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Whew. It's been a time: "Open the Fuckin' Strait," "A whole civilization will die," puerile threats, boundless botches and cover-ups, deranged lurches into ballrooms, auto-pens, Davy Crockett, and a media sanewashing it all. And when their slapstick "ceasefire" and "peace talks" imploded, our Supreme Leader was at a UFC cage match watching men batter each other bloody for fun and profit. Then he depicted himself as Jesus, with a hotel on the moon. Breaking: "The president has lost his mind."
It's a historic given that the final act of any narcissist is inevitably a descent into psychosis. Thus are we now witnessing - and struggling to survive - the mayhem of "history's dumbest madman," a toddler with a gun, a Dunning-Kruger president with a brain of moldering oatmeal as supremely confident as he is utterly ignorant, leading to dazzling insights like, "I'll know the war is over when I feel it in my bones." A criminal braggart and loathsome human being, he is above all extraordinarily stupid, giving rise to the first time in history you can post, "He's an idiot," and 90% of the world knows who you're talking about. It may also be the first time aggrieved, enraged citizens regularly say of their purported leader, "Die as soon as possible, you child-raping worthless fuck."
Today, we find ourselves mired in "the worst-run war in US history," a witless war conducted mostly by thumb by "a depraved idiot" with no plan, no map, no clue, inexorably morphed into the "Worst. Ceasefire. Ever." In his staggering stupidity, Trump has done more damage to American status, power and respect in weeks than any adversary did in decades, experts say, empowering and enriching Russia, China and Iran while endlessly, mindlessly declaring, Baghdad-Bob-like, "victory" over "obliterated" enemy forces. Abetted by a cabal of inept sycophants whose "collective incompetence is unprecedented," a demented old crook who relishes carnage has rendered America a rogue state lacking all credibility, a beleaguered world's preeminent villain and laughingstock.
In the lead-up to his illegal war, the chaos begun on Day One had already wildly escalated, blunders coming fast and lethal. He gutted measures to reduce civilian casualties, decommissioned minesweepers, fired judge advocate generals who keep military action within international law, did no planning for the economic fallout, stupefyingly ignored warnings about Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz - universally deemed by anyone who's glanced at a map or history book the key vulnerability in Middle East geopolitics. The result: A Wild West lack of accountability that on the first day saw a US strike slaughter some 175 Iranian schoolgirls, an atrocity first met with lies and denials, then silence and as yet no apology from any American representative.
We've since seen a flood of senseless, trash-talking claims, threats and whiplash deadlines that sound either like a rabid 10-year-old schoolyard bully, a pissed-off late-night text to a mob sweetheart who hasn't called back, or a ransom note in crayon: "If they don't make a deal, I am blowing up everything," "Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today,” "WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!", "If it goes well we'll settle, otherwise we'll keep bombing our little hearts out," "TAKE THE OIL & MAKE A FORTUNE," "48 hours before all Hell will reign (sic) down," "We will bomb Iran back into the Stone ages (sic)." They're so dumb Iran trolls him online: When he claimed (fictional) “good and productive talks," they echoed him with a smiley face and, "To the president of peace."
They, and the world, were less amused when he went full genocidal and proclaimed, "Power Plant Day and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one. Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards," with a jeering, "Praise be to Allah," and then the more bonkers, "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again." Still-spineless legacy media translated that into, "Mr. Trump issued a new ultimatum." For Easter, Jonathan Larsen noted the day would be "commemorated with the traditional threatening of the war crimes (with the) ritual repetition of deadlines and horrific consequences...(The) incantation was followed (by) the miracle of the levitating oil prices. They were risen." The Strait, Iran officials asserted, "will not be opened through the ridiculous spectacle (of) the president of the United States." His name, they wrote, "will be etched in history as a supreme war criminal.”
Another deadline shuffled, the madness by "a dangerous delinquent idiot" went on. At a surreal Easter Egg Roll, he ranted about Iran's fighters beside a bewildered Easter Bunny, babbled to the assembled, equally baffled kids about Biden's auto-pen, insisted bombing was good for Iranian children, and silently stared down a reporter who asked about war crimes, stonily turning away with, "What else?" He gave a droopy, gibberish speech about America's "overwhelming victories on the battlefield,” though there haven't been any battles and "the whelmingest victory" was against a girls' school. It was rote stale lies, noted Colbert: "All the stuff you’ve heard before, delivered by a narcotized turtle” who'd disastrously "started a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle" and then walked away.
Online, amidst a war, he's ceaselessly spewed batshit claptrap: He raged at Somali Americans, wondered if Jasmine Crockett is related to Davy Crockett, trashed Bill Maher and "dried-up old prune" Springsteen (LOL), obsessed over his ballroom and Hitler-esque arch. He said "we can’t take care of daycare" or Medicaid/ Medicare "little scams" because we need more war; speaking of, he posted a bizarre, pre-Bonespurs photo of himself in military garb. He danced, partied as tankers burned, danced again: "Young man, there's no need to feel down!" Letting his homicidal freak flag fly, he fundraised off images of dead soldiers - him in his fucking baseball cap - and lied their families urged the war on. One non-fan: "He has the empathy of a serial killer."
He's also brazenly saber-rattled - the US military can do "whatever it wants in the world" - and blasphemed - God supports the war because He/She "wants to see people taken care of." Umm. Add the "heretical Christianist gibberish" of bombastic ghoul Drunk Pete - who's giddily celebrated “death and destruction from the sky," urged war-crimey "no quarter" against enemies, and prayed for "overwhelming violence against those who deserve no mercy" - and even devoutly apolitical church leaders have protested, "There are no new crusades. If God is present in this war, He is among those who are dying." Noted Pope Leo, "Jesus, King of Peace, does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: Your hands are full of blood.’"
Following in a long, grim American tradition, the regime's hands may prove more bloody than we know. Despite an "investigation" into the massacre of Iranian schoolgirls, there's been no accountability and many deem it unlikely there will ever be. Meanwhile, multiple reports suggest a series of cover-ups by officials seeking to hide the deadly cost of a catastrophic war nobody wants. A new report accuses military leaders of a "casualty cover-up," charging they're issuing “low-ball and outdated figures" of U.S. casualties of up to 750 Americans killed or wounded. Unsurprisingly, the chest-thumping, out-of-his-depth, lying- his-way-out-of-sexual-assault-charges Drunktank Pete is often at the center of reported deceptions, with angry soldiers themselves calling them out.
Survivors have disputed his account of a deadly March 1 Iranian drone attack in Kuwait that killed six U.S. soldiers and wounded dozens, with almost 40 hospitalized. Soldiers describe a grisly scene with many head wounds, perforated eardrums and shrapnel hits to abdomens and limbs; The Great Empathizer infamously shrugged off the carnage with, "That's the way it is." Hegseth claimed the drone was a "squirter," an anomaly that "squeaked through" a well-fortified operations center. But survivors call bullshit, saying they were left "unprepared to provide any defense." "Calling it a squirter is a falsehood," said one, citing "a bunch of little tin buildings” unprotected from the sky, in "a deeply unsafe area" not just within range of Iran's missiles but a known potential target. On the degree of fortification, he said, "I would put it in the 'none' category."
A new WaPo story also disputes Hegseth claims about Iran's losses that fail to line up with intel and reality. Despite his persistent boasts that Tehran's military might has been "decimated" by U.S. forces' "complete control of Iranian skies" in now-"uncontested airspace,“ experts say Iran still has over half its missile launchers and thousands of medium- and short-range ballistic weapons that can be repaired or pulled from underground facilities. They also say his focus on the number of Iran's missile launches is "a dumb metric" that ignores what matters: Not their volume, but their precision, or "hit rates," which are increasing as their strategy evolves. In another nod to his cluelessness, they note the downing of an F-15 and subsequent rescue of its airman - itself a suspected cover-up of a failed mission - is "what happens when you have air superiority but not air supremacy."
Finally, many have suggested a cover-up of possible sabotage on the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the Navy’s $13 billion crown jewel, which has morphed into a sort of McHale's Navy "Voyage of the Damned" for a war-weary crew of about 4,500 sailors stuck in a record-breaking 11th month of deployment. "It’s on fire. It’s heading to Greece. And the toilets don’t work," runs one succinct summary of its series of mishaps, from the breakdown of over 600 toilets - also suspected as sabotage - to a laundry-room fire that raged for 30 hours, caused far greater damage than initially reported, and left some 600 sailors sleeping on floors and tables before the ship limped to Greece for repairs. The Navy is now investigating whether the fire was deliberately set,
Between lies, blunders, mutinies against mindless wars and an addled Commander Bonespurs who doesn't know how batteries work, some WH officials have reportedly "raised concerns" - thanks legacy media - if lackeys are "explaining the evolving complexity of the conflict" to him. Seriously? The guy claims he invented the word "groceries," thinks migrants come from insane asylums, and gets his daily info from a two-minute video of "stuff blowing up" (which has never ended a war, except in Hiroshima) so what are the odds? This weekend, he again displayed his strategic acumen by railing against a (female) reporter who asked about the Strait. "We win, no matter what," he snapped. "We've defeated their military, it's all at the bottom of the sea (with sharks!), their leaders are dead. With all that, lets see what happens. But from my standpoint, I don't care."
Neither, apparently, do the whip-smart, deeply knowledgeable "negotiators" - a corrupt slumlord, clueless golf bro and creep who fucks couches - who just went to Pakistan for "peace talks." Less than shockingly, they gave up in under 24 hours and fled home empty-handed. According to Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the Ugly Americans "derailed" the talks with "maximalist demands and shifting goalposts" just as the two sides were "inches away" from an agreement. "Zero lessons learned," Araghchi wrote. "Good will begets good will. Enmity begets enmity.” Profoundly weirdly - and aptly for this timeline - at the same moment J.D. was announcing their failure, Trump, slathered in clown makeup, was entering Miami's Kaseya Center to watch two men beat up each other, or pretend to, in a UFC cage match.
With Kid Rock blaring and accompanied by assorted bottom-feeders - UFC's Dana White, rapper Vanilla Ice, a few of his evil spawn and a hammered-looking, dead-eyed Marco Rubio who bafflingly skipped seeking peace, which is kinda his job, for this - Trump strutted into his last MAGA chud safe space, a symptom of the decline of Western civilization and a tacky haven for people who get off on watching other people get hurt. Last year, Trump was loudly cheered here; this year, he was cheered and booed, not a good sign for his shot at the UFC Peace Prize. Amidst our many crises, people mulled why Rubio was there. One sage: "He makes Trump look tall." Others: "This ain’t a cabinet. It’s a junk drawer," "This is not serious leadership. It’s amateur hour,” and "What a circus."
Trump, a fat, clumsy, longtime manosphere wannabe, watched the fighting intensely from ringside, occasionally dodging blood and spit, oblivious to the madness of attending a fucking cage match as the world burns. Ever-dazzled by celebrity, he went gaga for Brazil’s Paulo Costa when the fighter came over to shake his teeny, rotting hand. “You’re a beautiful guy," Trump crooned. "You could be a model, you look so good.” Filmmaker Jeremy Newberger: “This montage of dueling events" - UFC vs. war and peace - "would be the denouement of The Godfather Part VII: Corleone Nights, a straight to video release by a second cousin of Francis Ford Coppola’s tax attorney." We are adrift in a dumpster-fire idiocracy, wading through Trump's opus, I Really Don't Care, Do U?
The next day, he announced a blockade to block the blockade that’s blocking the Strait of Hormuz that wasn’t blocked before he caused it to be. "Any Iranian who fires at us, will be BLOWN TO HELL!" he bellowed. "We are fully 'LOCKED AND LOADED.'" He went on Fox, babbling about the Gulf of Trump and stunning into wide-eyed silence Maria Bartiromo when she asked if he thought gas prices would be lower by the midterms. "I hope so. I mean, I think so. It could be," he yammered. "It could be or the same or maybe a little bit higher." Online, he (again) trashed Pope Leo, who's "weak on crime," for being against war. Rep. Ted Lieu, who earlier reminded the military not to obey illegal orders, added, "If you receive an illegal order to attack the Vatican, you will also disobey that order."
In a social media frenzy, he rage-posted 12 times through Sunday night. He posted an AI image of a Trump Hotel on the moon. Then he posted an image of himself cosplaying as Jesus healing a sick man, who if things weren't weird enough many thought looked like Epstein. Cue flags, eagles, jets, angels, widespread outrage even from MAGA world - most charged "blasphemy," not insanity - who maybe should've seen this coming? Taken aback by the uproar, he sputtered it "had to do with red cross as a red cross worker," but took it down. Still, America's eyes hurt. The consensus: "This man is not well." And, said John Brennan, "The 25th Amendment was written with Donald Trump in mind.” Aaron Rupar sent out the image as a plea. "I'm not sure it has broken through to the general public that the president is a megalomaniac crazy person," he wrote. "Hopefully posts like this help." Or not.


The nationwide backlash against the artificial intelligence industry entered a new stage on Tuesday after a small Wisconsin city overwhelmingly passed a first-of-its-kind referendum limiting AI data center construction.
According to a Wednesday report in Politico, voters in the Milwaukee suburb of Port Washington, home to roughly 12,000 residents, supported the data center restrictions by a margin of around 2-to-1.
The referendus requires town officials to seek voter permission before approving or providing tax incentives for any future data centers in the community, giving residents veto power over new projects.
Port Washington is already home to a $15 billion, 1.3-gigawatt data center funded by tech giants Oracle and OpenAI, and local residents wanted to ensure that no additional facilities are green lit without their express approval.
The referendum was pushed by a grassroots community organization called Great Lakes Neighbors United, which advocates "advancing transparency, environmental stewardship, and responsible development in Wisconsin."
Christine Le Jeune, founder of Great Lakes Neighbors United, told Politico that she hopes the work done limiting AI facilities' construction can be replicated nationwide.
“This is really setting a precedent,” Le Jeune, said. "This is something that other communities can look to."
Politico noted that similar anti-data center measures are coming up for votes later this year in communities across the US, including in Monterey Park, California; Augusta Township, Michigan; and Janesville, Wisconsin.
Opposition to AI data centers has become a major political issue in recent months, as local residents have objected to the large facilities consuming massive amounts of electricity and water, while also generating significant noise pollution.
Data centers also put a major strain on the US electrical grid, causing a spike in utility bills across the country. PJM Interconnection, the largest US grid operator that serves over 65 million people across 13 states, projected earlier this year that it will be a full six gigawatts short of its reliability requirements in 2027 thanks to the demands of data centers.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced a bill in March that would impose a nationwide moratorium on AI data center construction “until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers, and communities, defend privacy and civil rights, and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment.”
At the same time, the AI industry is planning on spending big money in 2026 to influence elections, with the goal of passing legislation setting a single set of AI regulations that will take effect throughout the US, overriding any restrictions placed on the technology by state governments.
CNN reported in February that Leading the Future—a super political action committee (PAC) backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, is pledging to spend at least $100 million to ensure AI-friendly candidates get elected to Congress this year.
“You know you're in trouble when you can't describe reality without sounding crazy.”
That's how renowned author and activist Naomi Klein described society's relationship with rapidly—some say dangerously—evolving artificial intelligence technology during a Tuesday livestreamed panel discussion with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) hosted by the Sanders Institute.
Khanna and Klein are both fellows at the institute, cofounded by Sanders' (I-Vt.) wife and son, Jane O'Meara Sanders and David Driscoll. The Sanders Institute over recent years has convened an array of conferences and events focused on bringing together the best minds, top experts, and policy advocates on a host of issues.
“This AI and robotics revolution is the most sweeping technological change that the world has ever seen,” said Sanders. “People talk about the changes that the Industrial Revolution brought, which were profound. This is going to move a lot faster, with a lot more impact.”
“This revolution is being pushed by the wealthiest people in the world,” Sanders continued. “We’re talking about Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and other multi-multi-billionaires who are spending hundreds and hundreds if not trillions of dollars combined trying to do the research and the implementation for these technologies.”
Turning to Khanna and Klein, the senator asked: “What are the motives of these guys? Do the American people think that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are sitting up nights saying, ‘Wow, we got this technology, we're going to improve life for working people?’”
Klein contended that “their motives are exactly the opposite, and they're very blunt about this, that they are in a race to reach something that they call AGI—artificial general intelligence—or even something beyond that, superintelligence.”
While agreeing with Sanders that AI will prove as transformative as the Industrial Revolution, Klein underscored one big difference between the two.
“Unlike the Industrial Revolution, which created huge numbers of jobs, the goal of this revolution is to eliminate jobs,” the Shock Doctrine author explained. “They've been absolutely transparent about what they want to achieve, which is a jobs apocalypse. They want to be free from their workers."
"They really don't like it when their workers organize and push back, whether in unions or outside of unions," Klein added. "And I think that's part of the appeal of AI for these guys, is the idea that they could become trillionaires with virtually no employees.”
Khanna, a potential 2028 presidential candidate who authored the book Progressive Capitalism: How to Make Tech Work for All of Us, has been a leading voice in the US House of Representatives on the issue of AI. The congressman pointed out that tech titans are “using technology to eliminate workers and maximize their profits, and if you look at the Industrial Revolution, for 60 years, worker wages fell… even as Britain became wealthy."
"And so the question, in my view, for AI is, are we going to let a few billionaires, trillionaires, call the shots, or are we going to make sure that the technology is actually used in any way to enhance workers, to enhance total productivity?” he asked.
Sanders noted that Bezos, Amazon's founder, "wants to raise $100 billion to do what? To automate factories in America and around the world."
"You know what that means? It means there will no longer be manufacturing jobs in the United States or in warehouses," the senator added. "He wants to get rid of the 600,000 Amazon workers and replace them with robots. Elon Musk is converting Tesla partially to a robotics company. He wants to produce a million robots a year… What do you think a robot is there for? It's to replace a union worker.”
Klein said that “if we lived in a world that took care of people… [where] if a job was eliminated, people had a guaranteed income, they knew that they had healthcare, they knew that they weren't going to get evicted, we'd be having a different conversation.”
It may be more than just jobs that are eliminated if humanity does not proceed with utmost caution.
Sanders cited AI pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton who have warned that superintelligent artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity. According to Hinton and others, the senator explained, c“it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when [AI] will become smarter than human beings, and the fear of these guys, which used to be science fiction, is that AI will essentially establish its independence from human control in order to protect itself... raising the possibility of horrific things happening.”
Khanna agreed that such an outcome is “a real risk" as countries remove guardrails to breakneck AI development with the excuse that if they don't do it, their rivals will—the same dangerous thinking that fueled the Cold War nuclear arms race between the US and Soviet Union.
“I don't know whether it will happen or not, but why would we not take every precaution to make sure it doesn’t?” the congressman asked. “And this is what I don't understand, when people say, ‘Well, we want to compete with other nations and have a race to the bottom."
While the specter of an AI apocalypse is growing, it remains much more a reflection of human anxieties that any sort of impending threat. The same cannot be said for lethal autonomous weapon systems—better known as killer robots, which are defined as arms that can operate without any meaningful human control.
Activists like those at the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots have long sounded the alarm on the development of weapons that can operate without human control. However, Khanna said that human decision-making alone “is not enough.”
“If AI is doing all the data analysis and saying, OK, here's the target, and you just have a human being saying, OK, I'm the one who's going to give the order [to attack]… well, there's a human last-minute judgment,” he said. "What's happened is just a dependence on these machines."
As an example, Khanna pointed to what he said was the US military's use of AI that “gave the target of the school” in southern Iran where 168 children and staff were massacred in a February 28 cruise missile strike.
Sanders raised the possibility that a future in which robots largely replace humans on the battlefield “makes it easier” for countries with such technology to wage war.
However, Khanna countered that such conflicts are “deeply asymmetrical," meaning that they're only "easier" for the more technologically advanced side.
“The United States can have drones and technology, and Israel can do that,” the congressman said. “But the people who were killed in what I call the genocide in Gaza, 70,000 people, they don't have that technology. The starving people in Cuba, because of our fuel blockade, don't have that technology. The people in Iran who were killed don't have that technology."
"So you have one side of political leadership in our country that doesn't have to worry as much about deaths for our people," he contended. "But then there’s no… moral deliberation about the dignity and worth of people who were killed.”
While such life-and-death matters are far removed from the reality of most Americans’ lives, the panelists gave examples of how AI is impacting everyday citizens and their privacy.
“We heard reports from a lot of people on the ground who were standing up to ICE,” Klein said, referring to the nationwide protests and individual acts of resistance against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Trump administration’s overall anti-immigrant blitz.
“They were having these very creepy experiences where ICE knew their names before they had said anything. They knew where they lived before they said anything," she added. "Scanning a face, scanning a license plate.”
Not everyone attends protests. But nearly everyone uses the internet and its accoutrements; most notably, social media. To that end, Khanna said that Big Tech isn’t just “taking our data, they’re trying to figure out what we think.”
“We've had no pushback to these companies,” he continued. “They have a profit motive to do this. They have a profit motive to get us as addictive to screen time as possible."
"They’re targeting young people… especially young girls that have had eating disorders... and suicidal thoughts because of the junk they've been fed," Khanna noted, calling the situation “a dereliction of Congress.”
“We have not passed any privacy legislation or restrictions really on social media companies as they've had total carte blanche to do what they want,” he said.
Sanders said that “to my mind, it is very clear why Congress is not dealing with this issue, and that is the power and the wealth of people who do not want us to deal with it.”
“To the best of my understanding, as of now, just for the 2026 elections, AI has already put $400 million into elections, and we've go… five to six more months to go,” he explained. “So let's assume that any candidate who gets up there and says, ‘You know, I have some real concerns about AI, let's slow it down, let's make it work for people rather than Elon Musk,’ that candidate will have billions of dollars thrown at him or her, which speaks to a corrupt campaign finance [system].”
Klein has similarly sounded the alarm about far-right tech oligarchs, including in a "must-read" essay with Astra Taylor about the fight against "end times fascism" published by The Guardian last year. The pair plans to release a related book in September.
“If we look at these Silicon Valley billionaires who lined up behind [President Donald] Trump during the election campaign… if you listen to what they have been saying about why they flipped, a lot of it was because there were some gentle regulations on crypto and AI during the Biden administration, including things like trying to figure out how to prevent AI from killing us all, and keeping it away from nuclear weapons," Klein said during Tuesday's panel. "Really sort of sensible policy… Apparently this was too much.”
While Congress fails to act, the people are stepping up.
“What we are seeing all over this country, from conservative areas, in progressive areas, [is] people saying, hey, thank you very much, we prefer not to have a data center in our community,” said Sanders—who recently introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)—pointing to one example of people-powered victories.
“So this is really an unprecedented grassroots revolt, not only against the data centers, but against this whole idea... of very, very wealthy people operating in a secretive mode, pushing through what they want against the needs of ordinary people,” he added.
Klein said that “we need to have a national and international conversation, because these are global technologies, about how we can use these very powerful tools to make our lives better, to enhance life, to have a human-first AI policy.”
“And that means that we look at it holistically,” she continued. “We figure out how we do it in the least resource-intensive way to have the best results. And then it isn't about turning a bunch of guys into trillionaires.”
“It's about what kind of society we want to live in, how we want to treat each other, how we want to protect the natural world,” Klein added. “I think we should be having town hall conversations about it, and we might find out that we have more in common with our neighbors than we thought."
A group of four psychiatrists warned congressional leaders on Monday that US President Donald Trump has recently exhibited "every behavioral sign of a personality in acute crisis," presenting a "constitutional emergency" that demands immediate action from lawmakers and members of the administration.
In a letter to the top Republican and Democratic lawmakers in both chambers of Congress, the psychiatrists and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs—who helped organize the letter—pointed to Trump's recent genocidal threats to wipe out Iran's "whole civilization" and bomb the country "back to the stone ages" as examples of rhetoric that has "crossed a threshold."
"President Trump exhibits what forensic mental health experts have, across dozens of independent assessments, identified as the 'Dark Triad' of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy," the letter states. "Rather than constituting a clinical diagnosis, this trait-based assessment is grounded in behavioral observation and is particularly useful for assessing the level of danger an individual poses in a political leadership position. We do not offer this as a clinical verdict. We offer it as the considered judgment of a substantial body of professional opinion, based on well-researched evidence that is consistent, accumulating, and impossible to dismiss."
The psychiatrists who signed the letter are James Gilligan, clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University; Prudence Gourguechon, former president of the American Psychoanalytic Association and former vice president of the World Mental Health Coalition; Bandy Lee, president of the World Mental Health Coalition and former professor at Yale School of Medicine; and James Merikangas, clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at George Washington University.
The experts' letter came amid growing calls from congressional Democrats for Trump's removal from office, whether through the impeachment process or the pathways offered by the 25th Amendment.
The psychiatrists stop short of demanding Trump's immediate removal. Rather, they urge Congress to reestablish its constitutional authority over war in response to the president's unauthorized assault on Iran; convene "urgent consultations" with top administration officials to prevent Trump from escalating "toward catastrophe, including the potential use of nuclear weapons"; and "formally initiate consultation" with Vice President JD Vance and Cabinet members "regarding the president’s fitness for office under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment."
"We recognize the gravity of what we are asking. We ask it because the gravity of the situation demands it," the letter states. "A president who publicly threatens to destroy a foreign civilization, who launches a bombing campaign and then imposes a naval blockade without congressional authorization, and who shows every behavioral sign of a personality in acute crisis is not merely a political problem. He is a constitutional emergency. The mechanisms for addressing such an emergency exist. They were placed in the Constitution and its amendments for moments precisely like this one."
The letter was released days after Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to White House physician Sean Barbabella requesting an "immediate and comprehensive cognitive and neurological evaluation of President Donald Trump, along with full public disclosure of the findings," in response to his "increasingly volatile, incoherent, and alarming public statements," specifically regarding the war on Iran.
"This is plainly out of the realm of normal politics," Raskin wrote. "When the president of the United States threatens to extinguish a civilization on social media, rants about combat missions with children at the Easter Egg Roll, and drops profane tirades on Easter morning, we have indisputably entered the realm of profound medical difficulty and concern."
A suspect was arrested in San Francisco Friday after being accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the home of Sam Altman, the CEO of the artificial intelligence firm OpenAI.
The 20-year-old man was found at the OpenAI headquarters about three miles away from Altman's home, where he was threatening to burn down the building, San Francisco police said.
The device the suspect threw onto Altman's property in the Russian Hill neighborhood caused a fire on the exterior gate. It was unclear whether Altman and his family were at home.
The suspect was in custody Friday, with charges pending.
Altman's company and other companies have been under fire as AI has expanded rapidly at President Donald Trump's urging, with the president issuing an executive order attacking states' ability to regulate the industry.
Experts have warned the expansion of generative AI threatens jobs and democracy, with political campaigns already using the technology to create fraudulent media in advertisements.
Massive, energy-sucking AI data centers have also been blamed for higher household electricity bills and water consumption.
Protesters have rallied against Altman's company for agreeing to provide its technology to the Department of Defense.
In November, The New York Times reported, a person who had once been associated with the anti-AI group Stop AI "expressed interest in causing physical harm to OpenAI employees," causing the company to lock down its headquarters.
On Friday, Stop AI condemned the attack on Altman's house and emphasized that the group "seeks to protect human life."
"We do not condone any violence whatsoever," said the group. "We pray everyone involved in this situation puts aside violence and finds peace, and we continue to hope the AI industry stops the development of frontier AI systems in the interest of public safety and the preservation of humanity. To the best of our knowledge, this incident did not involve anyone who has ever been associated with our group. And this action is wholly inconsistent with our values."
With the status of US-Iran talks unclear halfway through a two-week ceasefire, a dozen faith, science, veterans, and watchdog groups on Monday pressured key congressional committee leaders to swiftly reassert Congress' "constitutional authority over matters of war and peace," and put an end to President Donald Trump's new conflict in the Middle East.
"The founders were clear: Article I of the Constitution vests in Congress—not the president—the sole authority to declare war, fund military action, and oversee its execution," stresses the letter, addressed to leaders of both congressional foreign relations panels: Reps. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) and Gregory Meeks (D-NY), and Sens. James Risch (R-Idaho) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH).
Abigail Bellows, senior policy director for anti-corruption and accountability at Common Cause, one of the groups behind the letter, said in a statement that "the Constitution places decisions of war and peace in the hands of Congress because the American people deserve a voice before their lives and tax dollars are put on the line."
The letter acknowledges that "over time, presidents of both parties have pushed the limits of their constitutional authority, gradually eroding Congress' role in decisions of war and peace. Reasserting Article I authority is not about one president or one party. It is about restoring the constitutional balance that protects our democracy, our national security, and our troops."
Víctor Guillén, director of national campaigns at Issue One, which spearheaded the letter, said that "while presidents of both parties have stretched the boundaries of constitutional authority, we are especially concerned about the actions of President Trump. From Greenland to Venezuela to Iran, President Trump has shown that he is willing to recklessly enter military conflicts without congressional support."
"His impulsiveness has led to suffering for millions of Americans, from American troops who were wounded and killed to people living paycheck to paycheck, wondering how they will afford groceries, gas, or childcare," Guillén said of Trump. "Now that Congress has seen what the president is capable of, it must stop the president from repeating it."
"If Congress does not check him now," the campaigner declared, "the president will most likely start more poorly planned and pointless conflicts in the future—on Truth Social, no less—to the detriment of the American people and citizens around the world."
Trump and Israel's war on Iran has already led to thousands of deaths across the Middle East, plus damaged civilian infrastructure throughout Iran. Israeli forces have also ramped up attacks on Lebanon, including during the ceasefire agreed to last week.
"Every moment lawmakers fail to act weakens accountability and puts both our democracy and more lives at risk," said Bellows. "Common Cause stands ready to work with Congress to restore the proper balance of power and ensure that decisions about war reflect the will of the people."
Specifically, the coalition is calling on lawmakers to:
"This is a bipartisan responsibility," the letter emphasizes. "The Constitution is clear and the stakes are high."
The letter's other signatories are Democracy Matters, Faith in Democracy, Mormon Women for Ethical Government, Principles First, Project on Government Oversight, Protect Democracy, RepresentUs, Stand Up America, The Chamberlain Network, and Union of Concerned Scientists.
So far, nearly all Republicans and a short list of Democrats in the GOP-controlled Congress have blocked multiple war powers resolutions on Iran and Trump's other unauthorized military action. Another round of votes on Iran are expected this week.
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also plans to force senators to consider cutting off the flow of Americans weapons to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government over its genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since October 2023.
Specifically, on Wednesday, Sanders intends to force votes on a pair of resolutions that would prohibit a $151.8 million sale of 12,000 BLU-110A/B general purpose 1,000-pound "dumb" gravity bombs and related logistics and technical support services, as well as a $295 million sale of Caterpillar bulldozers along with related materials and support.
"US taxpayers have spent tens of billions of dollars in support of the racist, extremist Netanyahu government. Enough is enough," Sanders said Tuesday. "The United States must use the leverage we have—tens of billions in arms and military aid—to demand that Israel ends these atrocities."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said the bill would stop Trump from "trying to snatch up billions of taxpayer dollars to line his own pockets and settle personal scores."
Four Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday unveiled legislation aimed at ending what they described as President Donald Trump's "plunder" of US taxpayers.
The Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act—cosponsored by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Dave Min (D-Calif.)—was crafted in response to Trump's effort to get the federal Internal Revenue Service to hand him a $10 billion settlement for the 2020 leak of his tax records and his demand that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) pay him $230 million over its past criminal investigations of him.
Among other things, the bill would bar both the president and the vice president, as well as their immediate family members, from collecting settlement payments from the federal government while in office.
The proposed legislation would also prohibit both the president and the vice president from filing administrative claims for damages while in office, and would only allow presidents and vice presidents to "collect compensatory damages awarded by a federal court if the court appoints an independent counsel to represent the agency and makes all proceedings public."
The bill allows former presidents and vice presidents to collect damages from the federal government, but only if the agency being sued "appoints career expert staff to lead the agency’s review or adjudication of any administrative claim brought by the former president/VP, and no official appointed by any president/VP is involved in handling the claim."
Additionally, any settlement made to a former president or vice president must be made public within seven days.
Warren said that the legislation was necessary to stop Trump from "trying to snatch up billions of taxpayer dollars to line his own pockets and settle personal scores."
Raskin accused Trump of exploiting the power of his office to "loot billions of dollars from American taxpayers," an operation that he described as the "ongoing scandal of this ruthlessly corrupt administration."
"The ‘Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act’ will prevent the president from pursuing the emerging MAGA grift of suing the government as a ‘plaintiff’ on bogus grounds," Raskin added, "and then settling the suit as ‘defendant’ for big bucks, a collusive settlement scam they recently executed with the disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who waltzed off with more than a million dollars for a bogus claim already dismissed by a federal court."
Flynn settled with the DOJ last month in a case in which he accused the government of "improperly and politically" targeting him, after he was charged with making false statements to the FBI in 2017.
The Democrats' bill has earned the endorsements of government watchdogs Democracy Defenders Action, Common Cause, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).
Debra Perlin, vice president of policy at CREW, praised the bill for establishing "common sense guardrails to protect against corrupt payouts to the president and the vice president during their terms in office and after they depart."
"Since returning to office, Donald Trump keeps finding troubling new ways to enrich himself at the taxpayers' expense," Perlin noted. "The president’s lawsuit against the IRS for $10 billion is emblematic of a pattern of self-dealing and corruption that appears pervasive in his administration."
The heads of the congressional Monopoly-Busters Caucus warned that a future administration could "break up" a merger of United and American Airlines if it is approved by Trump regulators.
The Democratic leaders of the congressional Monopoly-Busters Caucus said Wednesday that a recently floated megamerger of two of the largest airlines in the US—United and American—would be so awful for consumers that it shouldn't even be considered, let alone approved by federal regulators.
"The rumored scheme to merge United and American should never see the light of day," said Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Pat Ryan (D-NY), and Angie Craig (D-Minn.). "This disaster of a merger would be illegal, consolidating more than a third of the US airline market, eliminating direct competitors on hundreds of routes across the country, and creating a near-monopoly on flights in many cities."
The House Democrats went on to say that if a United-American merger is formally proposed and approved by President Donald Trump's regulators, a future Democratic administration could break up the resulting airline behemoth.
"In a time when too many Americans just struggle to even go on vacation, much less afford their housing, childcare, and healthcare, these airline executives should not mistake the corruption of this administration as a green light to break the law," the lawmakers said. "They should also remember that there is no statute of limitations on breaking up bad deals."
"In case it is not crystal clear," they added, "that is absolutely a threat to break up this merger should it ever happen."
The lawmakers' statement came a day after Bloomberg reported that United Airlines (UA) CEO Scott Kirby floated the idea of merging his company with American Airlines (AA) "directly" to Trump during a meeting in late February. Kirby also pitched the merger idea to other "senior government officials," the outlet noted, without providing names.
"A combination would create the largest airline on the planet," Bloomberg observed. "As a result, any merger between the two aviation giants would pose serious antitrust concerns and likely face significant backlash from consumers, politicians and rival US airlines."
"That the United CEO raised the idea of a merger with American directly with Donald Trump suggests he thinks he might obtain direct approval from the president for a merger that would otherwise never be permitted.”
Contrary to claims of a "surging MAGA antitrust movement" in the early days of Trump's second White House term, the president's administration has proven friendly to corporate merger efforts, from Paramount-Skydance to UnitedHealth-Amedisys and more. Reuters reported Wednesday that "investment banking fees—earned from advising on mergers and acquisitions and underwriting deals—surged an average of 27% across six major US banks in the first quarter, with record dealmaking a key profit driver."
William McGee, senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said Wednesday that "thanks to the federal preemption clause in the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act, states have virtually no airline oversight."
"So effectively the only sheriffs overseeing airlines are [the Department of Transportation] and [Department of Justice]," McGee observed. "Under Trump they've been derelict in policing competition."
"To be clear: A UA-AA merger is absurd," McGee added. "A monolith mega-mega-carrier operating 4 of every 10 domestic flights is so harmful that anyone favoring it doesn't understand airlines. Or is a regulator eager to please a president who 'loves to see big deals.'"
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement Tuesday that "it would be easy to dismiss the prospect of such a merger passing antitrust scrutiny—except that the Trump Department of Justice seems content to bless dangerously high levels of corporate concentration, so long as administration cronies, allies, or flatterers are in charge of corporate goliath."
"That the United CEO raised the idea of a merger with American directly with Donald Trump," Weissman added, "suggests he thinks he might obtain direct approval from the president for a merger that would otherwise never be permitted.”
Audience members also booed the vice president, who claimed the Trump administration "solved" Israel's war on Gaza.
US Vice President JD Vance was repeatedly heckled over the Trump administration's support Israel's genocide in Gaza and the US-Israeli war on Iran as he spoke at a Turning Point USA event in Georgia, underscoring frustration among a MAGA base betrayed by promises of a peace presidency.
Vance was discussing his disagreement with Pope Leo XIV's criticism of the Trump administration's xenophobic immigration policies and record-breaking warmongering when someone in the audience at the Akins Ford Arena near the University of Georgia in Athens yelled out, "Jesus Christ doesn't support genocide!"
"I agree," said Vance. "Jesus Christ certainly does not support genocide, whoever yelled that out from the dark. He certainly does not. I think that's pretty easy."
Some audience members booed Vance's response, and the heckler shouted, "You're killing children!"
U.S. Vice President JD Vance faced hecklers during a speech at a Turning Point USA event, where he said Pope Leo should "be careful when he talks about matters of theology."
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— Reuters (@reuters.com) April 14, 2026 at 9:54 PM
Hundreds of children have been killed by US-Israeli bombing of Iran, including 168 students and staff at a girls' school in Minab who were massacred in a February 28 US cruise missile strike. More than 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed by Israel's war and siege on Gaza, according to local officials and international advocacy groups.
While Jesus never supported genocide in the New Testament of the Bible, his purported father commands his followers to commit genocide several times in the Old Testament. Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes—have invoked God's biblical command to "slay" everyone in the Hebrews' ancient enemy of Amalek, "man and woman, infant and suckling," as divine sanction to lay waste to Gaza.
Attorneys in the South Africa-led International Court of Justice case against Israel have pointed to Israeli leaders' references to Amalek as evidence of genocidal intent, a key legal requisite for proving genocide.
Vance responded to the heckler, asserting that when President Donald Trump took office, "the humanitarian situation in Gaza was an absolute catastrophe."
"So if you want to complain about what happened in Gaza," he continued, "why don't you complain about Joe Biden in the last administration? We're the administration that solved that problem."
On January 20, 2025, former President Joe Biden's last day in office, the Gaza Health Ministry said at least 47,035 people had been killed by Israeli forces in the coastal strip since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. Since Trump's return to power, Israeli forces have killed at least 25,280 more Palestinians in Gaza.
The Biden and Trump administrations have both supported Israel with tens of billions of dollars in armed aid, diplomatic cover including vetoes of numerous United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolutions, and repeated denials that the leading US ally in the Middle East is committing genocide.
While there is growing unease among many in the MAGA base over Trump's broken promises of no new wars and lower gasoline prices on "day one," critics note that this opposition does not indicate a full anti-war shift, as many of the president's supporters just want the war to end as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Turning Point USA was co-founded by far-right firebrand Charlie Kirk, who was shot dead last year while trying to deflect blame for US gun violence on gangs. Kirk explicitly opposed any US regime change war in Iran.
In a bid to counter Gen Z's rightward shift during the 2024 election, progressive activist Elise Joshi on Wednesday launched More Perfect University, which aims to mobilize young voters by focusing on the economic issues that affect them.