Is Trump being bribed by Qatar good because it somewhat reduced the odds of a war with Iran? www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...

Seems like Trump either jumped the gun, prematurely announcing Houthi deal before it was finalized or threw Israel under the bus by making a separate peace with the Houthis just as their fight with the Houthis escalates, or both. www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/p...

A political prisoner in other words.

Some real Kenny Powers energy from Hegseth here. youtu.be/vf7-d9mIGvA?...

Is there anyone in or out of the Trump administration who truly believes that drone strikes on cartels would work to limit fentanyl flows or really in any sense beyond just showing that we remain committed to illegal and unpredictable violence? www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...

Make him veto it!

Predictably, Trump's campaign against the Houthis seems to be going as poorly as Biden's, only at greater cost. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/u...

For @wpr.bsky.social, Rose Kelanic and I argue that the real Signal chat scandal should be the war it discussed. We show why it's unnecessary and bound to fail. www.worldpoliticsreview.com/houthis-us-t...

Throwing students out of the country for speech is a terrible offense to American values in any circumstance, but what makes this worse is how it's done in abject service of a foreign power where a fascist organization is bragging about how it is manipulating US immigration policy.

A nation of yapping infosec inspectors who don’t know and don’t care about first-order strategic choices, policies, acts of war

Also the war they are so casually green lighting is stupid. It's not going to work, and it's not remotely necessary.

Something people are missing in this signal chat /Yemen leak story is how Trump seems out of the loop. He apparently had some vague meeting that was open to interpretation and allowed this pop up cabinet chat group to make the decision whether to bomb without him (and the JCS). x.com/theatlantic/...

Can’t wait until JD lectures Europe about free speech again.

Making the supreme allied commander for NATO European would signal a shifting in burdens from the US to Europe, but it's far from abandonment, contrary to framing in this article, which quotes only Ben Hodges and James Stavrides, with predictably hysterical results. www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...

Despite his asinine methods, Trump is right to keep pushing or a peace deal in Ukraine, but he and advisors should not let "ambition for a deal — or their desire for speed — come before American interests, even if this means walking away," writes @jennkav.bsky.social. unherd.com/newsroom/can...

Polish PM Donald Tusk: "500 million Europeans are begging 300 million Americans to protect us from 180 million Russians who have not been able to cope with 40 million Ukrainians for three years." www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/w...

Hard to imagine an article that would me more positively inclined towards Trump' hostage negotiator Adam Boehler than this one, especially how it condemns him because he "publicly differentiates between American and Israeli interests." www.timesofisrael.com/meet-adam-bo...

Beyond the flagrant illegality, the implied Congressional "power to consult" is what's most alarming here, as this seems to be the dovish "we at least need to talk to them" position within the administration.

BREAKING: DHS Detains Lead Negotiator of Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment After Online Campaign by Pro-Israel Groups. Part of Trump’s sweeping attack on the First Amendment. Also, Mahmoud Khalil is a Green Card holder and his wife is 8 months pregnant. www.dropsitenews.com/p/dhs-detain...

I'm glad this is coming out, but more should be made of how it is Christian nationalist, authoritarian guru Ross Vought who hired this lady at CRA and propelled her into the Trump administration.

Lately it seems like Trump is actually trying to limit support for his Ukraine policy to his base, which is terrible for those of us who support peace there. Somehow it's still impressive how bad he is at the basic political skill of saying things so more people agree with him rather than less.

The US Attorney in Washington DC is investigating Georgetown Law School, demanding that "if DEI is found in your courses or teaching in anyway [sic]," the law school should "move swiftly to remove it" Federal prosecutors don’t control the classroom. This is a dark abdication of the First Amendment.

Rather than Europe cutting welfare spending to spend more on defense, they could quit inflating the Russian threat beyond Ukraine and thus recognize that even a substatial US military withdrawal from the continent need not result in a military buildup. www.ft.com/content/3705...

Ironic to see Facing History and Ourselves dodge talking about Israel killing Palestinians. I remember as kid how they hammered us with the idea you should be willing to oppose murderous bigots even when it's politically inconvenient. jewishcurrents.org/a-progressiv...

I don’t respect the office of the president, because an office that can be occupied by a man like Trump is, for that reason alone, unworthy of respect.

The say thank you / now apologize tiff is an idiotic sideshow distracting people, including Trump, from how the mineral deal offers low to zero benefit for the US but is an obvious effort to cause him to overestimate US interests there and be tricked into a kind of quasi security guarantee.

Shutting down the government in adamant defense of having your spending powers stolen will be a new low in craven partisanship. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Trump amusingly is still pursuing the dopey minerals deal as recompense for protecting Ukraine, when he should be saying clearly that the US can just cut Ukraine off if they prefer continuing the war to the US backed peace plan. kyivindependent.com/trump-zelens...

I know the narrative of this-was-an-ambush has already solidified on this app, but I'm not seeing evidence of that in the reporting coming out so far.

I'm against Trump berating Zelensky when he could've just calmly said our interests allow us to just walk away and ranting about Hunter Biden's sex tape, but their argument reflects a real divergence of interests that Biden furiously denied. www.defensepriorities.org/press-releas...

GWOT narco is getting real. The terrifying good news here is that Stephen Miller is arguing against bombing Mexico vs counterterror dude Gorka, who gets to have something to do with this I guess because Trump designated cartels as terrorists. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/w...

Hysterical stuff here, but if there really is a trans marxist cult of powerful insiders messing up the NSA, maybe we take the win for civil liberties and let them be. www.city-journal.org/article/nsa-...

Mike Pompeo, who won Trump's heart and rose to prominence by writing a wildly partisan Benghazi report designed to harm Hillary Clinton's chances of being elected president in 2016, is now her colleague at Columbia. What a world.

This complaint ignores how Shapiro explicitly replies to it early in the article.

Those 8% annual Pentagon cuts reported yesterday aren't real. It seems to be an efficiency generating move not aimed at actual cuts. Also we know from history that efficiency drives (see eg Bob Gates') tend to not work well even in shifting tail to tooth. responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-bud...