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armenian-genocide
'Truth Cannot Be Erased': Vance Deletes Posts Honoring Armenian Genocide, Which Trump Admin Doesn’t Recognize
"This is brazen genocide denial," said the policy director for the Armenian National Committee of America.
Feb 11, 2026
The office of Vice President JD Vance made multiple posts commemorating the Armenian genocide on Tuesday, but was forced to take them down because the Trump administration doesn't formally recognize that the genocide happened.
Vance's X account posted a photo of the vice president and his wife, Usha, attending a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial in the Armenian city of Yerevan. The post said the Vances were there "to honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide."
But the post was swiftly taken down, with a Vance spokesperson blaming it on a staff member.
"This is an account managed by staff that primarily exists to share photos and videos of the vice president's activities," they said. "For the vice president's views on the substance of the question, I refer you to the comments he made earlier on the tarmac in response to the pool's question."
This was referring to Vance's comments to reporters about visiting the memorial, which were posted by an official White House account. "I'm the first vice president to ever visit Armenia. They asked us to visit the site... I wanted to go and pay my respects."
That post has since been deleted as well.
Alex Galitsky, the policy director for the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) reacted: "This is brazen genocide denial. An insult to the memory of the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide—and an affront to a community that fought tirelessly for decades to ensure recognition of that crime."
Historians widely agree that the Ottoman Empire's systemic killing and deportation of mostly Christian Armenians during the First World War constitutes one of the 20th century's worst genocides. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
There were approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire in 1915. At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million died during the genocide, either in massacres and individual killings, or from systematic ill treatment, exposure, and starvation.
But the government of Turkey continues to adamantly deny the genocide committed by its predecessor state to this day. And due to Turkey's status as a NATO ally, US presidents dating back more than half a century have likewise refused to describe the historic crime as a "genocide."
This began to change in 2019, when Congress passed a historic resolution finally recognizing the genocide more than a century after it began. In 2021, then-President Joe Biden became the first US president to formally acknowledge the genocide without ambiguity.
But in April 2025, after President Donald Trump returned to office, he rolled this acknowledgment back, referring to the mass killing as a "great catastrophe" and "one of the worst disasters of the 20th century" while evading the term "genocide."
Julien Zarifian, a professor of US history at the University of Poitiers in France, wrote that "Trump's reversal seemed to make genocide recognition taboo not only in the White House, but in the whole executive branch."
The return to a denialist stance put the US back into line not only with Turkey, but with Azerbaijan, with which Armenia has been locked in conflict over the disputed Nagorno‑Karabakh region for decades.
In 2023, more than 100,000 Armenians—virtually the whole population—were forced to flee the territory in what has been described as an ethnic cleansing by Azerbaijan, which occupied large parts of the area.
While the US has remained formally neutral in the conflict, it has provided hundreds of millions of dollars of security assistance to Azerbaijan under presidents of both parties, which critics say has emboldened Azerbaijan to act more aggressively. Azerbaijan notably has the steadfast backing of Turkey in the conflict, as well as key US ally Israel.
Vance's visit to Armenia was the first leg of a trip that continued to Azerbaijan, where he met with its leaders to discuss ending the conflict and to shore up an agreement that would give the US greater access to the region's natural resources.
Last August, Trump boasted of brokering a “peace deal” between the two nations, but Azerbaijan had not signed anything—only agreed to further talks.
One of the provisions of the deal pushed by the Trump administration is that Armenia would drop any legal claims against Azerbaijan over its human rights abuses, which Just Security analysts David J. Simon and Kathryn Hemmer said would be "thereby depriving Nagorno-Karabakh’s 150,000 victims of justice."
During a summit with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Vance laid on the flattery: "Other than President Trump, the only leader in the world that has really good relations with both the Turks and the Israelis is President Aliyev," he said. "That means one, the food must be really good here, or two, he must be really charming. I can confirm that he's very charming."
Gev Iskajyan, the advocacy director of ANCA, responded: "Vance thinks Aliyev is really charming. Especially when he’s committing war crimes, rigging his own elections, or ethnically cleansing an entire people."
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214 House Republicans Just Tried to Give 'Mad King' Trump Even More Tariff Powers
"The trade powers Trump is illegally usurping are expressly granted to Congress under the Constitution," said Rep. Don Beyer.
Feb 11, 2026
Republicans in the US House on Tuesday tried—and narrowly failed—to advance a measure containing language that would have temporarily blocked votes on resolutions disapproving of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Democrats voted unanimously to defeat the measure, and were joined by just three House Republicans—Don Bacon of Nebraska, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and Kevin Kiley of California—in a final vote of 214 in favor to 217 opposed.
As reported by MS NOW, House Republicans tucked language preventing challenges to Trump's tariff policies into a rule setting up floor consideration for legislation related to US energy security.
While a similar provision was passed in the House in September before expiring at the end of January, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was unable to cobble together votes to get it passed this time.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) celebrated what he described as a "heartening" victory, while expressing concern that the vast majority of Republicans were comfortable letting the president take their constitutionally mandated power over taxation.
"Most Republicans again tried to surrender Congress’ power as a coequal branch of government to check a president who is behaving like a mad king," Beyer wrote in a social media post. "The trade powers Trump is illegally usurping are expressly granted to Congress under the Constitution."
Matt Fuller, director of congressional reporting at MS NOW, similarly argued that "it's a lot more notable to me that 214 House Republicans voted to hand Donald Trump unchecked authority to levy tariffs until August than it is that three House Republicans said 'no.'"
While Tuesday's vote suggests a narrowly divided House, Punchbowl News co-founder Jake Sherman argued that it actually represented a "watershed moment" that could open the door to several defeats for the Trump administration on the House floor in the coming days, as Democrats prepare to hammer the GOP with tariff disapproval resolutions.
"Now Democrats have the opportunity to force unlimited votes on the president's global tariffs, putting Republicans on the spot all the time," Sherman explained in a Wednesday social media post. "If Dems handle this well, this is going to get bad for rank and file House Republicans. And it will piss off Trump."
Sherman's assessment of the situation was echoed by the Wednesday edition of Politico Playbook, which noted that Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) is already teeing up a resolution to overturn Trump's tariffs against Canada that is set for a vote on Wednesday afternoon.
"Given the current mood in the House—every single Dem showed up to vote last night, while plenty of Republicans are uncomfortable with tariffs—Johnson looks all but certain to lose," Politico declared.
Matt Maasdam, a Democratic US House candidate running in Michigan's 7th Congressional District, started putting pressure on incumbent Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) the morning after the Michigan Republican voted to protect Trump from tariff resolutions.
"Tom Barrett has voted over and over to protect the Trump tariffs that make costs go up," wrote Maasdam on social media. "The tariffs on Canada hit Michigan hard. Auto parts for a car made here cross the border multiple times—in a trade war, it’s our workers and businesses who get hurt."
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'Our Democracy Depends on Rejecting This Charade': GOP Pushes Bills to Prevent Millions From Voting
"It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb," said one expert.
Feb 11, 2026
Congressional Republicans on Tuesday held hearings on a pair of bills that watchdogs, election experts, and Democratic lawmakers characterized as brazen and dangerous efforts to suppress voter turnout in service of President Donald Trump's broader assault on democracy—which has included a call for the GOP to "nationalize the voting."
Tuesday's hearings, held by the House Committees on Rules and Administration, featured a revived version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) Act and Rep. Bryan Steil's (R-Wis.) newly introduced Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, which one analyst described as possibly the "most dangerous attack on voting rights ever" unveiled in the US Congress.
During his opening remarks at the House Administration Committee hearing on the MEGA Act, the panel's ranking member, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY), said that "this scheme is not just how Republicans plan to take over our elections, it's how they plan to take over our country."
"Republicans know that they have one hope at winning the next election: change the rules of the game, destroy the rule of law, and desert any last remaining shred of allegiance to the United States Constitution," Morelle added.
@RepJoeMorelle on the anti-voting MEGA Act:
“This scheme is not just how Republicans plan to take over our elections, it’s how they plan to take over our country.”
👇Learn more:https://t.co/kkm6ISuedX pic.twitter.com/g2kRbLIxGX
— Democracy Docket (@DemocracyDocket) February 10, 2026
Both the SAVE Act—which is expected to get a House vote this week—and the MEGA Act would impose severe restrictions on voting access by effectively eliminating voter registration by mail, implementing nationwide photo ID requirements, banning universal mail-in ballots for federal elections, allowing massive voter roll purges, and threatening nonpartisan election officials with imprisonment if they fail to uphold the bills' strict voter documentation requirements.
If passed, the SAVE Act would require anyone registering to vote in federal elections to furnish documentary proof of US citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, in person. The Brennan Center for Justice has estimated that 21 million people in the US "lack ready access to these documents," noting that "half of all Americans don’t have a passport, for example, and millions of married women who have changed their names might need to jump through extra hoops to vote."
"Make no mistake: The SAVE Act would stop millions of American citizens from voting," the Brennan Center wrote in an analysis of the legislation on Tuesday. "It would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress. It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb."
The co-chairs of the Not Above the Law Coalition placed the voter suppression bills in the context of Trump's "yearslong campaign of election lies and conspiracy to overturn the 2020 results" as well as "his recent attempts to nationalize election administration, and weaponization of the Department of Justice to intimidate voters and officials."
"Republicans are falling in line by attempting to silence American voters under the guise of 'election integrity,'" the coalition said. "House Republicans are doing Trump's bidding instead of holding him accountable. The real threats to election integrity sit in the White House and among those enabling his authoritarian agenda. Our democracy depends on rejecting this charade and confronting Trump's documented attacks on free and fair elections."
The Trump White House has publicly endorsed the SAVE Act amid mounting fears that the president—animated by false claims of large-scale voter fraud—is moving to undermine the midterm elections later this year.
"It will be up to Democrats to hold their ground and ensure the SAVE Act’s ultimate defeat. It will be up to all of us to not be fooled by the myths and the lies—and protect our elections so they remain free and fair," wrote Brennan Center president Michael Waldman. "And we should stand with election officials who now face threats of groundless criminal prosecution for doing their jobs."
"For voters, who must have the most powerful voice in our democracy," Waldman added, "the stakes are high, and getting higher."
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No, We Can’t Just Wait for Dictators to Die
If history proves anything when it comes to authoritarian fascists, it’s that patient optimism is not a virtue.
Feb 11, 2026
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of history at New York University; her Wikipedia biography describes her as “a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders.” With these credentials, she has written an opinion piece in the New York Times telling us that dictators and would-be dictators generally make their economies worse and lead a precarious existence. Their efforts often “backfire,” as she puts it.
While this theory might seem like comforting evidence that history “proves” that dictators will get their comeuppance, it is actually a counsel of passively sitting on our hands and waiting out the authoritarian leader: either to await his death, or hang on till he’s ousted from power by his own miscarrying plans. If history proves anything, it’s that patient optimism is not a virtue.
Ben-Ghiat's area of expertise is Benito Mussolini and the fascist era in Italy, and she uses him as an example of a dictator getting what’s coming to him. After surrounding himself with sycophants and employing consistently disastrous military strategies, Mussolini was deposed in 1943 by the Fascist Grand Council: “He spent his last years as the head of the Nazi puppet state the Republic of Salò, his phone tapped by the Germans. He was killed by anti-Fascist partisans in April 1945.”
His demise—being strung up like a side of beef at a Milan filling station—may have been poetic justice, but wasn’t the cost just a little too high? He ruled Italy for 21 years until he was deposed, and by the time of his death, much of the country was in ruins. Italian campaign veteran and Stars and Stripes cartoonist Bill Mauldin described the landscape as “ghostlike,” recalling walls standing in the moonlight surrounded by rubble, with empty, "single unblinking" windows looking out like eyes. That’s what tends to happen when a dictator’s plans backfire – he pulls the whole country down with him.
The author’s more contemporary example is Vladimir Putin. At the beginning of 2022, she says, Putin had it all, including gold toilet seats in his Crimean palace. But according to Ben-Ghiat, he invaded Ukraine to shore up his waning popularity, a move that did not work out as planned. The Russian dead have piled up, Russia has become more dependent on China, and the economy has sputtered under the burden of the war.
If the cultural constellation provides a measure of both elite and popular support, the dictator can endure for years.
But so what? Putin has been in power for 25 years, and shows no sign of going anywhere soon. Perhaps some faction in the army or the FSB might “terminate him with extreme prejudice” (as the phrase in Apocalypse Now termed an assassination), because they would be the only ones with the firepower to do so, but I suspect Putin’s likely successors would not transform Russia into another Denmark. And Ben-Ghiat undermines her own thesis by reminding us that Donald Trump shows every sign of being willing to bail Putin out of his international difficulties.
Unfortunately, dictatorial systems tend to be more durable than she thinks. How many times in the last four decades have we heard that the Iranian regime is on the point of collapse? Even a usually savvy observer of international relations like Lawrence Freedman has flatly claimed “the regime is doomed.” Perhaps in the long run Freedman will be proved right, but the people in Iran have to live in the short run.
And sometimes the long run is very long. North Korea, possibly the most repressive regime on the planet, has been run as a family business by the Kim dynasty for 78 years. With a per capita GDP that is less than one-sixtieth (note: not one-sixth, one sixtieth!) of South Korea’s, it is the most spectacular example in the world of how dictatorships ruin economies. It also experiences periodic famines. Famine is the single biggest marker for the total failure of a governing system; historically, the one thing any regime wanted to avoid was bread riots in the big cities. Ask the shades of Louis XVI or Tsar Nicholas about it.
Yet, if the regime is repressive enough, as North Korea’s is, it can use lack of food as a regime stabilizer. The army, the secret police, and the regime’s vocal supporters get food as a reward; access to enough calories to survive becomes the reward for loyalty. The rest, as in North Korea or China during the Great Leap Forward, can subsist on grass, wood shavings, and potato peels, and will be too physically debilitated to overthrow the system, even if a comprehensive system of surveillance and informers did not exist.
Donald Trump certainly does not have a hold on the United States like that of Kim Jong-un on North Korea, or Putin on Russia. But even in a “mild” dictatorship, the odds are high that living standards for the average person will decline, free speech will be stifled, and culture will stagnate into regime propaganda and kitsch. Social trust, already in steady decline in the United States since the 1960s, will crater to the levels of Somalia or Yemen.
Without social trust, the economy cannot be entrepreneurial and innovative (as opposed to crony-ridden and subsisting on government favoritism), and our civil society cannot be vibrant and voluntaristic with so many informers about. Art and intellectual activity will wither; our public universities, once the best in the world, will decline to the level of Bob Jones U. or Trump’s own fake university.
I believe that Ben-Ghiat fundamentally errs in emphasizing the dictator, rather than the political and social culture that allows a dictator to reach the top, and that can sustain him in power despite his disastrous mistakes. If the cultural constellation provides a measure of both elite and popular support, the dictator can endure for years.
There is a solid American base of popular backing for fascism, and Trump’s departure from the scene will not cause these people to come to their senses as if by magic.
As in all dictatorships, Trump has a circle of elite supporters. Only in this case, the extent of their international influence is orders of magnitude greater than any previous group of oligarchs. Our American class of billionaires, deci-billionaires, and centi-billionaires dearly loves Trump for the fact that the bribes they render unto him are smaller than the taxes they would have to pay in normal circumstances.
As a bonus, the billionaires receive no-bid contracts; the return on their investment is so great that the public groveling they must periodically perform is well worth it. These malefactors of great wealth will stand like a praetorian guard to protect the privileges they have received under Trump. Any attempt to return America to a functioning representative democracy under the rule of law cannot succeed over the long term unless there is a firm reckoning with our billionaire class.
Finally, dictators must have at least some popular support. Trump’s opponents must contend with the uncomfortable fact that in three consecutive presidential elections, the number of Americans who voted for him grew each time. There is a solid American base of popular backing for fascism, and Trump’s departure from the scene will not cause these people to come to their senses as if by magic.
Ben-Ghiat is trafficking in platitudes by saying that dictators make decisions that are terrible for their countries. That is the nature of dictators and the sycophants who fawn over them; competent and moral people are systematically weeded out of the governmental apparatus and replaced by yes-men. As Hannah Arendt observed 75 years ago:
Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.
None of this is to say that Trump and his goons cannot be levered out of power. But there is no basis for us to complacently wait for his mistakes to cause the scales to fall from the eyes of his supporters in a miraculous fashion. Making America a decent society will require a tough-mindedness and unflinching determination that Merrick Garland so conspicuously lacked when he had the chance. We must not fail the next chance.
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