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roger wicker
GOP Hawks Alarmed as Trump Mulls Deal to End His Illegal Iran War
"Nothing was accomplished by Operation Epic Fury except putting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in charge of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz," said one critic of the war.
May 24, 2026
President Donald Trump revealed on Saturday that he is mulling a deal that would end his illegal war with Iran, and some hawks within the Republican Party are expressing alarm.
According to a Sunday report in The New York Times, many details of the agreement to end the war remain murky, with the fate of Iran's enriched uranium up in the air. US and Iranian officials have also given contradictory messages about the proposed deal's contents, suggesting there is much work still to be done before any agreement is finalized.
Regardless, three hawkish GOP senators on Saturday raised major concerns about the contents of the deal, warning against accepting any agreement that will leave Iran in a stronger position than before Trump illegally launched a war against it without any authorization from Congress in late February.
"If it is perceived in the region that a deal with Iran allows the regime to survive and become more powerful over time, we will have poured gasoline on the conflicts in Lebanon and Iraq," wrote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who lobbied Trump to attack Iran repeatedly before the start of the war. "A deal that is perceived to allow Iran to survive and possess the ability to control the [Strait of Hormuz] in the future will put Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Shia militias in Iraq on steroids.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), another longtime Iran hawk, said he was "deeply concerned" about what he's been hearing about the deal and expressed particular worry about Iran getting relief from US sanctions while still maintaining the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
"If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime—still run by Islamists who chant 'death to America'—now receiving billions of dollars," Cruz wrote, "being able to enrich uranium and develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake."
Sen. Roger Wicker (D-Miss.) was even blunter in his condemnation of the reported agreement.
"The rumored 60-day ceasefire—with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith—would be a disaster," Wicker wrote. "Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!"
Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser for President Barack Obama, challenged Wicker's claims that Trump's illegal war had achieved anything of value.
"Nothing was accomplished by Operation Epic Fury," Rhodes wrote, "except putting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in charge of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz."
Rhodes' criticism was echoed by Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who wrote that "everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury is already for naught."
Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, accused the Iran hawks of being delusional for thinking further bombing would force Iran to capitulate.
"DC's Iran hawks got two wars, nearly every conceivable sanction designation, a blockade, threw a wrench in global economy," Vaez wrote, "and will still claim that just a little more pressure and a touch more bombing will magically yield the concessions they still won't be satisfied with."
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Trump Has Taken a Wrecking Ball to Good Governance
To our misfortune, the main aim of the present administration is “pillage and plunder,” so as to feed private coffers.
May 24, 2026
This president’s proclivity for deploying distractions to avert public scrutiny of what’s really going on and what the effects are, has consequences far beyond the obfuscation of illicit activity. Outlandish assertions cover up the undermining of democratic principles and the evisceration of critical institutions. National capacity to address our most critical concerns is severely hampered. Most nefarious is the theft of a decent future from young Americans.
In the 20 months since President Donald Trump took office, he has overwhelmed public discourse with a virtual tsunami of distractions. The theme of all of them, some personal, some national, some international, is domination.
- Perpetual Bluster: “I’m in charge; I’m on top of this; I keep winning in Iran”—over and over again.
- Acquisition Aspirations: Encroaching on other countries’ sovereignty—Canada, Greenland, Venezuela, Cuba.
- Grandiose Building Projects Aimed at Redefining National Identity: A gigantic ballroom, a triumphal arch, a rehabbed national arts center.
- Reverberations of “Dear Leader”: Affixing his name to major institutions, his picture on paper currency and passports.
- Arbitrary Prosecutions and Harassment: Indictments regardless of cause—James Comey, John Bolton, Letitia James.
There is frequently a measure of verisimilitude to these moves, yet the timing of their announcement usually coincides with developments that the administration would rather the public not heed. Included are links to Jeffrey Epstein, subverting the independence of the Department of Justice, suspicious stock market windfalls. That the media feels obliged to report the distractions as news may be understandable, but the result is that they become complicit in promoting increasingly outrageous distortions.
Good governance is defined by the concentration of attention to matters central to public welfare, not only in the moment, but in the long term. This is what we count on from our elected leaders. To our misfortune, the main aim of the present administration is “pillage and plunder,” so as to feed private coffers. Beyond covering up seedy, illicit, and corrosive activity, these manufactured diversions detract from a focus on addressing common needs.
Rather than expending the energy to mislead, our government should be about injecting consideration of the following concerns into public discourse. Sidelining them will likely be this administration’s most enduring legacy.
- Education: American public education is in crisis. Across the country, students’ academic performance is worse than it was a decade ago. From a recent New York Times story, reading scores were down last year in over 80% of school districts. Math scores were down in 70% of districts.
- Healthcare: The US ranks highest among developed countries in the cost of healthcare. The recent elimination of Affordable Care Act subsidies will further erode access to adequate coverage for middle- and lower-income individuals.
- Home Ownership: Owning a home is largely out of reach for young people and those of lesser means. Because of wage stagnation, low housing inventory, and high interest rates, many younger buyers can’t afford to buy a home.
- Climate Imbalance: Extreme weather events are highly probable going forward, the risks magnified by heat reinforcing carbon emissions. Increased hobbling of emergency management capabilities will make matters worse. El Niño’s anticipated arrival will produce a marked increase in natural disasters this year.
- Financial Stability: The national debt is now closing in on $40 trillion, larger than our Gross National Product. The only precedent for this was at the end of WWII. But that level of debt was directly related to the demands of a world-wide conflict, into which we had been drawn.
- Energy Affordability: The Iran War has hamstrung the availability of energy from fossil fuels. Along with AI’s voracious appetite for electricity and the increased demand for AC to keep us cool, the nation’s energy infrastructure is likely to be stretched thin in the years ahead.
The near total absence of governmental attention to these and other critical areas, amid countless distractions, is not just dangerous, it’s effectively suicidal. Palpable is the probability of a stunted future for all of us. But most of the burden and suffering will fall on the shoulders of the youngest among us—on whom the nation depends for its future safety and well-being.
We’re witnessing machinations aimed at covering up crimes that result in neglect which most severely harms those citizens who will be responsible for creating a livable future.
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The Roberts Court Is Pushing the US Toward Existential Conflict
By gutting the Voting Rights Act and granting President Donald Trump irmmunity, the Supreme Court has helped set up a fight over the future of US democracy.
May 24, 2026
Is the United States headed for a second Civil War? According to a survey of likely midterm voters published by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, 57% of Americans believe it is. Sixty-nine percent say democracy is under serious threat; and an equal percentage of non-white voters say they fear rising white supremacy.
While President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement deserve the lion’s share of blame for such findings, the Supreme Court has done its part. Under the stewardship of Chief Justice John Roberts, the court has issued a blistering succession of dangerously polarizing rulings, ranging from presidential immunity, union organizing, the death penalty, environmental protection, and gun control to affirmative action and abortion rights. The resulting jurisprudential carnage has accelerated the nation’s rupture into irreconcilable belligerent tribes and prompted speculation that we are headed for another existential conflict.
The Roberts Court has taken a particularly malevolent interest in destroying the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. Last month’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais gutted Section 2 of the landmark legislation, which was amended in 1982 to permit the Justice Department and private citizens to challenge election laws that have the effect of diluting minority voting power.
The court’s 6-3 majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito invalidated Louisiana’s 2024 congressional map that created a second majority-Black congressional district to operate alongside the state’s five white-majority districts, roughly reflecting the size of Louisiana’s Black population. The ruling handed a victory to the lead plaintiff in the case, Phillip “Bert” Callais, an election denier and alleged conspiracy theorist who had attended the January 6, 2021 “Stop the Steal” rally on the White House Ellipse that eventually snowballed into the insurrection at the Capitol. Barely concealing their racial animus, Callais and his co-plaintiffs described themselves in court filings as “non-African American voters” who were the victims of reverse discrimination. Louisiana has since moved to redraw its voting maps.
Neutering the Voting Rights Act represents the culmination of Roberts’ lifelong calling and warrants his ranking alongside Taney as the most disgraceful chief justice in history.
With the demise of the “effects test,” future Section 2 plaintiffs will have to meet the nearly impossible burden of proving that redistricting maps were created with overt discriminatory intent rather than for political purposes. And as the court held in a 2019 opinion written by Roberts in Rucho v. Common Cause, political gerrymandering claims cannot be brought in federal courts because, as the Republican majority sees it, they present nonjusticiable “political questions.”
Both Callais and Rucho built upon Roberts’ 2013 majority opinion in Shelby County v. Alabama gutting two other sections of the VRA that required state and local jurisdictions with histories of egregious voter discrimination to obtain advance federal approval—known as preclearance—before making changes to their election procedures. Like Alito in Callais, Roberts declared in Shelby that racial discrimination in voting was a thing of the past and thus special protections for minorities were no longer necessary.
The combined effects of Shelby and Rucho have led to a proliferation of voting roll purges, onerous photo ID laws, and limitations on mail-in ballots in red states across the country. Now, with Callais, election law experts predict that as many as 19 Democratic congressional seats in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana could be eliminated, returning the former states of the Confederacy to one-party rule.
The court’s handiwork has sparked outrage and alarm. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the only Democrat in Mississippi’s congressional delegation, who will likely lose his seat to gerrymandering, has condemned Callais as “equivalent to a second Civil War.” Other observers have compared the current moment in the US to the 1850s, when debates over the future of slavery eventually led to secession and war.
Chief Justice Roberts has also drawn comparisons to Chief Justice Roger Taney, whose 1857 majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford held that Black Americans had “no rights that the white man was bound to respect.” The Dred Scott decision helped precipitate the Civil War, and is widely considered the most infamous in the court’s history.
The parallels between Taney and Roberts are beyond hyperbole. Both men began their legal careers as zealous partisan political advocates. Before ascending to the Supreme Court in 1836, Taney was elected to the General Assembly of Maryland, and later served as a loyal foot soldier to President Andrew Jackson, first as secretary of war and then as attorney general, in which capacity he penned an advisory opinion that prefigured his Dred Scott ruling, arguing that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were inapplicable to Black people, even those living in free states.
Similarly, the young Roberts established himself as a dependable right-wing operative, clerking for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and afterward serving as special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith in the Reagan administration. There, he authored upward of 25 memos opposing the 1982 amendment that added the effects test to the Voting Rights Act in addition to ghosting op-eds for Smith and preparing administration officials for their testimony before Congress on the test. Later, as an attorney in private practice, he played an important role as a consultant, lawsuit editor, and prep coach for the GOP’s legal arguments in the run-up to Bush v. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 presidential election.
Neutering the Voting Rights Act represents the culmination of Roberts’ lifelong calling and warrants his ranking alongside Taney as the most disgraceful chief justice in history. As the civil rights activist and writer William Spivey argued in an essay published earlier this month in the online journal Level:
Taney held that no Black person, free or enslaved, could ever be a US citizen. He believed that Black people were not part of the political community and the Constitution was written for white men only.
Chief Justice Roberts has been more effective than anyone in disenfranchising Black people. Most of what Taney accomplished can be traced to a single decision that remained in place for 11 years before being reversed [by the 13th and 14th Amendments]. Roberts has spent an entire career whittling away at the Voting Rights Act of 1965, affirmative action and, most recently, the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement.
Roberts will also be remembered for composing the majority opinion in Trump v. United States in 2024 that gave the president near-complete immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts. That decision, along with the evisceration of voting rights, has emboldened Trump to threaten the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the military to polling places and hatch other plots to rig the midterm elections and consolidate Republican power.
It may be premature to conclude a new Civil War is upon us, but a high-stakes battle for the future of the country is well underway.
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The 'Autopsy' Written by a Corpse
Stay as far away as you can from this DNC report. Trust me.
May 24, 2026
After an extended pressure campaign, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin finally agreed to release the DNC’s “autopsy report” on the 2024 election. It’s the first document I’ve ever read that would have been better if it had been written by AI. Martin himself said the report “does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards.” That’s for damn sure. As we’ll see, however, that doesn’t let Martin off the hook.
I downloaded the document before reviewing my news feed, where I quickly learned that many like-minded people began exactly as I did: by searching for the word “Gaza.” Result? “Not found.” I then tried “Palestine.” Result? “Not found.” How about “Israel”? “Not found.”
These omissions are particularly striking since one activist group was told by report author Paul Rivera that DNC data showed that the administration’s support for the Gaza genocide was, “in their words, a ‘net-negative’ in the 2024 election.” Axios, which reported on that exchange, added that it “independently verified that Democratic officials conducting the autopsy believed the issue harmed the party’s standing with some voters.”
RootsAction was one of the groups pressing for the autopsy’s release, and co-founder Jeff Cohen called the document “almost worthless.” Cohen condemned the failure to mention “the Biden/Harris administration’s Israel policy that abetted the Gaza massacre,” Biden’s initial decision to run for re-election, and what he called Kamala Harris’ “lack of principles.”
Other words that can’t be found in the autopsy include “war,” “military,” “defense” (in the military sense), “peace,” “Medicare,” and “Social Security.” The report fails to address either the US’ runaway military spending or the ongoing attempts to undermine the country’s social contract.
The report’s only conceivable value will be for future anthropologists, who will find it provides considerable insight into the culture and folkways of the professional Democratic class. Its introduction reads like the kind of word salad a teenager might come up with when asked to write a 1200-word essay on a topic they forgot to study. There’s a lot of meandering, some restatements of the assignment, and a hastily looked-up quotation. Don’t read it unless you’re prepared to wade through prose like this:
... the voters decide which choice is most resonant. One party declares itself the winner, and the other party declares that the fight is far from finished.
Effective parties, understanding history rarely repeats itself, it does often rhyme, make it a point to study electoral outcomes after each cycle to identify potential improvements to every aspect of their campaigns. John Adams argued ‘"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right…and a desire to know."
Believe me, it doesn’t get any better from there.
The document is 192 pages long, but many of those pages are blank. The page called “Leadership Message”: blank. (Any comment about that would be like shooting fish in a barrel.) “Executive Summary”: blank. And so on.
The section entitled “Electoral Landscape” includes sentences like this: “We must organize everywhere to Win Anywhere”—which doesn’t make any sense. You don’t have to organize everywhere to win anywhere. And Democrats already win somewhere! Those “somewheres” are called “Blue States.” The problem is they have to win more “somewheres,” and you can’t win somewhere if you’re “everywhere”! You have to be there to win there!
The next sentence begins, “Winning Anywhere means providing for a renewed focus on the voters of Middle America and the South ...” Wait. One sentence ago we were everywhere. Now we’re in Middle America and the South, which happen to be two readily-identifiable somewheres.
That’s what consultant-speak will do to the human mind.
The document, perhaps unsurprisingly, praises the centrist Democratic orientation of the late 1980s and 1990s. But the same pro-corporate orientation contributed heavily to the party’s 2024 losses. That’s what you get what you call on a party to emulate the centrists’ “future-focused directive”—by adopting a 40-year-old strategy.
The report also states that “the DNC and ASDC (Association of State Democratic Parties) have conducted more than 1200 interviews to assess the health of our 57 state parties—in every state, district, or territory.” Where are those interviews?
Martin reportedly told DNC members that Rivera no longer “is with or advises the DNC in any capacity.” But the buck stops with the boss, not the consultant.
I get it; Martin has a tough job. But he campaigned for his position by promising an autopsy. When Rivera’s proved to be unusable, Martin was obliged to have it re-done. By failing to do so, he reneged on his campaign promise. In the meantime, a little transparency would have gone a long way toward avoiding the mess he now faces.
Don’t read the DNC document unless you’re a masochist or a journalist (provided there’s a difference between the two). Read this one instead. Stay far away from the DNC report. Trust me, you’ll “win somewhere” by being anywhere else.Keep ReadingShow Less
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