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March 2026	1	736
April 2026	1	4,538
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August 2026	0	1 (collection gap)
September 2026	0	1,320

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Articles served from theweek.com

Why Israel has fallen out of favor with Americans

The United States has backed Israel since its founding as a modern state in 1948. That alliance is looking fragile these days, with recent polls suggesting American public support for its longtime ally has cratered amid deadly wars in Gaza, Iran and across the Middle East. The number of Americans who now hold a “very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel” is 60%, said Pew Research Center. That’s up seven points since last year, and “nearly 20 points since 2022.” There was once bipartisan support for Israel among U.S. voters, but 80% of Democrats now disapprove while 58% of Republicans approve. There has also been a departure from 25 years of polling, which long reported that “Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies,” said Gallup. Americans now view Palestinians more sympathetically than Israel, by a margin of 41 to 36%. ‘Heavy-handed militarism’ The United States is “falling out of love” with Israel, Edward Luce said at Financial Times. Fewer Americans remember Yitzhak Rabin, the “courageous prime minister of Israel who sought peace with the Palestinians” but was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli extremist. Benjamin Netanyahu has largely dominated Israeli politics since then, wielding a “heavy-handed militarism” in Gaza, and Americans have noted his role in persuading President Donald Trump “that it was a good idea to attack Iran.” Rabin lost his life for peace. “What will posterity say of Netanyahu?” Netanyahu may be remembered as the “prime minister who lost Israel’s most important ally,” Michelle Goldberg said at The New York Times. The country’s faltering reputation is mostly a “consequence of its oppression of the Palestinians” and particularly the “mass killings” in Gaza during its war with Hamas. But the growing split is also the result of Netanyahu’s “aligning Zionism” with Trump’s “American authoritarianism.” U.S. views of Israel “could still have much further to fall.” The United States “must stand with Israel,” Alex Tokarev said at The Detroit News. Like the U.S., Israel “values liberty” but is “surrounded by tyrants and terrorists determined to annihilate it.” A West that will not support its ally against such enemies “will not defend its own liberty.” An ‘ominous turn’ Netanyahu has “torched U.S. support for Israel for a generation,” said Axios. The collapse can be seen among Democrats in Congress, where “lawmakers who started out staunchly pro-Israel are becoming increasingly vocal critics” of the U.S. ally. American leaders must “have a discussion about how to normalize” the relationship with Israel, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said to Axios. An “unprecedentedly overwhelming majority of Democrats” last week voted against failed Senate resolutions to block weapons and bulldozer sales to Israel, said The Times of Israel. Americans are “sick and tired of spending billions of dollars to support Netanyahu’s horrific wars,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said to reporters, per the outlet. The votes to deny arms to Israel are an “ominous turn that will encourage Iran, Hezbollah and their terrorist allies around the Middle East,” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial.

Apr 22, 20265 votes

Why Israel has fallen out of favor with Americans

Apr 22, 202616 votes

The 5 wildest ideas Donald Trump has proposed

President Donald Trump has nothing if not an active imagination. Since taking office, he has pitched multiple ostensibly revolutionary products and plans to the nation. Some are material planks of his America First agenda, while others are seemingly speculative flights of questionable feasibility. Whether touting settlements on Mars or “freedom cities” at home, Trump has never been at a loss for ideas about the next big thing. Aliens In February 2026, Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he had directed his administration to identify and release government files containing “any and all other information” about the “highly complex but extremely interesting and important” matter of aliens, UFOs and other extraterrestrial phenomena. Trump should “peel back the layers of that onion, let America decide if we can handle it,” Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett said in a Fox News interview two months later. “I think we can handle it.” Even with Trump’s “presidential intent,” federal bureaucracy and legal safeguards will determine “whether the files are ever fully revealed,” said CNN. Those hoping for immediate bombshells may want to “temper expectations a bit,” said Christopher Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, to the outlet. UFO hunters should expect, at minimum, a “fairly long, and probably a bit of a slow process.” Golden Dome As one of the first executive orders of his second term, Trump in January 2025 directed the implementation of a “next-generation missile defense shield for the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and other next-generation aerial attacks,” said The White House. Dubbed the “Iron Dome for America” at the time, there has been “little progress” made on the since-renamed Golden Dome system, with “internal misalignment on the administration’s plans for the architecture causing delays,” National Defense said. At the “heart” of the networked satellite defense system would be “space-based interceptors” designed to “find and destroy enemy missiles and drones in the early stages,” said Gizmodo. That technology, however, “does not exist yet and is deemed theoretically ineffective and impractical.” Nevertheless, Golden Dome will demonstrate “operational capability by the summer” of 2028, said project director Gen. Michael Guetlein to lawmakers earlier this month, per The Washington Examiner. He also admitted that pace-based interceptors may not be part of the “final architecture as originally envisioned” if the tech is shown to be “prohibitively costly,” said Breaking Defense. Boots on Mars While speaking remotely with NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson in 2017, the president said he would like to see a manned mission to Mars “during my first term or at worst during my second term.” The United States will “lead the world in space and reach Mars before the end of my term,” Trump said in the closing days of his 2024 reelection campaign, reiterating the promise of historic planetary exploration alongside major donor, SpaceX CEO and future-DOGE chief Elon Musk. Under his leadership, Trump said at his second inaugural address in 2025, America will “pursue our Manifest Destiny” by sending astronauts to “plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars,” a message he returned to in his address to Congress that year. In a memo to NASA in late 2025, Trump “confirmed that he wants to send astronauts back to the moon” instead, thereby “putting eventual Mars missions on the back burner,” Le Monde said. A manned Mars mission would “likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars spread over a number of years,” said Nature. NASA, however, spends “$25 billion a year on all of its programs,” and faces further potential budget cuts from the administration. Freedom Cities In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Trump campaigned on establishing “Freedom Cities,” tracts of federal land where businesses could “focus on technological innovation” and potential homeowners would revel in futuristic patriotism, said Politifact. At the time, Trump’s campaign advisers framed the proposal as comparable to “Abraham Lincoln’s campaign for the transcontinental railroad, Teddy Roosevelt’s vision for a national park service and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System,” said Politico. By March 2025, multiple interest groups had begun “drafting Congressional legislation” to advance the development of Freedom Cities “where anti-aging clinical trials, nuclear reactor startups and building construction can proceed without having to get prior approval” from the associated federal agencies, Wired said. Concurrently, Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland have been met with interest from “some Silicon Valley tech investors” envisioning their own “libertarian utopia with minimal corporate regulation” on an American-controlled Island, Reuters said. The notion has been “taken seriously” by U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Ken Howery, although Greenland remains, for now, in Denmark’s control. Despite his utopian campaign promises, Trump “hasn’t lent any rhetorical weight to the idea recently,” Politifact said in February. It is possible that “preliminary work undertaken by outside groups will eventually be reflected in tangible developments.” Medbed In September 2025, the president shared a since-deleted video to Truth Social promoting “access to new medical technology” in the form of a “cure-all bed” with roots in “conspiratorial corners of the internet,” said CNN. “Every American” will have “their own medbed card” granting access to medbed hospitals, an AI-generated Trump said in footage “intended to resemble a Fox News segment” hosted by daughter-in-law Lara Trump. Why was the footage AI? Because “no one has an actual photo” of a medbed, said McGill University’s Office for Science and Society. “Let’s be clear, they don’t exist.” Trump is “transparent,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt when asked about why the president shared a doctored video of a nonexistent technology on Fox News. “He likes to share memes and videos,” she said, calling it “refreshing” that Trump is “so open and honest.”

Apr 16, 202620 votes

Dems file 25th Amendment bill amid Trump outbursts

What happened Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Tuesday unveiled a bill to set up a bipartisan panel that could help remove a mentally or physically incapacitated president under the 25th Amendment. The legislation, which had 50 Democratic cosponsors, is a “matter of national security,” Raskin said in a statement. “Public trust in Donald Trump’s ability to meet the duties of his office has dropped to unprecedented lows” as he “threatens to destroy entire civilizations” and “aggressively insults the pope,” among other erratic behavior. Who said what The 25th Amendment empowers the vice president, plus the Cabinet or “such other body as Congress” provides, to declare the president unfit for office. “This body should have been set up” when the amendment was ratified in 1967, Raskin said. A White House spokesperson called Raskin a “lightweight” and praised Trump’s “sharpness” and “unmatched energy.” The Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate would each pick four of the panel’s 16 members — physicians, psychiatrists and former top Cabinet officials — and the panel would pick a 17th member as chair. If a medical examination found the president unfit, a majority of the panel could vote to suspend the president with the assent of the vice president. What next? The legislation “is a long shot,” Axios said, as “Republicans control Congress, and Trump could simply veto it.”

Apr 15, 20269 votes

Dems file 25th Amendment bill amid Trump outbursts

Apr 15, 202618 votes

Will Democrats try to remove Trump from office?

Democrats are ready to be done with Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump’s critics are starting to talk more openly about removing him from office, using impeachment or the 25th Amendment. They assert that his recent social media tirades against Iran and Pope Leo reveal he is unfit for office. Democrats in Congress mostly “steered clear of threatening impeachment” since Trump’s return to the White House, said The New York Times. The president’s threat last week to wipe out Iranian civilization “dramatically” shifted their calculations, spurring dozens of “formerly hesitant” House Democrats to back articles of impeachment. Trump “seems to be taking us on a path to mass war crimes,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on X. The president’s recent “erratic behavior and extreme comments” have “turbocharged” discussion of his mental fitness, said the Times. The challenge: Removal efforts are “doomed to fail so long as Republicans control Congress,” said The Associated Press. What did the commentators say? The “fate of the Earth depends” on Trump’s removal from office, Will Bunch said at The Philadelphia Inquirer. The president’s growing list of “embarrassingly profane and unspeakably evil” social media posts demonstrates that he is “mentally and physically deteriorating,” a danger given his command of the “planet’s largest air force and a large cache of nuclear weapons.” The threat is too urgent to wait for Democrats to win control of Congress in November. Americans should join a May 1 general strike called for by the organizers of the “No Kings” protests to make their feelings clear. “It is a time for action.” Democrats’ talk of impeachment “plays into Iran’s hand,” Peter Lucas said at The Boston Herald. Despite his words, Trump “will not end civilization in Iran.” But he will end Iran’s attempt to develop its own nuclear weapon. Democrats are looking for an excuse to “impeach him anyway if they gain control of the House in November.” They should instead acknowledge that Trump “saved the day” by taking action against Iran. The 25th Amendment is “having a moment,” Ian Millhiser said at Vox, but it is unlikely to be used against this president. The constitutional provision would allow the White House cabinet to “temporarily prevent Trump from acting as president,” but the process is designed to replace an executive who is “physically or mentally incapacitated” rather than one who is “merely bad at being president.” Other democracies make it easier to remove an “incompetent, unfit or unpopular leader.” The United States should join their ranks. What next? Democratic leaders are trying to “shut down” impeachment talk, said Axios. That is not the “best use of our time” given that the effort would inevitably fall short, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) said to the outlet. Dean and other senior Democrats want the party’s focus to be on “concrete issues like the war in Iran and affordability” as midterm elections approach, said Axios. An impeachment that fails to remove Trump, said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), “is worse than no impeachment at all.”

Apr 14, 202622 votes

Trump probably can’t quit NATO but he can wreck it

President Donald Trump loves raging against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, regularly chiding the military partnership for alleged financial delinquencies while at the same time boosting the interests of NATO’s primary antagonist, Russia. Now, as the U.S.’s war on Iran continues, NATO’s ostensible neutrality in that conflict has prompted him to renew his threat of leaving the organization altogether. Trump often tries to dictate reality by presidential fiat, but the legal process for leaving NATO is largely out of his hands and in Congress.’ The result is a Trump who’s more constrained on paper but not without a toolbox of other, less absolute options. Why can’t Trump just leave NATO? Trump has often threatened to leave the military alliance, but he has his own Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to thank for the legal inability to do so. In 2023, Congress enacted what “appears to be the first statute prohibiting the president from unilaterally withdrawing from a treaty (specifically, the North Atlantic Treaty),” said the government’s Congressional Research Service in a February 2026 report. This “might be understood as a rejection” of the position that presidents possess “exclusive power over treaty withdrawal.” The bill ensures presidents cannot exit NATO “without rigorous debate and consideration by the U.S. Congress with the input of the American people,” said co-sponsor Rubio in a statement on Senator Tim Kaine’s site; Kaine (D-Va.) was the amendment’s other sponsor. Before this, any member nation could exit the treaty one year after notifying the U.S., which would then “inform the governments of the other parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation,” said the NATO charter. Per the bill, a bipartisan effort for which Rubio partnered with Kaine and others from across the aisle, a president may only exit NATO “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, provided that two-thirds of the senators present concur or pursuant to an Act of Congress.” This is a virtual impossibility, given the Democrats’ current holdings in the upper chamber. The 2023 effort was “spurred by worries that Trump, if he returned to power, might try to quit the alliance,” said The Washington Post. Fast forward three years, and Trump “insists he would be able to do it anyway,” said Deutsche Welle. What can he do then? While it’s possible a constitutional challenge to Rubio’s 2023 bill would “likely favor the power of a president,” there are still “plenty of ways” Trump could “kneecap” the treaty “without leaving” or complying with the congressional restrictions, said DW. Even without an “official exit,” Trump’s “increasingly hostile stance toward the alliance may leave it weakened,” said CBS News. If other member nations “can’t trust” that the U.S. will honor the treaty’s Article 5 mutual defense pact, then the alliance is “already broken in the way that matters most,” said political scientist Ian Bremmer on X. As soon as the group’s mutual defense pact is “questioned,” NATO “loses its potency” as a Russian deterrent, said Politico. Trump has, in that respect, “turned doubting NATO into official policy.” The president is also “considering a plan to punish” some NATO member nations he deemed “unhelpful” during the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, said The Wall Street Journal. This would involve relocating some of the 84,000 American troops stationed in Europe and deploying them to “countries that were more supportive,” including Greece, Lithuania, Poland and Romania. Trump could also withdraw American military assets entirely and shut off funding for NATO operations. Or if he wants to be “very dramatic,” he might even “decide not to staff the position of Supreme Allied Commander Europe,” a post traditionally reserved for American officers, said DW. The president could “just downgrade our participation,” said Jim Townsend, a former Pentagon official who oversaw Europe and NATO policy, to Politico. He could skip summits, and the secretary of defense “won’t go to defense ministerials.” With the “language” of its 2023 bill, Congress has “prevented” a “total” and “formal withdrawal from NATO,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) to Politico. But the U.S. could “still be in NATO” with a president grasping “many different levers” so that the country’s impact would nevertheless be “diminished significantly.”

Apr 10, 202611 votes

Trump probably can’t quit NATO but he can wreck it

Apr 10, 202620 votes

The 6 most sci-fi things Trump-era Republicans have claimed

Traditionally seen as occupying a more staid, straight-laced and “conservative” end of the American political spectrum, the modern Republican party has, under President Donald Trump, become a hub for many of the theories formerly relegated to the fringes of national discourse. Over the past decade, the conservative movement has elevated adherents to claims of demonic possession, extraterrestrial infiltration and, most recently, instantaneous transportation. Just months after being nominated to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s core Office of Response and Recovery in late 2025, top FEMA official Gregg Phillips became the subject of an investigation into his “rise to prominence” as a “far-right activist” who “spread conspiracy theories,” said CNN. Phillips’ claim that he’d spontaneously teleported to a Waffle House restaurant in the city of Rome, Georgia, has “generated numerous headlines and at least one biting late-night comedy segment,” The New York Times said. Rep. Tim Burchett: UFO disclosures the country would ‘come unglued’ over “We need full disclosure,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn) said to Newsmax in April. “The public has a right to know, dadgummit, it’s your tax dollars. Let’s get it out there.” Asked by host Rob Finnerty about the aliens-exist claims from former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, Burchett, who sits on both the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees, said he’d been “briefed by just about every alphabet agency there is.” If the national security apparatus were to “release the things that I’ve seen, you’d be up at night worrying about or thinking about it.” One of Burchett’s recent classified briefings “would have set the earth” on fire and cause the country to “come unglued,” the Tennessee lawmaker said. Outer space revelations are “getting covered up, and the people that know are dying or disappearing.” Tucker Carlson: demonic origins of atomic weaponry Onetime Fox News juggernaut Tucker Carlson insists a nocturnal attack from supernatural forces once left him bloody and scarred while his family slept unmolested. The claim, made in footage from the unreleased “Christianities?” documentary, was accompanied by “creepy music, reenactments of Carlson firing a gun and dogs running through the woods in slow motion,” The Seattle Times said. A post shared by Christianities? (@christianitiesmovie) A photo posted by on Nuclear weaponry is also “demonic,” Carlson said on the Bannons War Room podcast to former White House advisor Steve Bannon. Anyone who “claims otherwise” is “either ignorant or doing the bidding of the forces that created nuclear technology in the first place, which were not human forces obviously.” Matt Gaetz: alien hybrid breeding program Once a front-runner to lead the Trump administration’s Justice Department, former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz claimed on The Benny Show podcast in late March that the U.S. government is engaged in a human-extraterrestrial breeding program, with eyes on making inroads to the broader galactic community. “An actual uniformed member of the United States Army briefed me,” Gaetz said to right-wing political commentator and podcaster Benny Johnson. Despite taking place in a “non-classified setting,” Gaetz said the soldier showed him “locations of hybrid breeding programs where captured aliens were breeding with humans to create some hybrid race that could engage in intergalactic communication.” During the interview, Gaetz “admitted he didn’t verify the whistleblower’s claims,” HuffPost said, but added he was told there were “between six and 12 breeding facilities around the country.” I asked Matt Gaetz What Is the Most Disturbing Alien Finding He Learned In Congress:Alien 'Breeding Programs' and 'Non-Human Biologics'"I had someone come and brief me who was in a military uniform, worked for the United States Army, that was briefing me on the locations of… pic.twitter.com/XRIwZTXeIwMarch 31, 2026 Marjorie Taylor Greene: Jewish space lasers Perhaps the most infamous Trump-era Republican flight of sci-fi fancy is that of former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in 2018 claimed in a since-deleted Facebook note that a series of catastrophic California wildfires were potentially started by a beam from “space solar generators” under the nebulous control of the Rothschild banking firm — itself a longstanding shibboleth for antisemitic conspiracy theories. In a 2025 interview on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Greene said she “didn’t even know the Rothschilds were Jewish” and also claimed UFOs “could be fallen angels.” Roger Stone: demon portal above White House In 2022, longtime Trump ally and conservative operator Roger Stone claimed on the Eric Metaxas Radio Show that a “demonic portal” had appeared above the White House “around the time that the Bidens moved in.” Insisting he’d been initially skeptical, Stone said he was convinced, in part, by a friend’s sending him a “bunch of documents and also a bunch of notations from the Bible about portals,” adding that he had seen the alleged 1600 Pennsylvania Ave vortex “swirling like a cauldron.” Asked why the apparent rift in space-time hadn’t been reported on by mainstream news outlets, Stone said simply that the media “doesn’t cover a lot of things that are true.” JD Vance: UFOs as demons Asked during a recent interview with Benny Johnson about federal tracking of UFOs and other potentially extraterrestrial phenomena, Vice President JD Vance offered a slightly different take on whether or not advanced civilizations were visiting Earth: “I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons,” Vance said. Pressed to expand on his assertion about “celestial beings who fly around, who do weird things to people,” Vance said there is a “desire to describe everything celestial, everything otherworldly” as “aliens.” Put simply, said Slate, Vance “appears to believe that aliens visit Earth” and that those aliens “are actually demons.” JD Vance Tells Me That UFOs are DEMONS:“I Think They’re DEMONS” 🛸“I don’t think they’re aliens. There are weird things out there that are very difficult to explain.”The Vice President tells me he’s going to AREA 51 with his Top Secret Security Clearance to FIND OUT.“I… pic.twitter.com/mDtrafkxB9March 27, 2026

Apr 7, 202616 votes

The 6 most sci-fi things Trump-era Republicans have claimed

Apr 7, 202610 votes

The 6 most sci-fi things Trump-era Republicans have claimed

Apr 7, 202612 votes

Trump offers shifting goals for the war...

What happened A defiant Iran intensified its attacks on Arab states and U.S. assets across the Middle East this week, as President Trump seesawed on America’s war aims and when the joint U.S.-Israeli offensive on Iran might end. Thousands of Iranian missiles and drones have rained down on Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and other Arab nations, smashing into oil refineries, airports, residential buildings, and hotels and killing at least 16 people. At least 11 U.S. military bases have been hit, damaging communications infrastructure and air defense systems and partially collapsing some buildings, according to satellite imagery reviewed by The New York Times. The Pentagon said at least 140 U.S. troops have been wounded, eight seriously, and seven have been killed; in Israel, Iranian strikes have killed at least 13 people. As the damage mounted, Trump judged the operation “very complete, pretty much.” Within hours he backtracked, saying the U.S. was bent on “ultimate victory,” while still asserting it would end “very soon.” Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted the assault was at “just the beginning.” Asked which of those things was true, Trump said, “I think you could say both.” Inside Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was selected to replace his father as the nation’s supreme leader. Trump, who insisted he must approve any new leader, said the selection of Khamenei—a hard-line cleric with deep ties to the elite Revolutionary Guard—was “unacceptable,” judging it would “lead to more of the same problems.” The U.S. and Israel continued to pound targets across Iran; more than 1,300 Iranians have died in the strikes, most of them civilians, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society. “They are striking everywhere: homes, schools, mosques, hospitals,” said one Tehran resident. In Washington, Democrats berated Trump’s failure to articulate a clear plan. After a closed-door briefing, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut called the administration “incoherent.” He said it had backed off the previously stated goals of regime change and destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and that it had “no plan” for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, where shipping has come to a standstill. Meanwhile, defiant Iranian leaders ruled out a ceasefire or mediation. “Iran will determine when the war ends,” said Iranian Revolutionary Guard spokesman Ali Mohammad Naini. What the columnists said There’s a growing realization inside the administration that Trump and his team “misjudged” how the Iranian regime would respond to a conflict it views “as an existential threat,” said Mark Mazzetti in The New York Times. They thought the war would follow the same pattern as last year’s U.S.-Israeli strikes, when Iran’s retaliation was fairly muted. That Tehran responded with far more aggression has forced administration officials to “adjust plans on the fly.” Some “are growing pessimistic” about the lack of an exit strategy. But they are “careful not to express that directly” to Trump, who’s called the operation a “complete success.” “It is not too late” for Trump to build a case for the war, said Thérèse Shaheen in National Review. The Iranian regime has been “an active, aggressive foe” of the U.S. for 47 years, and was building “capacity to cause catastrophic damage” with its nuclear program. The public’s not buying it, said Greg Sargent in The New Republic. A poll aggregator found only 38% of Americans approve of the offensive—“the lowest initial support for an American war perhaps ever.” Among Iranians, faith in the U.S. project is also in short supply, said Najmeh Bozorgmehr in the Financial Times. At the war’s outset, opponents of the brutal regime hoped better days were at hand. But the “terrifying” air campaign “has shattered that belief.” Choking on “toxic black smog” from burning oil depots, many Tehran residents are “shocked” by the destruction of schools, thousands of homes, and historic landmarks, and dismayed by the “resilience of the Islamic regime.” There’s no sign of the “anti-regime unrest” that erupted in January; instead, one sociologist in Tehran, a critic of the regime, sees a rising “sense of nationalism.” Mojtaba Khamenei’s ascent is a grim sign, said Marc Champion in Bloomberg. Instead of a shift toward a “less confrontational” government, his selection “represents regime consolidation.” And Trump’s “tone-deaf demand” for veto power over Iran’s supreme leader is yet another sign he “profoundly misunderstands his opponents.” He thought they’d crumble at his shock-and-awe campaign. But “Iran has been preparing for this fight since 1988,” and they are “ready for a long war.” Now Trump must “decide if he is too.” Trump should declare victory and “walk away,” said Jason Willick in The Washington Post. Regime change would be the ideal outcome, but that would require ground troops and take years and many American lives. As it stands, U.S. and Israeli strikes have severely damaged Iran’s military capability, knocking out missile launchers, air defenses, and more than 60 naval craft. Quitting now—as some advisers are reportedly urging—would serve Trump best politically while saving the U.S. from a potential “quagmire.” Trump is “confounded by the war he started,” said Andrew Egger in The Bulwark. Pumped with “hubris” after last year’s Iran strikes and the capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, he and his team thought the U.S. “could simply impose its will on smaller countries,” with “little cost.” Now they’re waking up to the fact that they have “plunged into a morass” without the support of the American people. The president and his advisers didn’t anticipate an actual war, “but now they’ve got one, and they don’t have the faintest idea how to end it.”

Mar 16, 20268 votes

Trump offers shifting goals for the war...

Mar 16, 20267 votes

Trump offers shifting goals for the war...

Mar 16, 202618 votes

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Challenges to these scores

Articles served from theweek.com

Why Israel has fallen out of favor with Americans

Why Israel has fallen out of favor with Americans

The 5 wildest ideas Donald Trump has proposed

Dems file 25th Amendment bill amid Trump outbursts

Dems file 25th Amendment bill amid Trump outbursts

Will Democrats try to remove Trump from office?

Trump probably can’t quit NATO but he can wreck it

Trump probably can’t quit NATO but he can wreck it

The 6 most sci-fi things Trump-era Republicans have claimed

The 6 most sci-fi things Trump-era Republicans have claimed

The 6 most sci-fi things Trump-era Republicans have claimed

Trump offers shifting goals for the war...

Trump offers shifting goals for the war...

Trump offers shifting goals for the war...