Mendocino County Today: Sunday 3/1/2026

SCATTERED SHOWERS and isolated thunderstorms continue through this evening. Conditions will briefly warm and dry early next week with another round of generally light and beneficial rain midweek. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cloudy 53F this Sunday morning on the coast. Maybe a shower today thru overnight then dry until another small chance of a shower Wednesday morning. Looking dry until into next week after that.

Fort Bragg Rainfall Totals
2025 Oct 2.06” Nov 9.45” Dec 9.87”
2026 Jan 6.02” Feb 8.98”
YTD 36.38”

FORT BRAGG DEMONSTRATION PHOTOS (Feb. 28, 2026) by Bob Dominy

https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCLQQY

DRIVER ID’D IN FATAL HIGHWAY 1 CRASH

by Colin Atagi

A former Mendocino County man was in the process of moving to Florida when he died on Monday, February 15, 2026 in a crash on Highway 1, his family said.

David Alexander Printz, 44, was identified as the driver involved in a crash between Gualala and Point Arena, according to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

The California Highway Patrol is investigating the crash and initially described Printz as a Gualala resident before the Sheriff’s Office identified him Wednesday as a resident of North Port, Florida.

A family member said Printz grew up in Humboldt County and most recently lived in Anchor Bay with his wife and daughter. They moved to Florida in December and Printz returned this week to complete final tasks.

He was pronounced dead after crashing into a tree on Highway 1, the CHP reported Monday.

Investigators said Mr. Printz was driving a 2003 GMC Sierra northbound when, for reasons still under investigation, he lost control and crashed around 1 p.m.

Alcohol and drugs do not appear to have played a role and there were no reports of weather being a factor in the crash, authorities said.

It forced a road closure for more than two hours. The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, South Coast Fire Department, Redwood Coast Fire Department and South Coast Ambulance assisted at the scene.

Anyone who witnessed the crash or has information is asked to contact the CHP’s Ukiah office at 707-467-4420.

Camillas, their time is so short but still beautiful once fallen (Dora Briley)

MISSING MR. PRINTZ

Editor,

When someone passes from this earthly life — especially in a local accident, a shockwave is felt, whether or not we personally knew that individual.

We were shocked and deeply saddened to read that David Printz died in a car-crash four miles north of Anchor Bay on Wednesday, February 16.

We knew David professionally since the big storm of January 2, 2023 when a Category 5 wind sucked out a 350-pound, double-paned rake window from our dining room, shattering it on the ground 20 feet below — miraculously not breaking the glass roof of our solarium. David manifested the heroic re-installation with impeccable skill, with the coordination of his crew and the assistance of Junior Roddy and his crane. We know many of you will have your own memories of our good neighbor David.

Whenever we will drive past that Highway 1 place of David's transition we will hold him and his tribe in our hearts, remembering his dignity and soulful nature.

Fred and Cheryl Mitouer

Anchor Bay

JOHN E. ‘JOE’ BURKE JR.

March 7, 1947-February 18, 2026

Joe was born at Howard Hospital in Willits on March 7, 1947. Joe attended the Laytonville schools from Kindergarten through 12th grade and graduated in 1966. Joe met Sue in 1969 and they were married on February 27, 1972. Joe and Sue have three sons, Nathanial, Cody and Blu. By previous marriage, Joe has a daughter, Chantal Burke (Coughlin) and son, Shane Burke.

Joe worked all his life in the timber industry. He worked for several local companies including: Harwood Mill, Musgrave Logging, Gullett Logging, Okerstrom Logging. Joe was injured in 1983 while with Okerstrom Logging and afterwards started working for Bailey’s until he started his own company, Burke & Son Logging.

Joe always came home after work and would load wood and Redwood Burls to sell to Legend of Big Foot.

Joe joined the Sheriff’s Mounted Posse in the early 80’s and remained until joining Laytonville Fire Department and then he was certified as an EMT and would put on CPR classes as well as driving the ambulance. Joe never missed a high school game as an EMT and he loved being with the kids.

Joe had the idea for a logging show on Old Timers weekend and we ran it for several years.

Joe had many passions, he loved fishing, hunting with his brother Delmer in Idaho (I only remember one Elk in 40 years). Joe loved taking his antique car to every show he could find. In early years he made beautiful burl clocks and tables. Joe was a hard worker and provider all his life despite numerous injuries and illness that never slowed him down.

Joe and Allen Frost would compete who could drop a tree and hit a beer can - don’t think there was ever a declared winner - 2 of the best fallers award!

Joe’s mother and father, John E. Burke and Rosella (Burgess) Burke preceded Joe in death, as well as his sister, Norma Jean (Burke) Randal.

Joe is survived by Sue, his brother Delmer (Ann), his children Shane (Alesha), Nathanial, Cody (Nancy), Blu and Chantal, along with several grandchildren: Emi Melsa from Minnesota, Nathan, Tyler, Marcus, Kyler, Kaden, Savannah, Kourtney, Dayton, Natasha (Matt) and great-grandchildren: Miguel, Caleb and Lily along with numerous nieces and nephews.

Services will be held on Friday, March 6th at 1 p.m. at the Good News Fellowship Church in Laytonville and a private burial at the Laytonville Cemetery. There will be a memorial service at the Lion’s Hall in Laytonville following the church services. Please bring a potluck dish to share for the memorial at the Lion’s Hall. To help at the memorial, please contact Anna Salmeron.

MENDO’S AMAZING $12-$14 MILLION SURPLUS

by Mark Scaramella

It’s hard to make sense of Mendocino County’s annual attempts to balance its precarious books, especially this year. On the one hand they talk about a structural deficit based on continually increasing costs (mostly personnel and their salaries) versus flat or declining revenue. On the other hand they always seem to be able to find enough money to cover their increasing costs, especially as the General Fund salary costs have experienced a slow but continuing decline, offset by continuing salary increases.

A few months ago, Auditor-Controller/Treasurer Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison gave the Board of Supervisors a preliminary guess that the carry-over from the close out of last year’s finances was around $12 million, or $14 million if you count some “unavailable” investment returns. At last Tuesday’s mid-year budget revision, that $12 million was essentially confirmed by the formal closing of the books for last fiscal year (ending in June of 2025).

According to the CEO’s February 24 budget presentation:

“General Fund

The increase in non-departmental (ND) revenue does not represent additional General Fund dollars available, as it is offset by departments projecting to come in over budget or not meeting their 6% attrition. The following chart starting on Page 21 shows the projected Fiscal Year End Net budget position with the additionally projected ND revenues. Projections show these amounts Net to $14,097, which means that the projected Year End General Fund budget is nearly balanced and will require strict budget monitoring over the remainder of the 2025-26 Fiscal Year.

Updated Non-Departmental (ND) revenue projections reflect an increase of approximately $2.8 million, primarily due to stronger property tax, in-lieu of Vehicle License Fees, Williamson Act replacement tax, and interest earnings. These gains are partially offset by adjustments in sales tax and opioid settlement revenue.

It is important to note this net increase in ND revenue does not represent additional General Fund dollars available, as it is offset by the net end of fiscal year position for General Fund departments, impacted by departments projecting to come in over budget or not meeting their 6% attrition. A detailed overview of projected Department end-of-year projections starts on page 20.

Executive Office adjustments reflect staffing and project changes since adoption, resulting in a net General Fund increase of approximately $112,000.

District Attorney adjustments are largely driven by the merger of budget units 0448 and 0464, and consolidation of 0465 into 2070, resulting in a net General Fund increase of approximately $726,000.

Social Services continues refining its budget following significant first-quarter changes, including updated staffing levels and realignment funding adjustments.

Grants and Economic Development budgets are reduced due to staffing changes and vacancies.

Public Health has refined its budget but is not requesting additional General Fund support.”

Part of that budget presentation included the chart below purporting to breakdown how the County ended up with about $12 million in unbudgeted additional revenue which they could use to cover operations costs in the various departments that are overrunning their budgets (which were arbitrarily cut by 6% from the prior year).

Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison tried to explain the increases:

Cubbison: “The balance sheet adjustments primarily relate to the fair value of investments that we are required to book at market value. It does not result in actual funds available. Those are for the investment in the treasury pool that have various different maturity dates out in the future. But that is what that $1 million balance sheet adjustment has to do with. The non-departmental ongoing revenue is a result of property tax, $914,000 of increased property tax. The $3.68 million is various other kinds of one time fluctuations. That relates to interest largely. I’d like to caution the Board not to be too reliant on a particular budget amount for interest rates because they tend to fluctuate. We’ve been very fortunate the last couple years to have some very good yield on our investment. So this portion of that $3.62 million is due to interest. But as interest rates go down over time they can very quickly return to much less revenue from interest on the treasury pool for the county general fund portion. So that revenue is also associated with cost plan [the plan which allocates sizeable overhead costs to operational departments by a pre-determined formula], cost reimbursements from internal service values. That also fluctuates. The cost plan is prepared using the prior actuals from two years and then it’s trued up when the costs are actually available for the year that was approved. So there’s kind of a rolling… Sometimes that can be good, sometimes not as good. The cost plan number is not a consistent number to be relied on. The County also did well unexpectedly I believe with transient occupancy tax. So we are not quite sure whether that is based on just higher room rate charges or if occupancy was truly higher than anticipated, but there was still some good amount of revenue generated from the TOT [bed tax]. There is some money, $473,000 in cannabis tax. I think that we’ve been conservative on what the estimate was. We are still not completely sure how to accurately predict that. It’s kind of an unknown number that fluctuates again wildly. So I just want to point those individual items out. There’s also a change in accounting availability. That depends on… We, with the accounting and the reporting, we determined that actually the end of September is the most realistic revenue recognition period before we close the books, so that allows us to count an additional months’ worth of revenue in the financial statements. So it’s shifting from unavailable revenue to available revenue. That is kind of a one-time shift that as we go forward if we consistently use September as our cut-off for recognition, we won’t have that kind of shift again. That’s why we count that as one-time. The $2.49 million is actually savings in department budgets for those departments that were over or under budget. That netted out resulting in that $2.49 million. I just wanna point out that I think we’ve been much more aggressive with the 2025-26 budget with the imposition of the attrition factor and the reduction of the 6% so the departments were forced to reduce their budgets more close to actuals, so we don’t anticipate an ongoing savings, or unanticipated savings, of $2.49 million going forward.”

Some of this is understandable, kind of, especially the parts about the higher than expected interest earnings and the budget savings that accrues from departments operating with fewer staffers. But we were not the only members of the public who found Ms. Cubbison’s assertion that changing the date of closing the books (the “cut-off for recognition”) actually results in any additional revenue or that it magically changes revenue from “available” to “unavailable” or the reverse.

Unfortunately, the Supervisors had no questions of Ms. Cubbison, so whether this local version of old George H.W. Bush’s “voodoo economics,” or perhaps voodoo accounting, will actually provide additional revenue remains illusory.

CEO Darcie Antle and her staff disagreed somewhat with Cubbison’s suggestion that some of the magic $12 million be used to cover departmental overruns. Instead, Antle & staff proposed that $5.1 million be spent on one-time expenses and the rest designated for reserves. But, as usual, those “one-time expenses” were ill-defined as well.

The CEO recommended that about half of the $5.1 million, or $2.5 million, be allocated to “risk,” which is undefined, but which we take to mean insurance claims and lawsuits, probably including Chamise Cubbison’s pending civil case against the County. The CEO suggests that the rest of the $5.1 million go to Road Maintenance ($1 million), “water” (i.e., $500k toward administrative costs associated with the pending Potter Valley Project/dam removal), and $100k to $360k each for the Little River Airport, capital improvements, the Low Gap Landfill, local share of a cannabis grant and, of greatest curiosity: $100k for “architectural design for DA Office move.” (Nobody has yet discussed or disclosed what the plans are for the DA office move after the old downtown courthouse is abandoned and our mostly newly appointed judges move their numerous pampered asses to their very own plush new barcode-courthouse over by the tracks. Given Mendo’s facility cost experience, there’s absolutely no way that $100k will be enough for the “architectural design for DA Office move” work. And the cost for construction of whatever that “design” ends up looking like will probably be a budget buster of its own.

The Supervisors asked no questions of staff about all this confusion or how the CEO arrived at her recommended levels of allocations to these one-time categories. Nor did they make any remarks about how they might ultimately choose to allocate the $12 million windfall this year or next.

ELEANOR "ELLE" R. CROSBY (February 1944 - February 5, 2026)

Eleanor "Elle" R. Crosby was born in Manchester, Connecticut, in February 1944.

She graduated from Rollins College in Florida with a degree in music, and learned Spanish, a passion for her. After college, she worked for SAS Airlines out of Washington, D.C., before eventually moving to California, where she met her husband, Philip Crosby. Together, Elle and Philip made their home in California; plus a short time in Hawaii, while raising their three sons. Elle later retired in Ukiah, California, where she became an active and devoted member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Elle was preceded in death by her husband, Philip Crosby, and by her brothers Andrew, Austin, and James R. Riker. She is survived by her sons and daughters in laws Nathaniel and Millie Crosby of CA; Christopher and Evelyn Crosby of CA; John and Kristen Crosby of OR as well as five grandchildren. She is also survived by her brother and his wife, Richard and Judy Riker of Oregon.

A private family gathering may be held later this summer.

ONLINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK

What to do about DA Eyster? How about if twenty people sue him in small claims court for theft from Mendocino County because of all the money spent, and going to be spent, on his vendetta against Cubbison? Twenty people suing at $10,000 each would be $200,000, a good minimum starting point for all the expenses he’s generated with his bullying of Cubbison, and presumably the board of supes, to suspend her from her ELECTED position and try to put her in jail. (Start with twenty people suing and go up to one hundred and the publicity might finally get some wider media coverage and/or get the state’s Attorney General’s office to take a closer look at what he’s done.)

THE LAUNDROMAT SHORTAGE

Editor:

The Mendonoma coast is sadly in need of a functional public laundromat, both for us less fortunate residents without washers and dryers at home, and for the tourist trade that many of our businesses rely upon.

Thus, I bring to the attention of aspiring business people the tremendous opportunity to both provide a much-needed service to our coastal community, and the certainty of accumulating much wealth in the form of 25-cent pieces!

The only laundry facility currently operating near Gualala is in Anchor Bay, and it is a sadly non-maintained wreck with, upon my last visit two weeks ago, one functioning dryer.

Some of the few washers were still working, although old and clearly on their last legs, despite the high prices for a wash.

Avoid this place if you can. If you can't, bring a book while you wait possibly hours for that one precious dryer.

To the interested entrepreneurs, I call your attention to Lucy's Laundry in Fort Bragg for the model of an ideal public laundromat with a multitude of modern machines, a clean and well-tended environment, and a pleasant and smiling full-time attendant. It's nearly the next closest to Gualala, and a pleasure to visit.

Check it out if you can afford the gas and three-hour round trip.

Daniel Reed

Gualala

MENDOLOCAL.NEWS AND THE U.S. POST OFFICE IN THE VILLAGE OF MENDOCINO

Donation letters returned to sender

by Elise Cox

I want to thank everyone who responded to my call for help funding our operational expenses for 2026. I know there are many worthy causes asking for donations, and it is deeply gratifying to see how many people in our community value and support local reporting.

This week, however, several supporters contacted me after receiving “Return to Sender” notices — even though they had addressed their envelopes correctly. If you were one of them, I hope you’ll consider resending your contribution.

Here’s what happened.

On Sunday, February 21, I went to pick up our February mail, which included responses to the fundraising campaign announced on February 1. When I arrived, I discovered that our post office box key no longer worked. Mendo Local Public Media formally incorporated in late August, and I believed the box was paid through the end of February.

We had not received any renewal notice from the post office, despite providing multiple methods of contact when we registered the box. I also acknowledge that I failed to add the renewal date to my calendar.

I returned the next day to clarify the situation and learned that the Mendocino post office does not send renewal reminders. Instead, it follows a U.S. Postal Service policy under which renewal dates are calculated from the first day of the month — even if a box is rented mid-month, as ours was on August 14. Under that policy, our renewal date was January 30, approximately five and a half months after we opened the box and rented it for six months.

At the counter, a clerk informed us that the box was overdue and advised us to return the following day with both keys to complete the renewal.

However, before we returned with the paperwork and keys on February 24, the contents of the box — including donation letters — appear to have been removed and returned to senders.

When we visited the post office again on Saturday, February 28, we spoke with the same clerk and asked when the letters had been returned. She first said they were sent back on February 10 or 11 — roughly ten days after the renewal date. When we noted that our rental period would have extended through February 13 based on our August 14 start date, she later stated the mail had been sent to Sacramento on February 14, which was a Saturday.

When we asked why the post office had not attempted to contact Mendo Local Public Media using the email address provided on our registration form, the clerk said she manages approximately 1,800 boxes and could not email customers individually. She then threatened to call the sheriff and did so.

The interaction felt like an unusual and disproportionate response to a calm inquiry about returned mail.

I am sharing this account, along with a recording of the exchange, in case others have had similar experiences at the Mendocino Village Post Office and would like to share them.

And again, if your donation was returned, please know how much your support means — and that we would be grateful if you chose to resend it.

The address for us is:

Mendo Local Public Media

PO Box 362

Mendocino, CA 95460

(Mendolocal.news)

Mark Scaramella notes: A version of this happened to us a few years ago. But in our case the mail was simply held and a notice put in our box to pay the overdue amount at which point the accumulated undelivered mail was released. What happened to Ms. Cox seems like the worst possible option since it involves much more post office handling, loss of mail, increased hassle and unnecessary delay.

ALICE WINGWALL

09/05/1935 - 02/13/2026

Sculptor, Photographer, Poet, and Visionary of the Unseen

Alice Wingwall, a multidisciplinary artist best known for her profound ability to "see" through her art long after losing her physical sight to retinitis pigmentosa, died peacefully in her home on February 13, 2026.

Born in Indianapolis and raised in Zionsville, Indiana, Alice graduated from Indiana University and obtained her Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from University of California, Berkeley. Alice founded the Sculpture program and served as Director of the Studio Arts program as a Professor at Wellesley College. Sculpture was Alice's earlier career focus, and she later moved into photography as her primary studio practice.

Alice was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa as a young woman and experienced a progressive loss of vision over her career. A member of the Blind Photographer's guild, Alice described her continued photography as "a radical choice, a political move. I was tired of people saying to me, 'How can you take a photograph when you can't see anything'? And I think they weren't asking me, they were telling me – 'How can you do this? It's unthinkable.' Well, I can do it. What I say to them is that the image starts in the brain."

Wingwall’s work has been exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum, the San Francisco Exploratorium, the Oakland Art Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and in public art installations at Brown University and University of Oregon. Alice was the subject of the award-winning documentary Miss Blindsight: The Wingwall Auditions (2000), and was one of three artists featured in the 2015 documentary Shoulder the Lion.

Wingwall was a remarkably strong, curious, and passionate woman who defied expectations about who she should be and what she could do. Music was deeply important to her and her home was almost never without the sound of classical and other music. She served for many years as a board member for the Kronos Quartet and loved attending concerts of all kinds throughout the Bay Area.

Alice was known for her love of all shades of red, orange, and pink, and in keeping with her independent spirit, frequently wore all three together.

She is survived by her husband of 62 years, Donlyn Lyndon, her sister Betsy Joyce, and brother Bill Atkinson, her three children and their spouses, Andrew (Leigh), Audrey (John), and Laura (Bridget), her five grandchildren, Nicholas, Isabel, Kenneth, Olive, and Ada, numerous nieces and nephews and her fourth guide dog, Buttercup. She was preceded in death by her sister Sally Hart.

The family will hold a private memorial on Saturday, March 21, with a public celebration of life to follow in the fall. In lieu of flowers, please consider donations to Guide Dogs for the Blind, Creative Growth, the Kronos Quartet, or the charity of your choice.

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Fun, Loyal Terrier Looking for His Person

Levi is a three year-old, 13-pound terrier with a big personality packed into a little body. He isn’t shy, but he can be a bit barky when meeting new people — it’s just his way of figuring out who’s who. Give him a moment, and he settles right in. Once Levi decides you’re a friend, he’s loyal and affectionate. This little guy loves to play when he feels comfortable, and he’s a great little walker on-leash. One of his favorite things is hopping onto your lap for scratches and soaking up attention. Levi is looking for a home with folks who appreciate a small dog with a spirited personality and a huge heart. With a bit of patience and understanding, he’ll reward you with devotion, playfulness, and endless companionship.

To see all of our canine and feline, guests visit: mendoanimalshelter.com.

We're on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!

OFFSHORE MARINE LIFE ECOTOUR

Anchor Charters will be running a trip to see offshore marine life Sunday (March 1), departing at 10 AM and returning around 3-4 pm. Cost is $120 per person and there is plenty of room on the boat. Weather looks great, calm seas and no wind. If you want to go, just show up at the dock by 9:45 with cash, check, or credit card. Dress in layers, it might be chilly going out but warm later. Bring lunch and water. The Kraken docks at the foot of North Harbor Drive, next to Noyo Fish Co. restaurant. Parking is across the street, park all the way in the back, not in the signed spaces closer to the street.

The plan is to start by looking for Gray Whales, which are northbound now - we saw several this morning - before heading further offshore to the upper Noyo Canyon area where we should find Albatrosses and other seabirds not seen from land. We often find Dolphins out there as well, and sometimes they come to the boat and ride the bow wave. The offshore marine environment here can be amazing and we never know what we will see.

(Tim Bray)

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE List of Events

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, February 28, 2026

EDUARDO ALVAREZ, 30, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, evidence tampering, failure to appear, probation revocation.

WARREN BECK II, 40, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, mandatory supervision violation.

TINA CARTER, 51, Ukiah. Petty theft with two or more priors, under influence, controlled substance, paraphernalia, shopping cart.

NOE COLEAZA-BENITEZ, 25, Ukiah. Suspended license, disobeying court order, false ID.

JOSALYNN JONES, 21, Ukiah. Trespassing, controlled substance, probation revocation.

AMANDA MENDOZA, 36, Willits. Battery with serious injury, disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

JACOB NEUER, 22, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernallia, probation revocation.

NATHANIEL SIMERSON, 47, Willits. Paraphernalia, suspended license, resisting.

SHAWN THOMAS, 55, Mendocino. DUI-any drug, controlled substance.

FEBRUARY ELEGY

This bald year, frozen now in February.
This cold day winging over the ugly
Imperfect horizon line,
So often a teeth line of ten buildings.
A red flag flapping
In the wind. An orange curtain is noon.
It all hurts her eyes. This curtain is so bright.
Here is what is noticeably true: sight.
The face that looks back from the side
Of the butter knife.
A torn-bread awkwardness.
The mind makes its daily pilgrimage
Through riff-raff moments. Then,
Back into the caprice case to dream
In a circle, a pony goes round.
The circle's association: There's a center
To almost everything but never
Any certainty. Nothing is
More malleable than a moment. We were
Only yesterday breathing in a sea.
Some summer sun
Asked us over and over we went. The sand was hot.
We were only yesterday tender hearted
Waiting. To be something.
A spring. And then someone says, Sit down,
We have a heart for you to forget. A mind to suffer
With. So, experience. So, the circus tent.
You, over there, you be the girl
In red sequins on the front of a card selling love.
You, over there, you, in black satin.
You be the Maiden's Mister Death.

— Mary Jo Brand (2007)

REPORTING IS ‘THE BULWARK OF DEMOCRACY’

Editor:

A letter to the editor said it was the military not reporters who defend democracy in America. I must differ. In no particular order, I will cite several cases of good investigative reporting defending the Constitution or just simply the rule of law. The work of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein immediately come to mind with their investigation of the Watergate break in and all the corruption surrounding it. How can we forget Edward R. Murrow bring the vile Joseph McCarthy down? More obscure but just as important was Ida B. Wells. She was a courageous Black reporter who investigated and reported on the plague of lynchings of mostly Black men in the late 1800s. Not as earthshaking or headline-making was the good work of investigative journalists helping bring down Ken Mattson, who is accused of defrauding Sonoma County residents with investment schemes.

We do need the military, and they do protect the country, but who investigates the military when it does wrong? Good investigative reporters do. They are the bulwark of democracy.

Linda Robinett

Sebastopol

DANCING ON LIGHT BEAMS

Warmest spiritual greetings,

Sitting here on a warm Saturday afternoon on a public computer grooving to: Earth Goddess: Enchanted Drums and Mystical Chants of the Sacred Forest: I am ready to leave the homeless shelter and go forth! The social security disbursement is incoming, pushing the bank account balance to $6,000, plus $69.95 in the wallet. There is $96.64 in the EBT account. There is enough health insurance for a family of four. Remaining centered, identified with the nameless formless Absolute ParaBrahman, uncompromising in the defense of Mother Earth, let's get it on. The time at the shift from the abominable phase of Kali Yuga to the Satya Yuga, or Age of Truth and Light, is now. What would you do in this world, if you knew that you could not fail?

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

ED NOTE: Well, Craig, if you have enough for a family of four, why don't you find a struggling single mother of two and marry her? That's what Kali Yuga would do, as would your Catholic Jesus. Put your insurance where your hari, hari krishna is.

This flower blooms and hangs facing down. I turned the camera around and photographed it from below so I could see it. (Dora Briley)

MEMO OF THE AIR: Please State The Nature Of The Political Atrocity.

Marco here. Here's the recording of Friday night's (9pm PST, 2026-02-27) eight-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO.org, on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and also, for the first three hours, on 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino, ready for you to re-enjoy in whole or in part: https://memo-of-the-air.s3.amazonaws.com/KNYO_0685_MOTA_2026-02-27.mp3

Coming shows can feature your own story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air. That's all I'm here for.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

A.I. made this. It has a candy-like aspect. I like that the machine intelligence imagines that bus seats are stuffed with feathers, and that a 95-pound woman with limbs like pencils can be grabbed by the wrists by a fierce 275-pound muscleman but toss him across a barn by shrugging her shoulders. Wouldn't that be nice. The naturally evolved wetware A.I. that generates my dreams often in my youth provided me with the pleasure of picking up an attacker by an arm or by both feet in one hand and slamming him against the walls and the floor, breaking him up until he became like a pathetic sock full of bloody pennies. There was a funny shock of recognition when I saw The Hulk do this to Loki in The Avengers. Oh, I thought, lots of other people must dream of that too. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Qyk3Dfe5xgk

This is a real place in the real world. It's 142 feet from the floor to the highest point inside the top. It's made of stone, oak wood painted to look like stone, and it's waterproofed outside with sheets of lead. It was imagined and designed by a man appropriately named Alan and finished by the year 1322, /seven hundred years ago/. At that time in North Africa and Spain scholars were advancing astronomy, medicine and mathematics. Madrasas and observatories were active from Cairo to Samarkand. Mongols had sophisticated astronomy and had developed an accurate past and future calendar of events on Earth and in the sky. It was the golden age of Chinese theater. Trade networks linked the Pacific to the Mediterranean. Look up the Silk Road. Sea trade connected East Africa, Arabia, India, and Southeast Asia. Cultures traded paper, gunpowder, navigational tools, yadda yadda. In India around that time they had cataract surgery. https://www.instagram.com/p/DUTXfqzjHf8/

This unreinforced concrete dome was built almost 2,000 years ago and it's still there, still strong and safe. Modern concrete structures made sixty years ago are already crumbling. https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/02/23/tops/

And Mandolin Orange - Boots of Spanish Leather. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOHkyZ62jjQ

Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

“THE TRUTH IS that I am happy only when I am sitting in the car, between the place I have just left and the place I am driving to. I am happy only when I am traveling; when I arrive, no matter where, I am suddenly the unhappiest person imaginable. Basically I am one of those people who cannot bear to be anywhere and are happy only between places.”

— Thomas Bernhardt, Wittgenstein’s Nephew: A Novel

A POWERFUL WINE COUNTRY FAMILY IS TRYING TO KILL THE SMART TRAIN WITH A BOOK

by Julie Johnson

A Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit, or SMART train, arrives in historic downtown Petaluma in 2025. (Jessica Christian/The Chronicle)

Earlier this year, an intriguing book promising to expose “one of the most catastrophic government transportation investments in U.S. history” began landing on desks at a curious mix of government agencies across California.

Copies of “The Great Train Heist” turned up at the Mariposa elections office, the Alameda County Mosquito Abatement District, in envelopes addressed to officials at small agencies from Susanville to Fresno and throughout the North Bay.

The book is not about California’s controversial and still theoretical high speed rail, which conceivably could impact jurisdictions up and down the state. Rather, its pages take aim at Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit, known as the SMART train, a 48-mile long passenger rail system connecting the Bay Area’s fifth largest city with small cities and towns across two counties.

Published just months before North Bay voters are expected to decide whether to extend by 30 years a quarter-cent sales tax that provides about half of SMART’s annual revenues, “Heist” is the latest salvo in a prominent Wine Country family’s yearslong battle against a crucial public funding lifeline for the train.

“It’s never going to make sense,” said Bill Gallaher, the patriarch of the influential and deep-pocketed family that has spent millions of dollars in the last six years campaigning against public funding for SMART.

Gallaher’s daughter Molly Gallaher Flater spent nearly $2 million on a successful 2020 campaign against an earlier effort to extend SMART’s quarter-cent sales tax, a crucial funding source for the train that expires in 2029.

Gallaher said he spent roughly $350,000 to have the book written, published and distributed to public officials and newsrooms across California.

Cindy Gallaher, show in 2024, believes SMART has too much public money supporting it. (Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle)

In an interview, Gallaher and his wife Cindy Gallaher said that their philanthropic work in Sonoma County has laid bare critical needs for housing, food security and other services. They couldn’t ignore a nagging feeling that the quarter-cent sales tax for SMART is squandering public resources that could help far more people.

The book is his family’s latest attempt to make the case that Marin and Sonoma counties are semi-rural and suburban communities without large population centers or job markets and they don’t need a train.

The train will never pay for itself, they say.

“That’s absolutely true — and neither will Highway 101 or the public library or the public schools,” said Chris Coursey, a Sonoma County supervisor and chair of the SMART board of directors. “All these things that are benefits to everyone in a community are subsidized by taxes.”

Coursey said he read a copy and marked page after page of stats and claims he felt were dubious or out of date alongside valid concerns that, he insists, SMART is addressing, primarily around low ridership.

“They say that they just wanted everybody to know what they know,” Coursey said. “What they know are things they decided several years ago with inaccurate and outdated information presented as facts.”

The SMART train began carrying passengers in 2017 and today stops at 14 stations between Larkspur in Marin County and Windsor just north of Santa Rosa. It’s scheduled to open another station in Healdsburg sometime in 2028 and, eventually, in Cloverdale near the Mendocino County border.

Marin and Sonoma county supervisors are on track to put another SMART tax extension measure on the ballot in June, and have a lower threshold of support to achieve — a simple majority of 50% plus one vote as opposed to the two-thirds required previously.

In 2008, nearly 70% of voters across Sonoma and Marin counties approved the quarter-cent sales tax for SMART, which was then just a promise of a new public transit system.

SMART proponents argue the train system has managed to grow despite punishing circumstances: the 2008 financial crisis that cratered sales tax revenues meant to launch the system, catastrophic wildfires that dealt a steep economic blow to Santa Rosa in 2017 (followed by major wildfires in 2019, 2020 and 2021) and a global pandemic that brought public transit to a standstill across the country.

According to official figures, SMART riders made over 1.1 million trips in the fiscal year ending in June 2025, and trains carry between 4,500 and 4,800 daily riders on weekdays and 2,000 on weekends. Over the 12 months ending in November 2025, the train served nearly 160,000 unique riders, a figure that represents about 21% of the combined populations of Sonoma and Marin counties. One-way fares cost between $1.50 and $7.50.

SMART said its numbers are a show of strength: Ridership increased 32% between fiscal years 2025 and 2024.

But the Gallahers have hit on a key sticking point for SMART: Ridership has continually been lower than promised — with earlier goals of hitting 5,000 daily riders during the week — and has not seemed to have made a dent in highway traffic, as promised.

“They’ll spout that ridership has gone up so much since the pandemic,” Gallaher said. “Yeah, it has, but it’s still pathetic.”

In a February statement issued after the book’s release, SMART officials said that they welcomed public discussion and thoughtful criticism “when it is grounded in current performance and an accurate understanding of who is riding the system.”

SMART said that rider demographics “represent the wider community.” Among passengers, about 18% are under 18 years old, 33% don’t have access to a car and 31% reported an income of $60,000 or less.

“Heist” claims that the average rider makes over $100,000 annually — a figure SMART officials said was wrong.

Gallaher acknowledged that much of the book’s statistics about SMART’s performance was out of date by the time it went to print — a victim of the format. But over the years he and his family members have grown suspicious of SMART’s public claims.

“We didn’t believe the facts had been delivered to the public and by the media,” Gallaher said.

No public transit system operates solely on rider fares, and the amount rides are subsidized by public funding varies widely by agency.

By one metric, the National Transit Database ranks SMART as one of the better-performing transit agencies in the Bay Area when it comes to the public subsidies required to cover the cost of the transit program.

SMART’s subsidy per passenger mile was $1.83 in 2024 — more than BART which came in at $0.88 but far less than bus systems such as Golden Gate Transit and AC Transit, which are subsidized at $3.24 and $3.71 per passenger mile, respectively.

Kari Edison Watkins, co-director of UC Davis’ Transit Research Center said if SMART is competitive with its regional counterparts “that’s fantastic, that’s what we want to see.”

“Any transit service whether it’s rail service or an inner city bus service, there’s a component of it that’s about being a community good,” Watkins said. “It’s a way to enable people to get to places who don’t have the ability to drive.”

Using the subsidy per passenger mile figures, SMART is improving steadily. The subsidy per passenger mile was just over $2 in 2023 and decreased to $1.81 in fiscal year ending in 2024 and to $1.50 in 2025, according to the agency. (The national database shows calendar year figures, which differ only slightly.)

Its farebox recovery rate — the percentage of operating costs covered by passenger fares — in contrast, has hovered around 6% for the last several years. Ridership has grown but that includes many passengers who ride free: people younger than 18 or older than 65.

To compare, BART’s farebox recovery was 71% before the pandemic shutdown — among the best in the country and only second to the New York City subway, according to an agency spokesperson. Today, it stands at 30%.

SMART spokesperson Julia Gonzalez said that the board of directors made the choice to prioritize getting more and new riders onto the train rather than focus on farebox revenues. Even so, Gonzalez said the free fare program has been a great success — the proportion of youth riders has jumped from 14% to 26%.

And paid fare revenues have grown 28% since the program began in mid 2024.

But the Gallahers argue that 6% farebox recovery is a dismal figure. They worry the system will never attract enough paying riders to make a meaningful dent in the costs of operations, especially because it doesn’t connect riders with important economic and entertainment centers like San Francisco and Oakland.

They argue that SMART isn’t serving enough people commuting to work, and that type of rider would be crucial to the system’s growth.

“Heist” is a sprawling 167-page battle of numbers with ridership statistics, population figures and financial metrics. It’s also a political broadside taking swipes at public officials long out of office and prior owners of the local newspaper, in addition to current public figures. It was written by Michael J. Coffino, whose other titles include books about coaching high school basketball and a novel inspired by an Irish immigrant’s life. The book was published by Skyhorse Publishing, which also put forth memoirs by Melania Trump and Woody Allen.

“It’s an interesting strategy because people don’t read books,” said David McCuan, a professor of political science at Sonoma State University. “They might read a substack or listen to a podcast.”

Gallaher is a third generation Sonoma County resident and registered Democrat. He is chairman and founder of Poppy Bank. His development firm, Gallaher Companies, headquartered in Windsor, and related companies have a large national portfolio of homes, multi-family projects, commercial spaces and senior living facilities, with a core of their business in the North Bay.

The Gallahers have repeatedly leveraged their wealth in high-profile local battles.

In 2016, Scott Flater, Bill Gallaher’s son-in-law, spent more than $200,000 on independent expenditures backing three Santa Rosa City Council candidates — a city record. Gallaher and Flater later sued the Press Democrat over its coverage of that spending, a defamation case an appellate court unanimously dismissed.

The following year, when the Tubbs Fire tore through Santa Rosa, dozens of frail elders were left behind at two Gallaher-affiliated senior care homes before being rescued by Good Samaritans; one building was destroyed and another damaged. Then–District Attorney Jill Ravitch sued Gallaher’s companies over the incident, and in 2021 they paid $500,000 and accepted a court-ordered injunction mandating stronger disaster training and evacuation plans. Two months later, Gallaher spent about $1.6 million backing an unsuccessful effort to recall Ravitch.

The Gallahers say they have been portrayed unfairly and have contributed considerable resources to important community causes.

The Gallahers are major supporters of the Redwood Empire Food Bank and have spent millions of philanthropic dollars on substance treatment and recovery housing. In 2024, they founded the nonprofit Gallaher Community Housing to focus on building affordable housing.

While driving to work or around his hometown Windsor, Gallaher said he often sees train cars pass by nearly empty. The park and ride lot is never full. Gallaher said that if he could, he’d turn back time and prevent the financial commitment for taxpayers that he believes is far too high and will never end.

“We’re aware that all public transit has some tax payer subsidy, and that’s reasonable because it’s important where it’s used,” Cindy Gallaher said. “But this one is just kind of off the charts.”

“It should have never been done in the first place, in reality,” Gallaher said.

Coursey, who previously worked for SMART as a spokesperson before running for public office before the first trains carried passengers, said the train is poised to become an even more valuable public transit option as Golden Gate Transit and other services are scaling back.

SMART is working with regional agencies to better coordinate schedules to help riders hop from one system to another. In April, SMART is adding more train trips and extending hours on weekends and evenings.

“To be successful we have to deliver what was promised, and that’s to get to Cloverdale,” Coursey said.

(sfchronicle.com)

REMEMBER THE TUBBS FIRE

Editor:

After reading about the SMART book, I want to give my wholehearted support for the SMART train and encourage people to dismiss the opinions of the Gallaher family who for some reason are opposed to the train It has been a spectacular success and a wonderful addition to our county. I would say a quarter-cent sales tax is a small contribution each of us can make to have this service.

And talking about books, they paid for publishing a book called “The Great Train Heist” that criticizes and attacks every aspect of the train system. I, on the other hand, would encourage people to read a book called “Inflamed: Abandonment, Heroism, and Outrage in Wine Country’s Deadliest Firestorm.” It describes the evening the Tubbs Fire swept through Fountaingrove, including what happened (and didn’t happen) at Varenna, a senior living facility owned by the Gallahers. Thank goodness for the children of the residents who ended up rescuing many of them.

Valerie White

Healdsburg

O SWEET SPONTANEOUS

o sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty . how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

— e.e. cummings (1920)

COVERED CALIFORNIA - ENHANCED FEDERAL SUBSIDIES EXPIRE

by Carole Brodsky

Covered California announced that despite the expiration of federal tax credits that helped millions of Americans afford health insurance, over 1.9 million Californians signed up for or renewed their insurance during the 2026 open-enrollment period.

Covered California continues as the state’s health insurance marketplace, where Californians access insurance from top insurance companies. Qualifying individuals may receive financial assistance on a sliding scale to reduce premium costs. Consumers may compare health insurance plans and choose the plan that works best for their health needs and budget. Depending on their income, some consumers may qualify for the low-cost or no-cost Medi-Cal program.

Covered California is an independent part of the state government whose job is to make the health insurance marketplace work for California’s consumers. It is overseen by a five-member board appointed by the governor and the Legislature.

This year, 235,055 Californians newly selected a health plan for 2026. A record-breaking 1.7 million Californians renewed their health insurance, bringing Covered California’s overall enrollment to a near-record high of 1,927,371 enrollees. That includes 389,590 Californians who enrolled in plans with subsidies from the state of California that lower their monthly premiums. On average, these enrollees are receiving $45 per month in assistance in 2026.

While the count of renewals is strong due to the historic levels of enrollment in 2025, California’s state subsidies showed that affordability made the critical difference. For the lowest-income consumers who were eligible for state subsidies that matched the enhanced federal financial help that has expired, renewal rates remained in line with last year’s. But conversely, for those middle-income consumers who lost all Enhanced Premium Tax Credits, the cancellation rate among renewing enrollees has been 22 percent, double the 11 percent seen last year.

“Despite Donald Trump and the Republicans’ continued attacks on health care access and affordability, Californians once again showed how valuable health insurance is to them by signing up for high-quality coverage through Covered California,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom. “Covered California continues to be a lifeline for working-class Californians. I’m proud that the state could step up and provide assistance to those who need it most so they can retain access to critical health insurance that helps protect them and their families.”

California allocated $190 million from the Health Care Affordability Reserve Fund (HCARF) in 2026 to provide state-funded tax credits for individuals earning up to 165 percent of the federal poverty level. This support will help keep monthly premiums consistent with 2025 levels for those with an annual income of up to $23,475 for an individual or $48,225 for a family of four.

New enrollment is down 32 percent from last year, while renewals are up 4 percent so far. The count of renewing enrollees is expected to decrease over the coming months as fallout continues from increased premiums due to the expiration of the Enhanced Premium Tax Credits (EPTC). Cancellations from consumers eligible for renewal do not settle until after April, but based on data so far, terminations are 32 percent higher than last year.

Following four consecutive years of growth and record enrollment in 2025, overall enrollment dipped in 2026, but it remains the second-highest total at the end of open enrollment in Covered California’s history.

“This year’s open enrollment was unique for many reasons, amplified by the loss of the Enhanced Premium Tax Credits that have helped thousands of Californians pay for their monthly premiums,” Covered California Executive Director Jessica Altman said. “Many Californians see the value in remaining covered, but they had to make sacrifices and shift to lower-tier plans. We see it as a commitment to health and the value that Covered California provides. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished, but much work remains, with more federal changes for 2027 on the horizon.”

The loss of EPTC led to fewer new signups across all ethnicities for Californians, with new enrollment down 32 percent overall. Latino communities were most affected, with enrollment down 39 percent. Those who identified as Black or African American saw a 34 percent drop in new signups. More than one in three new enrollees chose Bronze plans for 2026 compared to fewer than one in four last year. It also led to more than 130,000 renewing Californians switching to Bronze-level plans for 2026. Californians making above 400 percent of the federal poverty level also saw major declines in enrollment, as they are no longer eligible for any tax credits due to the loss of EPTC. New signups among this population were down 59 percent compared to last year, and this group had the highest renewal cancellation rate (22 percent) among all income groups.

Nearly half of Covered California’s enrollees (935,700) reside in Southern California, and another 20 percent (391,680) live in the Greater Bay Area. The Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley region has 205,610 Californians enrolled in coverage, while 148,620 are covered in San Diego.

Those who didn’t sign up for coverage during open enrollment may still get health insurance during Covered California’s ongoing special-enrollment periods, which are available to Californians experiencing a major life event, like getting married, losing a job, or having a child.

Consumers can learn more about their options by visiting CoveredCA.com, where they can find out if they qualify for financial help and see the coverage options in their area. Confidential, over-the-phone assistance is available in a variety of languages, from one of more than 14,000 certified agents and community-based organizations throughout the state. An online calculator tool is available to help consumers determine the best and most affordable insurance option for their situation.

For more information about Covered California, please visit www.CoveredCA.com or phone (800) 300-1506.

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

RELENTLESS AS THE TARANTULA

they're not going to let you
sit at a front table
at some cafe in Europe
in the mid-afternoon sun.
if you do, somebody's going to
drive by and
spray your guts with a
submachine gun.

they're not going to let you
feel good
for very long
anywhere.
the forces aren't going to
let you sit around
fucking-off and
relaxing.
you've got to do it
their way.

the unhappy, the bitter and
the vengeful
need their
fix—which is
you or somebody
anybody
in agony, or
better yet
dead, dropped into some
hole.

as long as there are
human beings about
there is never going to be
any peace
for any individual
upon this earth (or
anywhere else
they might
escape to).

all you can do
is maybe grab
ten lucky minutes
here
or maybe an hour
there.

something
is working toward you
right now, and
I mean you
and nobody but
you.

— Charles Bukowski (1986)

‘EVERYONE ASSUMED HE HAD DONE IT:’

Bay Area teacher accused of abuse sues famous school for millions

by Jill Tucker

Jeremy Taylor had just finished dinner at home in Oakland after a day of teaching when his phone rang, his principal’s name lighting up the screen. The words he heard next, he recalled, barely registered: Allegations of misconduct. Administrative leave, effective immediately. Don’t come to school. An investigation. Wait for further information.

It was Jan. 4, 2022, and Taylor was in his 18th year at Oakland School for the Arts, a charter school whose famous former students include actor Zendaya and Olympic skater Alysa Liu. He had received stellar performance reviews and was popular among students, who once honored him as the “sassiest” teacher for the yearbook.

Taylor was left to speculate about the reason for the investigation, he said — perhaps a student’s concern over something spoken in class, or anger at a disciplinary action. Whatever it was, he hoped he could soon get back to students he feared would miss out on their government and psychology coursework.

That didn’t happen. Taylor wouldn’t see his students or teach in a classroom again.

A student he’d taught in the first years of his tenure had accused him of engaging in a sexual relationship with her starting when she was 14. She’d told a friend he had a red truck and cats, and would take her out to eat at Zachary’s pizza after sex at his house. The accusations launched a police investigation, then a school investigation, conducted by an outside agency in cooperation with police.

Taylor said he was shocked. He told the independent investigator he never had an inappropriate or sexual relationship with a student. He didn’t live near Zachary’s pizza at the time, records show. He’s never owned a red truck and didn’t have cats then, he said. And he questioned the lack of evidence — witnesses, emails, text messages — corroborating the accusation.

But based on the school’s investigation, Taylor was fired. Three months later he was arrested. And that summer the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office charged him with abusing the former student.

“It was like everyone assumed he had done it,” said Kris Bradburn, an Oakland School for the Arts teacher from 2008 to 2022. The accusation “was like touching the third rail on BART — you’re just like dead. There’s no coming back from it.”

Taylor’s story made headlines at a critical moment.

California schools, churches and Boy Scout groups were facing a wave of lawsuits after a 2019 law that expanded the statute of limitations to include decades-old sexual abuse.

At the same time, students across the Bay Area, including those at Oakland School for the Arts, or OSA, staged walkouts and other protests in response to claims of widespread and unaddressed sexual harassment on campuses.

But then, much more slowly and quietly, the case against Taylor fell apart.

Over the next three years, Taylor’s defense attorneys acquired evidence from the school, the accuser, the police and other sources that they said prove the initial investigations were deeply flawed.

After more than 20 court hearings and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, according to Taylor, the district attorney’s office dropped the charge against him in March 2025. Months earlier, the woman who accused Taylor, identified as Jane Doe in court papers, dropped a civil lawsuit she’d filed against him, although the school had already settled with her for $1.1 million, records show.

Taylor, now 50, remains unemployed and fears he may never teach again.

“I’m in a position of having to prove a negative,” he said. “It’s not enough to be found not guilty or having a case dropped.”

In mid-December, Taylor filed a lawsuit seeking at least $4 million in damages from Oakland School for the Arts, saying it rushed the investigation while ignoring inconsistencies and his accuser’s documented struggles with mental illness. In early February, he sued the Bay Area law firm that conducted the school’s inquiry, Oppenheimer Investigations Group.

Taylor and his lawyers argue his story is a cautionary tale about a teacher who was just trying to care for his students and was swept up in a cultural backlash related to sexual abuse scandals across the country.

“Everyone at OSA and in particular its administration understood that the school would benefit from an opportunity — any opportunity — to recast itself as taking a proactive stand against sexual violence,” they wrote in their complaint against Oppenheimer.

Neither the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office nor the accuser responded to requests for comment for this story.

Oppenheimer Investigations founding partner Amy Oppenheimer said she could not comment given privacy concerns.

School officials did not respond to allegations in the suit, but said in a statement that they would continue to “fully cooperate” with police and prosecutors.

“An independent third-party investigation was conducted after allegations were first made about Mr. Taylor,” wrote Steven Borg, OSA’s director of advancement and marketing, “and Mr. Taylor was terminated based on the findings of that third-party investigation.”

But a Chronicle review of police files, witness statements and other records from the case — including evidence never publicly disclosed in his defense until now — raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the investigations.

The allegations

In late 2021, Doe told a friend in a series of text messages that she’d had a sexual relationship with her ninth-grade math teacher, records show. Convinced by the level of verifiable detail, the friend reported the allegation, without first telling Doe, to Oakland police, who then contacted the school.

Doe told investigators she had sex with Taylor approximately 10 times, beginning when she was in ninth grade.

At the time of the alleged abuse, OSA was in just its second year, and Taylor, then in his late 20s, was among its first teachers. Its roughly 180 students took academic classes in the mornings with teachers like him, and arts electives in the afternoons. The report acknowledged OSA’s early years had been chaotic, with teachers and students often forming friendly relationships, sharing hugs, cellphone numbers and lunches off campus.

Doe told police she became close to Taylor after she confided in him about her adoptive mother’s drug use at home, which led him and an administrator to contact Child Protective Services. Raised in the foster care system and struggling with her mental health and an eating disorder, according to the lawsuits and her statements to investigators, Doe “latched” on to Taylor, who started to take her off campus for lunch.

According to police reports, she said their first sexual encounter, and others, took place in what she described as a reading corner of Taylor’s classroom on a pile of lounge pillows beneath a tentlike canopy.

Doe told police Taylor would later sign her out of school in the afternoons using her adoptive father’s name and then take her back to his apartment, which she described as near Zachary’s Chicago Pizza in Rockridge, a block from the BART station.

She and Taylor communicated by phone and email almost every day, often late at night, Doe told investigators, adding that her best friend from her freshman year would confirm how “weird” and “gross” the relationship was.

As evidence of this relationship, both the police and school investigations cited emails between Doe and Taylor, some of which were related to the accuser’s troubles at home, her eating disorder and other teenage topics.

“I got a new phone and it’s a flip phone!!! :) so i’m really happy about that, and i get to text message which i didn’t get to do with my old phone,” she wrote in an email to Taylor. “I’m not coming to school tomorrow…i have to go to php,” she went on, describing a treatment program for her eating disorder. “But maybe thursday.”

“Wasn’t your old phone just a regular phone?” Taylor replied. “So, doesn’t this mean that you now have a cell phone (which sounds even more exciting than whether or not it flips)? Either way, good news for you :) Is it pink to match your iPod? I’ll be here Thursday.”

Doe said she and Taylor had frequent late-night talks on her cellphone, which led to significant charges on the family’s phone bill, according to the Oppenheimer report. Her mother believed the number on the bill was Taylor’s, although she told the investigator she couldn’t remember how she determined that, and in September 2005, she complained to school officials about the frequent calls with the teacher.

The report also included an incident at an OSA performance. While in line outside the school’s theater, Doe and Taylor were reportedly “all over each other.” Her adoptive father told the investigator that the pair’s “dynamic did not look like standard teacher-student relationship” and was “weird.”

The school and police investigators also spoke with several female students who attended OSA at the time of the allegations. They concluded it appeared Taylor developed close, personal relationships with “several female, teenage students,” and that the behavior constituted “grooming,” although none said he was physically inappropriate. Police and the Oppenheimer report cited a memo from a school administrator at the time that directed Taylor to “stop ‘counseling’ students in one-on-one settings outside of class.”

The Oppenheimer report determined Doe’s allegations had merit, under a preponderance of evidence standard, meaning they were more likely true than not. The investigators’ justification included that Taylor knew “intimate details” of Doe’s life — such as that she had a pink iPod.

The Oppenheimer investigator found Doe credible because she was “visibly distraught” and had “nothing to gain” by fabricating a complaint. Taylor, by contrast, was said to be less trustworthy, in part because he insisted on his innocence. “Taylor did not admit to responsibility for any wrongdoing, which reduced his credibility,” the report stated.

On May 27, 2022, after learning of a warrant for his arrest, Taylor turned himself in to police. He was released from jail on a $50,000 bond.

That July, after prosecutors reviewed evidence including police reports and the Oppenheimer report, they brought a single charge: one felony count of a lewd act with a minor aged 14 or 15, alleging a single incident of sexually motivated touching. The offense is punishable by up to three years in prison and registration as a sex offender if proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Challenging the case

Taylor said he spent the next three years at times in despair as he fought his case. He and his legal team gathered thousands of documents during discovery — emails, witness transcripts, texts and Facebook messages, medical records, Jane Doe’s diary and more — he believed would exonerate him, and shared them with the district attorney.

In March 2025, the DA’s office dropped the charge, citing insufficient evidence. The decision was made according to Deputy District Attorney John Pricco, “based on the review of the discovery, based on conversations with prior DA’s assigned to this case for many years.”

But Taylor’s life didn’t return to normal. The accusations left a lingering question mark, reinforced by a permanent digital footprint. So he sued, arguing the school-commissioned investigation contained errors and omitted key evidence.

Oppenheimer found no corroboration of the sexual relationship described by Doe — no intimate communications; no friends Jane Doe confided in at the time; no entries about Taylor in her high school diary; and no mention of Taylor in years of therapy, according to legal filings.

“Had even the most basic investigative practices been followed, OSA would have easily discovered the truth — that Mr. Taylor was the victim of a malicious false accusation,” his lawsuit against OSA states.

For instance, records show Taylor lived east of Lake Merritt, more than 4 miles from the only location of Zachary’s Chicago Pizza at the time.

Doe did not provide many specifics about the relationship, including how often they allegedly had sex or the chronology of events, and changed her account of how long the relationship lasted, according to the lawsuits, police records and the Oppenheimer report. The Oppenheimer report states that the investigator “did not insist on certain topics or details, given the evident emotional impact the interview had” on her.

Investigators never questioned Jane Doe’s description of Taylor’s high school math classroom, according to the lawsuits, including the pillows and canopy that Taylor said didn’t exist and would have violated fire regulations. Any number of witnesses would have confirmed this, he said.

The lawsuits question how Taylor could have signed a student out of school in the front office posing as her father. And they argue there was no evidence that Taylor communicated with Doe by phone: No one confirmed his number matched the one from Doe’s phone bill, and Taylor’s email about the flip phone shows he didn’t know about Doe’s cellphone until after her mother complained about the bill.

The quantity and content of the email communication between Taylor and Doe are also a point of dispute. Records obtained through discovery in Taylor’s OSA lawsuit show he and Doe exchanged a total of 108 emails during her time at OSA. Half were sent from the teacher to all his students. None was sent after 7:15 p.m. None was sexual in nature.

While Doe told police that her best friend would back her claims of the relationship with Taylor, the friend told police he never saw anything inappropriate between the two and that he was surprised by the case, according to partial transcripts cited in Taylor’s lawsuit against OSA. The friend said he thought Taylor was “socially awkward and gay.”

As for the incident at the school production, no witnesses described Taylor and Doe having physical contact, according to police reports. The Oppenheimer report’s statement that the two were “all over each other” came from Doe, who said her father described it that way.

When asked about the event by police, Doe’s father said he didn’t see them touching. According to Taylor’s lawsuit against OSA, Doe’s adoptive mother was also present at the event and didn’t recall any inappropriate conduct.

“Essentially, the ‘incident’ amounted to a teacher (Taylor) and a student (Doe) talking at a school event while surrounded by parents, students and teachers, none of whom expressed any concern,” the lawsuit states.

Taylor’s lawsuits also rebut the claim he was too close to students. Police and school investigators cited a school administrator’s memo about counseling students as evidence of Taylor’s alleged grooming. But the document, included in the Oppenheimer report, actually tells Taylor he is “only responsible for general counseling” of the students, and to direct students to “appropriate professional help” when needed.

“Thank you for consistently reporting your concerns about several students,” the administrator wrote. “You have enabled me to provide our students with professional services and family support.”

In the fall of 2005, when Doe sent Taylor an email saying she “really” needed to talk to him, he replied that he was unavailable and to go to the office for help if she needed assistance, according to an email included in the Oppenheimer report and the lawsuit against OSA.

Taylor’s lawsuits also point to alleged omissions in the investigations, such as Doe’s history of mental illness, including hallucinations while at OSA, two years in a secure facility in high school and hospitalizations throughout adulthood.

Investigators allegedly failed to obtain the text messages between Doe and the friend who reported the claims. In them, Doe wrote that in the week before she made the allegations against Taylor, she hadn’t been eating, and was consuming 20 laxatives a day, which inhibited the lithium she had been taking to prevent mania, according to the suit against the school.

Doe wrote to her friend that she was “disassociating” and “lost my grip on reality,” in messages cited as evidence in Taylor’s lawsuits.

Police and school investigators also didn’t initially request all of Jane Doe’s emails from OSA, according to Taylor’s lawsuits, which could have resulted in the discovery of nearly 190 emails between the then-14-year-old and a 31-year-old security guard at her former middle school.

These messages, some of which are included in the lawsuits, contained sexual content and references to late-night phone calls. OSA officials turned them over to Taylor’s legal team in December 2024, under court order, nearly three years after his firing.

“Please Delete this e-mail once you read it, since we are talking about my %$! #@ and peeing in bed,” reads one of the March 2005 emails to Doe from the security guard, whose name is redacted. “The wrong person reads this and I’m in Jail by next Tuesday cuddling with my new boyfriend Tyrone. …When the hell am I going to see you again, when your’re freak’n 18 yrs. old? WTF? Hurry up and get older, so you can drive over here.”

In another email in April 2005, around the same time Doe told police she was latching on to Taylor, the security guard wrote: “given my age, your age, just everything we can’t both help but feel strange or even wonder what we are feeling.”

OSA administrators, who are mandated to report suspected sexual misconduct, declined to say when they discovered the emails and whether they notified law enforcement about the emails, according to Taylor’s lawsuit.

“If OSA had looked at these materials that it had in its possession,” the lawsuit against the school states, “it would have understood the innocence of Jane Doe’s discourse with Mr. Taylor, rather than attempting to read inferences and innuendo where none belonged, and by comparison, the concerning nature of her communications with (the security guard) would have been obvious.”

The fight ahead

Since California extended the statute of limitations on childhood sexual assault claims, school districts have been flooded with new cases like Doe’s. The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing has documented 1,432 reports of child sexual misconduct among credentialed educators, including 385 last school year, more than twice the number four years earlier.

The legally mandated investigations that follow can be complex, in part because some allegations date back decades, and state law gives schools or districts just 90 days to complete them.

While research has consistently shown that the vast majority of sexual assault allegations have merit, a small percentage of claims — anywhere from 2% to 15% — are false, possibly more when the accusations are against educators, according to a 2022 academic review by Gander Research, which studies gender issues.

“It’s a small number. It can happen,” said Billie-Jo Grant, a consultant in school employee sexual misconduct and lecturer at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. But she said that a little fear of accusations among teachers is “probably a good thing,” and that, “It’s been too long that they’ve been doing anything they’ve wanted.”

Many teachers actually say that this fear is pervasive. The National Education Association offered advice in 2006 to reduce the risk of false allegations: Never be alone with a student. Maintain professional demeanor and distance. Avoid physical contact. And be wary of “troubled” students, who may misconstrue help.

The tips have been echoed by the federal Department of Education and state teacher organizations in more recent years.

With more cases to evaluate, Taylor questioned whether the system has adequate safeguards. In his case, the Oppenheimer investigator decided what evidence to include, who was credible and what conclusions to make.

“They’re playing the role of police, prosecutor, the judge, the jury, the executioner,” he said.

The fallout from the case extended far beyond Taylor — to his family and friends, his former students and to Doe herself.

The day Taylor’s criminal case was dismissed, Doe appeared in court to read a statement before the official ruling. Over several minutes, she condemned the friend who told police about the allegations, OSA, her adoptive parents, the district attorney’s office, Taylor’s attorney and Taylor.

She questioned why it took so long for the case to be dropped if they couldn’t prove the allegations.

“This has been the worst three years of my life,” Doe said. “You asked me to be here, then you allowed me to be thrown around for three years while you did absolutely nothing to protect me, and then you drop the case with nothing more than an I’m sorry, there is not enough evidence.” The experience, she said, was “like getting tied to the back of a truck and getting dragged through gravel.”

The accusations against Taylor shook the OSA community, which was already reeling from the walkouts. Students had shared anonymous allegations of sexual misconduct by teachers and peers, demanding accountability and safety. Many of the more than 1,000 students who had passed through Taylor’s classrooms didn’t know how to react to his firing.

For former student Vyolet Ashley, who graduated in 2016, the allegations against her favorite teacher had been devastating. “I spent the next three years trying to grapple with it,” she said. “I didn’t know how to trust myself for a while.”

In recent weeks, she has read Taylor’s lawsuit, the accuser’s civil lawsuit, the Oppenheimer report and any other documents she could get her hands on, she said.

“I’ve actually been very surprised by how much proof there is that this didn’t happen,” said Ashley, whose name and contact information was provided by Taylor at the request of the Chronicle. “As a survivor myself, I know how scary it is to not be believed.”

Taylor said the “last thing” he wants “would be to create any ammunition for anyone to go after the credibility of real victims.” He’s now focused on rebuilding his life and credibility — sometimes one friend, one former student at a time. But he still doesn’t know whether he’ll be able to teach again. The state notified Taylor of its intent to revoke his teaching credential based on the accusations. He is scheduled to defend it this summer.

Meanwhile, his arrest remains part of his record. To clear it, he plans to seek a finding of factual innocence through the Alameda County Superior Court, which requires convincing a judge there was no reasonable cause for arrest.

Taylor’s lawsuits could wind through the courts for years as the sides argue over contractual language and the legal standards of a thorough investigation. If he wins in court or settles with the school, it will mean OSA payouts for both the accuser and the accused.

In the meantime, Taylor said, he can finally share his side of the story in the court of public opinion. The allegations didn’t just cost him four years of his life and whatever future he hoped to have. They destroyed his past as well, he said.

“It was an erasure of 17 years and every positive memory a student might have had of me,” he said. “I want to try to restore that past, restore those memories, restore that reality.”

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Every country has lunatics but America is the only advanced country where a high level of gun violence is considered normal. The abundance, easy availability (just be over 18 without a felony record) and lax gun laws in America combine to produce the highest level of gun violence of any first world nation.

As for “freedom”, guns result in less freedom for many Americans. A quarter of U.S. adults fear being attacked in their neighborhood. A third of U.S. adults avoid certain public places/events because of mass shooting fears. Millions of American women have been threatened by their gun-wielding romantic partners and fear breaking up with them will result in their deaths. It’s no surprise the U.S. appears far down on the list of countries on Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index.

COUNTERCURRENTS

by Selma Dabbagh

The exhibition Trésors sauvés de Gaza: 5000 ans d’histoire, even with its 130 objects, felt sparse. The rescued treasures include a Hellenistic or Roman marble statuette of a Greek goddess, several large wine amphoras from the third century BCE, funerary steles engraved with Kufic calligraphy and photographs of ancient ports. But the point is there is little left. The Israeli government, its military and its archaeologists have destroyed or stolen almost everything.

The show at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, reviewed in the LRB last October by Josephine Quinn, closed last December, having had its run extended, but very few other international museums have shown any interest in hosting it. If it were for me to curate it, with an unlimited budget, I’d leave an expanse the length of an airport runway between each object to show how much has been destroyed.

When the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in March 2001, the destruction was writ large in newspaper headlines and widely condemned. A year later, the Israeli army bombed the old town of Nablus. The Palestinian architect and writer Suad Amiry wrote about it in her memoir Sharon and My Mother-in-Law. Her first thought was ‘Oh, God, not the soap factory!’ She then remembered the thirteen people who’d been killed and felt ‘rather ashamed’. And yet since October 2023 five thousand years of cultural buildings and ancient libraries have been bombed into dust in Gaza with hardly a whisper from the international media or cultural institutions.

The Tresors sauvés exhibition, among other things, was a personal showcase of the skill and tenacity of Gazan archaeologists, above all Jawdat Khoudary, an engineer by training, who had salvaged and preserved most of the objects on display. He used to keep them in his garden in the Sheikh Radwan area of Gaza City, where he had hundreds of objects dating from the second millennium BCE to the Ottoman era. In 2008 he opened his museum to the public.

Jawdat Khoudary’s garden, Sheikh Radwan, Gaza City, April 2005 (Marc-André Haldimann)

The previous year he had loaned 260 objects to a museum in Geneva. The extraordinary story of how they were shipped out of Gaza through the Rafah crossing reads like a spy thriller and is told by three of the actors in the drama, Béatrice Blandin, Marc-André Haldimann and Khoudary himself, in the recently published Archiving Gaza in the Present, edited by Dina Matar and Venetia Porter. But it was never safe to return them and for years they remained locked up in a crate in Geneva.

As Joanna Oyediran documents in her contribution to Archiving Gaza, the Israeli defence minister during the Six-Day War, Moshe Dayan, removed 23 sarcophagi from a cemetery in Deir al-Balah in violation of the Hague Regulations, which forbid the seizure or destruction of property in occupied territory. The ‘Dayan collection’ was acquired by the Israel Museum in 1982. It is far from the only example of Israeli looting from Palestinian land.

The British Museum will not be showing the Trésors sauvés exhibition. Last May, though, a private event to celebrate the anniversary of Israel’s founding was held at the museum, which professes ‘a deep belief in objects as reliable witnesses and documents of human history’. Unesco’s preliminary damage assessment for cultural properties in Gaza has so far verified damage to 157 sites since October 2023: fourteen religious sites, 122 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, three depositories of movable cultural property (including Khoudary’s collection), nine monuments, one museum and eight archaeological sites.

The bulldozed site of Jawdat Khoudary’s garden, Sheikh Radwan, Gaza City, 2 February 2024 (Wael Shehab)

The British Museum has also removed the word ‘Palestine’ from some of its display cases, apparently because ‘audience testing has shown that the historic use of the term Palestine … is in some circumstances no longer meaningful’. The group known as UK Lawyers for Israel has said that ‘concerns were raised’ in a letter it sent to the museum. A petition criticising the museum for contributing to a ‘wider pattern of erasing Palestinian presence from public memory’ and calling on it to ‘restore the term “Palestine” to all relevant displays’ has received more than 23,000 signatures.

Venetia Porter, a former senior curator for Islamic and contemporary Middle East art at the British Museum, told me that ‘the museum needs to answer the question as to when and why did the museum decide to change any of these labels. What processes did it go through? Did these involve scholarly peer review, and what specific conversations have they had with UKLFI?’

In 2021, UKLFI demanded that the statement ‘Forensic Architecture stands with Palestine’ be removed from an exhibition at the Whitworth in Manchester. Following its removal, Forensic Architecture insisted the exhibition be shut until the statement was reinstated, as it eventually was.

UKLFI also pressed for the removal of Palestinian children’s drawings from Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in February 2023 and have conducted a campaign against the rector of Glasgow University and war surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah, accusing him of misconduct. Abu Sittah was cleared at a fitness-to-practise hearing last month, but the case cost him and his supporters nearly £100,000. UKLFI have informed his lawyers of their intention to appeal to the High Court against the decision.

David Velasco, the former editor of Artforum, fired for speaking out against the onslaught in Gaza in October 2023, wrote a piece for Equator in December on ‘How Gaza broke the art world’. He describes going to Berlin in November 2024 for a Nan Goldin retrospective at the Neue Nationalgalerie. ‘The museum has kept its promise to allow me to talk, and I thank them,’ Goldin said. ‘But they claim that my activism and my art are separate, even though that has never been the case.’

At the Berlin Film Festival earlier this month, the chair of the jury, the director Wim Wenders, said that filmmakers ‘have to stay out of politics’. Another juror, one of the producers of The Zone of Interest, wondered why she hadn’t been asked about ‘Senegal and all the other wars’ (there is no conflict in Senegal). Arundhati Roy withdrew from the festival. ‘To hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping,’ she said. ‘It is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time – when artists, writers and filmmakers should be doing everything in their power to stop it.’

Also in Berlin, the director of The Voice of Hind Rajab, Kaouther Ben Hania, rejected the Cinema for Peace Most Valuable Film Award. Hind Rajab was killed by the Israeli army on 29 January 2024, a few months before her sixth birthday. The soldiers also killed her family and two paramedics who tried to save her. ‘I refuse to let their deaths become a backdrop for a polite speech about peace,’ Ben Hania said. ‘Not while the structures that enabled them remain untouched.’ A screening of Annemarie Jacir’s film Palestine 36 in Jerusalem last month was shut down by the Israeli police. They detained the projectionist and announced that future screenings were prohibited.

Meanwhile in Australia, Adelaide Writers’ Week withdrew its invitation to the Palestinian Australian writer Randa Abdel Fattah. She called the decision a ‘blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship’. About 180 writers said they would boycott the festival. The director and all but one of the board resigned and the event was cancelled.

What is interesting and inspiring to me here is the energy of the countercurrents. I’m on the board of the Mosaic Rooms, an arts institution in London established and supported by the Palestinian A.M. Qattan Foundation. On 17 February, it reopened its doors after a yearlong renovation, with exhibitions by Bouchra Khalili and Dima Srouji. All four floors were packed and people were queuing around the corner to be let in. ‘It feels like what the Tate used to feel like,’ one of the visitors said to me.

(London Review of Books)

LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT

Iran Names Interim Leaders After Killing of Khamenei

The C.I.A. Helped Pinpoint a Gathering of Iranian Leaders. Then Israel Struck.

Iran's Attacks on Persian Gulf Countries Crack Their Safe Haven Image

Why Diplomacy Was Doomed: Trump's Issue Was Iran's Leadership Itself

Iran Says Dozens Are Killed in Strike on School

Shipping Traffic Through Strait of Hormuz Plummets After Attacks on Iran

Who Could Take Over for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?

Why the Epstein Investigations Took So Long and Did So Little

THE MIDDLE EAST has descended into a state of total regional war as Iran officially launched a new wave of ballistic missiles toward Israel. This latest barrage follows a night of unprecedented violence that saw major damage to Tel Aviv and the confirmed death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

While Iranian state TV has declared a 40-day mourning period for the fallen leader, reports from within Tehran suggest many citizens are actually cheering and celebrating in the streets. Simultaneously, a U.S. official confirmed that the massive joint operation, "Epic Fury," was triggered by intelligence showing Iran was rebuilding its nuclear enrichment sites.

The economic consequences are becoming catastrophic as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, effectively blocking one-fifth of the world's daily oil supply. Global travel has also ground to a halt following direct missile strikes on major aviation hubs, including Dubai International Airport and Kuwait International Airport.

In response to these multi-front threats, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have formed a unified front with the United States to stabilize the region. Over 40 U.S. Air Force aircraft are currently surging into the theater to bolster coalition defenses and maintain air superiority over the Persian Gulf.

Fearing a global collapse, Russia and China have officially called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting to demand an immediate ceasefire. However, with the launch of this new missile wave, the remaining Iranian military command appears committed to a final, high-intensity confrontation.

TRUMP’S WAR WITH IRAN (an AVA collection of news and commentary)

TEHRAN, IRAN & THE UGLY AMERICANS

by Karen Rifkin

When I was a sophomore, attending Montclair High in New Jersey, my father, who was a labor negotiator for the United Auto Workers (UAW)/AFL-CIO, decided he wanted to travel and put in his application with the United States Agency for International Development.

After some thorough investigating (my father had been quite a rabble rouser in his youth), he was assigned to USAID’s Labor Division in Iran, and so it was that my mother and I boarded a flight with him out of New York on New Year’s Eve, 1961, for a two year stay in Tehran.

We moved into a home with a walled compound—on the outskirts of town where other state officials, oil consortium executives and military personnel lived — with a small in-ground swimming pool across the street from the U.S. Officer’s Club that had the biggest swimming pool I had ever seen; tennis courts (I watched the courts being built by men churning up the knee-high mud for the pleasure of us Americans to play at our leisure), where I learned the game from an Iranian professional; and a bar and grill where my friends and I would gather for hamburgers and cokes on the weekends and charge the bill to the military kid’s fathers.

We had a badji, a maid, who lived with us six days a week in a small stone structure behind our house, cooking and cleaning. She saw her children one day a week and when our tour of duty was over, she begged us to take her back to the States.

Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was in power which mostly did not concern me as I attended the Tehran American School (like all American students) and was primarily interested in integrating myself with the cool kids.

There was a hierarchy of sorts, but we all mixed. The oil families were the wealthiest; my boyfriend Tom’s family had many servants — a chauffeur for his family, his own personal car and chauffer, a house servant and a couple of cooks. My family, in comparison, had only one full time maid.

Next came the commissioned officers; my friend Lee’s father was on his way to becoming a full bull colonel and she lived as “modestly” as we did. The lowest rung were the kids whose fathers were non-commissioned officers. But Mike, Lee’s boyfriend, whose father was one of those, had quite an allure.

I played girls’ basketball, with girls’ rules; we played half court and were only allowed three dribbles before we had to pass. There were forwards on one side and guards on the other while two players were allowed to roam full court.

Well into my stay there, our coach arranged for us to play an Iranian girls’ team at their school. Prior to the game there was much international fanfare, as I believe this was a very unique event. I clearly remember the pageantry.

Their players were large and athletic and had been playing full court basketball. Needless to say, they wiped the floor with us.

I attended school, occasionally helping my friend Lee to cheat on tests; went to the prom with Bobby at an exclusive American hotel; snuck out of my house at midnight with Lee to meet our boyfriends and ride Vespas illegally through the back streets; and learned how to snow ski at Mt. Abali in my red rubber rainboots tied to the skis with rope.

Our two-year stay was cut short to one-and-a-half years when the State Department realized my father was attempting to unionize the Iranian drivers of the Carryall passenger vehicles. We left in the early summer of 1963 and in the fall he was transferred to La Paz, Bolivia.

When I read the news this morning that our insane monster of a president, illegally without consent of Congress, in cahoots with the Israeli criminal Netanyahu, let loose a reign of terror, killing god-knows-how-many innocent people, it took me back to those times. There’s a bit of a personal touch for me as I try to wrap my head around this unfolding horror story.

GOING TO WAR, AGAIN, FOR ISRAEL

by Chris Hedges

Once again, America is going to war for Israel. Once again, many will die for the Zionist state, including American service members. Once again, we will stumble blindly into a military fiasco. Once again, we will do the bidding of a foreign power whose interests are not our interests, but whose lobbyists have bought up our political class, including Donald Trump. Once again, we will violate the U.N. charter by attacking a country that does not pose an imminent threat.

This is not our war. This is part of Israel’s demented vision of Greater Israel, of dominating the Middle East. But Israel needs our military, our taxpayer dollars, our weapons to do it. And we have handed them the keys to our formidable arsenal.

The architects of the war with Iran, which the administration feels no need to justify to the American public or the international community, admit it will not be quick.

Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS News on Saturday that the goal is not only to curb Iran’s nuclear program, but “dismantle their terror support network.”

“To do all that is going to take longer than the strikes on their nuclear program last summer,” Cotton said. “We’re probably looking at weeks, not days, of joint efforts by the United States, Israel and our Arab partners, who have also been attacked this morning.”

Israel’s lackeys in the political class, along with their courtiers in the media, including former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) employee Wolf Blitzer, as well as academia, are shining examples of Israel’s transparent and often illegal meddling in the American political system. Forget Russia. Forget China. No foreign government comes close to exerting Israel’s influence.

Democratic Party leaders are not opposed to attacking Iran — they are opposed to attacking Iran without being consulted. Two dozen Democrats lept to their feet and applauded every time Trump threatened Iran, or lauded Israel, in his State of the Union address. The Biden administration and Democratic Party leadership made no effort to reinstate Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement. It focused instead on sustaining the genocide in Gaza. It cheered Israel’s decapitation of Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Kamala Harris in her feckless and tone deaf presidential campaign promised to continue funding the genocide, which alienated many voters, and labeled Iran our most dangerous enemy.

Endless war is a bipartisan project.

The flagrant interference by Israel in the American political system is documented in the Al-Jazeera four-part series “The Lobby,” which Israel and its supporters blocked from being broadcast. Pirated copies can be watched on the website Electronic Intifada. In the documentary, the leaders of the Israel lobby are captured on a reporter’s hidden camera explaining how, backed by the intelligence services in Israel, they discredit and silence American critics and use huge cash donations to control the American electoral process and political system.

Israel’s death grip on our political system is also documented in “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

“If you wander off the reservation and become critical of Israel, you not only will not get money, AIPAC will go to great lengths to find someone who will run against you,” Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, says in the documentary. “And they support that person very generously. The end result is you’re likely to lose your seat in Congress.”

Israel flies hundreds of members of Congress, often with their families, to Israel for lavish junkets at seaside resorts. These Congress members run up individual bills that frequently exceed $20,000. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 attempted to restrict lobbyists from offering paid trips lasting more than one day to members of Congress. But AIPAC, which has never been forced to register as a foreign agent, used its clout to insert a clause in the act to exclude so-called educational trips organized by charities that do not hire lobbyists. The AIPAC-affiliated charity utilized to navigate this loophole is called the American Israel Education Foundation.

The investment by Israel is worth it. The United States Congress in 2016 authorized a $38 billion per year defense aid package from 2019-2028 for Israel. We squandered $ 4 to $ 6 trillion on the futile wars Israel and its lobby pushed for in the Middle East. Congress has, as well, authorized $ 21.7 in military aid to Israel to sustain the genocide.

God knows the cost of this war, but it will likely be in the billions of dollars.

We are back to where we were in 2003 with a war whose utopian goal is regime-change. It didn’t work then. It won’t work now.

The same fatuous lies have been dredged up to justify this war, with U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff telling Fox News that Iran is “probably a week away” from having the materials necessary to make a nuclear bomb.

This has been Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel lobby’s mantra for three decades.

I’m not sure how we are supposed to swallow this after Trump announced last July, following U.S. air strikes, that “All three nuclear sites in Iran were completely destroyed and/or OBLITERATED. It would take years to bring them back into service…”

One lie supersedes the next.

Once again, we promise to bomb a country to liberate it, with Trump saying all he wants is “freedom for the people” of Iran.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s compound was bombed and, according to Israeli officials, he has been killed. Iran insists he remains alive.

The Israeli prime minister, like Trump, is calling on the Iranians to seize the “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to “take to the streets en masse, to complete the task of overthrowing the regime that is making your lives miserable.”

“This is your time to join forces to overthrow the regime, to secure your future,” Netanyahu said.

That every other attempt at regime-change in the Middle East resulted in disaster eludes them. This time, they promise, it will work.

We may not have assembled a ground force, as Bush did in 2003 for the Iraq war, but once you open the Pandora’s box of war, war controls you. You don’t control it.

American troops will likely be killed as Iran targets U.S. bases in the region. The Iranian navy has announced it is shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil chokepoint that facilitates the passage of 20 percent of the world’s oil supply. This will potentially double or triple the price of oil and devastate the global economy. Oil installations along with U.S. ships and military bases in the region will be hit.

Iran has already fired missiles at Al Udeid airbase in Qatar, Al-Salem airbase in Kuwait, Al-Dhafra airbase in the United Arab Emirates, the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and U.S. bases in Jordan. Explosions have been reported in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Thousands of innocents will die. Israel hit an elementary girls’ school on Saturday in Minab, a city in the Hormozgan province of southern Iran. Iran’s Tasnim News Agency cited the Judiciary of Minab as saying that the death toll had risen to 85.

An image of a girls’ elementary school hit by an airstrike on Saturday in Minab, Iran posted by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on X.

The steady losses, and a huge spike in oil prices, will compound the frustrations of Trump and his Israel allies. These frustrations, like those during the two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, will ignite a protracted regional war.

Iran, under sustained attack, could eventually fragment and splinter, sending millions of refugees over its border and igniting the chaos we engineered in Libya. But Israel, whose goal is to degrade the military capabilities of its neighbors, will get what it wants.

We will be left with the mess.

CONSERVATIVE MEDIA is praising President Trump for taking bold action to topple a dictatorial religious regime by bombing its leaders and military capability which will lead to some form of revolution from the streets and a more US-friendly Iranian leadership. Liberal media is saying they thought Trump had already “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capability and they don’t mind seeing the Ayatollah gone, but that Trump doesn’t have a plan, a stated goal, or approval of Congress. Trouble is 1. Nobody knows where this will lead. History shows not positive. And 2. Neither Clinton nor Obama asked for approval of their many missile and drone strikes or bombings, nor did they have any stated goals or objectives. And the liberals never complained about when Clinton and Obama did it. (Mark Scaramella)

TUCKER CARLSON:

Is it possible that there is some hostility toward the United States, the Gulf States, and Europe from the people pushing this war with Iran?

Oh, there's a lot of hostility. And part of it makes sense.

The Gulf states, the six Arab oil-producing states called the GCC in the region, are, along with Iran, one of the main impediments to Israel's regional hegemony. They are very rich. They produce something that the rest of the world needs. They're also very good at diplomacy, particularly Qatar. They settle a lot of disputes internationally. They've posited themselves as the Switzerland of the Middle East, and they've done a good job at it, actually. And so they are a rival to Israel.

You hear on Fox News, “they're Hamas supporters.” No, no, no. That's not their sin. Their sin is existing as a powerful independent country in potential rivalry with the regional hegemon Israel. So, shafting them would be a very good thing from the Israeli perspective.

But what about the United States? Israel's benefactor, its closest ally. Hmm, why would they want that? Well, maybe if you're gaming this out a little bit, you've decided we need a new superpower. Public opinion in this country has swung against us so hard, this bipartisan consensus that we're its closest ally is disintegrating before our very eyes. And let's be honest with ourselves, this is not gonna continue forever. We need another country to be aligned with.

Now, how many big countries are there to choose from? It's gotta be physically large, big population, nuclear armed. Not too many. In fact, the big ones would be China and India.

But China, unfortunately, is a Han ethnostate. So you can't really turn its population against itself in order to increase your own power. It's not gonna work. It's resistant to this, to manipulation.

And that leaves India. And it was probably no coincidence that the Prime Minister of India, Prime Minister Modi, spoke to the Knesset this week about the ancient ties between Israel and India. Bottom line, yes, Israel is moving on from the United States at some point, probably sooner rather than later, to India.

And so weakening the United States in a war with Iran is not all bad. In fact, it might be good, because then there's no rivalry at all in your region. It's you, the only country with nuclear weapons, and everybody else. So you can kind of do whatever you want. You don't have to worry about hostile neighbors. You can expand the size of your territory, for example. You can move your borders in all directions. Who's gonna stop you? No one.

So if you game this out for a minute, the things that from an American perspective seem horrifying, like real downsides. Holy smokes, we could tank the U.S. economy. We could wreck the energy sector, at least temporarily. Some of our key Arab allies could be disabled by this. Those all seem very bad from an American perspective. Are they so bad from an Israeli perspective? No, they're not actually. They may be the point long-term.

PETE BUTTIGIEG:

The President has launched our nation and our great military into a war of choice, risking American lives and resources, ignoring American law, and endangering our allies and partners. It does nothing to help with the urgent problems here at home that Americans face every day. This nation learned the hard way that an unnecessary war, with no plan for what comes next, can lead to years of chaos and put America in still greater danger.

“EVERY WAR when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac…

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”

— George Orwell

CONGRESSMAN JARED HUFFMAN:

I oppose this rash, illegal act of war against Iran and will be working to confront it under the War Powers Act and other authorities in the days ahead.

It is another alarming abuse of power that Congress must confront, and unfortunately another blow to America’s credibility and goodwill on the global stage, which Trump has made it virtually impossible for any nation to negotiate and pursue diplomacy with the United States.

"WHO DOES VOTE for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine?"

— Hunter Thompson

SENATOR MARK KELLY:

After promising to keep America out of war and instead focus on lowering costs for families, Donald Trump has launched a large-scale military operation against Iran.

We’ve seen this playbook before. Weeks of inflated claims, selective facts, and talk of imminent threats that led the American people into a war that cost thousands of American lives and trillions of taxpayer dollars.

The United States has the most capable military in the world. I have complete confidence in our service members, and I’m praying for their safety. The question is never whether they can do the mission. It’s whether the mission makes sense and makes us safer—and what it’s going to cost.

The Iranian people deserve freedom. They deserve the right to choose their own leaders. So, what's the plan for what comes next? I don’t think Donald Trump knows the answer, and that’s dangerous when American lives are on the line.

When I launched on my first combat mission during Operation Desert Storm 35 years ago, I understood the mission and the end goal. So did Congress. So did the American people. That’s the minimum level of leadership this country deserves. And Donald Trump has failed again at that.

The Senate needs to come back to Washington immediately and do its Constitutional duty.

AYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI’S DEATH at the hand of a nation he worked very hard to kill is a hinge moment in the history of Iran’s revolution, Karim Sadjadpour argues:

Khamenei “did not build the Islamic Republic of Iran. He inherited it from its founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,” Sadjadpour writes. In 1979, Khomeini led a revolution that deposed a U.S.-aligned monarchy and replaced it with an Islamist theocracy whose three ideological pillars were “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” and the mandatory covering of women—the hijab, he said, was “the flag of the revolution.”

“Khomeini died in 1989, and his successor’s life’s work was to keep that revolution alive long after the society it governed had moved on,” Sadjadpour argues. “In this, Khamenei was remarkably, ruthlessly successful. But the world view he imposed was never truly his own. He was the spokesman for a ghost.”

“Khamenei understood that his power was best preserved in a bubble. Not complete isolation—he wanted to sell Iran’s oil—but calibrated insularity,” Sadjadpour continues. “But insularity has its costs, and they were borne entirely by the Iranian people.”

“Khamenei treated the relationship between the state and its citizens not as a social contract but as a predatory lease—nonnegotiable, imposed by the landlord, long since expired. The regime micromanaged the personal lives of more than 90 million people, dictating whom they were allowed to love, what they drank, what women wore on their heads,” Sadjadpour writes.

“Khamenei confronted the paradox that every revolutionary caretaker must face: The revolution he preserved was designed for a world that no longer exists,” Sadjadpour argues. “In the end, he was felled by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, an American president and an Israeli prime minister whom he loathed. He lived by ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel.’ He died by death from America and Israel.”

ON LINE COMMENTS RE: IRAN:

Officials are already starting to prepare the American people for a prolonged war. U.S. Senator Tom Cotton just said the operation against Iran will last weeks, not days. And we know all too well how fast weeks can turn into years when it comes to Middle East wars.

Even voices within the intelligence and defense community have raised concerns about the justification for the strikes. Some lawmakers, after classified briefings, have said they saw no evidence of an imminent threat to the United States that would necessitate immediate military action.

And let’s be clear: that doesn’t make Iran a benign actor. The regime’s record is well known. The Iranian people themselves have suffered under it for decades.

But acknowledging that reality doesn’t answer the question of whether this path leads to stability, or deeper chaos. And right now, chaos is spreading.

Missiles are crossing borders. Global energy routes are under threat. Regional alliances are being tested. And the risk of a broader and prolonged war grows by the hour.

Through all of this, we can hold onto two truths at once. The Iranian regime has long oppressed its own people. And the Iranian people, like civilians everywhere, are now caught in the middle of forces far larger than themselves.

Our hearts should be with them. And with our own service members, who may soon find themselves drawn deeper into a conflict whose scope is still evolving.

We are at the very beginning of this story, and it’s one that feels all too familiar….

On-line comment: Well, not to worry, magats. Your Cult Master has started his first war. I remember how we were going to “win” in Vietnam, too. Then Americans were scrambling to the roof of the Saigon Embassy to fight their way onto the evacuation choppers.

HOW DO WE UNDERSTAND the war with Iran? We must get away from the propaganda and ask why this might be happening, in light of the facts that we do know.

These facts suggest two interpretive frameworks: a foreign war as a mechanism to destroy democracy at home; and a foreign war as an element of personal corruption by the president of the United States.

From the United States, the most plausible angle of view is domestic politics, not foreign policy. Wars are a tool of undermining and undoing democracies. Given that we have multiple examples of this from both modern and ancient democracy, and given the behavior of Trump and his allies in general, this must be an interpretive method for these attacks.

The relationship between foreign war and domestic authoritarianism can take two basic forms: 1) we must all rally because there is a war and everyone who oppose the war is a traitor; 2) we must hold elections under specific conditions favorable to the party in power. This is utterly predictable and should be easy to halt and indeed to reverse.

The American propaganda about our foreign policy motivations is impossible to believe as such. But it does lead us, indirectly, to the second possible interpretive framework: personal corruption.

The claim that Iran was about to build a nuclear weapon has not been established. It is all the odder as a justification for war given that this administration has already claimed many times to have destroyed the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

The second American propaganda point is that the regime must be changed. This too is very strange, since opposition to regime change wars was supposed to be a core tenet of MAGA.

But who might be directly interested in Iranian regime change? Who has given it more thought than Washington? Insofar as there was any sort of foreign policy involved here, I suspect that it was that of countries that the Trump administration considers to be its allies in the region.

The basic structural feature of regional politics is a rivalry between Iran on the one side and Gulf Arab states plus Israel on the other. Given that this structural feature is a far more durable element of politics than the wavering and contradictory statements of the Trump administration, it is a good place to start. And where does it lead?

It leads to personal politics or rather personal gain. Given the stupefyingly overt corruption of the Trump administration, one must ask whether the United States armed forces are now being used on a per-hire basis.

Gulf Arab states who oppose Iranian power have generated extremely generous packages of compensation for companies associated with Trump personally and with members of his family. The United Arab Emirates invested in a family firm. The Saudis have provided numerous de facto gifts. And sometimes the gifts have been simply gifts. The Qataris gave Trump a jet. The list is very long.

And now — we are using military force to take the side of precisely the countries who have enriched Trump and his family. This backdrop must at the very least be stated in the reporting of the war. Along with the subversion of democracy, personal corruption provides a second interpretive framework.

None of this is a defense of the murderous regime in Teheran. The Iranian government has been engaged in the mass murder of peaceful protestors. The scale of that slaughter has not really sunk in. One can certainly imagine ways of addressing Iranian authoritarianism and corruption. We could combine a patient campaign of pressure and sanctions with support for the opposition and proposals to help address growing ecological problems such as the horrifying lack of water that stands behind much of political opposition in the country. Unfortunately, nothing like this is on offer, or could be on offer, from the Trump administration. All that it has to offer is its own authoritarianism and corruption.

A war is a time when we will be told not to ask questions. But a war is actually when questions must be asked. And they must be asked in light of what we already know. The presumption created by the surrounding evidence is that this war could very well be about (1) subverting US democracy, (2) enriching the president, or both. These are presumptions, not proof — but they provide the solid lines of inquiry as we learn more about the war.

War does not create a clean slate where suddenly we have to believe the absurd just because a leader says it. On the contrary, war provides the opportunity to see the core of the absurdity and the destruction that is being offered to us.

— Rebecca Solnit

TOM NICHOLS WRITES: “This is not a preemptive war. It is a war for regime change. Many of Iran’s 92 million people want the regime removed. But it is far from certain that this will be the outcome.”

“‘Success’ is not impossible—if by ‘success’ we mean the fall of the ayatollahs and the rise of a better, more humane, pro-Western government that does not seek to destabilize the Middle East; dominate Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen; and eradicate Israel,” Nichols writes. “But the path to that success is exceedingly narrow and mined with significant hazards. Destroying the regime’s capabilities is relatively easy, but nothing permanent—as Americans learned in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—is achieved by bouncing rubble and piling up bodies. Destroying the regime itself is a far trickier business; dictatorships have a high pain tolerance, especially when the hapless citizens, not the leaders, bear the brunt of that pain.”

Trump has “not offered a strategy, or identified any conditions that would signal that U.S. goals have been achieved,” Nichols continues. “Yes, he has vowed to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, but beyond that, he seems to be arguing for just inflicting military damage on the regime, on the assumption that enough ordinance on enough targets will weaken the grip of the ayatollahs.”

“Americans have tried this before,” Nichols continues. “America twice had its hands full in Iraq, a nation of 37 million, even with the assistance of several nations.” This time “the target is two and a half times the size of Iraq, America has exactly one openly declared ally in this enterprise, no serious armed rebel force exists in Iran, and no coalition of nations is assembling to march into Tehran.”

“Unfortunately, ways that all this can go wrong are more numerous and more likely.

"IN TIMES LIKE THESE, when the War-drums roll and the bugles howl for blood, I think of Vince Lombardi, and I wonder how he would handle it. … Good old Vince. He was a zealot for Victory at all costs, and his hunger for it was pure -- or that's what he said and what his legend tells us, but it is worth noting that he is not even in the top 20 in career victories.

We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War might last for "a very long time."

Generals and military scholars will tell you that eight or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history -- which is no doubt true -- but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a war-time economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today.

The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed."

— Hunter Thompson, 2001

14 Comments

Harvey Reading March 1, 2026

Well, from reading today’s issue, it seems that I am not paranoid, and that things here in freedomlandia are getting worse and worse as time marches on…

George Hollister March 1, 2026

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY is off base.
Freedom means taking responsibility for yourself, and I don’t believe CATO’s description of being less free has to do with citizens having guns.

- Harvey Reading March 1, 2026
  
  Well, George, that would be about what I would expect to hear from an old, ignorant MAGAt. I’ve heard that old saw, and similar ranting for all my life. And, just why did you sneak in the “citizen” distinction? Again,very MAGAtish.
  
Tom Smythe March 1, 2026

The Iran bombing creates a good distraction from Epstein files.

Stephen Dunlap March 1, 2026

there are also big nice laundry mats at Columbi’s and Boatyard

Chuck Artigues March 1, 2026

Still waiting for Jared Huffman to voice even one critical word of the warmonger, apartheid, genocidal State of Israel.

- Harvey Reading March 1, 2026
  
  It’s not an acceptable activity here in freedomlandia. One might be visited by a gang of ICE agents and summarily shot for engaging in it.
  
Chuck Dunbar March 1, 2026

Years ago it boggled my mind to see George W. Bush in control of the U.S. military forces and engaging in warfare in the ME. Now my mind is boggled x 10, with Trump–far dumber and more rapacious than Bush–in the same position.

- Marshall Newman March 1, 2026
  
  +1
  
- Chuck Wilcher March 1, 2026
  
  and knowing no Trump in a generation or three back ever served in any military capacity.
  
  - Chuck Dunbar March 1, 2026
    
    And this, the big picture:
    
    “On Saturday, Senator Tim Kaine, of Virginia, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said, ‘Has President Trump learned nothing from decades of U.S. meddling in Iran and forever wars in the Middle East? Is he too mentally incapacitated to realize that we had a diplomatic agreement with Iran that was keeping its nuclear program in check, until he ripped it up during his first term?’ ”
    
    Politico 3/1/26
    
    - Steve Heilig March 1, 2026
      
      My local longtime street-dwelling friend today stopped me and asked, “Hey, do youn think it has occurred to many Americans yet that their country hired a crazy vicious hit man?”
      
So sad ... March 1, 2026

I’m disappointed and angry about what happened to Elise Cox. She was apparently brutalized by a USPS worker, and I think she should consider pressing charges. How dare they return letters which were sent to her delinquent P.O. box. When I miss payments, I expect accommodation, and when I don’t get accommodation, I get mad. And when I get mad, I use my platform to attempt to shame people. So I understand where she’s coming from. Frankly this is an outrage.

- Eric Sunswheat March 1, 2026
  
  The AVA endured years of irregular USPS mail delayed distribution of its newspaper, which was more or less resolved.
  
  —>. Feb. 24, 2026
  WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on Feb. 24 kept the lid on lawsuits against the U.S. Postal Service for delivery problems, ruling against a Texas landlord who said the federal agency deliberately withheld her mail as a form of racial harassment.
  The court, in a 5-4 opinion, said the immunity Congress gave the Postal Service from lawsuits seeking monetary damages covers acts alleged to be intentional.
  The struggling Postal Service warned that without these protections, it could face a flood of lawsuits over its daily handling of 300 million mail pieces.
  But the attorney for the landlord, Lebene Konan, said situations like hers – in which she and tenants did not get their mail delivered for years even after she filed dozens of complaints − are rare…
  Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court did not decide whether all of the landlord’s claims are barred by the ruling, just that the Postal Service can’t be sued for intentionally not delivering the mail. The court sent the case back to the lower courts for further proceedings.”
  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/02/24/usps-lawsuit-supreme-court-ruling/87826801007/

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