SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
memorial day
A Memorial Day Reminder: Not One Post-9/11 War Has Been Worth It
Our leaders continue to spend money on wars they think will make the United States the undisputed power in the world—wars that instead kill millions of people abroad, endanger US troops, and make life harder at home.
May 25, 2026
As Memorial Day approached, polls showed nearly two-thirds of US voters oppose the war against Iran. They’re right. After decades of war since 9/11, Americans now largely agree: War isn’t worth it.
The Iran war has killed thousands of Iranians and Lebanese and displaced hundreds of thousands more. People in poor countries around the world are facing fuel shortages, power outages, and food insecurity, with much worse to come.
Here in the United States, the war has already cost more than $50 billion, and the cost is only going up—not just at the gas pump but in opportunity. For that $50 billion, we could have paid for healthcare for 3 million people in this country and gotten about 1.5 million kids into Head Start, according to the Institute for Policy Studies National Priorities Project.
Which makes us safer?
For the $16 trillion the US had spent on the military after 9/11 before the Iran war, we could have made transformative investments in healthcare, education, and renewable energy.
President Donald Trump would like us to believe that no price is too high to stop Iran’s “nuclear threat.” But Iran isn’t a nuclear threat. Year after year, including 2026, US intelligence agencies agreed that Iran is not building nuclear weapons.
In 2015, Iran agreed to cut its stockpile of enriched uranium, reduce its reactors, and submit to unprecedentedly intrusive United Nations inspections. The United States, in return, agreed to end many of the sanctions that were crippling Iran’s economy.
It worked. Intelligence agencies around the world, including in the United States, agreed that Iran was complying. UN inspectors kept a watchful eye on Iran’s reactors, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz flowed freely, and Iran was still not trying to build a nuclear weapon, maintaining that a bomb would violate Islamic law.
However, Trump tore up the agreement in 2018. He didn’t pretend Iran was violating it; he just claimed he could “get a better deal.” He couldn’t.
Instead, Trump joined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ratcheted up threats against Iran. Eventually, those threats turned into reality—first in a short-term bombing campaign in June 2025 and then a full-scale US-Israeli war this year.
Despite repeated ceasefire declarations and claims from the White House that “we’ve won,” the war continues months later. Thousands are dead, gas prices are shockingly high, and the Strait of Hormuz (which was running fine before Trump trampled the nuclear deal) remains largely closed.
It’s easy to say that diplomacy works and war does not. That’s not just a statement of principle—it’s the truth.
Diplomacy is the only strategy that’s ever worked to change Iran’s behavior. It wasn’t because the US asked nicely. It was because the US negotiated seriously; changed its own aggressive behavior; and stopped using its economic, political, and strategic power as acts of war against Iran.
Is this war worth the human, economic, or environmental costs? Clearly not. You could say the same of Trump’s other second-term conflicts—including his support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and his attacks on Somalia, Yemen, Venezuela, and Nigeria.
In fact, today most Americans would agree that none of the major wars in this country’s recent memory have been worthwhile—not in Vietnam, Central America, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iraq again.
For the $16 trillion the US had spent on the military after 9/11 before the Iran war, we could have made transformative investments in healthcare, education, and renewable energy. We could have erased student debt and virtually wiped out child poverty at home and globally.
Instead, our leaders continue to spend money on wars they think will make the United States the undisputed power in the world—wars that instead kill millions of people abroad, endanger US troops, and make life harder at home.
Veterans know this. “The US has been at war in one form or another since my deployment in the Persian Gulf, 36 years ago,” said Michael McPhearson, executive director of Veterans for Peace.
“Trillions of tax dollars spent, thousands of US military service members dead, and tens of thousands wounded. The toll on the rest of the world is even more staggering, while warmongers and those who send us to war get richer,” he added.
“It’s time to invest in people and life and stop spending money on death and destruction,” McPhearson said.
I agree—and so do most Americans.
This piece was originally published in DC Journal.
Keep ReadingShow Less
This Memorial Day Weekend, Americans Will Spend $3.5 Billion More on Gas Thanks to Trump's Iran War
The average household has already paid an additional $291 for gas since the war began and could spend $1,450 by year's end.
May 20, 2026
Americans' travel plans for this Memorial Day weekend have gotten a lot more expensive as a result of President Donald Trump's war with Iran.
A tracker released on Wednesday by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) projects that Americans will collectively spend an extra $3.5 billion on gas over the holiday weekend due to the global rise in oil costs.
The costs of gas have risen sharply, to above $4.50 per gallon across the US on average, as a result of Iran's restriction of travel through the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the war that the US and Israel launched at the end of February.
“Americans were already struggling with the high cost of living before this war started,” said Carl Davis, research director at ITEP. “The fact that their summer travel plans just got a whole lot more expensive isn’t going to help with that.”
Using publicly available data and price forecasts from the US Energy Information Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, and the US Census Bureau, ITEP determined that as a result of the war, Americans have paid about $39.6 billion in additional gas costs in less than three months since the war began.
It is projected that if current conditions continue, the total cost would be about $193 billion by the end of the year.
The average household has already paid an additional $291 for gas since the war began and could spend $1,450 by year's end. However, the cost varies by region, and the tool allows users to estimate their household's added cost based on where they live and how many family members they have.
The tracker only accounts for increased gasoline prices. It does not include price hikes caused by the war on other essentials, such as home utilities and food. Federal data released earlier this month showed that inflation has surged to its highest level since May 2023.
It also does not account for the amount of taxpayer dollars spent on the war. Pentagon officials said that it had cost $25 billion in April, though other independent estimates have placed the total cost much higher.
As Trump flails in response to rising prices, which have driven his approval ratings to their lowest low of his second term, he has proposed suspending federal gas taxes. Lawmakers in both parties have introduced bills that would temporarily suspend the tax, which adds an extra 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel.
However, ITEP argued that these proposals would be "ineffective as they offer very little relief to families" and that they "also run the risk of straining public budgets at a time when governments at all levels are facing some of the same higher costs as the public brought on by this war."
Keep ReadingShow Less
We Salute, Then We Abandon: The Betrayal of America’s Veterans
We’ve built a system that honors veterans with ceremony but abandons them in practice. The Trump administration’s spending priorities only make this worse.
May 27, 2025
The draft notice came on May 28, 1968—just a few days after high school graduation. He’d been working nights at the mill since February, saving up for a car. It was the first big thing he’d ever bought: a 1969 Pontiac Firebird, deep blue, four-barrel V8. He didn’t even have plates on it yet. His plan was to spend the summer driving—county roads, lakeside highways, maybe as far as Colorado if the money stretched. That was the future, as far as he could see it: a car, a road, freedom.
He figured he’d be back in a year or two. He felt certain of it—sure that the country asking for his service would still be there to welcome him home.
His uncle helped him bring the Firebird out to the farm and back it into the barn. They threw a tarp over the hood like they were sealing something up for safekeeping. When he returned, he thought, he’d pull it off, turn the key, and drive like no time had passed.
At the same moment funding was being clawed back from veterans sleeping in cars, Congress was being asked to greenlight unprecedented new spending on weapons, drones, and missile systems.
What he didn’t know—what no one tells you in the recruiter’s office or in the grainy footage of presidents giving speeches—is how long it takes to feel like you’ve really come home. Or what it feels like to live in a country that thanks you for your service but resents having to keep its promise.
That Firebird was sold 20 years ago to cover a surgery Veterans Affairs (VA) wouldn’t pay for. The barn’s long gone too. And now, in his 70s, the man who once covered that car with a tarp sits at a kitchen table with a blinking laptop and a stack of printouts, trying to navigate a benefits portal that feels like it was built to confuse him. He clicks through broken links, resubmits forms, dials numbers that go to voicemail. He’s not afraid of war anymore. He’s afraid of being forgotten. Of being told there’s no record of his claim. Of finding out too late that the service he relied on has been quietly defunded.
This year, Memorial Day arrived with its usual rituals—flag-raising, wreath-laying, the half-mast slow choreography of remembrance. But beneath the ceremony, something else is happening. Just days after taking office, the Trump administration launched a freeze on federal financial assistance across dozens of programs, including those housed within the Department of Veterans Affairs. Memo M-25-13 ordered agencies to halt disbursements for any grant or aid program considered inconsistent with the administration’s values. No list was released. No criteria published. By 5:00 pm the following day, payments were to stop.
The impact on veterans was immediate and severe. More than 44 VA-supported programs were effectively frozen overnight. The Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF)—a backbone initiative that helps tens of thousands of veterans each year stay housed through rental assistance, case management, and emergency aid—was halted. The Grant and Per Diem (GPD) program, which funds transitional housing, peer mentorship, and reintegration for unhoused veterans, was put on hold. Legal aid clinics that help veterans resolve fines, access overdue benefits, and prevent evictions had their funding suspended or marked for review. Suicide prevention programs lost staffing and stability. Hotline response times lengthened. Providers pulled back outreach. Veterans called in, asking the same questions over and over: Is my housing still covered? Is the program still running? Will anyone still pick up the phone?
In many cases, the people on the other end didn’t have answers. Some had already been laid off.
After a wave of lawsuits and public outcry, a federal court issued an injunction. The memo was withdrawn, but the strategy was not. The administration made clear that programs centered on housing, reintegration, climate resilience, or “nontraditional” care models would remain under scrutiny. Meanwhile, federal officials quietly sunsetted the VA Servicing Purchase Program—a pandemic-era mortgage relief tool that allowed the VA to purchase delinquent loans and offer more affordable terms to struggling veterans. Over 5,000 veterans avoided foreclosure because of that program. There was no press release. No transition. Just silence.
Then Trump proposed the largest defense budget in American history: over $1 trillion for 2026. It was a stunning figure, even in a country accustomed to massive Pentagon spending. But what made it feel grotesque was the timing. At the same moment funding was being clawed back from veterans sleeping in cars, Congress was being asked to greenlight unprecedented new spending on weapons, drones, and missile systems. A trillion for war. But nothing for the woman calling a crisis line after her motel voucher runs out. Nothing for the outreach team trying to find a veteran living under an overpass. Nothing for the caseworker explaining to yet another caller that the check might be delayed.
This isn’t about belt-tightening. It’s about priorities. And those priorities have consequences.
Across the country, nonprofits that deliver VA-funded services are shrinking. Some are shutting down. Others are operating with skeleton crews, working double shifts to prevent people from falling through the cracks. Suicide rates among veterans remain stubbornly high—nearly double the civilian average. Women veterans, now one of the fastest-growing homeless populations in the U.S., are bearing the brunt of service gaps and shelter closures. In cities like Phoenix, Cleveland, and San Diego, outreach teams report rising waitlists, rising anxiety, and rising numbers of veterans returning for help they were once stable enough to no longer need.
The policy is abstract. The harm is not.
This isn’t about a man and his Firebird. It’s about the distance between what we say and what we do. It’s about the uncomfortable truth that we’ve built a system that honors veterans with ceremony but abandons them in practice. A system where aid is conditional, where services are quietly withdrawn, and where the paperwork is designed to wear people down.
We do not honor the dead by abandoning the living. We do not preserve freedom by gutting the systems that make it real. And we do not fulfill our patriotic duties by breaking the promises made to the very people who upheld them.
Memorial Day has passed. But the test it asks of us—who we are, what we stand for, and who we stand with—remains.
So the question is this: Will we salute once a year and forget by Tuesday? Or will we become a nation that matches its pageantry with policy, its slogans with service, its rhetoric with resources?
Veterans do not need ceremony. They need care. They need consistency. They need housing. They need healthcare. They need legal aid. They need a country that doesn’t ask them to prove again and again that they are worth helping.
And they need it now.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular