Guest post: Intergenerational wealth

There may be less for the next generation than they expect.

And it won't fix the U.S. deficit problem.

Some Boomer parents invested in Nvidia. Others invested in Worldcom, Enron, or Lehman Brothers. Some Boomer parents live in memory care too long, and it eats up everything they ever saved. Some Boomer parents never earned all that much. President Trump could plunge the world into a world war, a depression, hyperinflation, civil war, or something else, so even people who have provided for their retirements could run out of money. Lots could go wrong.

While at my college's 55th reunion of the class of 1971, I am presenting guest posts by classmates so that I would have my mind and time free to remember those days and places of my youth.

Here I am in 1967, age 18

Erich Almasy rowed at college, went to Harvard Business School, then had a long career on the consultancy/business management track. He and his classmate wife, Cynthia Blanton, live in Mexico.

Almasy at graduation

Almasy, recent

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

The Myth of Intergenerational Wealth 

For generations, the idea of “leaving something behind” has become deeply embedded in the American psyche. Financial advisors promote it, politicians praise it, and family dynasties flaunt it. The financial investment industry touts the massive inflow of intergenerational wealth, mostly from Boomers, over the next 25 years as The Great Wealth Transfer. Estimates range from $110 to $124 trillion (with a “t”), comprised of real estate, insurance, investments (including capital gains), retirement accounts, and charitable bequests. 

 

Is the “Bubble” Real?

Many factors are presently reducing this transfer, among them:  

Boomers are living longer and spending their money on healthcare and longevity.

The median cost of long-term assisted living is over $6,000 per month. Healthcare, even with Medicare, costs people over 75 about $25,000 annually. Boomers also need to plan for inflation, and they might want to travel.

Family farms and businesses are often illiquid and harder to move directly into transferable wealth.

Much of this wealth was accumulated during the 70s and 80s, a period of high inflation that significantly increased asset values. If, as some analysts believe, we are heading into a deflationary cycle, it may be reduced.

Most of the wealth is already tied up in family estates. Over 75 percent of the projected transfer can be found with families in the top 10 percent of income, tied up in generation-skipping and living trusts.

 

Where’s It Hiding?

Well, with rich people mostly who protect it from taxes. On top of their trusts and shelters, the top 1% added a benevolent Republican Congress that slashed their capital gains taxes. Capital gains are now capped at 20% with exemptions, the lowest level since the 1920s (and we know what happened then). Inheritance/estate taxes have been largely eliminated. Initially, federal taxes on inheritance/estates were used temporarily during times of war -- 1797, 1862, and 1898 -- funding through a stamp paid for registering wills. In 1916, the federal estate tax became permanent, with rates that rose to 77 percent by 1975. Under George W. Bush, the tax was eliminated. It was restored under President Barack Obama, but later exemptions (~$14 million per individual and ~$27 million per couple) meant that very few estates paid any tax, and the top rate is now capped at 40%. But the most significant tax-saving wealth-creator for the rich has been the “carried interest loophole,” which allows anyone involved with investment funds to treat their performance-based compensation as long-term capital gains, reducing their top federal tax rate from 37% to 23.8%.

 

Cui Bono

In the immortal words of Cicero - “who benefits?” Well, not you and I. The federal deficit averaged under 4 percent of GDP for the past 50 years. Today, it is 5.8 percent, expected to rise to 6.7 percent by 2036. The government will add $1.9 trillion to the deficit this fiscal year, bringing the total to $39 trillion. The deficit is growing faster than tax revenues. And this omits future unfunded liabilities, separate from the annual deficit. Social Security has an estimated $25 trillion in long-term unfunded liabilities, and Medicare another $53 trillion. Put more personally, the annual interest payment on the national debt amounts to $7,300 per family. I don’t expect another Ted Turner to come along and pay $1 billion to reduce the federal deficit, as he did for the United Nations.

 

Net Net

The deficit plus unfunded liabilities total $117 trillion, remarkably close to the amount of future intergenerational wealth transfer. Most of that $110-$124 trillion is controlled by high-income families and, as we have seen, it does not “trickle down." Charitable giving has not increased under the “Tech Bros.” Adding trillions to inherited estates will not cause greater investment in American infrastructure or pay off our national debt unless federal tax law changes. The modern obsession with creating “generational wealth” may also overlook a deeper truth: Is this wealth raising capable, decent human beings who have a viable future? 

 

 

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I really don't want to hear from Jill Biden

Please don't give interviews. Don't promote your book.

Don't try to make yourself, or Joe, or Hunter Biden look good by explaining further. 

Just go away.

Jill Biden wrote a book, View from the East Wing: A Memoir. She is giving interviews promoting the book. She gave an interview to CBS News and said that while watching the disastrous debate she knew that something seriously wrong was happening in front of her eyes.

I was frightened. . . . I don’t know what happened. I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.

The Atlantic has an excerpt from her memoir, where she give another account of her thinking in the moment:

Is he short-circuiting? Is this a stroke? I felt like we were watching an AI hologram of the man we knew and the hologram was glitching. Has he been drugged?

In light of this version of events, then, incredibly enough, I agree with something President Trump wrote yesterday in a typical-for-Trump petty and insulting Truth Social post. Trump wrote: 

She said that she thought he was having a “stroke,” and various other really bad things, and yet never rushed onto the stage to help her troubled husband, as any good wife would do.

I agree. Trump is always low character -- selfish, dishonest, mean-spirited -- but he is not always incorrect. Aside from her recognition of her husband's duty to the country, and hers as likely the one person in the world who was in a position to pull Joe Biden "out of the game" acting as his trusted intimate partner, she had a personal duty to her husband, to get him off stage and get him to a hospital. She needed to intervene to save his life, and if nothing else, to save him from the embarrassment and damage to his reputation to be on camera, the world watching, as he was having a stroke or mental breakdown. She could have strode onto stage, said that Joe had the flu and was taking strong medication, and gotten him out of there. 

Her behavior after the debate was no better. She told supporters and the media:

Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question, you knew all the facts.

How ridiculous. We saw what we saw. 

Thus began critical weeks of lying, dithering, and delay that sabotaged the Biden family reputation and the democratic process as she insisted that Joe was just fine, really he is, he's ready for four more years. She led a crowd of supporters chanting "Four more years."

Trump is spectacularly dishonest. Democrats are right to point it out and right to call Trump's assertions, still today as adamant as ever, that he won the 2020 election the "Big Lie." My wish is that America have at least two strong, respected parties that act as institutions that provide ladders for leadership of our democracy. I have concluded that the GOP has been corrupted by Trump, and it will stay corrupted until he either dies or is brought down by the results of bad policies. The fact that Republican officeholders ignore his spectacular grift, lawlessness, and glory-seeking shows me that they have lost all self-respect. They are toadies. Enablers. They are in a cult, or too afraid of it to act in defiance of it.

But Democrats have a big lie of their own to own up for: Democrats hid Biden. Until the institutional party admits the lie, a critical mass of people of low engagement and partisanship will conclude that "they are all corrupt" and that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans. Close observers will notice a distinction in scale. Democrats think small; Hunter Biden peddled influence to collect grift in increments of tens of thousands. The Trump family collects billions, maybe tens of billions. Democrats are hypocrites about it; Trump does it openly and proudly. But it is a distinction in size, not kind. Both Democrats and Republicans trade stocks on inside information. The swamp is bigger than ever.

I was astonished by seeing a teleprompter at campaign stump speeches for Biden in 2019, and wrote about it at this blog. It is like training wheels on a speech that is supposed to be a expression from the heart by an experienced pro. What is going on, I wondered? I attended a high-dollar fundraising event for Biden in Portland, Oregon, in 2023, and the attendees were directed that no cameras or recordings were allowed. Say, what? Incredible! We were paying to see our candidate. I wondered why. Now I know. It was part of the coverup. Biden might lose focus and say something stupid. They had to manipulate me to hide Biden.

The people around Biden -- Democrats -- covered up a matter of monumental significance to the country, that our president was failing mentally and he was campaigning for another four year term. 

I write this as a person who typically votes for Democrats, donates money to Democrats, and who wants that party to be worthy of the vote that entrusts Democrats with public office. Democrats have work to do, and they have an opportunity to do it. Republicans cannot "push reset" on Trump. He is still there. But Democrats can push reset. It begins by not continuing the Democratic lie. Call out dishonesty. Condemn wrongdoing. Federal and state candidates should say it flat out and clearly: Joe Biden, Jill Biden, and the people who cosseted him made a colossal mistake. It was not just a mistake of strategy and tactics. It was one of morality: They lied to the American people and that is wrong.

A Democrat can emerge with a strong reform vibe by discarding people and policies that are indefensible and unpopular. I do not want Jill Biden to fill the public square with talk of minimization and justification. I want a different message to be bouncing around the public conversation, a message of disapproval from Democrats willing to be straight with the American people. Say it clearly enough that the public gets it. Say that hiding the truth about Joe Biden was shameful.

Out with the old.

That sets the stage for new people and new policies that re-establish trust and win elections.

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Answer the damned question!

I cringed when I listened to Texas U.S. Senate candidate Democrat James Talarico.

I am familiar with that cringe feeling.  

I felt it repeatedly in 2024 when I listened to Kamala Harris in her short campaign for president.

I want to shout, "Quit evading. Just answer the damned question."

There are questions Democrats don't want to answer. They know the answer is unpopular with voters, but they are constrained by voices within the Democratic constituency groups. The popular answer is the "wrong" answer in the eyes of well-organized policy groups within the Democratic coalition. Answer "wrong," and the candidate is a sell-out, racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, corporate, Trump-loving, Republican-in-hiding. Answer according to progressive orthodoxy and about 70 percent of voters realize that the criticisms Republican make of you are essentially true -- and voters don't like it.  

So candidates protest the question. They complain that it is a "Republican talking point." They minimize and say it is an exception or rare. They say they want to talk about the price of gasoline or something else. 

The Talarico instance was a podcast where the host was setting up softball pitches for Talarico to swat. The host shared a bit of negative advertising against Talarico by the GOP nominee Ken Paxton. Paxton sneered that Talarico supported trans women playing in women's sports. They asked Talarico to respond.

Talario avoided the trans-women-in-women's-sports question, saying that trans athletes were irrelevant to the issue of the economy. The host asked again. Again Talarico dodged.

Heads up to Democrats: Gotcha questions are asked precisely because they expose the candidate doing something unpopular and people do want to know the answer. They address a question: Is the candidate a kook? Democrats have their own gotcha question: "Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?" 

Democrats tap-dance around these questions:

--  Do you support biological boys and men competing in women's sports?

--  Do you support teens having permanent surgery to change their gender and should Medicaid pay for it?

--  Do you support the right of a woman to exercise her choice to have a late-term abortion?

--  Do you support striking union workers -- including workers in public employee unions -- being eligible for unemployment benefits?

--  Do you support deporting people who are here in this country illegally? 

--  Do you support giving qualified Black applicants for college admission and employment an affirmative edge to achieve the goal of diversity?

--  Do you support bans on new oil and gas pipelines in the U.S. to protect our climate?

These are uncomfortable questions because each question has a "right" answer from the point of view of a significant part of the Democratic coalition.

My own suggestion is for Democrats to risk disappointing the interest group. It is counterproductive for a Talarico or Kamala Harris to elect a Paxton or a Trump as the price of insisting that trans women are women in every context, or that women have an unconditional right to abort a fetus. Most of the supposed beneficiaries of progressive policies have a more moderate and muddled view of the issue than do the educated, ivory-tower policy advocates. My own view -- from which I expect disagreement from people deeply committed to the various causes -- is that positions that conform to the public's sensibilities are, in fact, the ones that best advance progressive policy goals. The Roe v. Wade formulation did not allow for very late term abortions at the discretion of the woman; it said that in the third trimester the state had an interest in the life of the fetus. Trans women competing in women's sports pits the liberal value of fair play against the liberal value of tolerance, and it hurts the goal of trans acceptance and inclusion. People inclined to support unions don't want to feel like saps for subsidizing people striking against the public. 

Each candidate will make their own choices. They should voice their position and then sell it as the best thing for all concerned. But hedging, avoiding, and blaming the question leaves an impression of dishonesty and weakness. 

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Guest Post: A defense of the Justice Department $1.776 billion giveaway to Trump

I wrote that the $1.776 billion slush fund deal stank to high heaven.

It should be the item that finally -- finally! -- convinces Republicans that Trump is a dangerous and corrupt con man.

Then I invited a Republican reader to tell me why I am wrong. College classmate Matt Naitove agreed to do so.

 
Naitove earned an MS degree at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and then accepted a first job, which became a lifelong career, at Plastics Technology magazine. He retired from that publication after 51 years. Naitove has voted for Donald Trump and he has defended him in this blog. He writes that Democrats have dirty hands when it comes to the prosecution of Trump and his associates, and in that context, Trump's Justice Department deal is a response that should not surprise to Democrats.

Naitove

Guest Post by Matt Naitove

Trump v. IRS – the ‘Final Straw’?

How can it be defended? Peter Sage asked the question after stating in his blog that the settlement between Donald Trump and his own IRS of a lawsuit that he (Trump) filed at the start of his second term was “the final straw” and “the utter corruption of the Justice Department.” Peter then generously invited “one of my Republican readers” (myself) to defend the presumably indefensible, if I could. Now that’s the Harvard spirit of open debate! (Or I wish it were.)

So I said I’d give it a whirl. Which is not so easy, because I wish it had never happened. It’s a big ugly mess that looks questionable on its face and takes much explanation to even try to justify. And of course it’s a big gift to Trump haters, as if they needed anything more to chew on.

But does that make it a hair-on-fire emergency to send Paul Revere off at a gallop to save our liberty? I don’t think so. Let’s start with a bit of background on the genuine scandals that precipitated the latest events. I refer to actions by the Biden Administration and their cronies that introduced the word “lawfare” into common parlance. President Trump himself was subjected to a barrage of fanciful and vaporous suits and indictments, almost none of which will be left standing ultimately, I predict. His income tax filings were released to the public, in clear violation of the law. And even FBI insiders consider the agency’s raid on Mar-a-Lago for “missing documents” to have been unprecedented and unwarranted.

Trump’s lawsuit against his own government also sought relief for the preposterous “Russia-collusion hoax” (to quote the settlement agreement), which was abetted by both the Obama and Biden administrations, and which swept many more of his associates into its maelstrom.

More than half a dozen of Trump’s former lawyers and associates have been subjected to disbarment, threat of disbarment, or even imprisonment for flimsy charges (in my opinion) related to objecting to elements of the 2020 presidential election. (May I remind readers that many Democrat legislators –Jamie Raskin, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, among others – have stood up in the House of Representatives while the Vice President is certifying slates of electors, to protest those slates for certain states after the 2016 and 2024 elections. something that is perfectly within the rules.) One of those former Trump lawyers, I have heard repeatedly on Fox News, was forced to spend $2 million of his own money on legal fees, which is precisely the purpose of lawfare: to sap an opponent’s time, energy and finances, regardless of the ultimate legal outcome.

Then there have been the nonviolent religious objectors to abortion that have been caught up in the maw of the legal system, as well as “the Biden Administration’s wrongful labeling of certain parents as domestic terrorists” (again quoting the settlement agreement). And, among the hundreds of prosecutions ruthlessly pursued by Biden’s DOJ for Jan. 6 infractions, some were richly deserved, but many were not, despite long pretrial incarceration under miserable conditions in the D.C. jails.

Are there good arguments for some form of reparations to those unjustly injured by partisan lawfare? Maybe so. But is this the way to do it?

-- The IRS employee, Charles Littlejohn, who leaked Trump’s and others’ tax returns was convicted and imprisoned. So why did Trump then file suit against what was now “his” IRS? Can’t say, other than it clearly gave him more leverage. But it certainly created a constitutionally awkward situation. (Trump was not alone in such a move, however. Hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin sued the IRS and the Dept. of Treasury for leaking his tax returns, but he received an apology after Littlejohn was convicted and dropped his suit.)

-- The agreement agrees “to ACQUIT and FOREVER DISCHARGE” and be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from pursuing tax claims against Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization LLC that “have been or could have been asserted” by the U.S. as of May 18, 2026. I don’t know any of the merits of those cases, since they have not been publicized. Littlejohn’s goal apparently was to show avoidance of paying taxes, not in itself a crime, since the whole U.S. tax code is an accretion of loopholes, carve-outs, exceptions and pretexts for tax avoidance. Would individuals and an organization as much in the public eye as Trump have pushed those elastic guardrails beyond legal limits? Who knows? But did the official settlement have to include all-caps to make it sound like Trump’s posts on Truth Social? And the phrase “have been or could have been asserted” is bound to raise eyebrows.

-- Then there’s the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” Oh boy. The settlement says the size of the fund is based only on “the projected valuation of future claimants’ claims.” And that’s exactly $1.776 billion? Come on. That’s an awful lot of money for such a purpose. Who will get it? Not the Trumps, the settlement seems to state. It looks very messy to decide who will qualify and for how much. Could former FBI chief James Comey claim to be victim of lawfare from Trump’s Administration? Whatever happens will no doubt engender much blowback. The article cited below from the New York Times, not a Trump-friendly publication, gives an admirably clear-headed appraisal of the many unknowns in this agreement.

Lawfare is deplorable, no doubt. Is it now an indelible part of our political cage match? Does this agreement discourage it, or the opposite? I don’t see the merit of establishing another government payout mechanism with a big pot of cash and vaguely defined purposes and eligibility criteria. No, I’m not a fan.

Sources:

Trump v. IRS
https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441201/dl

“Justice Department Announces Anti-Weaponization Fund” https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-anti-weaponization-fund

“How the Administration’s $1.8 Billion Fund May Violate Past Practice and Policy”.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/us/politics/trump-fund-explainer.html?unlocked_article_code=1.llA.VJ2Q.UuIk3VY9XPXO&smid=url-share

Trump v. Internal Revenue Service – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._Internal_Revenue_Service

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Trump reveals a fatal flaw in our Constitution.

     "Peter, in my opinion, [Trump] has done democracy a great service by truly stress-testing the separation of powers."
          Comment to the blog yesterday

First, the good news:

The United States will probably get through this constitutional crisis with our democracy intact. Donald Trump turns 80 in June. He is vigorous but unwell. Humans are mortal. Napoleon had to be defeated by armies and navies. Nature will take its course with Trump.

As the comment observed, our democracy faces a stress test, and it is failing. The constitutional system does not work on its own to limit the ability of a charismatic president to ignore the checks and balances that create consensus reflecting the true will of the people. 

The Supreme Court ruled that the president is immune from the legal system. That supposed check is gone. Congress is supposedly the second check, but a popular president can intimidate Congress into giving up its power.

Yesterday I posted that the only real power of Congress was the power to impeach and convict. Impeachment by the House is a toothless tool, a political gesture. A president who is impeached but not convicted is stronger for having survived. Today a Republican president needs only 34 votes by U.S. senators to survive impeachment. A president needs support of a majority of the Republican primary voters in 17 of the reddest states in the union -- an easy accomplishment. The stress test is underway now. Thomas Massie, a congressman from Kentucky, lost his primary. Senator John Cornyn lost his primary election to a Trump-backed challenger in Texas yesterday. Senator Bill Cassidy lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenge in Louisiana. Senator Thom Tillis in North Carolina chose not to run for re-election knowing he would lose his primary election.

The Madisonian premise is that ambition will counter ambition. Alas, no. Political ambition in the era of a charismatic factional leader requires acquiescence to him, not checking him. MAGA-oriented Trump voters are a minority of a minority, but they are the majority where it matters, in the GOP primary.

Trump is very popular in these states: Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, Utah, Kansas, Montana, and Nebraska. That is 17 states and each state has two senators, a total of 34. Trump could, indeed, shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes, or at least not an impeachment vote.   

A Democrat has his own backstop against conviction. Bill Clinton survived an impeachment vote with 55 votes acquitting him on perjury and 50 votes acquitting him on obstruction of justice -- far short of the two thirds necessary to convict.

If Trump were turning 60 rather than turning 80, I would expect him to suspend the 2026 midterm elections, claiming foreign subversion of the election or "national emergency," or achieve the same end by stopping the vote count in key Democratic counties (Fulton in Georgia, Wayne in Michigan, Philadelphia County in Pennsylvania, Cook in Illinois) and disallow certification of votes from those areas. The result would be GOP majorities in both the House and Senate. He might still do that. I could imagine him demanding to stay in office until the emergency was over --  as long as he wishes -- for the "good of the country." He would suspend the Constitution's two-term limit and rule as a "temporary" commander in chief. A minority of voters would approve, and it is a minority that would keep Trump in office. National emergencies are how democracies turn into strong-man dictatorships.

But I suspect Trump is too old to pull this off. People see his end, and in this case the ambition of people who see light at the end of the tunnel will keep President Trump from claiming to be a permanent leader. There is no natural successor. Donald Trump, Jr., appears to be a cocaine user more interested in money and women than power. The U.S. dodged a bullet.

We need a Constitutional convention once Trump is gone so we can rethink what isn't working. Perhaps we need a parliamentary form of government with a leader chosen, as was originally planned by the founders, by representatives, not electors who serve as a weighted counting-mechanism for a popular vote. As the founders realized, the public is the repository of power, but it cannot be trusted with it. A republican form of government is safer, with knowledgeable leaders chosen by the people. In a parliamentary system the government is run by a coalition, not a charismatic leader. In a parliamentary system a leader can be deposed by a vote of no-confidence. Such a threat is a better check on power than is an impeachment vote.

In a presidential system, we empower a dictator if he chooses to be one. And Trump does.



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Impeachment and conviction is Congress' only power.

A president can do anything he wants, so long as a third of the Senate allows it.

Impeachment and conviction is the only check and balance. 

High school civics textbooks need to be revised and corrected. 

Trump ignores the War Powers Act in our war against Iran. The bill passed with bipartisan support in 1973, amid the public unease about the war against Vietnam. President Nixon vetoed the bill. The House and Senate overrode the veto, again with bipartisan support, making the War Powers Act the law of the land.  

--  A president is required to give advance notice to Congress of a planned attack; Trump didn't.

-- A president is required to give a report to Congress within 48 hours of a war in progress; Trump didn't. 

--A president is required to withdraw from a war if, within 60 days, he does not get affirmative approval from Congress for the war; Trump didn't.

There is a simple message coming from the president: "Make me."  Congress doesn't make him.

Same thing is happening with tariffs. The power to levy taxes is central to congressional power. Trump imposes tariffs on his own authority and volition, using an obviously false pretext that a state of emergency is in effect. Then when his authority to levy those tariffs under that pretext was stuck down by the Supreme Court, he imposed new tariffs using a different pretext. The real message was "Make me." Congress does nothing.

Congress itself publishes formal descriptions of its power. It is irrelevant make-believe, suitable to be assigned to 14-year olds, being taught ignorant patriotism. 

Click: CONGRESS.GOV

--  Trump cuts whole programs and departments that Congress authorized. 

--  He fires employees in contradiction to the Civil Service Act.

-- He ignores and breaks treaty obligations. 

Much of Trump's illegal behavior is done openly, proudly, unapologetically. These are not arguable cases, open to interpretation, such as whether his giving pardons to people who buy his meme coin, enriching him personally, is an out-and-out bribe, or it merely stinks to high heaven, but cannot definitively be grounds for impeachment because there is no document proving it was a contracted-for transaction.

In the past, presidents edged around the boundaries of congressional, and judicial power, pushing the edges, but with a show of good-faith acceptance of the law. Sometimes they were hypocrites, but they were not open scofflaws. They demonstrated recognition of an obligation to "faithfully execute" laws.

Trump redefined rules-based international relationships. He said that the supposed constraints on powerful countries set through the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, and treaties are just window-dressing obscuring what is really going on. The strong make the rules, period, he said. Trump does the same in relation to the institutions of government. Forget rules. Stop him, or let him do what he pleases.

There is one constraint on Trump, impeachment and conviction. As long as he has support of half of the Republican primary electorate in bright-red states, he can do whatever he pleases. That is why the defeat of Thomas Massie is so consequential. It showed that even when a person confronted Trump on a weak spot -- Trump hiding the Epstein files -- voters supported Trump. This comes shortly after the primary election loss of Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who had voted to impeach Trump five years ago following the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Resist Trump and lose your primary.

Trump has leverage and uses it. Republican officeholders know that activist MAGA, Trump-loving party faithful -- perhaps 20 percent of the total voting population -- control their political fortunes. A minority of voters in Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma and other bright-red states are the only power-politics constraint on Trump. If Trump keeps 37 senators on board, he can ignore Congress and do as he wishes. And he does.

Norms, tradition, and respect for the law don't constrain Trump. He says "Make me." He exercises hard power.

Hard power is the only power Congress has left.

[I am grateful for Herb Rothschild's excellent report on the War Powers Act in his column this week in Ashland.news, a nonprofit news organization that emerged to fill the vacuum in local news coverage in Southern Oregon.]

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Memorial Day: We are fighting to get Trump out of a political jam

     "Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest."
          Greek philosopher Bion of Borysthenes, born circa 325 BCE

We aren't at war with Iran because it advances American interests.

We are at war because Trump thought it was good politics.  

George Friedman, the American geopolitical analyst who leads the think tank Geopolitical Futures, writes that one understands the jostling of nations as their power rises and falls not by looking at leaders, but by looking at geography and national interest. Leaders succeed because they act on behalf of their nations.

I disagree. I watch events shaped by the selfish politics of leaders.

President Nixon, White House aide Bob Haldeman, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sat in the Oval Office in 1971 and agreed that the Vietnam War was a mistake and they should cut their losses. They decided to pretend the war was being won for rest of 1971 and 1972 to avoid admitting a mistake prior to the 1972 election. They had agency. Ten thousand American lives was a good trade for an election victory, they decided. I was entering the draft pool in 1971. I might have been one of those 10,000. I lucked out. Someone else was in the 10,000.

Liberal media

Republican concern

Reuters

We are not at war with Iran because Iran might get a nuclear weapon. We had a nuclear deal in place negotiated under President Barack Obama, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and it did a better job of monitoring and containing Iran than will the agreement Trump can now make. We are weaker now, and Iran has better cards to play. Trump is scrambling to save face, to come up with something he can sell. It is show business and politics.

Iran demonstrated that it can block the Strait of Hormuz, that it can bomb the infrastructure of the Gulf States that the U.S. supposedly protected, that it can bomb our forward bases in the region, that it can force the U.S. to lift sanctions, and that it can get us to agree to return more frozen assets than Obama agreed to. Iran proved it possesses something better than a nuclear bomb -- an unusable tool that would invite immediate retaliation. Iran demonstrated it can hold the world hostage and cause crippling political damage to Trump. What is on the table now is whether Iran collects a toll and whether the U.S. pays reparations. Iranians have solidified themselves as the power that can open or shut the oil resources of the region at their discretion.The Gulf States now know that their glass cities of luxury survive at the pleasure of Iran, not the U.S.

So why did we do something so self-destructive to our interests?

--  Bibi Netanyahu has a political problem at home. To stay out of prison and manage a constituency at home he needed to be a super hawk within Israeli politics, and he needed to support settler expansion into the West Bank, which ensures perpetual conflict with Palestinians. Israel has a national interest of survival as a Jewish, not multinational, state and that requires close ties with the U.S. to achieve that goal, evern though it is contrary to the American creed of "out of many, one."

--  Netanyahu decided to team with the GOP in condemning an Obama deal, and it made the GOP the all-in-with-Israel party, while the Democrats became the Israel-but-with-reservations party, a position which pleased few people. It is Trump's nature to back his political friends, particularly ones with ample resources to contribute to the GOP and him personally, and that was congruent with his need to condemn anything Obama did. So Trump became the willing hostage of Netanyahu's interpretation of Israel's national interest.

--   Trump needed a diversion from Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, and he needed a big win to change the issue from Trump-the-Epstein-pal to Trump-the-Israel-helping-dealmaker. He thought Iran would work out like Venezuela, and he could replace an old, weak Iranian leader with a new, compliant one and that killing thousands of Iranians would accomplish this. Trump would have gotten advice warning him that Iran was capable of responding as it did, but Israel said there was an opportunity to strike now and kill lots of Iranian leaders, so the U.S. should seize the opportunity. That fit Trump's personality and political interest, so he did.

The New Yorker.  Trump will spin it as victory.

--  All wars eventually stop. This one will stop when Trump arranges something that he can spin as a victory, whatever that is, a story that will feed the narrative that he is great and that his predecessors, especially Biden and Obama, were weak and stupid. I liken Trump to a dog marking his territory with urine, fresh and higher up the tree trunk. Trump must be top dog.

The war with Iran was not fought to advance America's interests. It injured them, and we will settle for a weaker position than where we started. Trump will OK that, because it was not about our interests. He will pay a political price for his selfishness, but the U.S. will pay a bigger one. We have lost influence, credibility, alliances, national wealth, and lives.

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