Category: Foreign policy

The Rights of Sovereign Countries

The 193 sovereign countries in our world determine when and if people and goods of other countries may cross their borders into their territory. The safety and other standards required for their own products (cars, planes, medicine, breakfast food, etc.) are equally required for those imported. For example, US chicken is banned from EU and UK because of American post-slaughter Pathogen Reduction Treatments (PRTs), specifically the use of chlorine or other antimicrobial chemical washes to kill bacteria like Salmonella and Campylobacter, which are not approved of in these countries.

But the extensive cross-border trade and movement of workers and tourists have so enormously benefited the standard of living of almost every person on the globe that countries have generally cooperated to harmonize these standards. Two hundred years ago almost 80% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. That figure fell to almost 60% a hundred years ago and almost 10% today. ” Study finds wealthy nations reap huge benefits from immigration”.

This dramatic increase in wealth has been greatly facilitated by establishing international standards for many of these goods and services for which international standard bodies have been created such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF, for which I worked for 26 years) are among a broader group of international institutions promoting global cooperation.

Obviously, a country cannot allow the airplanes of other countries to enter and fly over or land in its territory without agreed standards for flight path reporting and control tower protocols. But what about satellites? They are part of the amazing story of telephone communications overseen by ITU in Geneva, Switzerland. On my cell phone I can connect to any other telephone in the world and have a conversation. It is unbelievable really.

On my first trip to Kabul in January 2002 we had to step outside to use our iridium satellite phones to connect with IMF headquarters in Washington DC (or anyone else for that matter). Landmines were later discovered in the garden we walked around while talking on our iridium phones.

Satellites can be stationary (i.e. move at the same pace the earth rotates so that it remains above the same territory below), or not and can be in a low or high orbit. Rules govern how a satellite should behave when passing over or near other satellites to prevent interference.

Satellites, unlike airplanes, are governed by a framework of international agreements and treaties, most notably the Outer Space Treaty.  Satellites move freely through orbital paths because a nation’s airspace only extends upwards to a certain (though legally undefined) altitude, while satellites operate in “outer space.” A satellite is governed by the laws and regulations of the specific country that launched or registered it. That launching country is completely responsible for authorizing, continuously supervising, and regulating the satellite’s operations. Nonetheless it is expected to abide by ITU regulations and assignment of the use of radio frequencies. ITU manages satellite frequency rights by acting as a global registry and coordination body to prevent signal interference, rather than by directly issuing operating licenses.

The United States is officially withdrawing from 66 international organizations. This includes 31 United Nations entities (such as the UNFCCC, UN Women, and the UN Population Fund) and 35 non-UN organizations (including the IUCN, the Green Climate Fund, and the World Health Organization). In my view, this dismantling of the global system of cooperation is a serious mistake—damaging both the US and the global system. The US has not, however, withdrawn from the ITU. But will the US play by the rules? The unpredictability of the Trump administration has the world wondering and worrying how far American destruction of the global order will go.

Scoring the Iran War

What did we gain from the Iran war and what was the cost (so far)? Why did we launch this war? What was our objective and have we achieved it?

From a NYTimes article and JD Vance speech the US budgetary cost of our illegal attack on Iran was about $150 billion. This year’s conflict cost five to six thousand lives. This does not include the economic cost to the world from oil shortages and food shortages expected from the shortage of fertilizer, etc. NYTimes – Iran war costs

In evaluating what we gained from the war it is hard to know whether to treat the negative outcome as a negative gain or an additional cost. Prior to this war the Straits of Hormuz were open and passage was free. While Iran seems to have agreed to reopen them, they have now clearly demonstrated the potential to close them or charge for passage as potential future choke points. While Iran may be giving up its financing of friends in the neighborhood (Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Yemen), and this would be an import gain, it has established its military strength to defend itself while the US has demonstrated its vulnerability.

More importantly, Iran is now judged by many to be more likely to build an atomic bomb. The Iran Deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action -JCPOA) negotiated by the Obama administration, which insured that Iran would not do so for at least ten years, was overturned during the first Trump administration. Hopefully such assurances can be reestablished during the 60 day negotiations still ahead. Though such a bomb would violate Islamic doctrine, the need for such protection has been greatly increased by US/Israel aggressions. But the MOU agreed to this week provides no assurance that a new agreement would be any better than the one Trump killed in May 2018. The Washington Post’s careful analysis suggests that it is not promising that a new agreement will be any better than the old one:  Trump condemned Obama’s Iran deal-here’s how his own compares

In an interview at the opening of his Presidential Library in Chicago, former President Obama stated that: “it feels like we are back where we were before we started the war, except maybe a little worse off…”  The Hill-Obama on Trump Iran war Obama’s assessment was not including the costs of the war noted above.

US support of Israel has been very costly. Virtually the whole amaworld, other than the US, has condemned Israel’s behavior in recent years. The number of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza alone since the Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas that killed 1,200, is hard to estimate in part because so many remain buried under the rubble. As reported in an interesting effort to estimate deaths, over half of those killed were women and children, Ralph Nadar stated that: “The recent report by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, referred to a consensus of 680,000 deaths.  Fatalities by Israel-vast Gaza genocide-deliberately undercounted These deaths don’t include those in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, which continue to this day despite a so-called cease fire.

More broadly the damage to America’s reputation because of our support of Israel’s bloody attacks of its Palestinian, Lebanon, and Syrian neighbors has been further increased by its illegal attacks on Iran. Our rapid decline continues.

According to Ian Bremmer: “The cease-fire does not mark the end of this chapter of conflict and regional division in the Middle East; it is instead driving a geopolitical realignment along new fault lines.

“More outcomes? A more polarized and fractured Middle East. Iran in a stronger strategic position. And American partners shaken by erratic and unpredictable conduct.

“The war has accelerated the collapse of the US-anchored order that held the Middle East together for decades. That arrangement kept oil flowing, rival powers out of the region, and Washington the broker of everything that mattered – from Iranian containment to the more recent Arab-Israeli normalization process. It was already fraying before the fighting started. The war broke it.”   Linkedin – What actually mattered

The General’s Son

In the book “The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” by Miko Peled, the General refers to Major General Mattityahu “Matti” Peled (1923–1995), an Israeli military commander who became a prominent peace activist, academic, and politician. A key architect of the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, he later transitioned into a radical advocate for Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and a two-state solution.

Like his father, Miko was also an avid Zionist who believed in peaceful relations with his Arab neighbors in two sovereign states. When Milo’s niece Smadar was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in 1997, Miko’s reaction to his grief tells us all we need to know to understand the heart of this book. Rather than expressing hatred toward the Palestinian murderer of his beloved niece, he felt shame and anger toward his fellow Israelis for driving a Palestinian boy to take his own life in this way. The book relays Miko’s journey upto and beyond this tragedy and sets out a more balanced history than you might have heard.

Having settled in San Diego to teach karate, Miko began to participate in mixed Jewish/Arab groups (San Diego Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group) discussing their experiences in and hopes for Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS) and became hopeful for two sovereign states living peacefully next to each other. When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat meet with President Bill Clinton at Camp David in Maryland, Miko was sure peace was at hand. When the talks fail to achieve agreement and Clinton seems to blame Arafat, Miko is shocked.

“Arafat had been consistent for years. For the sake of peace he was willing to give up the dream of all Palestinians to return to their homes and their land in Palestine. He was willing to recognize Israel, the state that destroyed Palestine, took his people’s land, and turned them into a nation of refugees. He was ready to establish an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza—which make up only 22 percent of the Palestinian homeland—with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital.

“He was ready to do all this, but he was not going to settle for anything less. He had always been clear about what he saw as the terms for peace.

“In the end, it turned out that… what the Israelis had demanded at Camp David was tantamount to total Palestinian surrender…. Barak demanded that Arafat sign an agreement to end the conflict forever and in return, he would be permitted to establish a Palestinian state on an area of land that could not be defined clearly because it was broken into pockets with no geographic continuity. Instead of Arab East Jerusalem, he would receive a small suburb of East Jerusalem as his capital. To that Yasser Arafat refused to agree.” (p. 126)

Miko’s love of Israel and increasing exposure to Palestinians (both in San Diego and in the West Bank, which he visited often to teach Karate and promote mutual understanding) exposed him to the shocking mistreatment of Palestinians in their own land. His compassionate heart and wisdom led him to strongly advocate the two-state solution to the struggles between the Arabs and Jews occupying the area.

During a visit to Ramallah to meet Abu Ali Shahin, Fatah commander and leader of the Palestine political prisoners for more the two decades, Miko exclaimed that: “Immediately after the war, while still in uniform, my father said that Israel must recognize the rights of the Palestinian people. He said that if we don’t do this, the Israeli army would become an occupation army and would resort to brutal means to enforce the IsraeliOslo occupation on the Palestinian people. He said this while still in uniform and he never stopped saying it and advocating for Palestinian rights till he died.” (p. 229)

In my own work with the IMF helping to establish the Palestine Monetary Authority called for by the Oslo Accord, I was disheartened to observe Israel’s abusive treatment of the Palestinians. The Oslo Accord itself did not provide for a fully independent and sovereign state for the Palestinians (themselves semitic children of Abraham). It provided what was hoped would be the first trust-building steps toward such a true state. However, Israel carved up the West Bank with highways only usable by Israelis. Palestinians driving to their new capital of Ramallah had to wait hours to enter via the Israeli-controlled check point. With my UN passport I could sail in via the Israeli entrance with no wait. Israel isolated the Palestinian population of the WBGS in every way imaginable.

Though declared illegal by the UN, Israeli Jews increasingly stole Palestinian land to establish Jewish settlements, carving up and often destroying Palestinian farms in the process. The number of Jews living in illegal settlements in the West Bank grew from about 80,000 in 1990 to almost 530,000 in 2025. But this pales compared to the shocking mistreatment reported by Miko.

At the end of Miko’s meeting with the 72-year-old Fatah leader, Abu, Ali Shahin, stated:

“We all belong to this land and need to live together. No one is safe in one Jewish state. Judaism is a religion, and I am speaking of a secular state of all its citizens. That is the only way to live here. Being Jewish or Muslim or Christian or atheist, that is a personal choice, not for me to dictate and not to be dictated to me. I don’t want a priest or a rabbi or a sheikh to govern my life. We belong in this land, and we need to live here as equals.”

Miko then writes: “This was not the first time I had heard someone talk of the ‘one secular democratic state,’ as the right solution. It was the part of the Fatah manifesto to create a secular democracy in all of Palestine. In the past, I could not stomach it, but the more I met impressive, intelligent people like Abu Ali, people who were driven by principle, the more I thought that there was no point, indeed no future, in dividing the people and the land. Not to mention the fact that the settlements and the facts on the ground had succeeded in erasing the West Bank as a viable area in which a Palestinian state could be established.”

In my book on my travels in the area, “Palestine: The Oslo Accords Before and After”, I still strongly supported a two-state solution. But when I asked George Abed, my IMF colleague then Governor of the Palestine Monetary Authority I was there to help create, if he would write the Foreword to my book, he declined, saying the book was unfair to the Palestinians. I have now come to accept that he was right.

This book was published in 2012. From that year (January 2012) until October 6, 2023 Palestinians killed about 300 Israelis, who killed about 3,900 Palestinians. From the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel until now (June 2, 2026), Palestinians killed about 1,400 Israelis (of whom 1,200 were killed during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack), who then killed about 75,000 Palestinians. The status quo is clearly not working for Israelis or for Palestinians.

The United States, home to about as many Jews as there are in Israel, is a secular state with large populations of Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims and other religious groups. Our constitution forbids the government from adopting any one of them. They have each flourished. I have reluctantly concluded that Israel must annex the West Bank of Gaza and give full and equal citizenship and rights to all Arabs and Jews living there. “A one state solution”,  “A one state solution – 2”.

The wars and ethnic cleansing now underway by the Netanyahu government is not only destroying Israel, but also dragging the United States down with it and I haven’t even mentioned Iran.

Obeying the rules is in our interest

The U.S. Department of Justice indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 Cuban military downing of two civilian planes operated by the exile group Brothers to the Rescue, which killed four people (including three U.S. citizens).Since September 2, 2025, the U.S. military has attacked suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific 59 times, killing 196 people. Shouldn’t we be indicting Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, for murder?

“According to President Donald Trump’s mysterious math, that means this campaign of carnage has prevented around 1.5 million drug-related deaths in the United States—more than 20 times the total number recorded in the year before Trump started treating suspected cocaine smugglers as ‘combatants’ who can be killed at will, from a distance and in cold blood.

“Back on planet Earth, there is no reason to think the boat strikes have prevented any deaths at all. That could only happen if blowing up smugglers—as opposed to the previous practice of intercepting them, arresting them, and seizing their cargo, which Trump says was ‘totally ineffective’—reduced the supply of cocaine available to American consumers. Given more than a century of failed attempts to ‘stop the flow’ of illegal intoxicants, that never seemed likely. And nearly nine months after Trump launched his new, deadlier version of the war on drugs, there is no evidence that it is more effective than the traditional tactics he derides as insufficiently homicidal.” Jacob Sullum, “Blowing up boats hasn’t slowed cocaine traffic to U.S.”

Should we care about such a double standard? Yes. What we are doing is not only illegal but also immoral. Hopefully we aspire to behave morally because we aspire to be moral people. But there is a practical self-interest in playing by the rules as well.

We could often get our way simply because we are the strongest guy on the block. President Trump seems to like being a bully. However, pushing others around has a cost. The better we can live up to the high principles upon which our nation was founded, the more respect we will receive from others (nations and people). One of those important principles is adhering to the rule of law. Such respect means that others will cooperate with us more easily (at lower cost to us).

International norms and conventions generally serve the interests of all who have agreed to them. Win, win. When we violate them, the world pays a cost and so do we.

Gas Taxes??

The US/Israel attack on Iran and resulting closing of the Straights of Hormuz has reduced the world’s oil supply. As a result, gasoline prices are increasing. Is that good or bad? Should the federal and state government suspend gasoline taxes until normal supply is restored?

When the supply of something is artificially reduced, its price increases to equate the new supply and demand. For gasoline, the impact of the supply shock can be moderated by releasing oil from the reserve the US and most countries maintain for such shocks. Thus the fall in gasoline supply would be kept smaller than it would other wise be. But how long will the supply shock last and how large is the reserve.?

The natural price increase in the face of a supply shock has several helpful effects. Those who need it most can still get it. Some non essential travel is reduced. President Nixon’s wage and price freeze in the early 1970s when confronted with the 1973 Arab oil embargo produced long lines of cars at gas stations that still had some gasoline. Price rationing is better than waiting in long lines

President Trump has proposed temporarily suspending government taxes on gasoline. This is a very bad idea not only because of the Nixon shock effect of non-price rationing but because it will reduce government revenue when its debt and deficits are already dangerously large. In the May 11 Washington Post Mitch Daniels provides an excellent account of that danger. “US national debt disaster looms-ai cant-stop it”   If you click on his link to a Cato Institute article on MMT you will be able to enjoy my article on that subject. “Modern Monetary Theory-critique”

Homeland – Final

We have now completed all eight seasons of Homeland. After my review of the first two seasons my old U of Chicago friend and fellow libertarian, Joe Cobb, said that we would like the rest of it as well. He was correct. The story continued to confront the main characters with excruciating choices with more plot twists than I could keep track of. Would you take steps to save the life of a friend that could result in the deaths of several thousand—or the reverse.

But what I want to share with you here is how eerily like today the early 2000s were. We were fighting with Iran, then Iraq. Forever wars our current President promised to end (remember that?). Not only did the struggles being portrayed seem like today but reviewing my email and news flashes during our breaks between episodes seemed like a continuation of the TV series. It was really weird. Homeland moves into my list of all-time favorite series, which includes The Wire, The Jewel in the Crown, and Breaking Bad.

National Science Foundation

On Friday, April 24, President Trump fired all 24 members of the National Science Foundation Board without saying why their staggered six year terms were not honored. Unlike executive branch departments, such as Treasury, Defense (now called Dept of War), Education, etc., which rightly should reflect the policy preferences of the President, the NSF, like the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, was carefully designed to be nonpartisan for good reason. A Forbes article by John Drake nicely explains the purpose of such design.

“Most people outside the research enterprise have never heard of the NSB, so it’s worth saying what it is. The National Science Foundation Act of 1950 created NSF with two heads: a director and a board. Jointly they set the strategic direction of an agency that now distributes roughly $9 billion annually in federal research funding, approve its budget submissions, and authorize new major programs. The board’s members are nominated for their distinguished records in science, engineering, education, and public affairs, drawn from industry and universities, and confirmed to staggered six-year terms so that scientific research priorities are set by the long arc of scientific progress rather than the election cycle. The statute requires that members be chosen “solely on the basis of established records of distinguished service.”

“That last phrase is the one I keep returning to.

“American scientist, inventor and administrator Vannevar Bush (1890 – 1974), whose ‘differential analyser’ was a forerunner of the computer, served as director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development throughout World War II and authored an influential report that led to the founding of the National Science Foundation. More American scientific preeminence is often discussed as if it were a product of talent or funding. It is really a product of institutions, the unglamorous architecture of boards, charters, terms of service, peer review and statutory independence that the postwar generation built deliberately. The structure traces to Vannevar Bush’s 1945 report Science, the Endless Frontier, which argued that federal science required governance insulated from political pressure and stability of support beyond any single budget cycle. The five-year fight to translate Bush’s vision into law turned largely on questions of independence and accountability, and the staggered six-year terms were part of the resulting compromise. Six-year terms exist for a reason. Staggered appointments exist for a reason. “Solely on the basis of distinguished service” is in the founding statute for a reason.

“The board’s function has been contested before, but always on the existing terms. As recently as 2022, scholars were debating how to modernize the board’s role, proposing to reduce its management duties and make NSF look more like other federal agencies. But other federal agencies are precisely the ones most exposed to political control. Their leaders serve at the pleasure of the president. Their priorities shift with each administration. The whole reason NSF’s structure is unusual is that the postwar designers did not want science funding to work that way. Even the would-be reformers recognized this: they proposed keeping the board’s staggered terms and statutory independence intact.

“These structures depend on a shared understanding, across administrations and across parties, that some institutions are worth preserving even when they constrain you. When that understanding lapses, the structures themselves do not survive long.

“On May 5, the National Science Board is scheduled to meet. There is no agenda, and at the moment, no board. That absence is the thing worth attending to, beyond the news of any particular firing. The question is not who sits on the board. The question is whether the kind of board the 1950 Act envisioned still exists in practice, and what American science looks like if it does not.” 2026/04/25/ “Trump fired the entire national science board-here’s why that matters”

At a minimum, when the President takes such action, the public should be given an explanation for why he thought it was justified. Ideally such a dramatic step should be preceded by a public discussion of the pros and cons of doing so.  This is not Trump’s style.

It my opinion Elon Musk’s DOGE downsizing of government (9% reduction in Federal employees before some had to be rehired and reducing the federal budget by claimed savings between roughly 160–215 billion dollars, counting job cuts, contract and lease cancellations, asset sales, and grant reductions) did more harm than good. Musk initially talked about cutting “at least 2 trillion dollars” from the federal budget, later revising goals down to around 1 trillion and then still lower, but actual savings fell far short of any of those targets.

A CBS‑covered analysis by a nonpartisan research group estimated that while DOGE claimed about 160 billion dollars in gross savings, its actions would also impose roughly 135 billion dollars in additional costs in the same fiscal year (for example through deferred‑resignation pay, disruption, and lost enforcement/revenue), implying a net savings nearer 25 billion dollars in that window.

But the real tragedy is that the opportunity to carefully evaluate and publicly debate whether government agencies were performing beneficial functions and doing so as efficiently as possible was totally missed. I offer the example of USAID, with whom I have worked both as a contractor and across the table as a collaborator. In my experience they have done an outstanding job serving America’s foreign policy interests:  https://wcoats.blog/2025/02/17/usaid/

The Trump administration has not operated in the traditional manor of our best (or even mediocre) Presidents. Even Kings are usually more careful in justifying and explaining their dictates.

Trump’s Record so far

So far Trump II has made or is making a number of changes that have benefited our economy.  However, his delivery on his key campaign promises is mixed.

Trump promised to “stop the migrant invasion,” and to carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history.” He delivered. Southern border attempted entries that were blocked in 2023 and 2024 of 2,475,670 and 2,135,000, dropped to 237,538 in 2025 and authorized new arrivals dropped from 2.9 to 2.8 million in 2023 and 2024 to less the 2,000 in 2025. Deportations and voluntary exit jumped from over 460,000 and 700,000 in 2023 and 2024 to over 2,500,000 in 2025 of which and estimated 1.9 million were self exits.

However, the behavior of masked ICE agents, including the deaths of over 30 people in ICE custody in 2025 have created a public outcry.  In 2024 and earlier, the majority of ICE arrests focused on those with criminal records. In 2025, the government stated that 70% of ICE arrests involved individuals with criminal charges or convictions. However, independent analyses of 2025 data suggested that only 23% of those targeted in broader sweeps actually had prior criminal convictions, with many of those being for minor traffic or immigration offenses.

Trump also promised to “End inflation and make America affordable again,” and to “Stop outsourcing” and turn the U.S. into a “manufacturing superpower” by bringing factories back to the United States by tightening trade policy. The high CPI inflation rate of 4.1% in 2023 has fallen to 2.9% in 2024 and 2.7% in 2025. Manufacturing value added to US total output was $2.91 trillion in 2024 rising to $2.95 in 2025 all in 2017 dollars.

The US imports more than it exports. The US trade deficit in 2024 of $903.5 billion changed little at $901.5 billion in 2025, but the highly criticized and erratic US tariffs on imports (both threatened and actually imposed) where eventually struct down as illegal by the Supreme Court. They were not approved by Congress and where not justified to correct unfair trade practice by China, the EU and others. Rather they were threatened punishments if the target country did not give in to some other Trump demand. Here is an example of such an attempted abuse of tariffs. https://x.com/spectatorindex/status/2041842665172693207

Trump was right to promise to reduce costly and unproductive regulations and bureaucrat bloat. But his approach with the help of Elon Musk and the DOGE swat teams was misdirected and destructive. https://wcoats.blog/2025/04/27/trumps-chainsaw/

https://wcoats.blog/2025/07/01/econ-101-government-budgets/  Just how bad the Musk DOGE chainsaw was can been seen in the following deposition of one of the totally unqualified kids swinging the chainsaw. He is being questioned by a lawyer for an agency suing DOGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXXvgZzK0Cc

And then there is the rest. Unlike previous US Presidents, Trump’s style of governing was that of a bully making threats. The result has not been good.

Trump the Egomaniac:  Putting his name on the Kennedy Center was sort of harmless (but distasteful) but then shutting it down all together is much less so and, and as is so often the case with Trump, hard to understand. The United States Institute of Peace is now the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace. Then there are programs he has created in his name: Trump accounts, Trump Gold Card, TrumpRx, Trump National Parks pass, etc. But he hasn’t stopped there, creating the “Trump-class” battleship. Though it violates the tradition of the U.S. Treasurer, currently Brandon Beach, signing our currency notes, Trump will do so in the future. While most of these displays of Trump’s name might be taken as the actions of an immature child, his proposal to issue special one dollar coins with his likeness seems to violate more than just good taste.

Trump the Authoritarian (postliberal)–domestic:  We have gotten used to Trump using his Truth Social or X/twitter accounts to damn and/or label as stupid or evil those who have criticized him, but he has used the power of his office to much more seriously attack his enemies or to force compliance with his policy views.

For example, after firing FBI director James Comey, who oversaw the probe of ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly called for investigations of Comey over alleged leaks and handling of memos, and his current Justice Department has pursued renewed inquiries premised on those same grievances. Similarly motivated DOJ indictments or investigations have been made against Trump appointed officials John Bolton, Letitia James, Robert Mueller, Andrew McCabe, John Brennan, and others who played leading roles in Russia‑related or Ukraine‑related investigations.

Beyond criminal investigations, Trump has repeatedly used or threatened non‑criminal tools of the presidency—regulation, funding decisions, security clearances, and administrative enforcement—to punish domestic opponents. He has used threats to cut off federal funds to Democratic‑led “sanctuary cities” or jurisdictions whose leaders criticize him, framing them as “anarchist” or lawless and directing DOJ and other agencies to look for legal hooks to withhold grants.  Reuters and civil‑society trackers describe cases where universities, law firms, and other entities changed diversity or governance policies after threats of lost contracts, funding, or investigations from the administration. https://protectdemocracy.org/work/retaliatory-action-tracker/

If you have wondered, as I have, why the Republicans in Congress have not exercised their constitutional rights to block Trump’s abuses of power, often in direct contradiction of Republican party principles, I assume that it is their fear of his vindictive attacks on anyone who criticizes him.

Trump has both threatened and actually moved to cut federal funds to a small but high‑profile group of universities, mainly to force changes on campus protests, DEI, admissions, and governance policies. At Harvard University billions in federal research grants and contracts were frozen or terminated starting in spring 2025. The reasons given by the Trump administration were the alleged failure to protect Jewish students and to tolerate antisemitism linked to pro‑Palestinian activism and criticism of “woke” policies, DEI programs. The Trump administration demanded leadership and governance changes, review of academic departments for perceived ideological “bias,” and changes to admissions policies. Harvard has filed legal challenges and publicly refused to accept some of the administration’s conditions, while still facing a major funding freeze.

Similar reasons were given for stopping and/or threatening to stop funding of contracts and projects at Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, and Princeton, University of Pennsylvania and UCLA.  These are the tip of an ugly iceberg that are very inappropriate in our liberal, limited government, freedom loving country.

But not all demands were objectionable.In October 2025, the White House offered a formal “compact” tying preferential access to federal funding to a raft of ideological and policy conditions that were agreed to by nine universities.Vanderbilt University.Dartmouth College.University of Pennsylvania.University of Southern California.Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).University of Texas at Austin.University of Arizona.Brown University and University of Virginia.

Key policy demands in the compact included:

  • Ban consideration of race or sex in admissions and hiring.
  • Cap international undergraduate enrollment at around 15% and subject foreign students to additional vetting.
  • Freeze tuition for several years.
  • Eliminate or sharply curtail DEI offices and programs.
  • Guarantee “ideological balance” or a “vibrant marketplace of ideas” without a dominant ideology

Trump the untrustworthy Bully –International: Trump pledged to serve American interests first, promising to end America’s forever wars and claimed to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Virtually every aspect of his foreign policy has been a failure, weakening our standing abroad and our national security.

The second Trump administration has ended no wars, conducted military strikes in at least seven countries, and with Israel started a new war in Iran. It has been complicit with Israel in the ethnic cleaning of Gaza and increasingly the West Bank, and by financial and armament support of Israel. Trump has weakened or lost the support of traditional allies with his threats to annex Canada and Greenland and his insults of European and other countries for not supporting his illegal war in Iran and more generally.

Bully Trump’s approach is illustrated by his spat with Pope Leo XIV. On Truth Social Trump proclaimed:

“Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”

On April 19, 2026, Trump warned that the U.S. would “knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge” in the country if they did not accept a new “DEAL,” Not that Trump cares but many of his threats, specifically those targeting civilian infrastructure like water and power plants, have been flagged by international human rights groups as potential violations of international humanitarian law.

Pope Leo XIV declared President Donald Trump’s threat to destroy “a whole civilization” unacceptable and suggesting Americans should contact their representatives in Congress to stop the conflict.

“Today, as we all know, there has also been this threat against the entire people of Iran.  And this is truly unacceptable. There are certainly issues of international law here, but even more, it is a moral question concerning the good of the people as a whole, in its entirety.

“I would like to invite everyone to think in their hearts of so many innocent children, so many totally innocent elderly people who would also be victims of this escalation. I would like to invite everyone to pray, but also to seek ways to communicate. Perhaps with congressmen, with authorities, saying that we don’t want war, we want peace.”

Trump responded by calling the Pope “Weak on crime” and “Weak on Nuclear Weapons” and falsely claiming the Pontiff agreed that Iran should have nuclear capabilities. In his Easter Sunday message the Pope said: “Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace.”

Trump’s failure to understand market trades and deals as win-win has fed his zero sum bully approach. America has been seriously damaged as a result.  Trump has either ignored or withdrawn from the international agreements or organizations such as the WTO, and WHO that have provided the basis of global cooperation and flurishing since WWII. And we have suffered as a result. https://wcoats.blog/2026/03/21/america-alone/  

Trump’s disregard for law has also been an element of his financial corruption, the details of which will hopefully be properly investigated.  Since returning to the White House for his second term, Trump’s net worth has grown by approximately $2.5 billion to $3 billion according to most financial trackers. Trump’s Presidency has been very bad for America.

Homeland-part two

My apology for my lazy note on Homeland. It deserves much more so here goes.

The series, which ran for eight years from 2011-2020, centers on Carrie Matheson, a CIA officer with bipolar disorder and for its first two years (all we have watched so far) the Marine scout Nick Brody. Nick was captured in Iraq and held prisoner for eight years before returning to his wife and two kids. In the last few years of his captivity Nick was befriended by Abu Nazir a leader of al-Qaeda and charged with teaching Nazir’s son English. Nick adopts Islam and when an American drone attack kills Abu Nazir’s son, to whom Nick has become very attached, Nick agrees to work with Nazir against US interests. Nick returns home as a war hero, is elected to Congress and groomed to run as VP in the current VPs upcoming presidential campaign. Carrie correctly suspects that Nick has been turned by Nazir and sets out to expose him (or exploit his new position in the US government). Complicated enough?

Virtually every character, Carrie, Nick, Nick’s wife and son and daughter and his best friend (who fell in love with Nick’s wife during his absence and assumed death) as well as Carrie’s CIA colleagues, struggle with conflicting loyalties. Nick loves America and his family but hates what it has done (convincingly denounced as terrorism by Abu Nazir) and cooperates with Nazir in punishing it. The VP Nick expects to run with gave the orders for the drone attack that killed Nazir’s son. Each character is complex, which complex histories. Each side rightly sees the other as terrorists. The show is full of twists and turns and surprises. It is fantastic.

Iran and the bomb

In the greatest public address any American President has ever given, Donald Trump claimed to have stopped Iran from developing atomic bombs (in the greatest lie every told).

Here are the facts. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran at the time, supported the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that provided international inspection of Iran’s enrichment of uranium used for its nuclear power plants to ensure that it did not enrich it to the level needed for atomic bombs. Khamenei repeatedly stated that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islamic law. This religious position is formalized as a fatwa (a legal ruling under Sharia), which the Iranian government has cited for decades as proof of the peaceful nature of its nuclear program.

During his first term, President Trump withdrew the US from the JCPOA and international inspections stopped. A broad international consensus holds that the US/Israeli attacks on Iran this year will drive Iran to overcome its religious restraints on developing the bomb and proceed to do so out of its need to defend itself. Thus, rather than preventing Iran from developing atomic bombs Trump (and his friend Bibi) have probably forced Iran to do so. For good measure US/Israel killed Khamenei with an airstrike on February 28. Maybe Trump will find a way to blame NATO for all of this???