Thursday, September 03, 2026

Oh Canada: We Will Neither Cower Nor Bend


Meme from the war between Canada and South Canada
Image from Bluesky


Abby Zimet
Aug 31, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Further


More insane idiocy from the petty huckster clown king whose idea of governance is threatening lawsuits, trade wars, buildings that won’t put his name on them; bungling war and peace; flaunting Nazi loyalty queries and sadistic images of black men in chains; and distracting from it all with the dumbass geographic circlejerk of inventing “LAKe AMeRiCA.” The Internet was born for this: Cue Donald Ducks, the Straits of Our Moose, Lake Dead Pedo Bestie, Lake Superior President Obama, and Lake Stupid Fucking Moron.

Last week, after God killed the wrong 80-year-old in the 784th year of a presidency that feels like “being in middle school when there’s a substitute teacher and a student has a medical emergency,” yet more banal slop issued from a needy racist sociopath so stupid he once seemingly conflated the Very Hard words “transistor” and “transgender” to claim Biden’s CHIPS Act offered billions to domestic tech companies but “if you weren’t transgender, (you) didn’t qualify.” Jesus. No wonder, à propos of nothing, the widely deemed “worst president in U.S. history” took time out from his busy mob boss schedule to declare himself the bestest - take that Honest Abe - after his faithful Human Printer dug up a similar 1948 Life Magazine chart, which is “exactly the kind of thing a healthy, high-functioning person shares.”




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Other things he did, abetted by a confederacy of dunces, stooges, techno-fascists, warmongers, crypto dorks, “unfuckable hate nerds” and “an actual Jewish Nazi“: Having hit the six-month mark of his Iran debacle, he giddily proclaimed, ”Mission Accomplished!“ despite a. the only thing achieved is handing a newly empowered Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. gas prices skyrocket and the economy implodes, b. he evidently missed the part where George W’s 2003 banner aboard an aircraft carrier became a queasy punchline, c. he did so amidst reports his and Kegsbreath’s said debacle has pushed the US military into a ”beyond critical“ shortage of money and missile interceptors in the case of an enemy attack, forcing them to shift funds around ”in imaginative ways“ - because everything he touches dies and we probably will too.

A fragile child, he demands fealty to even his ceaseless clusterfucks. Thus the latest inane authoritarian hokum from a Department of Homeland (sic) Security that alas hasn’t lost any of its fascist fervor since the brutal puppy-killing days of ICE Barbie. Its new, dystopian, “genuinely deranged” missive: A glowering image of Dear Dumb Leader with the dark challenge, “Did you remain loyal?”, which chillingly fails to consider just what atrocities they’re demanding allegiance to. The answer came in a post that swiftly followed: Sadistic footage of shackled Haitian immigrants, targeted after losing Temporary Protected Status for no reason but mindless, racist cruelty, being shuffled onto planes in pouring rain to the sneering tune of a Creole song about returning home - complete with fawning close-ups of the chains on their feet. Well done, sick fucks.

Meanwhile, the trail of destruction goes on apace. In D.C., after the East Wing and reflecting pool - we like the meme of him studying it with, “All I see is scum” and a lackey saying, “Well, it is a reflecting pool, sir” - we’ve reached the mobsters’ “offer-they- can’t-refuse“ phase on the besieged Kennedy Center. Having repeatedly lost in court, the regime now threatens to demolish the not-long-ago-flourishing Center unless a tantrum-throwing 10-year-old gets his name ”prominently added“ to its exterior with ”appropriate respect“ of his efforts to ”save“ it from a fictional “death spiral” that’s rendered it ”dilapidated, outdated, decrepit and embarrassing to the Nation’s Capital,“ which is some pot/kettle. If they can’t plaster his ghastly name over it - inscription, plaza et al - they’ll replace it with ”an outdoor amphitheater,“ aka a lawn.

They’re also pushing to sell off part of Yosemite National Park, like everything else, to the highest bidder, though the seller is such an imbecile he still cringingly says “Yo, Semites!“ He’s such a petty dolt he’s also skipping this year’s 9/11 remembrance at Ground Zero because he wasn’t allowed to give a Nazi speech there, opting to give it at the Pentagon before rushing off to the Irish Open at his crappy golf course, ‘cause priorities. Having trashed jobs, health insurance, food aid, the environment and most of our global alliances, he blew up trade talks with Canada, calling its endlessly nice residents ”nasty people,“ and holding a clownish Oval Office event to sign an idiotic executive order renaming Lake Ontario to ”LAKe AMeRiCA,“ which he’s ”been thinking about for a long time“ with what’s left of his tiny brain. (Here he is on trade: The stupid, it burns.)

“All it takes is a good pen and some intelligence,” he said, only batting one for two in a pretend-name-changing event labeled, “Making the Great Lakes Even Greater.” Then - what a feckin’ playacting infant - he drew a line through the doomed lake and intoned, “We have notified various people who needed to be notified...This is official.” He said he’d instructed craven lickspittle and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to “take all appropriate actions.” Burgum slavishly wrote, “We’re on it, Mr. President!”, thus becoming the only person on Planet Earth to take this puerile claptrap seriously, evidently unaware an executive order is not a law and every ship entering the Great Lakes has to go through Canada’s Welland Canal, including $26 billion in U.S. trade, and it would be a shame if Canada up and supersized their tolls, and thank you for your attention to this matter.

Uncle Bernie and most of America promptly responded they’d rather have affordable health care, thanks, also housing, food, education and cancer research. Nova Scotia’s Conservative premier Tim Houston, “not exactly a firebrand,” opined, “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy.” Canada’s newly combative Prime Minister Mark Carney, out of fucks to give, noted that long before Europeans came the lake was named by Native Americans using the Huron word “Ontari’io,” for, “The lake is beautiful, the lake is big.” “The name is more than 400 years old,” he said. “Canadians know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario - then, now and always.” The Canadian Resistance Army, who earlier defended penguins, also chimed in, declaring, “We’re going to trade war/Beavers and moose won’t take it any more.”

Above all, it was agreed, “LAKe AMeRiCA” is what God invented the Internet for. The names spooled out in a gleeful torrent.

Lake Release the Epstein Files. Lake Gulf of Mexico. Lake Are We Doing This Again. Lake Micropenis. Lake Natalie. Lake Huron Thin Ice with Melania. Lake Universal Healthcare. Lake Eerily Overweight Pres Dick J. McRectum. Lake Felon. Lake Not Eerie. Lake Oh Canada. Lake Small Dick Energy. Many chose Lake Obama. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers created the politically incorrect Lake Retard: “See, I can sign napkins that say things too.” One decided to “just keep calling it Lake Epstein, like the Founders wanted.” Mapquest, unlike cowering Google, not only declined to change the lake’s name but invited viewers to “spread some geographic joy” and “name it whatever you want.” One result: Lake Who Uses Mapquest Anymore.

Many noted the traditional Great Lakes litany of “H.O.M.E.S” had entirely logically become “S.H.A.M.E.” People renamed their toilet bowl to Lake Trump. The White House to Home of Diaper Butt. Mar-a-Lago to Poopy Pants Palace. The United States of America to the Epstein States of Pedophiles, or just South Canada. President Trump to President Dickhead. California to Amerifornia. Strait of Hormuz to Strait of Our Moose. People mocked his thieving choice of one of the smallest and dirtiest Great Lakes. They noted, “Nobody in Ontario gives a single solitary fuck what Assclown McCrappy-Pants says about anything.” They griped the name change “really screws with the lyrics of Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

“What are they trying to distract us from this time?” they asked. Response: “The previous distraction.” Some coddled the needy child-king: “Good for you, li’l fella.” Some railed: “Jesus Christ, can somebody just get him a coloring book already?” Some were still baffled by how low we’ve gone: “Wait, this is real?” Some refused to go there: “Nope.” Some summoned the great Talking Heads: “As things fell apart/Nobody paid much attention.” And some fought back against the incessant bullying. After the Center for American Progress released a report finding billions spent on ICE thugs and National Guard swarms had no real effect on reducing violent crime, Trump threatened a $5 billion lawsuit if they didn’t retract it. The center stood firm against “a transparent attempt to silence us.” “We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it,” they said. And, still and all, we will snark away.

Update: Talk about “Do not obey in advance”: After defying the petty madness, usage of Mapquest has surged to about 50 times its usual rate, leapfrogging past Google and Apple Maps to become the most-downloaded mapping app, and the fourth most popular of all apps excluding games in the US. Along with their “spread some geographic joy” invite, they posted a mocking, all-caps retort: “OUR MAPS ARE BIG AND BEAUTIFUL. PEOPLE COME UP TO US AND SAY WE’LL GET THEM PLACES. AND WE DO!!” Lol.


Canada vs. the Epstein States of America  Image from Bluesky
Pro-Trump town turns on president over 'Lake America' fiasco


U.S. President Donald Trump in Dearborn, Michigan
 REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
September 01, 2026 
ALTERNET

By renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America, President Donald Trump has aroused the wrath not only of most Canadians, but of a majority of Americans as well. Indeed, his swipe at the nation against whom he started a trade war has even angered a community that overwhelmingly supported the Republican's election campaigns — and which shares the same name by which the lake in question is known to the rest of the world.

"In the upstate New York town named after Lake Ontario, some supporters of Donald Trump oppose his executive order renaming the body of water 'Lake America,'" reported The Daily Beast's William Vaillancourt on Tuesday. At a different point in the article, Vaillancourt added that "according to a new Reuters/Ipsos survey, only 14 percent of respondents approved, while 63 percent did not. The same poll found that only one in five respondents supported Trump’s tariffs on Canada."

The outlet also observed that as a result of Trump's renaming, Google Maps changed the lake’s name for American users, prompting a resurgence in the app MapQuest that caused it to become the No. 1 overall free app in Apple's U.S. App Store by Monday.


Residents of Ontario echoed that ire.

“I don’t think the lake’s name should be changed because it’s history,” Dave Rupp, the operator of Ontario’s liquidation store and a 2024 supporter of Trump, told The Washington Post's Laura Beveridge on Tuesday. “And I don’t like changing history.” Similarly Cassandra Tylenda, a farmer and Trump voter, admitted that “I like Lake Ontario better, but there’s nothing I can do about it.” (She continues to support Trump's tariffs against Canada.)

One Ontario resident who did not support Trump, Serena Eaton, told The Washington Post that she believes Trump renamed the lake in order to distract from the US-Israel war against Gaza and his refusal to release files related to his close friend, the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“America doesn’t just own the lake,” the 24-year-old Eaton pointed out. “I’m not going to call it Lake America. But my town is really redneck. I’m sure a lot of people will just switch their brains off and tune out sensible reason.” Another individual who lived near Ontario, Cayuga Nation member Charles Smith, made a deeper historical argument, telling the Post while standing outside a Dunkin that “it’s been Lake Ontario for a very, very long time, and it will always be Lake Ontario.”

Not every Ontario resident opposed Trump's behavior.

“I would like it if they changed the name here to the Town of America: The Town of America on the Lake of America,” Serafino Rosso, a 41-year-old telecoms manager and Trump supporter, said to The Washington Post. “It makes me feel really patriotic. It felt Canadian before.”

Similarly a 33-year-old man named Frankie Amalfi echoed Trump's rhetoric, declaring that "he will tell you right off the bat that Canada’s been getting us for years. He doesn’t let them walk all over us.”

He added, “We have the Gulf of America, the Lake of America. All we need now is the Ocean of America.”

Despite what Amalfi claimed, Canada did not provoke the trade war against the United States. To understand how so many Trump supporters could bully a weaker nation and enjoy it, AlterNet spoke in August with Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist and professor of cognitive science at the University of Bristol.

"I used to live in Oklahoma for five years, so you can imagine — I'm familiar with farmers and that mindset, though that was a long time ago (laughs)," Lewandowsky explained. "Look, human beings do all sorts of things, and sometimes you just look at it and think, "What on earth?" Being hypocritical — feeling pain for yourself but not making the connection that maybe this other person is also in pain, and maybe we should support each other rather than throwing welfare recipients under the bus so I can have my subsidy — different people come to different conclusions about that."

AlterNet also spoke in August with Dr. Steven Hassan, cult expert and author of "Combating Cult Mind Control" and "The Cult of Trump," who shed light on how they can change their views on issues like US-Canada relations purely on the word of a cult-like leader such as Trump.

"These destructive groups, like the Trump movement, are lying all the time," Hassan told AlterNet. "And part of the appeal is really about using emotionally leading rhetoric to scare people, to create "the other," to demonize. I'll quote Eric Hoffer's 1951 book, 'The True Believer.' He said, 'The strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil.'"


As for Trump's tariffs, economist Dr. Robert J. Shapiro — who advised Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — told AlterNet in August that they will only worsen America's ongoing inflation problem.

"There's no good news on inflation," Shapiro said. "Just this week, Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on our largest trading partner, Canada, which will further increase inflation."


Joe Rogan blurts exactly why Trump wants to rename a lake


Podcast host Joe Rogan speaking to filmmaker Zack Snyder in March 2024
 (Image: Screengrab)

September 01, 2026  
ALTERNET

President Donald Trump controversially renamed Lake Ontario as Lake America as part of his escalating trade war against Canada — and pro-Trump podcaster Joe Rogan has a theory why.

"The real reason Trump made the move, Rogan said, is to 'distract you from the fact that we’re in a war that we can’t win in Iran,'" according to a report by The Daily Beast's Eboni Boykin-Patterson. "Rogan went on to assert that the renaming 'doesn’t make any sense' otherwise. 'Like, who cares? It’s Lake Ontario. It’s a good name. We’ve had that name forever.'"

The Daily Beast provided further detail on why Rogan's criticism of Trump is so important — and why there are also limits to its significance.

"Rogan, who endorsed Trump in 2024, may have made it known that he was one of many Americans who find the renaming pointless—but that doesn’t mean he’s come to his senses," The Daily Beast wrote. "The podcaster also dedicated a portion of his show to peddling more conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccine. He echoed Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s revival of an old and inaccurate theory that the vaccine increases the risk of miscarriage in the first trimester."

The Daily Beast added, "The theory gained traction after senators released text messages during their investigation into the former COVID czar that showed Fauci expressing apprehension during the shots’ early rollout."

Even so, Rogan's separation from Trump on the issue demonstrates that he has lost his populist touch in getting supporters to believe anything he says, at least according to one analyst.

"Throughout his political career, Trump’s signature skill has been to drive the conversation where he wanted it to go. He declares victory when things have not been won," wrote Slate's Ben Jacobs on Monday. "He ducks attribution with the rhetorical tic 'many people are saying,' frequently followed by things that people are decidedly not saying. He posts outrageous graphics on social media. And, of course, he renames things: Political opponents get nicknames, buildings get Trump’s name, and bodies of water get America’s name."

Speaking with AlterNet in August, cult expert Dr. Steven Hassan explained how Trump's cult-like hold on his followers could weaken when acolytes like Rogan began to part ways with him.

"So if they really love Joe Rogan, they're going to follow a lot of his views. And consequently, when he turns against Trump, Trump loses a lot of followers,"



Trump Threatens to Rename Strait of Hormuz for Himself as War Pushes Diesel Prices Toward Record High

One petroleum industry analyst now projects potential record-breaking prices for diesel fuel by Labor Day.



US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with travel industry executives in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on September 2, 2026.
(Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images


Brad Reed
Sep 02, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


More than six months after starting an illegal war with Iran, President Donald Trump is now threatening to rename the Strait of Hormuz, whose closure at the start of the conflict led to a global spike in energy prices.

In a Wednesday social media post, Trump falsely claimed that the strait is “under USA control” and then mused on whether to “change the name... to TRUMP STRAIT???”

“Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before!” the president added. “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

In reality—despite Trump’s previous threats to declare the vital commercial waterway a US territory—the US does not have control of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply travels.

Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday that Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait authority has added eleven more ships to its list of more than 50 vessels that are banned from traveling in the strait.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Wednesday also claimed that two oil tankers that were traversing the strait caught fire after striking sea mines, according to Al Jazeera.

The price of Brent crude petroleum rose once again during Wednesday trading, climbing up over $95 per barrel. Data released Wednesday by the American Automobile Association (AAA) showed that the price of gas in the US has risen to $4.12 per gallon, while the price of diesel fuel has risen to $5.69 per gallon.

While most Americans deal with the price of gasoline on a daily basis, the price of diesel fuel might have an even larger impact on the overall economy given that diesel is used to power the vehicles that ship consumer goods in the US.

In a Wednesday social media post, petroleum industry analyst Patrick De Haan wrote that diesel prices are rising so quickly that “we could even break the all-time diesel record ($5.819/gal) by Labor Day.”

Last month, Trump responded to collapsed trade talks with Canada by renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America.” Much like the illegal war with Iran, Trump’s trade war with Canada is raising prices on goods paid for by US consumers.


Facing the Crooked of Hormuz


During the Reign (Rain?) of Donald Trump

by | Sep 1, 2026 |

Reprinted with permission from Tom Engelhardt’s Substack: 

I was born on July 20, 1944, in the midst of World War II. My father had just returned from Burma where he had been operations officer for the 1st Air Commandos in the China-India-Burma Theater. I, of course, remember nothing about that war – except that my father (on extremely rare occasions) would barely mention what he had gone through but would sometimes take me to World War II movies like The Caine Mutiny and Merrill’s Marauders at local movie theaters.

In a country that has never stopped fighting wars, however, that’s certainly the last one that any American could truly be proud of, the global defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

In fact, we’re talking about a country that, between 2001 and 2024, spent an estimated $21 trillion on its military, which, it turns out, was equal to the military spending of the next 18 – yes, 18! – countries combined (if you can even believe it). And in those years, of course, like the 55 preceding ones, the United States managed to never – no, never – actually win a significant war (or, in truth, even come close). In short, Donald Trump’s present disastrous war with Iran is anything but out of the ordinary when it comes to American military power destroying all too much, but sooner or later finding itself in a remarkably dead-end situation (with an emphasis on dead, of course).

Just imagine for a moment that you had been asked in 2001 to invest $21 trillion taxpayer dollars in a military that would fight wars across the planet without a success in sight after World War II (other than perhaps the invasion of the helpless Caribbean Island of Grenada in 1983). It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about the Korean War of 1950, the nightmarish Vietnam War that engulfed the 1960s and early 1970s, the Afghan and Iraq wars of this country’s calamitous War on Terror early in this century, or more recently Donald Trump’s wars, which have proven to be one disaster after another, from Somalia to Iran at this very moment.

And that should be considered strange indeed. I doubt there’s another example in history of a great imperial power that, for a significant part of its rise (and potential fall) simply couldn’t win a war.

It certainly gives that old song “War (What Is It Good For?)” with the response “absolutely nothing” new meaning. Of course, if you happen to be Donald Trump and you’re the president who simply can’t win a war (which certainly leaves you in good company among American presidents of the last 80 years or so), then the least you can do, when it comes to Iran, is declare that the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of global oil and even more natural gas used to pass and which was closed down by the Iranians in response to his warring acts (distinctly harming the global economy), is now actually U.S. property, or, to be specific, a potential “territory of the United States.” (Phew, that was exhausting!)

And hard as it might be to believe, he really did say that recently. How logical, right? After all, it’s only perhaps 6,500 miles or so from Washington, D.C. So, what could possibly make more sense?

Of course, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi responded that, whatever Trump might think, the Strait “cannot be seized with a tweet, nor with an aircraft carrier, nor by issuing an order, nor through an election speech.” He added, “This strait will only be opened and closed under Iran’s command, and as long as you do not accept the reality of defeat and stop indulging in delusions, Iran will continue to enforce the blockade.”

Defeat Donald Trump? In what world could that possibly happen? How delusional could the Iranians be about our distinctly delusional president?

Oh, but in case you think that’s just so much enemy blather, the fact is that, in the ongoing war with Iran, the U.S. has already lost about one quarter of its crucial Reaper Drones, valued at $30 to $50 million each (or more than $1.3 billion worth of them), mainly around – yes, of course! – the Strait of Hormuz. And many of them have been taken down by Iranian drones valued at $20,000 to $50,000 each.

And while losing so many of its drones, the Trump administration has also been losing other things as well, including its previous insistence that a complete Iranian surrender was the order of the day. No longer, it seems. Now, all that it appears Donald Trump wants (whatever he’s said) is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the free flow of oil and natural gas globally. In other words, what he now yearns for is essentially a return to the very situation that existed six months ago just before he launched his disastrous war.

Or as Vice President J.D. Vance put it recently, all the Trump administration now wants is to ensure “that the Gulf countries continue to send oil and gas to the world economy so that we have energy price stability,” and, of course, to ensure as well that the Iranians won’t ever have a nuclear weapon. No matter that, as far as anyone knows, they are not faintly close to having, no less possibly even trying to develop such a weapon.

On the other hand, the Iranians are now threatening to continue the state of war with the U.S. until the end of Trump’s second term in office in 2028 (and his approval ratings are, of course, already plunging to new lows). As a senior adviser to the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard put it, “One way is to prolong this war until we get to the next term of the presidency and cause attrition, so that if anyone else wants to attack Iran, they will know there is a cost… We have to attain deterrence so that the enemy never dares to attack us, so we can live with security.”

And let’s not forget that, lest you think Donald Trump has learned anything from all of this, he has only recently been threatening to “bomb the shit out of” long-time American ally Oman, if it “gets in the way” of his Iranian plans – and what, I ask you, could possibly go wrong with that? (I can’t even imagine.)

Of course, we’re talking about the rule (or do I mean reign – or perhaps I actually mean rain, or even thunderstorms or tornados?) of Donald Trump, a president for whom, according to a recent poll, only 29% of potential voters in the coming midterm elections approve of how he’s handling the situation with Iran.

And yet, sad to say, what’s new? Not much, it seems. After all, Trump, who may indeed be unique in so many ways, is proving anything but unique as president of the greatest power on planet Earth (in certain ways, perhaps the greatest in history) when it comes to making war all too miserably, even disastrously. In fact, give him a certain amount of credit. After all, despite what anyone, including him, might have learned from American history since 1945, he decided to go to war with Iran anyway in 2026. It evidently mattered not at all to him that the most obvious and self-evident fact about American warmaking since 1945 is that defeat (or minimally nothing faintly approaching victory) would essentially be guaranteed. And yet, he still managed to launch another disastrous all-American war on this distinctly embattled planet of ours.

At the very least, the Iranians should consider renaming the Strait of Hormuz, the Crooked of Donald Trump, and let me just hope that I’ll never have to take one of my grandchildren to a movie about his disastrous war.

Tom Engelhardt created and ran the website TomDispatch.com for nearly 25 years. He was also a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, “The End of Victory Culture.”


Even the best propaganda can't rescue Trump from Americans' wrath


REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
September 02, 2026 
ALTERNET


A new University of Massachusetts-Amherst opinion poll, conducted August 21-26, finds profound American disillusionment with President Donald Trump, with his Iran War, and with its economic fallout in their lives.

Apparently the Ellison family’s attempt to drum up support for Donald Trump and his Iran War by buying up CBS News and gutting it as a respected news organization was a costly failure. Likewise, Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp and his various pro-Trump organs, from Fox Cable News to The Wall Street Journal, have not pulled the wool over the public’s eyes in the ways that Murdoch hoped. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted of the effort he expended convincing the American people to go to war with Iran, saying he had a thousand hours on US television , but while he may have prevailed on the gullible and avaricious Trump to fall on that country like a ravenous wolf, he did not succeed in altering the views of the American public on the desirability of such a war. The only significant impact of Netanyahu on most Americans has been to convince them that the Israeli government is a combination of genocidal maniacs and welfare queens that Americans should cut off economically and perhaps even militarily.

The UMass poll asked a weighted sample of respondents how well Trump has handled his Iran War. The response of 55% of those asked this question was “not well at all.” Ouch. Another 13% replied “not too well.” So 68%, over two-thirds, think he has done a piss-poor job on his Iran War, which was his war of choice. Two-thirds is the percentage needed in the Senate to impeach and remove a president, so if our representatives actually mirrored public opinion, Trump would be toast.

That question had to do with Trump’s handling of the war. Asked whether they approved of the war on Iran, a majority, 54%, said they strongly or somewhat disapproved, and another 20% were noncommittal, which I would interpret as not actively supporting the war even if they didn’t particularly oppose it. Those statistics yield a picture of a war that nearly three-fourths of Americans either oppose or about which they just don’t care. It isn’t what the commander of a war would want to hear from his own public.

Trump and the Republicans are always campaigning on being the party of business and therefore the party that knows how to handle the economy, but only a tiny minority, 7%, think Trump is handling the economy very well.

A majority think the war was a mistake and question whether it has made the US safer or forestalled an Iranian bomb.

Another way of putting it is that only about a quarter of respondents think the US should have gone to war with Iran, and that the US is winning.

The UMass report on the opinion poll noted that Raymond La Raja, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll, said, “Americans are overwhelmingly negative about Trump on the Iran situation.” He continued: “Only 1 in 4 Americans thinks he is handling Iran well. The real divide is increasingly between Trump’s hardcore MAGA base and almost everyone else. Among Republicans who identify very strongly with MAGA, 87% approve of Trump’s handling of Iran. But that falls to 58% among Republicans who are ‘somewhat MAGA’ and just 30% among Republicans who say they are ‘not MAGA at all.’ The more loosely attached Republicans are to the MAGA identity, the more skeptical they are of the war.”

Conducting a war in the Middle East, as even the cowboys in the G. W. Bush administration recognized, requires at least some allies. But Americans don’t think Trump plays well with other children. Asked how he has handled working with allies in global affairs, 52% say “not well at all” and 12% say “not too well,” showing that nearly two-thirds view his foreign policy performance negatively.

Based on this sounding, we can further project that Americans are even more angry about the main fallout of the failed war on Iran, which is high inflation. Fully 80% of respondents said that the Iran War has increased the cost of gasoline and groceries. Asked about how Trump has dealt with inflation, 57% responded, “not well at all.” A further 18% said “not too well.” That is 75%, fully three-fourths, who disapprove of his handling of inflation. Trump and the Republicans are always campaigning on being the party of business and therefore the party that knows how to handle the economy, but only a tiny minority, 7%, think Trump is handling the economy very well, and I presume they are wealthy investors in Trump’s casino stock market. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 14-16% so far this year.
JD Vance Says If His Work With Trump ‘Leads to the End Times’ That Is ‘OK’

“Show this clip to anyone who says Iran is run by religious lunatics,” responded one podcaster.


US Vice President JD Vance’s appearance on Bryce Crawford’s podcast was published August 31, 2026.
(Photo by Bryce Crawford Podcast/YouTube/screengrab)


Jessica Corbett
Sep 01, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


Shortly before US President Donald Trump on Tuesday spurred fresh fears that he’ll use nuclear weapons in his illegal war on Iran, Vice President JD Vance told a Christian podcaster that he’s fine with the administration’s work leading to the end times.

“Do I think that we’re in the end times? I don’t know,” Vance told 22-year-old podcaster Bryce Crawford nearly an hour into a lengthy video interview released Monday. While admitting his fascination with the theories, the VP said that “I think that it’s probably bad for me, spiritually, to focus too much on it.”

As The New Republic’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling explained: “The Christian end times refer to the religion’s interpretations of the final days of humanity. That’s detailed in the Bible as a period involving widespread turmoil and deception (such as wars, earthquakes, and a false prophet), a seven-year stretch of unprecedented hardship known as the Great Tribulation that will end in Armageddon, the emergence of the Antichrist and a cadre of their followers who reject Christ’s teachings, and a final judgment by God.”

As Vance sat beside a propped-up edition of his new book on his religious journey, including his conversion to Catholicism, he said that “I think that there are... things about the world that make me feel like not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us, but again, I try not to focus too much on it.”

“One of the things that I think that Catholics are very focused on, that I think is very good for me, is this idea that... we don’t know when God is coming, but we’re commanded to try to, as much as possible, try to make the world the kind of world that God wants it to be,” the vice president continued.

“While I wouldn’t be shocked if we are living in the end times,” he added, “what I’m trying to focus on is doing as much of God’s work as possible right now, and if that leads to the end times, OK, and if that leads to, you know, us building a better world that thrives and survives for a very long time after I’m gone, that’s great, too.”



Those remarks—from a man expected to compete with figures such as Donald Trump Jr. and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the GOP’s 2028 presidential nomination, if the president doesn’t try for an unconstitutional third term—were met with alarm.

Critics wrote that “this should concern us all” and wondered: “WTF does that mean? Is he OK with using nuclear weapons?”

Sharing a clip of Vance’s comments on social media, Iranian-American writer Alex Shams noted that “these guys are trying to convince you Iran is ruled by a crazed messianic theocracy.”

Podcaster and writer Katie Halper said, “Show this clip to anyone who says Iran is run by religious lunatics.”

As Vance’s video interview began circulating on Monday, over six months into the Iran War, a reporter in the Oval Office asked Trump if he’s ruled out using a nuclear weapon against the Mideast country.

While suggesting he has ruled out nuclear war, Trump also said: “What a stupid question that is, actually. Here they are, they’re totally defeated militarily, so now I defeat them, and now I should use a nuclear weapon on top of them?”

Just a day later, Trump triggered speculation that he’ll pursue a nuclear attack. On Tuesday, while bombing alleged Iranian military targets, he wrote on his Truth Social platform, “If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!”















‘Blood Is On Their Hands’: Haitian Student Dies In Apparent Suicide After Trump Ends Deportation Protections

“Because of the blatant cruelty and racism of Trump’s immigration policies, Pierre Damas Bel was denied the chance to fulfill his dreams.”


Pierre Damas Bel received his diploma at a graduation ceremony in an undated family photo.
(Photo: Instagram/family photo)


Julia Conley
Sep 01, 2026
C0MMON DREAMS

Since President Donald Trump was running for office two years ago, Springfield, Ohio has been a central target of Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s racist attacks and violent mass deportation operation, with the White House threatening the city’s Haitian population with forced removal back to their unstable home country.

On Monday, Springfield became the site of a new tragedy that immigrant rights advocates said was directly caused by the Trump administration’s xenophobic agenda, particularly its termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitian migrants, when 20-year-old Pierre Damas Bel was killed by a tractor trailer on Interstate 70—apparently dying by suicide after the loss of the protections pushed him into despair.

As The Washington Post reported Tuesday, college student and aspiring doctor Bel parked on the highway’s shoulder Monday morning, got out of his car, and walked into westbound traffic. He was pronounced dead at the scene after being struck.

Ohio authorities are investigating, but Bel’s family believes his death to be a suicide.

His family told the Post that Bel had become distressed in recent weeks after the US Supreme Court allowed Trump’s termination of TPS for Haitians and Syrians.

Although he had a pending asylum case and a hearing scheduled for October, Bel was required to report to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of terminating TPS. Officers placed an electronic monitoring device on his ankle.

In late July, Bel wrote in an Instagram post: “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”

The Post reported that classmates bullied Bel over the bracelet, and he was unable to continue playing soccer as he had for years.

“He felt like he was treated like an animal,” his father, Pierres Ronal Bel, told the Post.

Last Friday, it appeared that Bel would not be able to continue in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) due to the Trump administration’s monitoring of him as it pursued deportation. As the Post reported:
His JROTC class instructor handed students their uniforms, which resemble those of the US armed forces, but did not give one to Bel. His father said the college student concluded it was because of the device strapped around his ankle.

“He came home that day feeling very bad,” Pierres Ronal Bel said through a translator.

Bel “killed himself because of the Trump administration’s obsession with hurting Haitians and the humiliating shame of an ICE ankle monitor,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “His blood is on their hands.”

The White House had threatened to flood Springfield with ICE agents earlier this year when it first announced it was ending TPS, which for 16 years has provided Haitians with deportation protections. During the 2024 election, Springfield ended up in Trump and Vance’s crosshairs as the two Republicans spread baseless, racist lies that Haitian community members there were eating their neighbors’ pets.



TPS was initially granted to Haitians after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 in Haiti—one of the worst disasters in modern history and one that the country has struggled to fully recover from, as it’s also faced soaring violence and unrest following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. The US State Department warns Americans not to travel to Haiti for any reason due to gang violence, kidnappings, and an ongoing humanitarian crisis there.


Despite that, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has gloated that “the T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY” and urged Haitians who have been legally living and working in the US for years to go back to “Home Sweet Haiti”—making such comments as at least 47 people were killed and 50 were kidnapped in a gang attack near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince late last month.

Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance told the Post that the Trump administration’s policies “are what caused [Bel’s] untimely death.”

Bel came to the US in 2024 to reunite with his parents, who had left Haiti three years earlier. Reichlin-Melnick said that “he almost certainly flew here through the [Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans] parole program, entering legally after a background check and probably with his parents having sponsored him. He broke not a single law. Not one.”

Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) said that “because of the blatant cruelty and racism of Trump’s immigration policies, Pierre Damas Bel was denied the chance to fulfill his dreams.”

“This never should have happened,” he said. “His blood, and the blood of all those who have died as a result of these policies, is in the hands of Trump and his top officials who have championed them.”


The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline—which offers 24/7, free, and confidential support—can be reached by calling or texting 988, or through chat at 988lifeline.org.
Bari Weiss Personally Involved in CBS News Hit Piece on Abdul El-Sayed: Report

“They took a small nugget of news, forced it into something much larger, and messed up,” said one CBS News staffer.



Bari Weiss speaks with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Uber, X and The Free Press)



Brad Reed
Sep 01, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A Tuesday report from Status claims that CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss was personally involved with a widely criticized story that linked Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to the September 11 terrorist attacks.


The CBS piece, which was published on Monday, drew criticism from Democratic lawmakers and progressive journalists for saying that El-Sayed “may be facing the risk of renewed scrutiny and fresh political attack” due to past innocuous statements he’d made about the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

According to Status’ sources, Weiss “personally directed” that the story’s headline be changed to “specifically mention that El-Sayed, who is vying to become the first Muslim American senator, had deleted tweets referencing” the attacks.


The two deleted posts highlighted in the story were far from scandalous, however. In the first post, El-Sayed called on Americans to unite in a common purpose to combat the Covid-19 pandemic just as they came together after the 2001 attacks, and in the second one he drew attention not just to the victims who died on 9/11, but to all the people who died afterward as a result of the US War on Terror.

Status also reported that Weiss “praised the story during the network’s daily editorial meeting Monday, signaling her support for the piece to the entire network.”

Weiss’ endorsement of the El-Sayed story came despite the fact that senior staffers at CBS raised concerns about it with the network’s standards department, Status added.

“They took a small nugget of news, forced it into something much larger, and messed up,” one staffer said.

Another staffer told Status that the story is “shameful” due to its “overt” racism.

One anonymous CBS News staffer similarly told Zeteo media columnist Justin Baragona on Monday that the Weiss-endorsed story was “trash” and “horribly Islamophobic.”

Weiss was installed as CBS editor-in-chief last year after David Ellison, the son of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a megadonor to President Donald Trump, acquired network parent company Paramount.

In that time, CBS ratings have collapsed to record lows and Weiss has overseen a mass purge of reporters and staffers at the network’s legendary news program “60 Minutes.”

Veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley, who was fired by CBS earlier this year, subsequently accused the Weiss-led management team of instructing him to “inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.”
Jayapal and Wyden Demand Probe of ‘Unlimited Surveillance’ and Subpoena Abuses by Trump Agencies

Agencies have used their subpoena power “to surveil, intimidate, and suppress the free speech of ordinary citizens and even the free press,” said the Democrats.



Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) 
(Photo by Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)\

Julia Conley
Sep 02, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Under the Trump administration, said Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Sen. Ron Wyden this week, federal agencies’ use of subpoena power to surveil Americans has become “institutionalized” in what the two Democrats called “brazen abuses of authority.”

Jayapal (Wash.) and Wyden (Ore.) wrote to US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and the acting comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Orice Brown, regarding what they called federal agencies’ decades-long practice of attempting “to coerce indefinite silence from private companies that receive subpoenas for customer information.”

While federal agencies have the congressionally vested authority to serve companies and service providers with administrative subpoeanas when they are seeking information about the provider’s customer or client, the recipient generally maintains the “First Amendment right to notify their customers of the demand, allowing the actual targets of the subpoenas the opportunity to assert their own legal rights or challenge the demand in court,” wrote Jayapal and Wyden.

If secrecy is required in a specific case, the agency can apply to a court for a time-limited nondisclosure order, but in the vast majority of cases, the lawmakers said in a statement, “the agencies may not gag recipients of subpoenas.”

That appears to have changed under the Trump administration.



Wyden and Jayapal pointed to one incident from July 8, 2025, when Harvard University received three immigration subpoeanas from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regarding international students, which contained “boilerplate requests for silence.”’

“The absurdity of this secrecy demand was demonstrated the very next day, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release celebrating the very enforcement action it had just directed Harvard to keep secret,” wrote the lawmakers.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which operates under ICE, has summons authority only for records relating to customs issues such as illegal imports or unpaid customs dues.

However, HSI has used its subpoena power “to surveil, intimidate, and suppress the free speech of ordinary citizens and even the free press”—in one case trying to reveal the identity of an anonymous Instagram user who had criticized and publicized ICE operations, according to the lawmakers.

Earlier this week, The Guardian reported that HSI had used the subpoenas to secretly obtain six months’ worth of phone records for Georgia Fort, a Minneapolis-based journalist who, along with former CNN anchor Don Lemon, was arrested in January for covering an anti-ICE protest at a church.

While the secrecy demands that come with subpoenas “carry no force of law,” said the lawmakers, “their coercive effect is extremely successful. This leaves customers entirely in the dark about government incursions into their personal data.”

Jayapal and Wyden noted that federal agencies were demanding secrecy from subpoenaed companies and third parties for decades before President Donald Trump took office.

For over four decades, they said, the Department of Justice (DOJ) “has treated extra-legal gag requests as standard operating procedure,  regularly instructing the recipients of grand jury subpoenas not to disclose the government’s demands.”

“Given the severe, asymmetric power dynamics between federal law enforcement and civilian businesses—particularly when the subpoena recipient is a business operating within a highly regulated industry—many corporate legal departments will naturally read an official prosecutorial ‘request’ for silence as an implied command, choosing compliance over risking scrutiny from federal regulators,” wrote Wyden and Jayapal. “This coercive silence is particularly insidious because it targets corporate policies intended to protect consumers. For nearly every American industry, including telecommunications, technology, and healthcare, Congress has neither required nor prohibited notice of subpoenas. Absent a court order or statute saying otherwise, notice to customers is a protected exercise of free speech that furthers government transparency and customer privacy.”

The lawmakers called on the GAO to conduct a comprehensive audit of the DOJ and DHS as well as the agencies they oversee regarding their use of gag requests in subpoenas.

Such an audit would “help ensure that agencies do not abuse their subpoena authorities at the expense of privacy and free speech rights,” said Jayapal and Wyden.













Iran War Has Cost the Average American More Than $1,200 Over Six Months, Economist Estimates

One columnist said it’s impossible to know the true extent to which the war has hit Americans’ pocketbooks, but “this figure should be understood as a rough sketch that conveys the magnitude of Trump’s folly.”



US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, President Donald Trump, and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth attend a Cabinet meeting at the White House on May 27, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Sep 01, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


As President Donald Trump’s war with Iran crosses the six-month mark without an end in sight, a new analysis calculates that it has cost the average American household at least $1,200 more than they would have paid if it had never started.

That is according to Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, who was quoted by New Yorker columnist John Cassidy on Monday as he sought to look beyond military costs to determine the true extent to which the war has impacted Americans’ pocketbooks.


In Trump’s Second Term, Average US Family Forced to Spend $3,800 More on Essentials


Cassidy wrote that the task of reaching a solid number is “far from straightforward,” especially since, in his assessment, the Pentagon has been “less than forthright about many aspects of the conflict,” including the cost.




Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee in July that the conflict had cost roughly $37.5 billion.

But prior to that, NBC News reported on internal Pentagon estimates that put the cost of the conflict between $80 billion and $100 billion when accounting for the cost to repair damage to US military bases, which has occurred on a level that, according to former Marine Col. Mark Cancian, has not been seen since World War II.

These costs do not include the additional $73 billion that House Republicans have approved for defense and intelligence related to the war, which will come up for a Senate vote in September.

“Whatever the true figure is, it’s a considerable sum that comes on top of the bloated trillion-dollar Pentagon budget that has already been approved for 2026, and it is money that could, in theory, be used for other purposes,” Cassidy wrote.

He cited a recent analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP), which found that the $73 billion could “provide full Medicaid coverage for 5 million more people, with $33 billion left over.”

Some of those remaining funds could be used to provide free school lunch for every child in America, provide free childcare for 1 million children, or extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits that Republicans allowed to expire last year, which would reduce premiums for around 20 million Americans.

Trump has explicitly emphasized that funding the war is coming at the expense of other priorities.

“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You gotta let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too,” he said in April. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.”

Just taking the lower-bound $80 billion cost estimate would mean the average household has been forced to pay about $300 more as a result of the war, using the same methodology that the National Priorities Project used to estimate the cost to taxpayers in April. But this is only a fraction of the overall cost.

Average gasoline prices have shot up by more than $1 since the war began, while the price of diesel has risen by roughly half. Citing an energy-cost tracker maintained by the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs, Cassidy said these combined price hikes have cost Americans an additional $93 billion—more than an extra $700 per household.

Oil and fertilizer prices have also shot up, rippling through the economy and contributing to higher food prices. The overall rate of inflation has climbed to 3.4%, up from 2.4% in February. Cassidy notes that inflation has also hiked market interest rates, “raising the costs of mortgages, car loans, and other types of consumer credit.”

Combining all these added costs, Zandi estimated that the average household had paid roughly an extra $1,200 in the six months since the war started, but emphasized that this was only a conservative estimate.

“Rather than being taken as a precise number,” Cassidy added, “this figure should be understood as a rough sketch that conveys the magnitude of Trump’s folly.”

As the midterms approach, Trump’s approval rating has hit an all-time low of just 33% according to a poll out Monday from Reuters/Ipsos, which also found just 36% approval for the war.

Meanwhile, 71% of Americans, including 4 in 10 Republicans, said they disapprove of how Trump is handling the cost of living. This has caused the longstanding Republican advantage in the economy to evaporate, with 36% of registered voters saying in a poll last week they believe Democrats are better prepared to tackle the cost of living compared with 28% of Republicans.

“Absent a break in the war’s current stalemate between now and the November midterms,” Cassidy said, “the president and his party may end up paying a higher political price. But the economic costs of the conflict can’t be reversed.”