Warm | Jeff Burroughs | Shark Attack | Wattle Fence | Escape Tax | Water/Sewer Rates | Smith Mural | Waste Management | Three Maids | Disaster Finance | Whizzle Stop | Tamale Drive-Thru | Mendo Movies | Kev-Ev in AV | Ed Note | Yesterday's Catch | Winter Heat | Don't Invade | Gun Control | Newsom Story | Chavez Abuse | Trump v World | DeLillo Writing | The Breather | Cafe Study | Short Autobiography | Cafe Terrace | Autism Hearing | Lenin/Stalin | Translation | DNC Failure | Government Purpose | Lead Stories | Most Dangerous | Direct Impact | Trump Mobile | Hormuz Access | Chess Match | Manipulating Donnie | Wheel of Fortune
YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Boonville 90°, Ukiah 90°, Covelo 89°, Laytonville 88°, Yorkville 86°, Fort Bragg 64°, Point Arena 53°
DRY WEATHER and above-seasonable temperatures are expected to continue with widespread Minor HeatRisk for the interior through Friday. Temperatures will cool gradually this weekend and into early next week, yet remain above normal. The chance of precipitation increases early to mid next week. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 41F under clear skies this Thursday morning. The satellite shows the fog right onshore so we play to game. Expect more of the same thru the weekend.
BIG RIVER BEACH SHARK ATTACK
Huge shark was visible from the shore
by Elise Cox
Bystanders rushed to aid a man bitten by a shark Wednesday afternoon off Big River Beach, helping stabilize him before emergency crews arrived. The man was reported in stable condition, according to early accounts from the scene.
The attack occurred around 5:15 p.m. at the beach just south of Mendocino. The victim made it to shore on his own and was located at the far north end of the beach, where responders requested an all-terrain vehicle to reach him.
Witnesses told Linda Little of MendocinoCoast.News that the shark as “gigantic,” visible from shore “as if it was a whale.” Several said the animal struck the man multiple times and then circled him and the surfers who entered the water to help.
Daniel O’Connor, a tourist visiting Mendocino, told Linda Little he watched from bluffs near Mendocino Presbyterian Church and could see the shark circling the rescuers. He said those in the water appeared unaware, and he and others shouted warnings from shore.
Emergency radio traffic indicated the injuries were serious but did not involve arterial bleeding. A paramedic advised that a helicopter might not be necessary, though an air ambulance was already en route at the time.
Agencies responding included California State Parks and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.…
(mendolocal.news)
SURFERS RUSH TO AID SHARK‑BITE VICTIM AT BIG RIVER BEACH
by Frank Hartzell
People who were surfing nearby provided immediate care to a man bitten by a shark late Wednesday afternoon — aid that may have saved his life, according to early accounts from the scene. He is reported to be in stable condition.
The incident occurred around 5:15 p.m. at Big River Beach, the wide stretch of sand just south of Mendocino. The victim managed to reach shore on his own and was found at the extreme north end of the beach, where responding crews requested an ATV to reach him more quickly.
Witnesses described the shark as “gigantic,” visible from shore “as if it was a whale.” Several reported that the shark struck the victim, who witnesses said was a local man multiple times and then circled both him and the surfers who rushed in to help after the attack. Daniel O’Connor, a tourist visting Mendocino, was on the bluffs above the stairway behind Mendocino Presbyterian Church and saw the commotion. He said he could see the shark and it appeared large and it circled the rescuers. He said the rescuers did not see the shark circling and he and a couple yelled, knowing they could not be heard.
Scanner traffic indicated the injuries were serious but did not involve arterial bleeding. A paramedic on scene advised that a helicopter may not be necessary, though REACH 18 was already airborne at the time of the call.
California State Parks and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife also responded.
Details about how the encounter occurred have not yet been released. This report is based on early information and may be updated as more becomes available. We were able to confirm the story with on scene witnesses.
And the beach held its breath — surfers turned first responders, witnesses staring out at a dark shape moving just beyond the break, the whole scene reminding us how thin the line is between ordinary and extraordinary on this coast.
Tonight, a man is alive because strangers didn’t hesitate. Because training met courage in the cold March surf. Because even as a “gigantic” shark circled back through the shallows, visible from shore like a passing whale, people ran toward danger instead of away from it.
Big River has seen its share of drama, but this one will ripple through the community for a long time.
This is a developing story — and one that already carries the unmistakable echo of the Mendocino Coast at its most human and its most wild.
The great white shark population has surged in Northern California in recent years, tracking the rebound of their primary prey — seals and sea lions. As more sea lions succumb to disease, researchers say great whites may be shifting their hunting behavior. A shark attack was reported earlier this year off Point Arena, and in late 2025 there were three reported incidents in the Bay Area after nearly a decade with none.
California recorded 10 shark‑related incidents in 2025, the highest ever documented in a single year, including the fatal December 21 attack in Monterey Bay in which swimmer Erica Fox, 55, went missing during a group swim and was later found dead. This followed a 2022 attack at the same location, Lovers Point, where the victim survived. SharkSider.com also notes the statewide uptick in encounters.
Shark encounters were far more common along the North Coast in the 20th century. One prominent local fisherman was decapitated by a great white near the Mendocino Headlands; a stone picnic table still stands above the site in his memory.
(MendocinoCoast.news)
SARAH SONGBIRD: I was excited to try my hand at a small natural building project this past weekend. It was a way to channel my energy into something natural and tangible, and create a thing of beauty for our yard and neighborhood. Wattle fences have been made for thousands of years and I felt somehow connected to my ancestors as I used the excess from a pruning project on our little piece of land. It’s a reminder to get out in the sun, rock some tunes in the front yard, remember to believe in the future and leave beauty where I can.
KRYSTAL MYERS:
Has anyone else received an escape tax bill from the county dating back 4 years after purchasing your home? I was hoping to get some advice. We purchased our home in 2021 and just received an $18,000 escape tax bill from Mendocino County. When I talked to the County Tax Collector they said they just got around to reassessing our home (for more than it's probably worth) because they are short staffed. We have been paying our property taxes through escrow all these years, just not the amount they reassessed our property at. This just seems so wrong. People are going to lose their homes because of this, especially if they never get a notice that they even have this bill to begin with, like us. We only found out about our escape tax bill because we're in the process of getting a heloc loan. Who knows?, in a few years they could have a lien on our home and take it. It all just seems so weird.
If you have bought property recently, I would look into this, so you don't get a big surprise in 4-5 years. I'm guessing the County is reassessing properties for more than they are worth to make up for being audited.
FORT BRAGG WATER AND SEWER RATE ADJUSTMENTS
Editor,
This is a reminder, should you like to voice your opinion about the water and sewer rate increases.
Please address your note to the City of Fort Bragg. Include the name that’s on the bill, address and a statement like, “I am against the proposed water and sewer rate increases. I am writing to protest any and all proposed increases in the water and sewer rates in the City of Fort Bragg.”
Sign it & drop it off at the City or Mendo Litho and they’ll deliver it.
It is being voted upon on March 23 at 6 pm. The time to act, should you want to, is now.
Taimi Barty, [email protected]
POINT ARENA COMMUNITY TO UNVEIL MURAL FOR NICOLE SMITH AS HER MURDER REMAINS UNSOLVED.
The Point Arena community is raising funds for a mural unveiling event honoring Nicole Smith, a murdered Pomo woman whose case remains unsolved.
The GoFundMe aims to cover event costs and travel for Nicole's children to attend the March 28 unveiling at 235 Main Street, bringing the community together in remembrance and to raise awareness. Organizers say the mural was vandalized in its early stages in November 2025, but it's now complete.
Per the GoFundMe, "This mural will not only celebrate Nicole's life but also highlight the important work of the MMIW Social Justice movement. The Smith Family is inviting everyone to join in this special event, which will be the largest mural in town and a meaningful tribute to Nicole and the Coastal Pomo peoples who have lived in the area since time immemorial…The pursuit of justice for Nicole Smith continues, and this mural stands as a symbol of hope and remembrance."
Here is the link to the fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/f/nicole-smith-mural-community-celebration
BETTER GARBAGE HANDING & RECYCLING ON THE COAST CALLED FOR
Hello,
Here on the Coast garbage disposal and recycling have been sub-par for many years and has only gotten more dysfunctional in recent times. Is there a master plan in the works or will it just keep limping along? Long lines of idling trucks, wasted time, wasted fuel, increased air pollution is anyone paying attention? Time to step into the 21st century and develop a new system of waste management here on the Coast. Recycling should be at a separate location from waste disposal since there isn’t a charge to drop off. I’m aware of the buy back option but for me it’s too time consuming to be worth the hassle for me personally. There used to be a recycling option north of Fort Bragg until Waste Management lost the contract and for some reason local contract negotiations didn’t require C&S waste to provide this same level of convenience. So we all must make our way down to Caspar to make the transfer.
Sincerely,
Tim McClure
Fort Bragg
WILLITS FINANCE DIRECTOR OUTLINES YEARS OF FINANCIAL TURMOIL AS THE CITY DECLARES A FISCAL EMERGENCY
COVID money combined with disorganized financials and a toxic workplace led the small city to the brink of insolvency
by Elise Cox
The Willits City Council voted unanimously last week to declare a fiscal emergency that includes laying off seven employees, cutting eleven open positions, and consolidating building, planning, public works, water and waste water management into one department.
But first, Manuel Orozco, the finance director who was tasked with bringing order to the city’s disjointed accounting and payroll data broke his silence.
For four years, Orozco said, he operated under what he described as a strict policy of working behind the scenes to reconcile the books for a city whose financial records were in such disarray they resembled a “disaster.”
Running a City on Small Business Software
When Orozco arrived in January 2022, the City Manager Brian Bender welcomed him “as a wonderful asset to the organization.”
What Orozco found was chaos. He testified at the March 9 meeting that Willits had no formal finance department. The city was two years behind on its audit books and was utilizing payroll software designed for small businesses rather than a municipality.
“The ACS system held no payroll expenses,” Orozco said, describing the manual effort he undertook to rebuild the city’s financial history from scratch.
To align the city’s old records with its new financial software, Springbrook, Orozco said he had to replicate daily utility billing and cash receipting through more than 3,500 separate journal entries. Despite the backlog, he successfully completed five audits during his tenure.
The Hidden Hole in the Budget
In January 2022, the city had a $1.9 million surplus, thanks to an influx in funding from the federal CARES Act money that was supposed to be used for pandemic-related expenses.
The surplus made Willits feel flush. At the same city council meeting where Bender welcomed Orozco, he also announced new positions in community development, dispatcher and public works.
By the next year, the surplus had dwindled to just $400,000.
Financial consultant Andy Heath noted that once this federal aid stopped, the underlying structural deficit became visible.
Retaliating Against a Voice of Concern
For Orozco, the turning point came in late summer 2023 when he raised alarms over the city’s spending. He specifically challenged a plan to pay $800,000 for outside engineering services to avoid a single $200,000 in-house hire—a decision he cited as emblematic of the era’s financial thinking.
Orozco claimed the response to his concerns was swift and punitive: the finance department was split in two. The “front-end” operations were placed under the assistant city manager, while Orozco was relegated to the “back-half.”
From that point on, Orozco testified that his efforts to implement internal controls were systematically dismantled. He told the council he was overruled on critical utility billing procedures and watched as documentation for cash receipting was “tossed away” over his objections. He was also placed on administrative leave for several months. This failure of oversight, Orozco claimed, led directly to the city receiving a “qualified” audit opinion — a red flag to lenders and the public that a city’s financial statements may not be fully accurate.
A Culture of Fear
Orozco’s testimony painted a picture of a workplace defined by professional and personal strain. He claimed he was forced to follow the city manager’s lead regardless of his professional disagreement and faced threats from past council members on social media.
“I’ve heard of a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking” on what people would have done differently, Orozco said. “It’s easy to state these things in the comfort of a protected space. But I had no such luxury.”
Even within the council chambers, Orosco said he was recently “stared down” by a council member in an attempt to intimidate him during public meetings.
A Toxic Culture Documented by a Civil Grand Jury
Orozco’s account is backed up by testimony gathered by the Mendocino County Civil Grand Jury and published in a report last year “Healing the Toxic Culture in the City of Willits Workplace.”
The grand jury found that “top management ignored the policy in the City of Willits Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual regarding harassment, discrimination and retaliation” according to the employees they spoke with.
The grand jury cited multiple examples of employee testimony, including:
- Top management placed themselves as acting Finance Director and Human Resources Director positions for which employees believed they had no experience or qualifications to do the jobs responsibly.
- Complaints were “squashed” instead of heard, investigated, and addressed.
- Employees state that the leadership is fear-based. This causes disruptions and frustrations, taking away the ability to perform duties to the fullest.
The Final Word
Orosco’s experience mirrors the challenges described by financial expert Mark Moses, who notes in The Municipal Financial Crisis that finance directors are often relegated to subordinate roles, tasked with “making the budget work” for predetermined political spending rather than acting as a true fiscal safety net.
As he prepares to leave the city, Orozco said he is finalizing the last of the bank reconciliations and cleaning up the final issues carried over from the previous administration.
“I leave it better than I had it when I arrived,” Orozco told the council as they prepared to vote on a radical reorganization plan that included his own layoff. “That’s why you have numbers now.”
(mendolocal.news)
AND THE AWARD FOR BEST RAILROAD SALES JOB GOES TO…
Mendocino Railway is proud to announce that it was honored as the Best Content Marketing winner in the 2026 Visit California Poppy Awards this week. Every two years, the Poppy Awards recognize excellence in tourism marketing and destination stewardship for California, identifying the most creative and impactful tourism campaigns from across the state. For 2026, Visit California received more than 170 campaign submissions from destinations, attractions, and other tourism marketing organizations.Mendocino Railway was recognized as a finalist in three of the Poppy Awards’ eight categories—Best Content Marketing, Best Influencer Campaign, and Best Strategic Partnership. Mendocino Railway won the Best Content Marketing category for a tourism business for its Skunk Train viral video, The Whizzle Stop: The Swankiest Restroom on Rails.”
“We are incredibly grateful to the Poppy Awards judges for this recognition,” said David Morrissey, Chief Marketing Officer of Mendocino Railway. “California’s tourism community is one of the most creative and collaborative in the world—and it means a great deal to see our team’s work recognized alongside so many inspiring campaigns.”
“California’s tourism industry continues to set the standard for creativity and excellence,” said Caroline Beteta, president and CEO of Visit California. “This year’s Poppy Award winners have demonstrated exceptional innovation in their campaigns, showcasing the incredible diversity and vitality that makes California the nation’s top travel destination.”
Mendocino Railway is committed to connecting travelers with the beauty and heritage of the Golden State through its train and Railbike experiences at the Skunk Train, the River Fox Train, and the Sunburst Railbikes. Winning the Best Content Marketing Poppy Award highlights Mendocino Railway’s ability to pair historic rail travel with modern storytelling.
“This award reflects both the uniqueness of Mendocino Railway’s experiences and the passion our team shares for welcoming new travelers to California,” Morrissey added. “We’re especially proud to have been recognized as a finalist across three Poppy Awards categories for work that promoted smaller California communities—like Mendocino County, West Sacramento, and Santa Paula—against much larger tourism and destination marketing giants.”
Only a few tourism organizations earned multiple finalist selections in 2026. In addition to Mendocino Railway, those organizations included Visit San Luis Obispo, Visit Newport Beach, Visit Oceanside, and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. For a full list of 2026 Poppy Award winners, please see Visit California’s press release.
About Mendocino Railway’s Recognized Campaigns:
Best Content Marketing: Winner , The Whizzle Stop: The Swankiest Restroom on Rails By leaning into humor and parody-style video, the campaign transformed the addition of an everyday guest amenity into a memorable brand moment.
Best Influencer Campaign: Finalist , All Aboard Creators: Influencer Partnerships Across Mendocino Railway All Aboard Creators brought together more than 150 content creators to share authentic stories that drove more than 20 million views, strong audience engagement, ticket sales.
Best Strategic Partnership: Finalist, All Aboard Together: Mendocino Railway + Amtrak San Joaquins This collaboration demonstrated how transportation and destination experiences can work together to promote rail-based travel while expanding reach and engagement for both brands.
About Mendocino Railway
Mendocino Railway is a federally recognized Class III public utility and common carrier railroad providing freight, excursion, and commuter passenger services across Northern California. Formed in 2004 with approval from the Surface Transportation Board, Mendocino Railway is a subsidiary of the Sierra Railroad Company, established in 1897. The company owns and operates several lines, including the California Western Railroad in Mendocino County—home to the world-famous Skunk Train—the River Fox Train in Yolo County, and the Sunburst Train operation on the Santa Paula Branch Line in Ventura County. Mendocino Railway is committed to safe, efficient, and environmentally responsible rail operations. The company continues to invest in infrastructure, sustainability, and community partnerships that preserve California’s rail legacy and support the regions it serves. For more information, visit www.mendocinorailway.com
About Visit California
Visit California is a nonprofit organization with a mission to develop and maintain marketing programs—in partnership with the state’s travel industry—that keep California top-of-mind as a premier travel destination. For more information about Visit California and for a free California Official State Visitor’s Guide, go to visitcalifornia.com. For story ideas, media information, downloadable images, video and more, go to media.visitcalifornia.com.
LEE EDMUNDSON:
Memo to the Major:
Movie productions infuse tens of thousands of dollars into local economies when filming on location.
They hire many locals. As Extras (background atmo’s is the term of art), carpenters, location scouts, assistants.
They rent scores of rooms to house the production cat and crews. They eat many, many meals in local restaurants. The list goes on.
They are meticulous about cleaning up after themselves.
Joan Curry (rest her soul) opposed Practical Magic because it was going to rent the Mendocino Community Center as its base of operations, which was across the street from her residence on Pine Street — she didn’t want the traffic, hustle and bustle and hullabaloo so close to her abode. Beth Bosk was merely between gigs as an activist. Bosk threatened to hire a bagpiper to play while location shots were being filmed, as well saying she’d hire a private pilot to continually buzz the set while filming.
I was with Michael Walbrecht at the Coastal Commission hearing — which granted the coastal use permit allowing the project — and handed him the copy of the Press Democrat I’d picked up before flying to southern California to support the film, in which Bosk’s intentions were printed. Upon reading the article he turned ashen, and said to me, “When we’re shooting on location, Lee, we’re spending tens of thousands of dollars a day. Even a half-days’ disruption can undo us.”.
Warner Brothers, having obtained their coastal permit to film in Mendocino, moved elsewhere. Much to the loss of the locals and county of Mendocino.
PS: And, Yes, Practical Magic was a mediocre movie, much like Humanoids of the Deep, which successfully filmed here about a decade earlier.
MARK SCARAMELLA REPLIES:
Mr. Edmundson misses the point of my complaint. I wasn’t talking about the merits of the movies (awful as they obviously were), the movie industry, the motivations of Ms. Curry or Ms. Bosk. Nor do I object to locals making a few bucks off the movie people. (The local fairgrounds got a few helpful bucks outta the Need for Speed idiots, as did a few others.) My complaint is with the fake liberals who pretend to support free speech, dissent, due process, local control, etc. But when a few bucks are dangled under their noses they set those things aside. I was particularly irked by Hamburg arranging for that hearing in Boonville AFTER the permit was approved, then getting testy with the locals who had legitimate gripes, saying they were nothing more than nattering nabobs of negativity who were against everything. (Also, irksome was the movie crew’s outright lie that the movie wouldn’t glorify dangerous driving, but I don’t blame the libs for that.) If we’re going to have policies and procedures and address grievances and go through permit processes, we need to follow them and let the advocates and opponents make their cases fairly and let the chips fall where they may. For decades, the Fifth District has been represented by fake liberals (Peterson, Colfax, Hamburg, Williams…). Hamburg rubbed it in by attending meetings with an emotional support Chihuahua, then made a vague nut-ball claim (I don’t know how the Coasties could tell.) And then he abruptly quit prematurely months before his term was up, fled to Oregon, and hasn’t been heard from since. Fake liberalism plays well in the Fifth District. Coast-lib supports them and elects them over and over again for no particular reason and they deserve what they get. Or, more accurately, don’t get. Name one good thing any of those fake liberals accomplished in office. Or even seriously tried to accomplish.
ED NOTE:
A Note on the looming apocalypse brought to US by Trump and the two competing death cults, Iran and Israel. We had no beef with Iran that civilized diplomacy couldn't have resolved, as Obama proved during his administration. As the present catastrophes accumulate beyond somnolent Mendocino County, they, these catastrophes, will be very bad for us here in the outback because fuel and related energy prices are already rising rather exponentially every 24 hours.
And, as we know, everything moves on fuel, and the fuel capacities of the Middle East have been or are being blown up, meaning everything we need to live is rising in price so rapidly that our cost of living is already beyond the means of millions of US.
Unless you're one of the prescient locals who've gone off the grid, your PG&E bill is doubling, as mine has just today as I discovered when I opened my bill. '
It's not an exaggeration to say that Trump has now made lives of people everywhere much more difficult if not impossible.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, March 18, 2026
MICHAEL FRASER, 55, Willits. Willful poisoning of food-assault, employment of minor in marijuana activity, cruiety to child-infliction of injury.
DEANNA INMAN, 48, Willits. Domestic abuse.
RENEE MCGEE, 39, Point Arena. Domestic abuse.
AARON ORESCO, 40, Ukiah. Child abuse without great bodily injury of death, probation revocation.
NIA RICH, 22, Ukiah. Contempt of court.
DARIN SCOTT, 38, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors.
RON SNEED, 63, Willits. Failure to register as sex offender.
SHAWN WANT SR. 58, Covelo. Vandalism.
LISA WASHBURN, 56, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.
STEVEN WASHBURN, 60, Ukiah. DUI.
CALIFORNIA HITS ALL-TIME U.S. HIGH FOR WINTER HEAT
by Anthony Edwards
California tied the highest winter temperature ever measured in the U.S. on Wednesday, as a heat wave intensified and shattered records across the state.
A weather station in the Dos Palmas Preserve of eastern Coachella Valley recorded a temperature of 108 degrees. That ties the U.S. March record with Rio Grande City, Texas, according to weather historian Christopher Burt. It’s also California’s highest temperature ever measured in March or any winter month. The data are considered preliminary, according to the National Weather Service.
Nearby weather stations in Indio and Thermal (Riverside County) reached 107 degrees. Palm Springs’ high of 105 is its hottest ever in March.
Triple-digit heat was mainly confined to desert regions, but one of the most anomalous temperature readings came in the Sierra Nevada.
South Lake Tahoe’s high of 76 was 5 degrees higher than any other March day since temperature observations there began in 1969.
“The forecast still calls for two more days of record breaking temperatures,” the weather service office in Reno said. “The question is, will we break the monthly record again on Thursday and Friday? The chances are pretty good!”
Many coastal areas cooled slightly from Tuesday’s readings, but it was still plenty warm for dozens of daily records and a few monthly records from Wine Country to Orange County.
In the Bay Area, Redwood City was the hot spot for the second day in a row, reaching 90 degrees. Santa Rosa followed with 89, Richmond hit 88, San Rafael and San Jose measured 87, Oakland reached 85, San Francisco International Airport hit 81 and Half Moon Bay rounded out the same-day records with a high of 79.
In the Central Valley, Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton, Merced and Fresno set monthly temperature records, while Sacramento tied its highest March temperature.
The heat wasn’t confined to California. Reno, Las Vegas and Phoenix each measured new all-time high March temperatures at 86, 94 and 102 degrees, respectively. And it isn’t over yet.
Even higher temperatures were forecast Thursday, with the hottest weather likely Friday amid a “marathon” hot spell bringing “rare summerlike heat in March,” the weather service said. The temperatures observed and predicted across the Southwest were made as much as five times more likely by climate change, according to Climate Central, a nonprofit science research institute.
A slight cooldown was expected Saturday and Sunday, particularly for coastal areas, though temperatures were still in line to be well above March norms.
“Confidence for above normal temperatures is still very high over parts of southern California, southeastern Nevada, and portions of the Four Corners region,” until April 1, the Climate Prediction Center branch of the weather service wrote in an extended forecast issued Wednesday. The winter season officially ends Friday.
(sfchronicle.com)
TO CONTROL GUN VIOLENCE, CONTROL ACCESS TO GUNS
Editor:
In a recent letter to the Editor of the Chronicle, David Haynes repeats the old saw that guns aren’t the problem, people are. I would say both are problems, and that is why we have a culture in which mass shootings are a common happening. (As of March 14, there have been 65 mass shootings in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.) Doing some basic research, I see nothing to support his statement that crime drops when gun laws are removed. In fact, quite the opposite.
He says guns “are here to keep a repressive government in check.” Even if that were true, which it is not, that is not what is happening. We have citizens killing citizens. We have ICE mercenaries killing citizens. I came to a very simple, logical conclusion: We can’t control people, so we must control the guns.
Karen Cooper
Hilo, Hawaii
DAN BACHER:
Since Gavin Newsom won the election for Governor easily in 2018, I've been documenting his terrible fish, water, climate, environmental and Tribal policies. Too many writers refuse to report on how bad his administration is for the people, fish, rivers and environment of California while falsely portraying him as the "Resistance." Many unscrupulous journalists, some of whom received "journalism awards" at receptions and dinners sponsored by the Western States Petroleum Association, portray him as some of guru in "opposition" to Trump. Finally, a few other journalists are starting to understand how fake, performative and dangerous he is to California and the nation. This is a highly recommended piece from Jacobin magazine:
"Newsom never comes close to reckoning with how heavily the Gettys and their ilk bankrolled both his business life and his political ascent. The family made him a multimillionaire, well before he became governor, by financing his early ventures. Gordon Getty backed the ritzy wine business Plumpjack, which his son Billy cofounded with Newsom. As for why the checks kept coming, Newsom offers a tidy explanation: he earned it by being a good businessman. Getty kept backing him, we’re told, because of “the success of [his] first investments.” (The governor is careful to distinguish the Getty fortune as “a different sort from Donald Trump’s grift,” though the distinction is not exactly self-evident.) Newsom says the public narrative of a silver-spoon beneficiary has “robbed me of my own hard-earned story.” The reader is left to decide whether that robbery was committed by the press or by the facts.
"Newsom is selective about which episodes of privilege he includes and which he mutes. Where a connection doubles as a vivid story — childhood encounters with opera tenor Luciano Pavarotti, transcontinental jaunts across Europe — he keeps it. Episodes that undermine his claim of meritocratic ascent are blurred. Newsom professes surprise at his admission to Santa Clara University, citing a baseball scholarship as his ticket to entry. Yet, as others have observed, he says nothing about the recommendation letters — one from Governor Jerry Brown, who knew the Newsoms well, another from a member of the school’s board of regents — that accompanied his application."
CESAR CHAVEZ ABUSE ALLEGATIONS SHAKE BAY AREA
by Aidin Vaziri, St. John Barned-Smith
As explosive allegations of sexual abuse against Cesar Chavez surfaced this week, celebrations honoring the labor leader began unraveling across the Bay Area and beyond.
The claims, detailed in a New York Times investigation published Wednesday, include accusations from two women — Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas — who said Chavez sexually abused them as children in the 1970s, while he led the United Farm Workers. The women said they were 13 and 15 at the time of the alleged abuse, according to the report.
The women, both now in their 60s, said the abuse occurred between roughly 1972 and 1977, when Chavez was in his 40s and at the height of his influence. The Times reported it found evidence supporting their accounts and those of several other women.
Cesar Chavez abuse allegations shake Bay Area
As explosive allegations of sexual abuse against Cesar Chavez surfaced this week, celebrations honoring the labor leader began unraveling across the Bay Area and beyond.
Separately, Dolores Huerta, Chavez’s closest collaborator in the farm labor movement, broke decades of silence about her own experiences Wednesday, saying she was also sexually abused by Chavez.
Murguia said Chavez used the privacy of his California office to repeatedly molest her after gaining her family’s trust. She was 13 at the time, according to the report. She said the trauma led her to attempt suicide multiple times as a teenager.
Allegations spark rapid cancellations across California
The United Farm Workers announced Tuesday it would not participate in any Cesar Chavez Day events on March 31, citing what it called “deeply troubling allegations” involving “abuse of young women or minors.”
The union said it had not received firsthand reports but called the allegations serious enough to require “urgent steps” to learn more and support anyone who may have been harmed.
In a statement released hours before the publication of the Times’ article, the Cesar Chavez Foundation said it had learned of “disturbing allegations” that Chavez “engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior with women and minors.”
“We are deeply shocked and saddened by what we are hearing,” the foundation said.
In San Jose — where Chavez once lived and organized — institutions began pulling back. San Jose State University’s Cesar E. Chavez Community Action Center said it was reevaluating planned events. A long-running Chavez legacy dinner in the city was canceled.
At least four events across California and the Southwest have been canceled or modified, including a march in Tucson, Ariz., and multiple commemorations tied to Chavez Day, according to organizers.
In San Francisco, organizers said the annual Cesar Chavez Day parade will go forward on April 11 under a new name — the Dolores Huerta Parade and Festival.
“We’re doing it for the farmworkers. The farmworkers need our support more than ever,” said organizer Eva Royale.…
TRUMP V. THE WORLD
Editor:
President Donald Trump is at war with the entire globe, by means of tariffs or by means of missiles and bombs. Unpopular autocrats like Trump go to war primarily to keep themselves in power. War brings out attractions to evil and illegitimate power. That is why Benjamin Netanyahu won’t stop warring against Muslims and why Muslim theocrats won’t stop warring against Israel. That is why Vladimir Putin won’t quit warring against Ukraine.
Trump is made for staying in power, so he is made for war. He is made for a lifelong war against women who don’t submit to his advances, war against employees he wants to fire, war against immigrants, war against Democrats, war against environmentalists, war against the federal government, war against universities and foreign students, war against brown- and Black-skinned people, war against science and reason, war against God and religion, war against any humanitarian activity designed to feed, house or lift people, war against Medicaid for the poor and Medicare for the elderly.
Welcome to Donald Trump’s permanent apocalypse of evil.
Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross, Utah
DON DELILLO
Don DeLillo once sat alone in a small Bronx apartment in the late 1960s, staring at a blank page after quitting his advertising job because he believed the modern world had become too strange to explain with ordinary storytelling.
At the time, DeLillo was not famous.
He had spent several years working as a copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather, crafting short advertising slogans while watching American culture transform around him. Television was reshaping politics. The Cold War filled the air with anxiety. Consumer culture was exploding into everyday life.
The language of advertising felt too small for what he was seeing.
So DeLillo walked away from the job.
He began writing fiction full time, trying to capture the strange atmosphere of late twentieth-century America: paranoia, media noise, political violence, and the quiet fear that technology was changing how people understood reality.
His early novels attracted attention slowly.
Then came “White Noise,” published in 1985.
The novel followed a college professor named Jack Gladney, an expert in Hitler studies who becomes obsessed with death while living in a world overwhelmed by television signals, supermarket aisles, and constant media chatter. At the center of the story is an environmental disaster known as the “Airborne Toxic Event,” a mysterious chemical cloud drifting across the landscape.
Critics immediately recognized something unusual.
DeLillo was not just writing about characters. He was writing about the systems surrounding them: news broadcasts, consumer products, political fear, and the strange ways modern life blurred truth and spectacle.
“White Noise” won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1985 and became one of the defining novels of late twentieth-century American literature.
DeLillo continued exploring those themes in later works like “Libra” (1988), a fictional examination of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and “Underworld” (1997), a massive novel tracing American history through Cold War culture and nuclear anxiety.
Despite the influence of his work, DeLillo remained famously private.
He rarely sought publicity and avoided the celebrity culture that surrounded many writers. Instead, he focused on the quiet act of observing the strange rhythms of modern life.
Don DeLillo once explained the strange pull behind his writing in a single line.
“I think fiction rescues history from its confusions.”
THE BREATHER
Just as in the horror movies
when someone discovers that the phone calls
are coming from inside the house
so too, I realized
that our tender overlapping
has been taking place only inside me.
All that sweetness, the love and desire—
it’s just been me dialing myself
then following the ringing to another room
to find no one on the line,
well, sometimes a little breathing
but more often than not, nothing.
To think that all this time—
which would include the boat rides,
the airport embraces, and all the drinks—
it’s been only me and the two telephones,
the one on the wall in the kitchen
and the extension in the darkened guest room upstairs.
— Billy Collins (2008)
A SHORT AUTOBIOGRAPHY
(with apologies to Miranda)
by Jonah Raskin
About 1955, I declared my independence
from Sam and Millie, my parents,
and from my teachers at school, Mr. Lee,
with his atom bomb and Miss
Miller with her vocabularies; I wore
jeans and a T-shirt, played bongos,
joined the crowd that rocked ‘n’ rolled,
let the tide carry me to Greenwich
Village, became a renegade, part
outlaw and part traitor to my own class,
a romantic revolutionary addicted to excitement,
went to jail and had the shit kicked out of me,
loss my ideology in solitary, released sober,
got a job digging ditches, pulled strings,
found employment at State, wore the color purple,
assigned Camus, Cain, Dorothy Hughes, Jim Thompson,
watched my comrades blow themselves
up, while I became a renegade from the renegades,
turned into my opposite, grew organic
vegetables, negated my own nostalgia,
flaunted my despair, hated citizens
who waved high the banner of hope, watched
my body fall apart, collected social security,
told the truth as often as I could which wasn’t
often enough, moved into the country of
the blind and the dying in wheel chairs and
with walkers, watched the empire fall apart
remembered my Ukrainian grandfather, Aaron,
and decided to die as he died and as the US
went to war again, surrendered my soul
to the cause of peace that I loved.
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON VACCINES & AUTISM
by Bernie Sanders
In the aftermath of Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy’s repeated and dangerous misinformation campaign inaccurately linking vaccines to autism, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) today called on Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to hold a hearing to set the record straight on autism research and clarify that vaccines are safe and effective and do not cause autism.
March 17, 2026
Dear Chairman Cassidy:
As you know, the scientific and medical community has been clear and unambiguous: Vaccines do not cause autism.
Since 1998, more than 40 rigorous scientific studies in seven countries involving over 5.6 million children have found no link between vaccines and autism. Major medical organizations have reached the same conclusion.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the largest professional association of pediatricians in the United States representing over 65,000 physicians who treat kids every day, states: “There’s no link between vaccines and autism. Anyone repeating this harmful myth is misinformed or intentionally trying to mislead parents.”
The American Medical Association, the largest professional association of physicians in our country representing over 270,000 doctors, has likewise concluded that: “an abundance of evidence from decades of scientific studies shows no link between vaccines and autism.”
You have correctly said: “I’m a doctor who has seen people die from vaccine preventable diseases. What parents need to hear right now is vaccines for measles, polio, hepatitis B and other childhood diseases are safe and effective and will not cause autism. Any statement to the contrary is wrong, irresponsible, and actively makes Americans sicker.”
I could not agree more with that assessment. Unfortunately, Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy and many others inside the Trump Administration do not. The reality is that since Secretary Kennedy has been in office, he has continued his longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that vaccines cause autism – all of which have been repeatedly rejected by scientists.
In June, Secretary Kennedy replaced the scientific experts on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices with vaccine-skeptics, including several who have promoted the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism.
In September, the Trump Administration asserted that acetaminophen use during pregnancy causes autism – a conclusion you and the scientific community correctly challenged based on the evidence.
In November, Secretary Kennedy directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to publish false information on its website suggesting vaccines cause autism.
Later in 2025, the Food and Drug Administration removed a webpage that had previously warned consumers about unproven, and often dangerous, autism treatments.
And in January, Secretary Kennedy overhauled the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), appointing 21 new non-federal members. Several of these appointees have publicly advanced false claims linking vaccines and autism.
The IACC is charged with disseminating fact-based information to the public about autism and developing recommendations for autism research. Unfortunately, Secretary Kennedy’s newly appointed members have a history of doing the opposite by promoting and providing controversial, untested and dangerous treatments for autism and pushing discredited claims that vaccines cause autism. As a result, it has become abundantly clear that the American people can no longer trust information from the IACC about autism.
It is our responsibility to make sure that the American people understand the truth about vaccines and autism based on scientific evidence, not conspiracy theories.
Therefore, I would like to work with you to schedule a hearing on this issue as soon as possible.
Such a hearing would provide an opportunity for leading scientists, physicians, and public health experts to review the existing body of research on autism, discuss how federal agencies evaluate scientific evidence, and clarify what is known – and what is still being studied – about autism.
Importantly, it would also allow the Committee to hear from members of the autism community about their priorities for federal research, services, and support.
I look forward to working with you to make this hearing possible.
Sincerely,
Bernard Sanders
Ranking Member
U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
IN THE FINAL YEARS of his life, Vladimir Lenin became increasingly worried about the future leadership of the Soviet state.
After suffering several strokes between 1922 and 1923, he dictated a series of notes that later became known as Lenin’s Testament. In these writings, he evaluated the personalities and abilities of leading Bolsheviks.
Lenin criticized Joseph Stalin, who had recently become General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1922, describing him as too harsh and concentrated with too much power.
Lenin feared that Stalin’s temperament, what he called “rudeness” and impulsiveness, could damage unity within the party and the fragile Soviet government that had just emerged from the Russian Civil War.
Lenin even suggested that the party consider removing Stalin from the position of General Secretary and replacing him with someone more patient and respectful toward other party members.
However, after Lenin’s death in 1924, the testament was suppressed by senior Bolshevik leaders, including Stalin’s allies. Rather than being removed, Stalin gradually consolidated power through his control of the party bureaucracy and political maneuvering against rivals such as Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev.
Within a few years, Stalin had emerged as the dominant leader of the Soviet Union, a development that profoundly shaped the country’s political system and global history for decades.
TRANSLATION
Where there is no “we”
we are
sometimes lip to lip
sometimes apart
sometimes eye to eye
sometimes tongue-tied
lost in the vague geography of words
where we find ourselves again
you, my voice
I, your heartbeat
us, nomads of our mother tongue
in another tongue.
— Fatemeh Shams, translated from Persian by Armen Davoudian (2026)
THE DNC APPROACH TO ISRAEL IS POLITICAL MALPRACTICE AND MORAL FAILURE
by Norman Solomon
No matter how much the DNC leadership tries to shunt it aside, the burning issue of US policy toward Israel will not go away.
When the governing body of the Democratic Party convenes next month, it will face a challenge to its support for Israel. The Democratic National Committee has evaded the fact that large majorities of Democrats oppose continuing military aid to Israel and believe it has committed genocide in Gaza. The stage is set for jarring discord when the DNC’s 450 members gather in New Orleans.
An NBC poll released this week underscores the depth of the DNC’s political folly. The results were lopsided, by a 67-17 percent margin in favor of Palestinians, when the survey asked Democrats: “Are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?”
The DNC leadership has stayed on a collision course with political realities about Israel. Last August, while a Gallup poll was showing that just 8 percent of Democrats approved of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, DNC chair Ken Martin said at a meeting of delegates from across the country that “there’s a divide in our party on this issue.” He didn’t acknowledge that the crucial divide is actually between the party’s leadership and Democrats nationwide.
At that summer meeting, amid contention over US policies toward Israel, Martin withdrew his party-line resolution after it won and after a pro-Palestinian rights measure lost. He called for “shared dialogue” and “shared advocacy,” announcing that he would appoint a task force “comprised of stakeholders on all sides of this to continue to have the conversation.” Martin declared that “this crisis in Gaza is urgent” and an “emergency.”
But the “emergency” lost its urgency as soon as the DNC adjourned and the media spotlight disappeared. Six months passed before the first meeting of the task force, which by then had been downgraded to a “working group.”
The working group’s convener (selected by Martin) is James Zogby, a longtime advocate for Palestinian rights. Zogby had greeted Martin’s task-force announcement with praise, calling it “politically thoughtful” and a recognition of “the reality that the status quo has become unacceptable and untenable.”
But more than six months later, the status quo remains undisturbed as the DNC’s Middle East Working Group proceeds at a snail’s pace. And the composition of the eight-member panel makes it foreseeably incapable of reaching its purported goal to “help us sort out how our party deals with America’s policies in the Middle East.”
The working group is an oil-and-water mix of fully incompatible views on Palestinian rights and Israeli power. Some on the DNC panel want an embargo on US arms to Israel, while others firmly oppose any such step. One member of the working group, Andrew Lachman, has led fights inside the California Democratic Party to thwart actions or statements critical of Israel. He is currently the president of Democrats for Israel-California.
How the DNC’s appointed group is supposed to “sort out” a Democratic Party position on US policy in the Middle East is inexplicable. But the project does have an evident function. The Middle East Working Group has proven itself to be a stalling mechanism. And the pretenses behind it have become even more fanciful as the US-Israel military alliance persists with a war of aggression on Iran that has been setting the region on fire.
No matter how much the DNC leadership tries to shunt it aside, the burning issue of US policy toward Israel will not go away. This year, it has become key in one Democratic primary race after another, putting incumbent members of Congress on the defensive for their timeworn efforts to justify support for Israel or acceptance of funding from the AIPAC lobby. Yet the DNC stance is that the party establishment is wise to seal itself off from such unpleasantness.
The DNC’s refusal to make public its autopsy of the 2024 election is tangled up in dodging the autopsy’s reported conclusion that Kamala Harris’ rigid support for arming Israel was a significant factor in her defeat. Keeping the official autopsy under wraps, supposedly in order to improve the prospects of future election victories, actually makes such victories less likely by mystifying instead of clarifying electoral history.
Martin told Fox News viewers in late February that concentrating on the future would be better than trying to “relitigate” the 2024 election. But hiding the autopsy amounts to condescension, assuming that only a small elite party circle should be privy to the results of the party’s extensive (and expensive) research. Many Democratic activists and candidates would benefit from candor instead of stonewalling.
Weeks ago, the annual convention of the California Democratic Party responded to growing pressure from grassroots activists by adopting a platform that advocates for “an immediate end to the mass civilian casualties, destruction, displacement and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.” The platform says that “Palestinians in Gaza should be able to rebuild without displacement, with international humanitarian, economic and security assistance,” and it calls for “the immediate rebuilding of Gaza with the provision of humanitarian aid, restoration of funding for an UNRWA that serves the Palestinian people.”
But the Democratic National Committee, like the bulk of Democrats in Congress, lags far behind such grassroots outlooks. The top-down culture that prevails in the national party has stultified internal debate, rendering it scarce and pro forma. Despite Martin’s reform talk, whatever the DNC chair says goes. “I’ve been more and more disappointed with him,” a progressive DNC member told me days ago. “He says he loves internal debate and small-d democracy. I think it’s a talking point. I don’t know that he really wants that.”
After a little more than a year in the job, Martin has cleared the low bar set by his immediate predecessor, Jaime Harrison, who dutifully served President Biden for four years. But the DNC is still largely paralyzed with pressure from its old guard and insistence on being unaccountable to the party’s rank-and-file. The Democratic Party is in dire need of democracy.
On no issue is that more apparent than the DNC’s insistence on treating Israel as above serious reproach. The ruse of forming and then slow-walking the Middle East Working Group may have bought some time for the Democratic Party’s status quo of complicity with genocide in Gaza and US-Israeli war crimes elsewhere in the region. But party activists genuinely committed to human rights will not be fooled and will not be silent.
(Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, includes an afterword about the Gaza war.)
LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT
On Iran, Gabbard Turned Over Intelligence Duties to Trump
Top U.S. Spy Chiefs Contradict Trump’s Reason for Iran Attack
Senate G.O.P. Again Blocks Bid to Stop War Until Trump Wins Authorization
Iran’s Intelligence Minister Is Killed in an Airstrike
Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years
Fed Holds Rates Steady as War in Iran Upends the Economic Outlook
Powell Says He Will Remain as Fed Chair Until Successor Is Confirmed
Following Trump, Republicans in Congress Propose to Ban Most Voting by Mail
Google Sits Pretty as A.I. Rivals Compete for Pentagon Favor
“THE MOST DANGEROUS CREATION of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”
— James Baldwin
IRAN IS FORCING THE WORLD TO CARE ABOUT US-ISRAELI WARMONGERING
by Caitlin Johnstone
Westerners are about to start paying a lot more attention to the war in Iran as massive US-Israeli escalations point to a coming energy crisis set to impact the whole world.
Israel has bombed the world’s largest natural gas field in southwestern Iran, reportedly in coordination with the United States. Now that a major red line for Tehran has been crossed, retaliatory strikes have already begun pummeling the energy infrastructure of US allies in the region, with Qatar reporting that its primary gas facility has sustained “significant damage” from an attack after Iran issued evacuation warnings for energy facilities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Fuel prices are already surging. If middle eastern energy infrastructure starts taking extensive damage on top of the already hugely significant Iranian blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, this war could end up affecting virtually every corner of human civilization in one way or another.
Westerners are largely apathetic about US military explosives landing on populations on other continents. But once it starts having a direct impact on their personal bank accounts, you can expect them to get a lot more interested in US foreign policy.…
HOW IRAN DEFIED TRUMP THREATS TO EMERGE AS STRAIT OF HORMUZ GATEKEEPER
Trump has called on other navies to help open the strait, but countries are instead striking deals with Iran.
by Virginia Pietromarchi
As United States President Donald Trump tries to build a coalition of navies willing to open the Strait of Hormuz, some countries are negotiating safe passage directly with Iran, underscoring a new de facto reality, analysts say: Regardless of military results, Tehran is calling the shots on who gets to use the world’s most important energy waterway.
After US-Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28 and killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Iranian military leadership responded by focusing on its most potent form of leverage – Iran’s geography. The country controls the northern shore of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of global crude oil and natural gas supplies pass. It is 33km (20 miles) wide at its narrowest point, so any naval force that wants to cross it becomes easy prey for Iranian attacks coming from the mainland.
Considering insurance companies’ low appetite for risk, it took relatively few attacks on vessels in the strait – or just the threat of them – to undermine market confidence and send insurance premiums shooting up, causing a near paralysis in maritime traffic. About 20 vessels have been attacked since the start of the war.
“Iran has effectively proven that it dictates the terms of passage through the strait. They have now shown they are the gatekeeper of this important chokepoint. This will elevate the status of Iran in the geography of the Gulf,” said Andreas Krieg, an associate professor in Security Studies at King’s College London and a fellow at King’s Institute of Middle Eastern Studies. This will be the new reality for the foreseeable future, he added.
Meanwhile, crude prices have risen above $100 a barrel, more than 20 percent higher than pre-war prices, forcing countries to make the biggest releases of emergency reserves in history. Gas prices have risen by more than 40 percent since the war began.
Trump initially floated the idea of ordering the US Navy to escort vessels through the waterway. He then appealed to some countries to send warships and warned NATO members they would face “a very bad” future if these allies failed to help in opening the strait. But the appeal was either turned down or received noncommittal responses. Japan said it had no plans to deploy naval vessels. Australia ruled out sending ships. The United Kingdom said it would not be drawn into the wider war. Germany sent a clear message: “This is not our war”.
Others decided to take action – but not of the kind that Trump asked for. On Saturday, two India-flagged gas tankers passed through the strait after days of negotiations between New Delhi and Tehran, including a phone call between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Ships from Pakistan, Turkiye and China also have transited through the Strait of Hormuz. The Financial Times has reported that Italy and France have also reached out to Iran for deals although Italian authorities have rejected making such an overture.
Meanwhile, Windward, a maritime intelligence tracking group, said that while traffic in the strait on Tuesday remained 97 percent below average, a growing number of ships have been passing through Iran’s territorial waters, suggesting that Tehran is allowing “permission-based transit”.
‘It is up to us to decide’
There is a precedent for US naval forces to escort convoys through the strait dating back to the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. But today’s scenario is different, experts said. Back then, the US, while it was backing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, was not a direct party to the conflict. Iran was still in a post-revolutionary process of consolidating power, and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was nowhere near as organised as it is today.
Today, Iran has drones that its factories are capable of producing on a large scale and has been using them. Iranian forces could also use small boats to assault tankers, deploy mines and engage in other guerrilla-style tactics. While there are conflicting reports on whether Iran has placed mines in the strait, experts said it would be a counterproductive move for Tehran because it would disrupt the passage for any ships – Iranian vessels included – and it would take away from Tehran the power to choose who may pass.
Iranian officials are aware of their geographic advantage. “This is up to our military to decide,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday, referring to who will be allowed to use the strait.
Pro-government figures increasingly frame the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic bargaining tool beyond the war itself, suggesting the waterway could be used to extract compensation, sanctions relief or broader economic concessions after the war, Hamidreza Azizi, an expert on Iran and visiting fellow with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, commented on X.
Recent attacks seem to suggest that Iran wants to increase its pressure on the energy market.
On Tuesday, a drone attack caused a fire at the port of Fujairah, the United Arab Emirates’s only crude export terminal. It is located outside the eastern entrance of the Strait of Hormuz, allowing its exports to circumvent it. The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen could also further squeeze oil prices by disrupting the Bab al-Mandeb strait. That would force the US to operate across multiple maritime theatres. So far, the Houthis have not carried out such attacks, but this month, they said they were ready to strike at any moment.
Still, the US is focused on applying maximum pressure on Tehran and forcing it to open the Strait of Hormuz. The US Central Command, the US military’s combat command responsible for operations in the Middle East, said early on Wednesday that its forces had used 2,270kg (5,000lb) bunker-busting munitions against antiship missile sites along Iran’s coastline near the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump has also ordered amphibious ships carrying thousands of US Marines to move to the Middle East, and some experts believe the US might try to seize Kharg Island, a tiny piece of land in the northern Gulf where 90 percent of Iranian crude oil is exported from. The US has already bombed what it said were military sites on the island.
Such an operation, however, might do little to force Iran into opening the Strait of Hormuz, Krieg said. The island is 500km 310 miles) from the strait, and should the US take control of it, it would expose US Marines to Iranian fire. Should Iran see its key terminal being seized, it could also opt to mine the strait outright, having fewer reasons to allow some vessels to pass through.
“The issue with the Strait of Hormuz is really not a military one. … It’s a market issue, and confidence cannot be restored by the military. Confidence can be restored through diplomacy only,” Krieg said.
(aljazeera.com)
HOW ISRAEL CONVINCED TRUMP TO WAGE WAR AGAINST IRAN
A psychological warfare campaign orchestrated by Zionist interests targeted Trump to drive him into war with Iran.
by Chris Hedges w/Max Blumenthal
As the chaos and destruction of the war in Iran escalates by the day, a lesser known element of the conflict remains ensconced in the shadows of statespeak and bureaucracy. Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, joins Chris Hedges to explain how an Israeli psychological warfare campaign worked to exploit Donald Trump’s imbecilic intelligence and increasing paranoia with the ultimate goal of luring the President into a war with Iran.
Blumenthal says the Israelis and their allies convinced President Trump that Iran was trying to assassinate him – a fear first stoked when Trump began a vicious cycle of violence with the regime after he assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani during his first term.
The FBI played an active role in this covert lobbying effort, utilizing War- on- Terror-esque sting operations to manufacture threats in order to justify foreign policy measures. “Trump is an enigmatic figure,” Blumenthal points out, “less stable and predictable than a Bill Clinton or even a Barack Obama. However, he offers a massive opportunity because he’s totally transactional and entered politics essentially to make a profit.”
As the war drags on and thousands of lives are claimed in the process, the grim reality that cynical actors likely played a role in manipulating American leadership into the interests of the Zionist lobby casts an embarrassing light on any propagandistic narrative about combatting “terror” in the region.
“Do you think [fear of assassination] was the primary motivation behind Trump’s support of the war?” Hedges asks Blumenthal.
“I think Trump has to answer for that.”
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/how-israel-convinced-trump-to-wage
Transcript
Chris Hedges:
“The Israeli government mounted a sustained campaign to entice Donald Trump into a war with Iran. It assured Trump that once the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was assassinated, the fragile edifice of the Iranian Islamic State would crumble and a new pro-Western government would replace it. Part of this campaign also included manufactured plots to convince Trump that Iran sought to assassinate him.
“I got him before he got me,” Trump told a reporter when asked about his motives for authorizing the killing of the Supreme Leader on February 28th. Joining me to discuss the campaign to convince Trump to go to war with Iran—something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has unsuccessfully tried to get past administrations to do for decades—is Max Blumenthal, the editor of The Gray Zone.
Max is also the author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party, The Management of Savagery, and Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, a book that, despite being nearly 500 pages long, was so captivating and so well reported, I finished it in a day.
“So Max, there’s been long pressure on the Trump administration. In your article in The Grayzone, you say this goes back to the very campaign itself. Explain how that worked. He was, of course, surrounded by pro-Israel advisors, both in his first term—figures like Bolton—and in his second term.
But just lay out the process. And of course, he survived two assassination attempts—which I didn’t know until I read your story—Netanyahu immediately linked to Iran.”
Max Blumenthal:
“Well, there’s the material political force that influenced Trump, that Israel applied to influence Trump. And then there is the psychological pressure, which is more sophisticated. It was a very sophisticated campaign that was—I think it’s more difficult for people to understand, because Trump is a difficult figure to understand.
I mean, if you’re a sensible person and you listen to what Donald Trump says now, you may want to try to apply some sort of rational logic to what Donald Trump is saying. Perhaps he’s playing three-dimensional chess, or maybe it’s three dementia chess. Or he may just actually be an extremely stupid, feeble-minded individual who is ornery and irrational.
But let’s say you’re Trump’s enemy—it’s less important than if you’re Trump’s frenemy in Israel, and you need him to fulfill your objectives, because you have the lobby that can convince and influence US policymakers to act against American interests in your interest. But Donald Trump is an enigmatic figure, less stable and predictable than a Bill Clinton or even a Barack Obama. However, Trump offers this massive opportunity because he’s totally transactional, and he is someone who entered politics essentially to make a profit.
So the Israelis were working Trump through their cutouts—many of the figures that came out of the mega group that was launched in the 1990s to support Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaigns and various pro-Israel objectives internally inside the US, who are like 12 to 20 billionaires. Netanyahu had a handwritten list of billionaires that he drew up to support his campaign back in 1996.
So you had those. The most important figure would have been Sheldon Adelson, who was succeeded by his wife, his widow Miriam Adelson. There are other figures like Paul Singer, who was sort of a mainstream neoconservative Republican. He had a gay son, so he was hostile to the Christian right, but he liked the Republican Party because he is a vulture capitalist who wants to pay very low taxes.
He backed the entire career of Marco Rubio alongside the Adelsons, and Singer eventually got in with Trump when Trump made certain promises, which are now coming to bear right now in Iran and the West Bank and elsewhere. Singer’s an Israel-first guy. Other smaller figures: Ike Perlmutter, Bernard Marcus—we know these names.
And it’s obvious—Trump doesn’t even hide this—that they are essentially bribing him through our corrupt campaign finance system to allow Israel to de facto annex the West Bank, commit genocide in Gaza, punish the International Criminal Court for attempting to hold Israel’s military and political leadership to account for these crimes, and everything else, all the way up to war with Iran.
And then you had Donald Trump, the man who had to be manipulated. And I assume the Mossad and other forces within Israeli intelligence were seeking to first decode the enigma of Donald Trump’s psychology and then to exploit it, as they do with all of their targets—whether they’re targeting them for assassination or targeting them for an influence campaign.
Donald Trump has been targeted through this campaign of legal bribery and manipulation since his first campaign. He spoke, actually, at the Sands Casino in 2015, I believe it was, when he first started to emerge as a candidate. This is the casino owned by Sheldon Adelson in Las Vegas, for the Republican Jewish Coalition, which is a cipher for all the money from the right-wing Likudnik billionaires in the US—principally Adelson money.
And Trump said, ‘You guys like to make deals. Most of you are in real estate’—he’s probably thinking about his buddy Steve Witkoff—‘so let’s make a deal with the Palestinians. What would be wrong with that?’
And what Trump said there was just so unacceptable that he was denounced as an anti-Semite by the RJC. Then he immediately started to change his tune. And what did he say? What were the magic words? ‘We’re getting ripped off by the Iran deal that Barack Obama signed, and we’re giving the Iranians and the mullahs hundreds of billions of dollars.’
This was, of course, a humongous lie. We were just unfreezing money that had been stolen, essentially held up in international banks through sanctions.
Trump hammered this message again and again, and it was like a Likudnik bat signal to Adelson and all the billionaires of the mega group that they could now support him. And suddenly, he began to surge forward. He was making deals behind the scenes through his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who understood this world very well. Through his own family—Charles Kushner—the Kushner Foundation was supporting some of the most radical settlements in the West Bank, supporting exclusively right-wing, Likudnik-oriented activities.
The Kushner family was close friends with Netanyahu when he was opposition leader in Likud. Netanyahu would come over to their house, and young Jared would have to get out of his bed and sleep on the couch so Netanyahu could have a guest room.
I could go into the Kushner family for the next hour, but he was the fixer who helped align Donald Trump with this Zionist billionaire class.
Donald Trump enters office. Israel starts pushing Trump to—first of all, he rips up the Iran deal, so that was a major win. He announces the Abraham Accords, which is intended to encircle Iran with a Sunni alliance of family dictatorships in the Gulf—seated in the front row, the Adelsons and Jared Kushner.
It was all pretty clear what the agenda was. But Israel was making moves on the ground too, to escalate so that Trump would be pushed to wage war. Gareth Porter published a really important analysis with us at The Grayzone, a two-parter on how Netanyahu and Mike Pompeo—a Christian Zionist, subject of influence for not just the Israel lobby but also the MEK exiled Iranian regime change group when he was CIA director—basically teamed up to pressure Trump to authorize retaliatory attacks because of supposed axis-of-resistance attacks on US bases inside Iraq.
There was one key attack on a US base in—I believe it was Baghdad, it might’ve been Baghdad or Erbil—in 2019. And it turned out that no group affiliated with Iran or the Popular Mobilization Units had carried out that attack. It was, in fact, an ISIS attack. ISIS—a group that had essentially been defeated. Anyone could claim ISIS. Raises questions about whether it was a false flag.
And it was with that attack that Netanyahu and Pompeo both went to Trump and said, ‘You need to retaliate, and the way to do it is we’re going to take out Qasem Soleimani,’ the number two figure in the IRGC, leading figure, head of the Quds Force, responsible for all of this terrorism against Americans, they claimed—even though he had just worked with the US, hand in glove, to defeat ISIS.
And we know that he’s coming to Baghdad and will be getting off a plane to commit acts of terror against Americans—when in fact he was going to a diplomatic conference to negotiate diplomatically with Saudi Arabia.
Trump authorizes a drone strike to kill Soleimani getting off the plane. And it’s the first time that Iran retaliates against the US with ballistic missiles. They attack the US Al-Assad air base in Iraq. They, of course, give advance warning. Iran was always careful to avoid escalating beyond a certain point.”
However, the Israelis have achieved a major objective—not just militarily, but psychologically—because they had set Donald Trump up in an escalation trap where he would not only have to continue escalating against Iran every time it retaliated or face looking weak—which is another aspect of Trump’s personality; he always needs to save face—but also Trump would now fear his own assassination, because he had just taken out the second most important figure in the Iranian leadership hierarchy.
And that helps us set the stage for Trump’s comeback campaign and the various assassination attempts he faced after enduring the whole Russiagate saga, which was indeed a hoax intended to paint Donald Trump as a traitor.
The former CIA director, John Brennan, calls Trump a traitor on national TV. Trump’s looking over that shoulder. The Democrats impeach Trump in Congress over the Ukraine war. He faces lawsuits, accusations from women that he sexually harassed them in the past. It’s all coming at him so fast, and he develops this fear of assassination—and also this determination to claw his way back to power, to seek revenge against all the people that sought to take him out.
And so, for the Israelis, now the psychology of Donald Trump is clear: we just need to convince him that Iran is trying to kill him, and he’ll do what we want.
Chris
And, of course, that fear of assassination, as you point out, is well founded. He was nearly killed in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July of 2024. And then, two months later, there was another attempt—a potential assassin arrested who was hiding in the shrubbery outside of Mar-a-Lago in West Palm Beach.
So Trump was already primed for this, since there had been two close calls. You write that the FBI manufactured a series of assassination plots, successfully convincing Trump that Iran was hunting him on U.S. soil with highly sophisticated teams of hitmen. Can you give us the details—and I guess begin by talking about Asif Merchant?
Max Blumenthal
Merchant, yeah.
And so anyone who watched your intro will hear you quote Donald Trump stating, “I got him before he got me,” referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It’s not really in Iran’s doctrine to assassinate a foreign leader and risk war. It would easily trigger the U.S. to attack them. But this is what Trump believes.
So why does he believe it? Who convinced him? And what do we know?
Well, the first thing to know is that, as you said, Donald Trump’s fears of assassination are well founded. The main assassination attempt—which nearly claimed Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13th, 2024—is not well understood and still shrouded in mystery.
And it’s especially not well understood by people on the left because, you know, what do they care? The right is much more invested in trying to get to the truth. Republican members of Congress have gone as far as going to Butler to try to get to the bottom of it.
One of them, Clay Higgins, went to Butler, I think, two weeks after the assassination attempt. And he found that the body of Thomas Matthew Crooks—the would-be assassin who missed Trump, supposedly sliced his ear, and missed his head by like an inch—his body had been destroyed. It had actually been returned to his family. There was no toxicology report he could access. We later learned the toxicology report was faulty.
But there are so many instances of obstruction around Crooks. Christopher Wray, the FBI director at the time, said that Crooks had no social media history and was just this mysterious lone wolf. It turned out he had an extensive social media history on YouTube, for example. He was a prolific commenter declaring his intention to ignite a civil war by killing political leaders in the U.S.
He explicitly called for the assassination of Ilhan Omar in one comment. Other YouTube users were flagging his comments, but nothing ever happened to him that we know of.
So there are real questions—within Donald Trump’s support base—about whether Thomas Matthew Crooks himself had been recruited by the FBI at some point, and that Trump’s assassination attempt was a manufactured plot gone wrong.
And it gets even eerier when we look at this figure, Asif Merchant. He is from Pakistan and entered the United States through Houston to visit family. He had an Iranian wife, whom he met on a pilgrimage in Karbala. This wound him up on a DHS watch list when he entered George H.W. Bush Airport in Houston, I think in February of 2024.
However, Customs and Border Patrol waves him through after discovering his history and seeing the watch list. They gave him a kind of visa that enables law enforcement investigation. They basically decided to target him and manipulate him.
The question is: were the Israelis alerting them in advance? Was this done in tandem with Israeli intelligence?
Merchant enters the country. He’s a small-time businessman trying to meet partners. A man approaches him and says, “I want to help you sell shirts and get into the garment industry.” That man is an FBI informant. He was a former translator for the US Army in Afghanistan. We don’t know his real name.
He winds up filming Merchant in a hotel room declaring his intention to carry out an assassination of unnamed leadership using a 25-person protest as a distraction, with a woman handling reconnaissance and a sniper. This is a guy with no military history, no experience with any of this.
Then he’s told by the informant, “All we need is $5,000.” $5,000 for this giant flash mob style assassination extravaganza is absurd. It turns out Merchant didn’t even have $5,000. The informant leads him around meeting other supposed collaborators—who are all FBI informants.
He flies back to Houston. He’s arrested on June 12th, 2024—24 hours before the Butler assassination attempt.
After Butler, he’s visited in his cell by FBI agents who want to know if he had anything to do with the attempt to kill Trump and Butler. They determine he didn’t. But one agent later said, “If we had demonstrated that this Merchant guy had been sent by the IRGC, it would have meant war. They would have had to attack Iran.”
Chris
And I just want to stop you there, Max, because as you know, immediately after 9/11, this was the Modus Operandi of the FBI—finding these dead-enders and essentially creating the plots themselves and supply them with the money. Something like 90 percent of these cases where they uncovered terrorist cells, they were essentially created by the FBI.
Max Blumenthal
Completely. Trevor Aronson, in his book The Terror Factory, found that over 90% of terror busts during the Obama era were manufactured plots.
The FBI agent overseeing the Merchant case was also involved in the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot, where Americans were told that these right-wing militia men had plotted to kidnap the Democratic governor Gretchen Witmer, which turned out to be largely orchestrated by FBI informants. None of the defendants conceived of the plot. The plot was conceived of by paid FBI informants. But they were all convicted.Anyway when did we learn about this ‘horrifying’ right-wing terror plot? In October of 2020, it was kind of like the October surprise that they dropped in order to further implicate Donald Trump as an extremist. I’m no fan of Trump but it was this was pretty clearly a political ruse. So the same guy was involved. He was found in contempt of Congress I believe for lying about evidence. The FBI has proven itself to be one of the most corrupt institutions in American society and one of the most dangerous.
Chris
We should also mention there was another FBI manufactured plot to supposedly kill John Bolton.
Max Blumenthal
Yes. That was another plot involving confidential informants that never amounted to anything. Even mainstream press concluded Bolton was never in danger.
And Mike Pompeo subsequently claimed that he was targeted by the same IRGC-run assassination network, but there’s nothing even in FBI or DOJ documents indicating that Pompeo was a target. It’s just something Pompeo runs around and says constantly in order to implicate Iran.
So, the IRGC operative who supposedly oversaw those plots is named Moghaddam. This was the guy whose assassination Pete Hegseth announced on day three of the war on Iran. How did Pete Hegseth know that Moghaddam had supposedly been killed? The Israelis told him that they killed him, and so Hegseth was thanking the Israelis for taking out the IRGC operative who he believed had overseen all of these plots against Donald Trump.
Except they’re not even said to involve Donald Trump. It supposedly involved John Bolton. What’s more, this would be like assassinating, I don’t know, Pete Hegseth because some American guy was in another country and killed somebody. Moghaddam, whoever he is, is so far up the food chain, it’s very doubtful that he had any command and control over this supposed assassination.
So, in every case, there are either confidential informants or witnesses who appear to have been confidential informants but aren’t named as such. And there never was a case in which any individual who’s accused of being instrumentalized by Iran to take out Donald Trump ever came anywhere close.
Asif Merchant said, “You know, I didn’t even want to do it. I just felt like I was being manipulated and pressured, and I thought I had to do it or my family back in Iran would be harmed.” But he said, “There’s no way I was ever going to succeed.”
But then there were imaginary plots that were conceived as well. I mean, we’re just talking about the manufactured ones. The most serious of these was when Donald Trump was told that there were IRGC operatives, or IRGC-trained operatives, in the United States who had shoulder-mounted MANPADS that could take out Trump Force One. This prompted Donald Trump to take decoy flights during the campaign on the private jet of his real estate buddy, Steve Witkoff.
Where did the FBI get that from? It looks like they pulled it from the indictment of Ryan Routh, who was the second guy who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in September 2024. He was the mentally troubled drifter who was seen pointing an SK-style assault rifle toward the golf course that Donald Trump was playing on, with Steve Witkoff, by the way. He was pursued and caught by Secret Service agents.
It turned out he has his own shady history. He was attempting to recruit internationals to fight in Ukraine, including mujahideen from Afghanistan and including Iranians. And he had said—probably this was all bluster—but he had told some Iranian he was trying to recruit that he would give him a shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft weapon, like a rocket launcher.
So it looks like the FBI just finessed the Routh indictment into an imaginary threat against Donald Trump to keep him afraid of Iran on the campaign trail.
But going back to the supposed Israeli assassination of Moghaddam, The New York Times reported last week that they probably didn’t even kill this figure. I mean, this all came from Israeli intelligence. So this is the first time mainstream media has acknowledged that Israeli intelligence was behind the information that Donald Trump received that Iran was trying to kill him.
So it raises questions about the Israeli intelligence role in Asif Merchant’s case, about the Israeli intelligence role in convincing John Bolton that he was targeted, Mike Pompeo, and the phony plot to take down Trump Force One.
And then finally, Benjamin Netanyahu—after Israel launched an unprovoked assault on Iran in June 2025, the 12-day war—Netanyahu wanted to guarantee that Donald Trump got involved and authorized U.S. military action, because Israel was not doing very well at that point. Tel Aviv was getting hammered. Iran was retaliating after losing much of its IRGC command structure in a way I don’t think Israel expected.
So Netanyahu goes on primetime on Fox News—which is what Donald Trump constantly has on his TV—with Bret Baier, and he declares that Iran is behind two assassination plots, two attempts on Donald Trump’s life.
Bret Baier was stunned. It was a completely scripted interview, and this was the only follow-up question. He said, “What are you talking about? Do you have intelligence on this?” And Netanyahu said, “Yeah, we have intelligence,” but he was very careful to kind of cover up the fact that Israeli intelligence was manipulating Trump. He said, “We get this through proxies, through proxies.”
So it was very clear that Israel was trying to convince Donald Trump that Iran was not only attempting to target him, but that they had sliced his ear with a bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania, and that Thomas Crooks was somehow an IRGC operative—this lone American boy who apparently was friendless and had never left the country. And Donald Trump, by this point, believed it.
Chris:
Do you think that was the primary motivation behind Trump’s support of the war?
Max Blumenthal:
That’s a great question.
I think Trump has to answer for that. He’s not being asked these kinds of questions. Often he deflects from questions with insults or amusing stories or just incoherent rhetoric. But when this war is over, it will have dealt such a blow to U.S. empire that there will be a lot to answer for. And I think his motives will come back into play.
And I think there are motives that he’s not able to address, such as his own personal fear of the Israelis—that Donald Trump wonders what would happen to him if he suddenly went off script after accepting so much money from this mafia-like coterie of billionaires—Adelson, Singer, Marcus, etc.
What does Donald Trump think about Charlie Kirk’s assassination? Who does he think did it? I know people around Trump have serious questions about that one as well. But watching Charlie Kirk get shot in the neck in the middle of a rally was probably not received well by Trump.
He’s not someone who wants to sacrifice his legacy. He’s there to make as much money as possible. He’s worried about his grandchildren and sons being targeted. His son, Eric Trump, actually stated on Fox News that he doesn’t believe the official story around Charlie Kirk or around Butler, Pennsylvania.
So I think there’s a fear factor as well. I don’t think Donald Trump likes Benjamin Netanyahu.
Chris:
I don’t think anybody likes Benjamin Netanyahu.
Max Blumenthal:
I think he’s afraid of him. I think he defers to him. And I think that Donald Trump is so feeble-minded and had so much hubris after Venezuela—the success he saw there—that he thought he could achieve the trifecta of Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran in a few months and would be seen as this hero.
And he was the subject of so much manipulation, financially and psychologically, that his brain had been rendered putty in the hands of the Israel lobby.
Chris:
I mean, Max, at the same time, he was getting heat on the Epstein files.
Max Blumenthal:
Yeah. I helped coin the phrase “Operation Epstein Fury.” That was my reply when the Department of War announced it was “Operation Epic Fury.” I just happened to be up watching the war at that time, and I responded “Operation Epstein Fury,” and my tweet got 52,000 likes.
I’m sure someone else would have come up with it. Many people understand that—I think liberals tend to see this war as a distraction from the Epstein files and the Epstein saga. There’s a running joke that Trump’s going to have to release more Epstein files to distract from his failures in this war.
Most Democratic voters, according to a poll commissioned by the outlet Dropsite, overwhelmingly believe that this war is a distraction from the Epstein files.
I don’t think so. I see it as synonymous with Donald Trump’s proximity to Jeffrey Epstein and to the class of grifters, elites, and oligarchs that existed within the transatlantic militant Zionist network of Jeffrey Epstein. It’s the so-called Epstein class.
And that’s why you’ll even hear from Iranians—who are very familiar with American and Western culture—that they’re at war with the “Epstein class” or the “Epstein army” or the “axis of Epstein.” It’s just a symbol.
Epstein has become a symbol for this decadent, militaristic Western elite that’s incapable of negotiation or humanity and worships at the altar of Baal or Moloch. That’s why, in Iranian pro–Islamic Republic rallies, when they want to show defiance against the U.S. and Israel, they burn effigies of the pagan god Baal and inscribe missiles with phrases like “This is revenge for Epstein Island victims.” That was actually inscribed on a ballistic missile.
So I think there’s a greater symbolism to Epstein and the Epstein files. If we read it too literally—just as if we read Donald Trump too literally and try to see this in a linear sense—we’ll misunderstand the true meaning, whether it’s the meaning to Donald Trump or to those he’s now placed under bombardment in Iran.
Chris:
So the war is not going well for Israel or the United States. We don’t know how much punishment Israel is taking because of very heavy censorship, but reading between the lines, it’s significant.
Iran has no interest in negotiating. It’s tried that route. It realizes these are not entities—the United States or Israel—that they can appease or negotiate with. Iran has the capacity to inflict tremendous economic damage. It’s already inflicting economic damage over the long term.
Where do you see it going, and what do you expect the response to be?
Max Blumenthal:
Well, just to continue with the theme of how Trump is being manipulated and moved: the reason that the Iranians won’t negotiate, I think, is who’s on the other side of the table—or down the hallway, since they negotiate through an intermediary in Oman. It’s Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
These are dedicated Zionist movement ideologues and operatives who used negotiations to weaken Iran’s ability to respond to an Israeli decapitation strike.
Steve Witkoff is a guy who carries a pager gifted to him by Benjamin Netanyahu in honor of the pager operation. He declared at a fundraiser for an Israeli group called United Hatzalah that his mother would be so proud to see him speak immediately after the former head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen. His sons are also very involved in the zionist world and in Trump corruption networks.
Jared Kushner wasn’t even supposed to be part of this administration. He emerged out of nowhere to lead negotiations and the “Board of Peace,” which is a board of war designed to replace the UN, with its first project being to profit from the biometrical controlled concentration camp of Gaza.
Those are the figures on the other line. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said he constantly turns down Steve Witkoff’s attempts to negotiate.
Witkoff—after the US launched its war with Israel, assassinating Iran’s supreme leader and as many leaders as possible and killing many common people in the process—went on one of the Sunday shows and said Iran not only refused to end enrichment—which is a lie—but also claimed Iran refused to give up its navy and its ballistic missile program, saying they can’t have a navy because it would allow them to close the ‘Gulf of Hormuz’— he didn’t even know that it was called the Strait of Hormuz.
By saying that it was very clear what was going on in these negotiations. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were putting forward Israeli terms in order to make sure that Iran’s red lines were crossed at every point. What sovereign country is going to give up its navy or ballistic missile program that’s entirely legal under international law and which exists to deter these attacks that it continues to receive? It’s not going to happen.
And we were told in the media that these negotiations are only focusing on Iran’s nuclear weapons while Steve Witkoff went to Trump and said Iran can produce 9-12 nuclear bombs within a week because they’ve reached 60 percent enrichment and that got back to the Iranians and they said ‘this guys doesn’t know anything—you can’t produce a nuclear weapon at 60 percent. He’s an idiot.’
So you’re dealing with ideologically motivated zionists who are also complete morons who can’t even understand the basic technical perimeters to even come to a deal.
So why would Iran ever go back to the table? The only thing Iran can do now is impose an end to the war through force. That’s the only language the Trump administration understands.
Meanwhile, Iran is showing it can hit back. Just today the fuel depot at Dubai International airport was hit. It’s continuing to escalate. That’s shocking to someone like Donald Trump, who has been heavily manipulated and lacks the capacity for critical thought.
What is Trump being told now that the war is going badly, by those who want to keep him in the war? There’s definitely a faction in the Trump administration that would like to get out of this that has buyer’s remorse. I think Marco Rubio might even be part of that faction. He wants to focus on Cuba and his little Donroe Doctrine.The people who are telling him about all these attacks—at U.S. bases, for example the US consulate in Baghdad (the embassy was evacuated this week), in Iraq, elsewhere, we’re getting hit by drones from Iran, from the resistance outfits in Iraq—and Donald Trump doesn’t believe it. He’s being told that this is all AI.
He even threw a tantrum on Truth Social and on Air Force One, screaming at the press and declaring on Truth Social that all of these videos of Iran’s supposed successes are AI and the whole media’s falling for it. He screamed at a reporter and said that a major rally of 250,000 people in Tehran, after he assassinated Khamenei was fake. The New York Times has verified the image. I don’t need to verify the images. I can see from all my acquaintances and sources in Iran that this is happening like every night there. The whole society is united and mobilized against this assault, or much of the society.
But Donald Trump doesn’t believe any of it. And Pete Hegseth, this glowering sociopathic dry drunk character who should have been fired over Signal-Gate and managed to stay relevant by bombing fishermen with drones off the coast of Venezuela, is now banning photographers from the Pentagon because he doesn’t like the way they make him look. They make him look like he’s angry and weary and under pressure. And he threw a temper tantrum at the Pentagon press corp just two days ago, screaming at the press: ‘you’re cheering for Donald Trump’s failure. That’s all you do’. And he declared he can’t wait for David Ellison to take over all of their networks, David Ellison being another billionaire asset who controls Paramount, CBS and will soon control CNN, VIACOM, TikTok and many other media assets
So they’re in panic mode. They’re blaming the press. This is not where they thought they were going to be. And Donald Trump is now being manipulated by being told that the entire failing war is a simulation and that he’s actually winning. But what are they doing? What are they hitting?
Most of the targets that the US is hitting are civilian residential targets. Over 17,000 residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed, according to the Iranian committee on the Red Cross. And the military targets they hit primarily are Iran’s Navy, naval ships that would not be useful in closing the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran’s Air Force, which was outdated and might have been useful in a regional conflict or to attack ISIS, but would have never been able to compete with the US Air Force.
But they’re not able to suppress Iran’s Shahid drones. Iran launched the 54th wave of Operation True Promise 4 just yesterday with ballistic missiles. And so it’s not working, and Iran is, I think, ready for a months-long conflict that could fully exhaust US empire. What they’re demanding is the withdrawal of US bases from the region. That’s what Donald Trump is fighting for now. He’s not fighting for regime change. There’s not going to be regime change. He’s fighting to simply maintain the US presence in the region and to open the Strait of Hormuz, facing global economic catastrophe.
The Europeans are not coming to his aid, because how did he treat them with the tariffs? He threatened them over Greenland. Europeans have more minesweeping ships than the US. He needs them, and they’re not coming to his rescue at this point. So we may be seeing the unraveling of Donald Trump through this war and the Trump administration, and we’re only like a year into that administration.
Chris:
My fear, Max—is that Bibi will reach for the nukes.
Max Blumenthal:
Why do you fear that?
Chris:
Because I think Israel cannot sustain this kind of war of attrition.
Max Blumenthal:
I think that’s a legitimate fear. I think one of the bigger stories of the year is that Israel likely tested a nuclear weapon in Dimona in, I think, early February. There was a massive earthquake near the secret nuclear facility in Dimona that was likely the result of the test of a nuclear bomb, and Israel was sending a message, but also preparing for the worst.
And I think we should consider the possibility that Donald Trump could detonate some form of nuclear weapon or tactical nuclear weapon if he’s unable to simply walk away. The Israelis do not want Donald Trump to walk away from this. He’s being urged to walk away by many of his advisors.
But the Israelis have all this leverage over him. So we should be concerned about whether they’ll drop a nuclear weapon. And this is why it’s completely rational and legitimate for Iran to develop a nuclear weapons program as a means of deterrence against these psychotic forces that are coming to destroy them.
(chrishedges.substack.com)
CALIFORNIA HITS ALL-TIME U.S. HIGH FOR WINTER HEAT
Weather warm here in red Wyoming, too. S’posed to get into the low 80s today in the central part of the state, and, except for the mountains there’s been relatively little snowfall. A course it caint be a symptom of climate change, now could it…best thing for the planet would be if Homo sapiens went extinct. The moron in charge and his idiot appointees and VP should be locked away, permanently, along with their supporters in the joke we call congress.
Why You Shouldn’t Invade America
Utah apparently got bigger, and Wyoming is gone? Well, I’ll be damned.
CESAR CHAVEZ ABUSE ALLEGATIONS SHAKE BAY AREA
Life in freedomlandia… If the allegations prove to be true–and they may well be–I will have lost my last hero. I have admired Chavez since my college days. Life on a sinking boat, eh?
Me too, Harvey, it’s a disheartening story, if true, and it looks so… I am getting tired of seeing the harm men bring to girls and young women. It seems to be the endless story…
And one that has been going on since the species evolved.
KRYSTAL MYERS…
Challenge the new value. Say that because of fire danger and difficulty in finding insurance/cost your home is not properly valued in light of this. Talk to a local realtor near yoour property.
I would want to know if the property was assessed at the 2021 purchase value, or the current market value. It might make a difference. It seems reasonable that the county would, at least, offer a payment plan spread out over a number of years. And remember that property taxes are deductible, which could affect one’s income tax liability in the year in which they are paid.
DON DELILLO
Re DeLillo’s stint as a copywriter at an ad agency: the far-less known but equally talented U.S. writer Richard Yates has one of his benighted alter-ego characters employed during the 1950s writing for a magazine entitled “Chain Store Age.” I confess I was somewhat disappointed when I later discovered there actually was such a publication, although perhaps it was simply conjured into existence by Yates’s ironic prose.
DAN BACHER,
Is this a book report or what? I have read Newsom’s book and you are leaving stuff out. I know Gordon Getty, we are on the same board of advisors and Gordon does not hand out money to anyone, including family without good reason. He invested $15,000 along with several other investors who put in the same amount. When Gavin brought him his investment gains in the form of checks, only then did he invest more.
From https://nuforc.org
NUFORC UFO Sighting 196465
Occurred: 2026-03-07 20:15 Local
Reported: 2026-03-08 11:11 Pacific
Duration: 4 hours
No of observers: 2
Location: Mendocino, CA, USA
Location details: Over the Pacific Ocean
Shape: Light
Color: Red, gree, and orang
Estimated Size: Quite a bit larger than an airplane
Viewed From: Land
Direction from Viewer: Slightly North West
Angle of Elevation: 45
Closest Distance: In the sky where clouds would be
Estimated Speed: Didn’t move and then took off like a flash.
Characteristics: Changed Colo
Pulsating red, green, orange, pink lights in the air that hovered for 4 hours and then just took off in a second.
My wife and I came home from dinner at around 8:15pm PST to our vacation rental near Mendocino CA. We both saw what looked like pulsating colored lights concentrated together. These concentrated lights were out over the Pacific ocean. The lights would flash different colors at different times in a sort of flickering pattern. It was always quick and pulsating or flickering but never moving around. At first we thought it was a star, but it was too close and in our atmosphere. We did some other things and about 2.5 hours later I laid down to sleep and couldn’t believe I could still see this pulsating light outside through the window. I watched it for what seemed to be an hour. It just flickered and pulsated. Then, all of the sudden it took off in a sort of white streak. Gone in what I would call a millisecond. I’ve never encountered anything like it in my life.
Posted 2026-03-16
You must not own a cell phone with camera and video. You might be the only folks in Mendocino County or even California without a cell phone. How odd.
You can study film of a similiar report in a case given a detailed followup investigation…..similiar at least with some descriptive features:
https://nuforc.org/sighting/?id=193270
Cell phones aren’t great for night filming….
So are you saying that you had a cell phone but didn’t bother to take a photo or video because you feared low quality photo/videos? Is that what you are saying? You are apparently directing me to, “film of a similiar report”? That suggestion breakes the chain of evidence. I used to testify about motion picture evidence in civil trials. You have to prove the chain from the original film/video/photo to the one presented as evidence. You had the opportunity to film or photo something that you could then testify to…and you didn’t do what was required. Therefore no one could possibly varify anything you say. Why would you do that?
Im not married and I have no vacation home. Its not my story!
At no point did I even imply that….its not the first time I’ve posted here filed reports coming from our county.
I’m days away from having to renew my ava subscription….glad I was able to make this correction in time but im wondering why you didnt note I corrected Marco, who thought I ate chili, causing me to hallucinate!
Various members of Congress have been shown in SCIFS film of objects that they say is way beyond human achievement in performance. They expect some of that to be made public so you may get a chance soon to see that.
There’s someone who did a transcript of a discussion on Bill Maher’s show where a House Oversight Cmt member discusses the briefings and expectations:
https://x.com/TheUfoJoe/status/2035280269792677983?s=20
Mike, there’s an old wisdom: When it seems like it’s everyone, it’s probably you. That also applies to perception: When if seems like it’s everywhere, it’s probably you.
A few years ago I had the problem of sometimes being on the air, reading my show, and the center of my vision got all sparkly and it made it hard to read. I put on some music and drank a glass of water and went outside and walked around a little bit and gradually it went away. The same thing happened a few times since then. Eventually I figured it out: Every time I have chili for dinner from a can, later that night my vision does that. No chili since then, no problem. Other problems, of course, from being old, but not that one. What did you and your wife eat the night of your story?
Marco, its not my story.
Eat blueberries instead for eye health.
Big River Beach is a legendary surf point
I used to surf there all the time. One time whilst walking on the beach there heading to the point, I saw a unique looking piece of driftwood and when I went to pick it up, it was a seal fin. Just the fin, no seal. Being young and nominally stupid, I weighed the risk and return of surfing a break with half eaten seal fins on the beach and went right in. Great waves. Nobody out. Now we know why. My calculation was that my chance of dying on Hwy 20 getting there was way higher than involuntary becoming part of the food chain. So the moral of the story is; drive safe folks because a shark is the last thing you need to worry about.
Particularly a shark that just ate a seal.