It was a big week in American politics, with Donald Trump giving his first official State Of The Union speech of his second term to Congress, but we felt even this was overshadowed by Trump seemingly slouching towards a new war with Iran. America going to war used to be a very big deal to the public, but on Trump's watch it seems to be just another item within the firehose of distractions he continually creates.

That sounds cynical, but it's not even the most cynical take on things. Hardcore cynics point out that Trump seems to launch his military attacks whenever the Epstein files begin to get some traction in the news again. We're not sure if we totally buy into that thinking, but it is worth considering, seeing how Trump does almost everything for the stupidest of reasons.

Distraction or not, America seems awfully close to just going in and bombing the heck out of Iran -- for no real particular reason. Trump has moved two aircraft carriers to the region (and something like one-third of our total naval power to support them), as well as at least 150 warplanes (that's in addition to all the ones onboard the two carriers). So it certainly looks like Trump is planning to unleash them very soon now.

If he were a normal president, and if there were actual reasons for starting a new war with Iran, Donald Trump would have laid those reasons out in detail during his big speech. He didn't. He spent a scant few minutes -- during a record-length 108-minute speech -- talking about Iran. This was more than Ukraine got (Trump mentioned the Ukraine war for only about 20 seconds, and forgot to mark the fact that it was the fourth anniversary of Russia's unprovoked and illegal invasion), but it still didn't answer any key questions -- like why this war seems so imminent.

Trump kind of painted himself into this corner, it should be pointed out. When mass demonstrations against the Iranian government took to the streets in Iran back at the end of December, Trump promised them that America would have their back. Unfortunately for him, he didn't have the military forces in place to make good on his threats, so he wound up doing absolutely nothing. The Iranian government killed thousands of protesters, and then the protests died down.

Trump, meanwhile, moved more and more military assets into the region. He now has enough of them to launch effective airstrikes, but his ostensible reason for doing so no longer exists. So he began tossing out reasons (or demands), almost at random.

According to Trump (during his big speech), Iran has to say the "secret" (or "sacred," as he had said earlier) words that they would never have a nuclear weapon. Iran has indeed said these words, repeatedly making this commitment over and over for decades now. Whether they can be believed or not is a big open question, but that's not how Trump framed it -- he is now demanding (as he did in his big speech) that Iran just say these words and he won't attack. Which is nonsense, of course -- Trump may still attack even if they do.

This all exposes a lie from the administration, however. Less than a year ago, Trump launched a massive bombing campaign against Iran's nuclear sites, after which he insisted -- insisted, even in the face of intelligence reports that raised doubts -- that Iran's nuclear capabilities had been completely "obliterated." Now, less than a year later, Trump and his henchmen are trying to state that Iran is just one week -- one week! -- away "from having industrial-grade bomb-making material." That is not a very precise statement, you will note. What exactly qualifies as "industrial-grade bomb-making material," after all? We're supposed to believe both that Iran's nuclear program was totally "obliterated" last summer, but that somehow they magically bounced back and recreated it all to the point of being a week away from putting together a bomb? That makes no sense whatsoever -- either Trump and his administration were lying to us back then (probably), or they are lying to us now (also probably).

In his first term, Trump (of course) pulled out of the deal Iran had previously agreed to with both the U.S. and the rest of the world. This had severely limited their nuclear activities and allowed U.N. inspectors in to monitor their compliance. Trump hated this deal because Barack Obama was the one to achieve it, plain and simple. So he pulled out of the deal -- which is exactly why Iran's nuclear program became such a threat again in the first place. Now Trump is negotiating with Iran to put in place another deal -- that will probably wind up being indistinguishable from the one Obama negotiated.

But the nuclear question isn't the only justification for war Trump has been floating (ever since his "we have the protesters' backs" idea disappeared when the protests ended). He's also demanding that Iran get rid of its ballistic missile program, claiming that they are also on the brink of having intercontinental ballistic missiles that could deliver a nuclear warhead to American shores. This is also not backed up by any actual facts or intelligence on the ground. Iran does have missiles that could possibly reach some parts of Europe, but they still have a ways to go to develop I.C.B.M.s, much less have an arsenal of them.

Trump is also demanding that Iran stop funding proxy terrorist groups, just for good measure. But these groups are at their weakest point ever after the prolonged war with Israel. Trump has also floated that he would like to see "regime change" in Iran, but according to military experts that sort of thing is pretty much impossible to do just by raining bombs down on a country.

As you can see, there are multiple demands from Trump and his administration, and there has been no public explanation of which ones are red lines, what would be acceptable to the U.S., or what would be acceptable enough to avoid going to war with them. Trump appears totally clueless even as to what he is demanding, and he certainly hasn't bothered to inform the American people about any of it (even though he had the biggest audience of the entire year this week for his State Of The Union speech, which would have been the perfect opportunity for him to do so).

Militarily-speaking, attacking Iran might not be the cakewalk Trump seems to be expecting. As was done before, the U.S. could probably knock out all the air defense systems Iran has and gain control of Iran's skies, but Iran still has plenty of ballistic missiles they could launch -- either at American ships or American bases in the region, or at Israel. And one thing that hasn't been mentioned much (if at all) is the progress Iran seems to have made in constructing drones. Russia has used uncountable Iranian drones in its air attacks against Ukraine. Most of them have been described as not very sophisticated, but without knowing how many of them found their targets, it's hard to accurately measure their threat potential.

One other thing worth pondering is whether Iran has made any progress on developing sea-based drones. As Ukraine has proven in the Black Sea, such drones can radically alter the balance of power on the water. Russia, unlike Ukraine, has a fleet of technologically-advanced warships in the Black Sea -- but they have been all but neutralized by Ukraine's low-cost drones. That is a sobering thing to contemplate when much of the American force now surrounding Iran is naval power. Just imagine what a game-changer it would be if an Iranian submarine drone successfully struck an American aircraft carrier (whether the carrier sank or not, this would still be stunning, on a geopolitical scale, since it would alter how modern wars will be fought in the very near future).

And one last thing worth pointing out is how the Trump administration has already totally shot itself in the foot. They've been trying to destroy one huge part of American "soft power" ever since they got into office -- the radio and communications news services that America runs worldwide. Outlets like Radio Free Europe and Voice Of America have served, ever since World War II (all the way through the Cold War), as respected sources of information for people inside totalitarian dictatorships. They could tune in a radio and hear the truth about the world, when such information was not available at all to them in any other way.

For no particular reason, Trump has been trying to kill off this vital service. There were mass firings at the start of Trump's term, which were only ended after a judge ruled they were illegal. This has all left the Farsi-language version of Voice Of America with a skeleton crew. During the operation to bomb Iran's nuclear sites, the service broadcast "just 75 minutes of content targeted to the audience in Iran" over the space of 72 hours. It used to be up and running 24 hours a day, every day.

Here is how Marc Thiessen put it, in an article he wrote last week in the Washington Post. Thiessen is about as hawkish as you can get, and about as right-wing as you can get as well. And he's not impressed with the Trump administration's dereliction of duty:

Unfortunately, Iran's leaders have an unwitting ally inside the U.S. government -- Kari Lake, the hapless acting head of U.S. Agency for Global Media. For a year, Lake has worked tirelessly to cripple the U.S.-backed "freedom radios" -- including Voice of America and Radio Farda -- that broadcast into Iran to counter regime propaganda. As an unpaid volunteer member of the board of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which operates Radio Farda, I have seen the chaos she's unleashed up close.

To succeed, kinetic warfare must be accompanied by information warfare. The United States needs a plan to surge news and messages into Iran through multiple means: Medium wave AM radio broadcasts to reach Iranians in their cars and homes; shortwave radio broadcasts over multiple channels; satellite news transmissions; and virtual private networks and other tools that allow Iranians to defeat the regime's internet censorship and communicate with each other and the world safely through secure messaging. The goal should be to overwhelm the regime's ability to keep people in the dark.

In an interview Wednesday, Lake told me: "We're ready for whatever the president does in Iran, we are ready to tell that story." Unfortunately, the facts speak otherwise. Instead of developing a plan to break the regime's information blockade, Lake has done the opposite: She has undermined the ability of VOA and Radio Farda to reach the people of Iran.

. . .

In March, Lake abruptly cut off Radio Farda's access to U.S.-owned transmission facilities in Kuwait -- facilities Congress funded for decades specifically for this purpose -- and then denied it permission to use appropriated funds to contract with private vendors for shortwave capacity.

The entire article is blistering in its condemnation of Trump's (and Lake's) attempts to kill off this mighty lever of American soft power, and it is well worth reading. And now it is being reported that the Voice Of America Farsi broadcasts have been banned from even mentioning the name of the exiled Iranian crown prince -- who could be instrumental in creating a better "day after" scenario, if Trump is truly going to attempt to overthrow the current Iranian regime. Otherwise, even with a forced regime change (if we killed all their leaders with bombs, for instance), Iran will likely just wind up being ruled by their military -- which is not exactly going to be an improvement.

America is slouching towards a war. Nobody knows what the outcome will be. Nobody knows why we're even contemplating war at this juncture. And the Trump administration's short-sightedness could lead to disastrous results. Will we all wake up one morning to the news that the bombs have started falling? At this point, that seems like the likeliest outcome, and it seems like it's going to happen at some point in the next week or so. Never has America entered a war with such vague objectives and without the American public even being told what is going on. So what could possibly go wrong?

In other news this week, Trump's State Of The Union address happened, but it will likely be one of the most-quickly-forgotten speeches of all time. At best, people might remember the U.S. Men's Hockey Team showing up. The reviews -- even from conservatives -- were pretty scathing. An editor at the Wall Street Journal posted on social media his snarky take on things: "So far this speech has been so full of falsehoods and fictions that I'm now starting to wonder whether the USA men's hockey team did actually win the gold medal." A conservative writer at the New York Times summed it up a different way:

While we're on the subject of illusion versus reality, everyone should look at The Times's sprawling, panting, verging-on-frantic fact-check of the speech. It necessitated a cast of thousands, and reading their attempts to correct and qualify Trump's ludicrous assertions is like watching a team of workers in hazmat suits and mops trying to contain the spread of a toxic spill. They're heroic and doomed. And their vocabulary! "Misleading," "needs context," "exaggerated," "false." Those are genteel synonyms for "hooey," "whopper," "Are you kidding me?" and "Do you really think I'm that stupid?"

A few other commentaries are worth noting here, just for amusement value. HuffPost won the best headline of the week award for their: "Trump Delivers Excruciatingly Tedious, Lie-Packed Mess Of A 'State Of The Union' Speech." But one pundit at the Washington Post had perhaps the funniest take on it all:

By the time the men's Olympic hockey team showed up, which honestly wasn't all that far into things, it had already become clear what kind of State of the Union this was and what kind it was not.

It was not, for example, the kind where we were going to learn about the state of the union. It was, for example, the kind where the president was going to run a game show from the dais, popping in surprise guests and passing out surprise medals while Republicans cheered and Democrats were half-absent and Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson -- in prominent view behind President Donald Trump for the duration -- both spent the entire 108-minute speech looking as though they'd studied the Joey Tribbiani method of serious acting, i.e., just pretend you're smelling farts.

Or, as one commenter pointed out, maybe they didn't even have to pretend?

What else? As usual, other things happened in the political world this week, but we thought the prospect of entering a war without Congress (to say nothing of the American people) even weighing in was so important it kind of shoved everything else to one side. But we will end with another scary-ass story from the White House, because it too may need the American public to pay close attention to it at some point.

The Washington Post reported this week that Donald Trump is being urged to declare a national emergency -- based on moonbeams and lies -- and just take over the operation of the midterm elections. Here is the story, for those who missed it:

Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly previewed a plan to mandate voter ID and ban mail ballots in November's midterm elections, and the activists expect their draft will figure into Trump's promised executive order on the issue. The White House declined to elaborate on Trump's plans.

"Under the Constitution, it's the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn't have any power to do that," said Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer who is advocating for the draft executive order. Ticktin attended the New York Military Academy with Trump and was part of his legal team that filed an unsuccessful 2022 lawsuit accusing Democrats of conspiring to damage him with allegations that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.

"But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes," Ticktin went on. "That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it."

Such an executive order would "empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference," according to Ticktin.

So far, the White House has remained noncommittal on the proposal. It was not so long ago that Republicans liked to sanctimoniously carry around little pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution, to prove their bona fides as a conservative. Any Republican who still does so (and has actually read the Constitution and abides by their oath to it) should immediately denounce such a breathtaking power grab as horrendously unconstitutional.

So let's see... how many of them are lining up to do so?

[sound of crickets chirping]

Yeah, that's kind of what we thought.

 

Well, for starters, we have to award "Best Protest Sign Of The Week" to Representative Al Green, who may have broken his own record by getting kicked out of Trump's State Of The Union speech even quicker than he did last year. His sign, in case you haven't seen it, read: "BLACK PEOPLE AREN'T APES!" Just to remind everyone of precisely how racist our president truly is, of course.

Runner-up in that category would have to go to the woman (unidentified in the coverage we saw) on the Democratic side of the aisle wearing a button that simply said: "FUCK ICE" -- which is a good lead-in to an amusing story from New Jersey:

Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey are using their legislative majorities to try to expand protections for the state's sizable immigrant population in sweeping ways.

One measure would bar law enforcement officers, including federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, from wearing masks. Another would impose a 50 percent tax on privately run migrant detention centers. There are also calls for the state to divest from a tech company that sells a product that can help the police and military officials search digital data to locate people.

On Thursday, two new Democratic members of the State Assembly injected the conversation with a dose of in-your-face Jersey attitude, introducing a bill that is encoded with an unsubtle message.

Named the Fight Unlawful Conduct and Keep Individuals and Communities Empowered act, the legislation, known by its blunt acronym, would expand residents' rights under state law to sue immigration officials for unconstitutional conduct.

Sounds about right to us.

And we would be remiss if we didn't give at least an Honorable Mention to Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, for her response speech to the State Of The Union this week (which we reviewed yesterday, if anyone's interested). The text of the speech was impressive, and will serve as a blueprint for Democrats running in the midterm elections, which is about as good as you can get from one of these response speeches.

But our winners of the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award this week are a handful of Democrats who are jumping on the Supreme Court decision striking down Trump's tariffs in a big way. Here's the story:

Lawmakers also joined the conversation calling for refunds like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. The Democratic lawmaker known for creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said on CNN Monday, "Everywhere in American law when you take money that doesn't belong to you, whether you do it by grabbing somebody's purse or cheating them in some other way, the first rule is you gotta give the money back."

"How would the U.S. government keep money that the Supreme Court said it did not legally collect from American businesses, that it did not legally take away from American families that ultimately paid this?" Sen. Warren said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called more explicitly for a tariff refund Friday. "Time to pay the piper, Donald," Newsom said in a press release. "These tariffs were nothing more than an illegal cash grab that drove up prices and hurt working families, so you could wreck longstanding alliances and extort them."

Newsom also demanded: "Every dollar unlawfully taken must be refunded immediately -- with interest. Cough up!"

He wasn't the only one. Citing studies that have shown that Trump's tariffs cost Americans over $1,700 each, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker also called on Trump to "cut the check" for that exact amount, adding:

"Your tariffs wreaked havoc on farmers, enraged our allies, and sent grocery prices through the roof," Pritzker's letter said. "This morning, your hand-picked Supreme Court Justices notified you that they are also unconstitutional."

Trump has reportedly been considering just trying to keep all the money he's illegally and unconstitutionally collected. Private companies are suing to get refunds for all the tariffs they paid, but Democrats may have come up with a powerful political idea in demanding that the money all be returned to American families -- who, after all, were the ones to actually pay this tax.

Trump himself -- before the Supreme Court ruled -- even flirted with the idea of sending all Americans "rebate checks," which would have been conveniently timed to arrive in the mail just before the midterm elections happened. So all Democrats have to do is point to this offer and demand that Trump follow through.

And they should demand it loudly, and often. Which is why we're giving this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week to Senator Elizabeth Warren as well as Governors Newsom and Pritzker. Strike while the iron is hot, Democrats! Demand Trump pay the American people back for his illegal tax!

[Congratulate Senator Elizabeth Warren on her Senate contact page, Governor Gavin Newsom on his official contact page, and Governor JB Pritzker on his official contact page, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]

 

Um... all of them?

[sigh]

About the best thing you can say for the overall Democratic response to the State Of The Union speech this week was that it was slightly better than last year's efforts. But that's not really saying that much.

The highest-ranking members of the party, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, did not exactly impress. Schumer did offer up one line that one of his speechwriters must have come up with, that it was Trump's "state of delusion" that was on display, but neither one brought the intensity that countering Trump really requires.

We suppose we shouldn't be too hard on them, because nobody anywhere has really come up with a magic way to forcefully counter Trump's carnival act, and everyone's had an entire decade to do so, meaning it'll probably never happen.

Even so, to see the Democrats' rather tepid and fractured attempts to protest Trump's cavalcade of lies was, in a word, disappointing.

[We can't really hand out the award to the entire Democratic Party, so you'll just have to let them know individually what you think of their actions for now.]

 

Volume 830 (2/27/26)

Another mixed bunch this week. We saved the best one for the end, though. Have fun and use responsibly!

 

   We want our money back!

Hit this one hard.

"Donald Trump said he was going to send all Americans a refund from all his tariff tax money. And that was before the Supreme Court ruled that the tariffs were illegal. So now he owes us this money -- because it is ours. We paid those taxes. We paid all of those tariffs. And I for one would like my money back. So, Donald, economists have figured that it cost each and every American family more than $1,700 to pay your illegal tax. Now that the Supreme Court is ruled, I'd like my check for that amount -- plus interest. Because we want our money back!

 

   Huge lead in enthusiasm

This one isn't too surprising, since it's been showing up in all the special elections. But it could wind up being the winning factor for Democrats in November.

"Public opinion polls have been asking American voters not just who they're going to vote for in November, but how enthusiastic they are about it. And Democratic voters are a lot more enthusiastic about sending a message with their vote than Republicans are -- by a whopping fourteen percentage points. That ought to scare Republicans, since it is one of the largest 'enthusiasm gaps' ever recorded. Every Democratic voter I've talked to is rarin' to go vote, in fact. Which is precisely what we need, to send a message that the public does not support Donald Trump's chaos."

 

   Do Trump next!

Both of them actually used some of their time to point this one out.

"Both Hillary and Bill Clinton were forced to testify before a House committee this week -- the first time in history a former president was forced to do so -- on their connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Neither one of them had much to add to what is already known, but both of them pointed out that there is one person who was closer to Epstein than anyone else during the time period in question. So I'm with the Clintons: 'Hey! You want to know more about Epstein? Do Trump next! I bet he's got some answers to some of your questions...'."

 

   Surprise, surprise...

Could've knocked us over with a feather (rolls eyes...).

"Well, surprise, surprise! Donald Trump's Department of Justice has been caught red-handed trying to hide documents in the Epstein files that cover an accusation one of the victims brought against Trump. She didn't just say she was raped by Epstein, but also that she was raped by Donald J. Trump as well. And even though the law that Congress passed -- and Trump signed -- stated specifically that no redactions should happen to save any possible perpetrator embarrassment, no matter who he was, nobody should be surprised that they tried to get away with doing just that for Donald Trump. This is the most corrupt Justice Department in the most corrupt administration in American history, folks."

 

   42,695 times... approximately

They're trying to set some sort of record, obviously.

"A federal judge just found that the Internal Revenue Service broke the law 'approximately 42,695 times' when they illegally offered up identifying information on suspected immigrants to the immigration enforcers. I have to assume that 'approximately' was an instance of judicial humor. Seriously, though, this is the most lawless administration in American history, folks. A separate federal judge in Minnesota is about to start holding Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in criminal contempt since they have ignored or otherwise not complied with 210 judicial orders, to date. And federal judges elsewhere have started doubting pretty much everything any member of the administration tells them, since they have been caught lying in court so often and so blatantly. So I will repeat that again -- this is the most lawless administration in American history, folks. Think about that the next time some Republican starts getting sanctimonious about 'the rule of law'."

 

   Seriously? Doggi Gras?

File this under "you just can't make this stuff up, folks"....

"We are still in a partial shutdown of the federal government. But you wouldn't know it looking at Republicans in Congress. Instead of doing the hard work to hammer out some sort of deal to get the Department of Homeland Security funded and fully functioning again, Senator Thom Tillis decided to -- one week late -- hold a 'Doggi Gras' event for costumed dogs. Yeah, you heard that right. Rather than working on the government shutdown, Republican senators thought holding a Mardi Gras pet parade would be a good use of their time. Now just imagine for one tiny second what Republicans would say if Democrats were this unserious during a government shutdown. I mean, it really boggles the mind...."

 

   The only measure he cares about

Want to get under Trump's skin? There's an easy way to do so, this week.

"Well, the television ratings are in and Donald Trump's marathon speech -- which lasted almost two unbearable hours -- got terrible ratings. In fact, Trump was down over ten percentage points from last year's audience. Oooo... that's gotta hurt. Trump measures everything in his life to how good the ratings are on television, and the verdict is in from the American people -- they just aren't that into him anymore."

-- Chris Weigant

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground