Krugman: "Ignorance and Ignominy"

Click here for Paul Krugman's Substack entry for April 8, entitled "Ignorance and Ignominy."

Krugman compares Iran's economy (GDP $0.5 trillion) to that of the U.S. ($28.75 trillion), and says "Yet Iran won. The Iranian regime has emerged far stronger than it was before, controlling the Strait of Hormuz and having demonstrated its ability to inflict damage on both its neighbors and the world economy. The U.S. has emerged far weaker, having demonstrated the limitations of its military technology, its strategic ineptitude and, when push comes to shove, its cowardice."

I like what he says next:

How did this happen? Naturally, the Iranian Minister of War credited divine intervention, declaring that “God deserves all the glory.” His nation, he said, fought with the “protection of divine providence. A massive effort with miraculous protection.”

Well, theocrats gonna theocrat.

But I lied. That wasn’t a quote from an Iranian official. That’s what Pete Hegseth, our self-proclaimed Secretary of War, said while claiming that one of the worst strategic defeats in American history was a great victory.

He goes on to say:

We were led to disaster by the boastful ignorance of men like Trump and Hegseth — boastful ignorance made even worse by claims that God supports whatever they want to do.

 

Trump guts U.S. Forest Service

April 9, 2026: The U.S. Forest Service announced that it is shuttering dozens of research stations and relocating its headquarters as part of a massive reorganization." (From left-center SFGate, a Bay Area news website.)

The article goes on to say: 

The agency’s headquarters will be moved from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, according to a news release published last week. Sweeping closures are also set to take place across its research division: 57 of 77 research facilities across 31 states are set to close, and any remaining facilities will operate under a single research station in Fort Collins, Colorado. 

Six research facilities in California — located in Anderson, Fresno, Chico, Fort Bragg, Mount Shasta and Hat Creek — will close, according to the Forest Service’s website. All nine of the agency’s regional offices will also be closed and consolidated to operations centers located in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Athens, Georgia; Fort Collins, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; Missoula, Montana; and Placerville, California.

According to the Forest Service, these changes are taking place as part of an effort to “unify research priorities, accelerate the application of science to management decisions, and reduce administrative duplication.” Public land advocates, however, said the restructuring could be disastrous for an agency already faced with over a year’s worth of workforce shortages and budget cuts. President Donald Trump’s administration fired thousands of Forest Service workers in early 2025, a move that sent shockwaves through rural communities that depend on the agency for employment opportunities and the management of nearby public land. 

“This is nothing more than intentionally trying to create chaos,” Tracy Stone-Manning, the former director of the Bureau of Land Management and the president of a conservation nonprofit called the Wilderness Society, told SFGATE over the phone. 

Click here for an article in the Glenwood Springs, Colorado, PostIndependent, by Ryan Spencer, titled "U.S. Forest Service reorganization prompts concerns of further employee loss, impacts ahead of fire season." The article says:

All 10 of the Forest Service’s regional offices will close and move their operations to a “network of operational service centers” in Fort Collins; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Athens, Georgia; Madison, Wisconsin; Missoula, Montana; and Placerville, California, according to the plan. The reorganization also calls for closing more than 50 research centers across the country and “consolidating” research operations into a single organization headquartered in Fort Collins. 

This is coming "as the West faces record-low snowpack conditions that could make for a particularly dangerous wildfire season," and goes on to say:

The National Association of Forest Service Retirees — a nonprofit that includes hundreds of former agency employees, including seven previous chiefs — is among those that have raised concern about how the reorganization will impact the agency.

Bill Avey, the nonprofit’s chair, said he’s heard that thousands of the agency’s employees have received letters notifying them of possible relocation, though it’s unclear how many will actually be required to move.

“First and foremost, we’re concerned about ensuring that current employees have the support, both the technical support and leadership support, they need to do the important work the public expects on the public’s national forests,” Avey said.

 

 

 

Response to those who say Europe freeloads on America's military

A Twitter account called Very Brexit Problems posted the following:

MAGA calls Europe freeloaders. Here’s what they’re not telling you. ​

1. Ramstein Air Base, the most important US military hub outside America, is built on German land provided rent-free, with Germany contributing hundreds of millions to its upkeep. The US couldn’t replace it anywhere in the world. 

2. Every US military operation in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia flows through Ramstein. Lose it and US power projection in the Eastern Hemisphere is crippled. 

3. The UK provides and maintains RAF Lakenheath used almost entirely by the US Air Force. Italy provides Aviano. Greece provides Souda Bay. Turkey provides Incirlik. European land. European infrastructure. American operations. 

4. The US Sixth Fleet depends entirely on European ports for fuel and supplies. Souda Bay, Naples, 11 Greek ports. Without them the Sixth Fleet cannot operate in the Mediterranean or project power into the Middle East. 

5. The majority of NATO’s intelligence and surveillance capacity is hosted on European soil and fed directly to the CIA, NSA and Pentagon. 

6. Early warning radar at Fylingdales, UK. Missile tracking in Greenland. Norwegian monitoring stations near Russia. All dependent on European goodwill. 

7. It would cost America MORE to bring the troops home than keep them here. European hosts subsidise roughly a third of all basing costs. 

8. Europe is America’s largest arms customer. Stop buying American and part of their defence industry goes bankrupt. 

9. The bases aren’t charity. They’re America using European soil, European money and European goodwill to project power across the world. 

10. We’re not the freeloaders.

"A whole civilization will die tonight" -- Robert Reich's reaction

Friends.

I don’t know how better to put this than to say Trump’s threat this morning to “wipe out a whole civilization” of Iran puts America into a new immoral universe.

He is directly threatening a war crime. And every one of us is complicit in it, in the sense that this threat comes from the President of the United States, threatening to utilize our nation’s military power to exterminate an entire people.

Regardless of whether Trump follows through on this threat, it needs to be repudiated immediately. No civilized nation threatens to wipe out another civilization. No people, through their head of state, threatens to exterminate another people. No human being vested with official power by human beings threatens to wipe out another part of humanity.

Those of us who are silent right now — whether we call ourselves Democrats or Republicans, whether we are in the military or are civilians, whether or not we hold public office, whether we like Donald Trump or detest him — must not remain silent.

It is our responsibility as citizens of this nation to say unambiguously that what Trump is now threatening is truly evil. It’s our responsibility as human beings to demand that Trump repudiate this threat to other human beings. It is our responsibility to call on all other Americans, in whatever capacity, to stand up against this despotic act of pure immorality.

Write. Phone. Shout. March. Trump has moved beyond indecency into the realm of insanity. This must be stopped.

Which civilization may die tonight?

Click here for Paul Krugman's second entry for April 7, this one a video, entitled "Our Darkest Hour." Here is the text, in full:

This is America’s darkest hour.

Hi, Paul Krugman with an update Tuesday morning. Earlier today, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social,

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.

Not going to be a problem if we ever do get the war crimes trial that all of this deserves. A statement of motive, intent is completely clear.

I don’t need to say how vile it is. It is shocking, although at some level, if you didn’t see this as a real possibility, then you weren’t paying attention. Not much to say here except to talk about how those of us who are not Donald Trump should behave.

First of all, any military commander given orders to start destroying civilian infrastructure in Iran should disobey that order, should say it, should not even quietly resign. This is a time to stand up and make it clear that this is totally unacceptable. This is a violation of everything that the military stands for. It’s a violation of everything that America stands for.

Second, any member of the Trump administration: to continue in your position doing your job as Trump takes America on the course of becoming a criminal nation, a criminal terrorist nation, you cannot continue in good conscience.

Particularly, if you play any role in making this happen, then you are a war criminal too. Then you ought to be brought up someday before an international tribunal. But even if you’re in a peripheral role, even just putting your head down and saying, well, I’m an assistant secretary at the agriculture department or something like that, that’s not good enough. This is not a regime that you can serve in good conscience.

Republican politicians, any Republican, I mean, there are people already saying, “oh, you know, I don’t approve of destroying civilizations, but” — that “but” makes you an accessory to the crime, if you are failing to stand up against it.

And I really don’t like this notion that only Democrats have agency. This is a very common thing. All of this is made possible by the lockstep slavish obedience of Republicans. Nonetheless, Democrats have a role here, too. And this is not a time to attack Trump’s war because it costs too much money or to attack it because it’s bad for energy markets or raises the price of groceries. I mean, it does do all of that. All of that is true. But we’re way past that point now. We’re at the point where you need to unambiguously condemn the immorality and criminality of what’s going on. No mincing of words.

Damned if I know what’s going to happen. I mean, at some level, I think that the civilization that may be destroyed tonight is our own. I mean, are we civilized if we do this kind of thing? If America as a nation doesn’t stand up against this, what are we?

So, God help us. Normal life will continue. It’s going to be a really weird thing to be out there, you know, grocery shopping and taking the subway and all of those things. But this is, in a way, the defining moment. The fate of the whole American idea is on the line.

I have no idea how this ends.

 

MAGA vs. Science (science is losing)

Click here for Paul Krugman's Substack entry for April 7, entitled :MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science."

With all the other terrible news right now, you may not have noticed that Donald Trump is in the process of killing American science.

OK, that’s an exaggeration — but not that much of an exaggeration. The Trump administration’s latest budget proposal calls for a gigantic increase in military spending combined with severe cuts to social programs. But as the chart above shows, it also calls for debilitating reductions in research funding.

Furthermore, Trump appointees have already been strangling science by sharply reducing the rate at which research grants are approved.

Krugman has graphs for proposed budget changes, 2025-2027; number of new grants approved by the National Science Foundation (more or less steady from 2015-2024, with a precipitous drop in 2025); student visas issued (steep decline), institutional location of authors of papers published in top 5% of journals (U.S. in steep decline since 1980, though far above all others; parity with the EU in 2020, and China surpassing strongly); percent trusting the scientific community (Republicans dropping steeply since 2009, then precipitously since 2017; Democrats steady until 2009, then rapidly rising); fractions of donations going to Republicans, by scientific field (physical, life, health, and social dropping sharply).

Why are there almost no Republican scientists? It’s not a mystery. GOP political orthodoxy includes positions that are at odds with the scientific consensus on multiple issues, ranging from the validity of the theory of evolution, to the reality of climate change, to the efficacy and safety of vaccines. In each case the scientific consensus is solidly grounded in evidence. But even before the rise of MAGA the U.S. right was increasingly hostile to evidence-based policymaking — especially, of course, where the evidence is unfavorable to fossil fuel interests or quack medicine, both financial mainstays of right-wing politics.

So scientists don’t support Republicans, and the feeling is mutual. Today’s Republican Party doesn’t like science or scientists. It doesn’t like having its preconceived views challenged by appeals to evidence. It knows that very few scientists are on its side electorally. In general, it sees scientific research as a threat to its grasp on political power.

Add in MAGA’s combination of rabid anti-intellectualism and allergy to any hint of criticism, and one has the makings of a drastic anti-science turn in policy. “Ignorance is strength” might was well be an official MAGA motto.

And as I said, we aren’t talking about something that will happen over the course of multiple years: The U.S. scientific enterprise is threatened with severe damage, even collapse, over just the next year.

There are many reasons to find this prospect horrifying: Think of all the beneficial advances, affecting almost every part of life, that won’t happen because U.S. science — still crucial to the world — has been eviscerated.

But think, also, of America’s international standing. Can a nation that has forfeited its role as a leader, or even a contender, in global science, still be a Great Power?

No.

Krugman calls Trump a terrorist

Click here for Paul Krugman's Substack entry for April 6, entitled "The Terrorist in Chief." Here's the text of Trump's tweet from Easter Sunday that he's responding to:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Characterizing Trump's tweet as terrorism, Krugman says:

... terrorism is a strategy of the weak. It’s what extremists do when they lack the ability to achieve their goals through military action or other non-criminal means.

And that’s where Trump and his officials find themselves. They inherited a powerful military (which they are rapidly degrading), but for all its firepower this military lacks the wherewithal to open the Strait of Hormuz to normal traffic. So the Trumpists are gearing up to impose suffering and death on innocent civilians instead, even though this suffering and death will do nothing to achieve America’s objectives.

He suggests that military officers may invoke their right and duty to disobey illegal orders. (He doesn't mention the possibility that they may be asked to drop a nuclear weapon.) 

He concludes:

The horrible but undeniable fact right now is that America has a terrorist president. And the whole world knows it. But we still have a chance to show the world that he is an aberration, that we are not a terrorist nation. And we can do that by standing up for the values that have always defined us. 

 

 

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) had it right.

Wikipedia calls him "an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist." He coined the terms "Spaceship Earth" and "synergetics" and popularized the geodetic dome. 

R. Buckminster Fuller’s words, “It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known,” are as timely today as when he first said them. Fuller’s belief that humanity has the tools and the resources to create a better world for all is not just an idealistic dream – it’s a practical reality waiting to unfold. We have the technology, the knowledge, and the innovation needed to ensure that everyone has access to clean water, food, shelter, and healthcare. What’s missing is the collective will to make it happen.

 

Fuller’s vision challenges us to rethink how we approach global problems. In his view, the systems we’ve built are outdated and increasingly irrelevant. We no longer need to operate under the mindset of scarcity; with the technology at our disposal, we can create abundance for all. His vision isn’t about redistributing what we already have, but about unlocking the potential that already exists within our society. It’s about using our collective resources to build a world that works for everyone.

 

He argued that selfishness and war are unnecessary in a world where technology can provide for everyone. If we can transform the vast amounts of resources at our disposal into tools for living rather than weapons of destruction, we can change the very course of humanity. Fuller believed in the potential for a utopian society – not through force or war, but through the thoughtful application of science, design, and cooperation.

 

This is the essence of Fuller’s philosophy: a world where technology serves people, not the other way around. As we continue to advance, we must challenge the status quo and strive for a future that reflects the abundance of possibilities rather than the limitations imposed by outdated systems. The world that Fuller envisioned is within our grasp – we simply need the courage to build it.

His words are a call to action, urging us to shift our focus from competition and conflict to collaboration and innovation. It’s time for a new kind of thinking, one that embraces the potential of humanity and technology working together for the common good.

 

Trump steals $1.25 billion in taxpayer dollars to bolster him as king of the world.

Click here for an article at MSN by Michael Rainey titled "Trump shifts $1.25 billion in State Department funds to his board of peace."

The Trump administration has redirected $1.25 billion from the State Department to President Trump’s Board of Peace, according to a report in Semafor Thursday. The money was intended to fund disaster relief and peacekeeping operations but is now being used to help fulfill Trump’s pledge to provide more than $1 billion for the board.  

According to Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller, the Trump administration moved $1 billion from international disaster assistance at the State Department to the Board of Peace. Another $200 million was shifted from peacekeeping, and $50 million from international programs. 

Trump established the Board of Peace by executive order earlier this year as a vehicle to oversee the planned reconstruction of Gaza, though the mission has expanded to embrace the general promotion of peace in areas marked by conflict. Trump named himself as chairman of the “public international organization,” which nations can join permanently after paying a $1 billion initiation fee. 

Trump said last month that ultimately, he wants the U.S. to give $10 billion to the organization, which he described as “the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place.” 

 

 

Billionaire Political Influencers

Click here for Robert Reich's Substack entry for April 3, entitled "Who's the Biggest Money Behind the Throne?" It's a discussion of the major billionaire contributors to Trump and other right-wing causes.

As of March 1, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness, the 50 biggest-spending billionaires in American politics had already contributed over $433 million to the upcoming midterm political campaigns.

Not surprisingly, 80 percent of this haul is in support of Republican candidates or conservative issue groups.

Reich gives an overview of the five major contributors: 

1. Elon Musk, $72 million, who  "contributed a total of $278 million in the 2024 election cycle, mostly for getting Trump reelected. His 'investment' has paid off nicely. Musk’s net worth has grown 220 percent since Trump won in 2024"; 

2,  Jeff Yass, $55 million: a Wall Street financier, major investor in Tik Tok, whose donations came "as Trump repeatedly delayed the sale, saving Yass’s lucrative investment";

3, Greg Briockman, $25 million, an AI tech mogul;

4. Dick Uihlein,  $15.8 million, to various right-wing causes; 

5.  Stephen Schwarzman, $15 million, private equity mogul (Blackstone). who has built a career on predatory business practices and disregard for the public good, while leveraging his immense wealth to rig the system in his favor."

Reich lists 10 more major donors, 3 of whom favor Democratic causes and candidates. The names are Singer (D), Warren, Simon Rickets, Koch (the Koch family has spent $12 million; how the mighty have fallen), Reyes, Wynn, Winklevoss, Pritzker (D), and Eychaner (D). 

Reich concludes:

Billionaires are not singularly responsible for corrupting our system of government, of course — and not all billionaires are doing this.

But as wealth continues to concentrate at the top, America finds itself in a doom loop in which giant campaign donations from the super-rich buy political decisions that make them even richer.

 

 

The Cornerstone Speech; U.S. Senator Alexander Stephens, 1861

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's Substack diary entry for March 21, 2026.

On March 21, 1861, former U.S. senator Alexander Stephens of Georgia delivered what history has come to know as the Cornerstone Speech, explaining how the ideology and power of elite enslavers in the American South were about to usher in a new era in world history.

Speaking in Savannah, Georgia, just before he became the vice president of the Confederate States of America, Stephens set out to explain once and for all the difference between the United States and the Confederacy. That difference, he said, was human enslavement. The American Constitution had a crucial defect at its heart, he said: it based the government on the principle that humans were inherently equal. Confederate leaders had fixed that problem. They had constructed a perfect government because they had corrected the Founding Fathers’ error. The “cornerstone” on which the Confederate government rested was racial enslavement.

 And then:

Less than a month after Stephens gave the Cornerstone Speech, the Confederates fired on a federal fort in Charleston Harbor, and the Civil War began.In 1863, using his authority under the war powers, Abraham Lincoln— now president of the United States— declared enslaved Americans free in the areas still controlled by the Confederates. In 1865, Congress passed and sent off to the states for ratification the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting human enslavement except as punishment for crime and giving Congress the power to enforce the amendment. The states approved the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. 

And finally:

Rejecting the worldview Stephens thought would come to dominate the globe, Americans used the moment in which men like Stephens reached for supremacy to enshrine the principles of the Declaration of Independence into the American Constitution. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments ushered in a very different sort of new era than Stephens imagined. It was, in large part, the tearing apart of old political systems under those like Stephens that permitted the rise of new ones that redefined the United States. Stephens thought he was heralding a new world, but in fact he marked the end of an era.

The shaping of the next era belonged not to him, but to others with a clearer view of both the meaning of the United States of America, and of humanity.

 

Fraudster pardons fellow fraudsters, promises to eliminate fraud

On March 17, Trump signed an executive order creating a Task Force to ELIMINATE Fraud.

According to Ron Shillman on Twitter, here are people convicted of fraud and pardoned by Trump this term -- and he's only been in office a little over a year: 

Jason Galanis — ~$200M+ 

Joseph Schwartz — ~$38M 

Lawrence Duran — ~$205M (Medicare fraud)

Carlos Watson — ~$60M investor fraud

Trevor Milton — ~$20M+ investor losses 

Todd Chrisley — ~$30M bank fraud 

Julie Chrisley — ~$30M bank fraud 

Devon Archer — ~$60M tribal bond scheme 

George Santos — ~$44K–$1M+ (multiple fraud schemes) 

Michele Fiore — ~$70K charity fraud 

Brian Kelsey — ~$90K campaign finance fraud 

Scott Jenkins — ~$75K bribery/fraud scheme 

Paul Walczak — ~$10M+ tax fraud 

Adriana Camberos — ~$1M+ counterfeit/fraud 

Trump's "Save America Act" explained

Click here for an article in The Guardian by Rachel Leingang, March 13, titled "What does Trump's restrictive voting bill include -- and does it have a chance of becoming law?" The subtitle is "Every voter would be affected by the Save America Act, as people would face more barriers to voting: 'It's a recipe for disaster.'"

Senate Republicans say they don't have enough votes, so the bill will fail -- but "While the fate of the legislation remains unclear, the damage may already be done. If it doesn’t pass, the talking points surrounding it will play into false election narratives for Trump and his allies, giving fodder for ongoing conspiracies about stolen elections."

Here's the problem:

Even if the bill doesn’t pass, talking points around it will animate the midterms. Trump is likely to use his bully pulpit to falsely claim noncitizens are voting en masse in US elections, and that Democrats and some Republicans stood in his way to prevent addressing the problem through the Save America act.

The bill is another way Trump has tried to assert more control over elections, which are run by state and local officials in manners set by state and local rules.  Trump has suggested that the US government should federalize elections. An executive order he issued that attempted to enact many of the Save act’s provisions has largely been blocked by the courts. In early February, he said on a podcast that Republicans should “take over” and “nationalize” elections in 15 states to protect the party from being voted out of office.

Voting rights advocates are concerned that he will claim election results are invalid in places that don’t require proof of citizenship, Bedekovics said. The bill relies on a false narrative of voter fraud by noncitizens, and the Save America act gives another way to revive that narrative and dispute results, Persad said.

“This is likely an attempt to sow the seeds of doubt about an election that the president appears to believe his party is going to lose,” Becker said.

The Republicans are trying to end democracy in the U.S. They want a North Korean-type state, where there is no dissent and everyone bows to The Dear Leader, and where Democrats can never win another election.

Is the United States a country worth fighting for?

It's right-wing Republican Tucker Carlson asking the question. Two strikes 40 minutes apart; a "double tap" targeting rescue workers who came to the scene? The girls' school was in the immediate vicinity of a naval training station that was the American target, and the students were mostly children of Iranian naval officers. We automatically give the U.S. the benefit of the doubt, thinking it must have been a tragic accident; Carlson raises the question: What if it was deliberate?

Are Americans bad people?

According to the polls, most Americans think their fellow citizens are bad people.

Click here for Robert Reich's Substack post on March 10, entitled "Why do Americans hate each other while Canadians love each other?" Subtitled "Could it have something to do with our politics? With the sociopath in the Oval?"

Once Trump took office, dislike of our fellow citizens soared.

Before he entered the White House, 47 percent of Republican and 35 percent of Democrats said people in the opposing party were “immoral.”

By 2022, after years of Trump’s venom: 72 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats called people in the opposing party “immoral.”

Since he’s been back in the Oval, it’s got even worse.

Reich says: "At the opposite end of the spectrum from the United States is Canada, where 92 percent say their fellow Canadians are good, while just 7 percent say they’re bad."

Reich had an interesting conversation 30 years ago with right-wing Republican  Senator Alan Simpson, when Simpson said:

Democrats viewed Republicans as stupid and Republicans viewed Democrats as evil. “I’d rather be in the stupid party,” he chuckled.

I asked him why Republicans saw Democrats as evil.

He took a deep breath. “Religion.”

I said I didn’t understand.

“It’s the Christian right,” he said as if talking to a five-year-old. “Since Reagan, my party has been a magnet for religious conservatives and Christian fundamentalists, where it’s all about good and evil. Too bad, pal. You’re on the evil side.”

That was thirty years ago. Since then, the divide has only sharpened.

 

 

Pete Hegseth is worse than you thought.

Click here for an article in The Guardian entitled "‘A very dangerous person’: alarm as Pete Hegseth revels in carnage of Iran war," subtitled "Critics say brash, bombastic Fox News host out of his depth to guide US military through murky new Middle East conflict."

It's a devastating takedown of Hegseth and his juvenile antics, which would be funny if it weren't for is dangerous White Christian Nationalist views and the enormous power he holds, with Trump's complete backing.