Iran: Now What?
On the six month anniversary of the start of the War with Iran, Iran retains the ability to severely restrict shipping through the Strait.
From Heather Cox Richardson: Foreign policy scholar and diplomat Philip Gordon, who served in the Biden White House, wrote: “U.S. acceptance of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz is an extraordinary outcome only made conceivable by an administration that squandered legitimacy, alienated allies, attempted regime change in a war it had not adequately prepared for and that is being forced to accept a catastrophic outcome without viable alternatives.”
He suggested that “in other circumstances Iran’s closure of [the] Strait by brazenly attacking maritime traffic and neighbors’ civilian infrastructure would likely have justified and led to a united, global response—like the U.S.-led naval escort mission during the Iran-Iraq war, the global coalition that reversed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, the multinational naval force enforcing UN sanctions in the Gulf in the 1990s, or the UN Security Council sanctions on the Iranian nuclear program in the 2010s—that led to the JCPOA.”
“Instead,” he wrote, “[the] US and other countries are now being forced to accept an outcome that would have been unthinkable before the war but seems to have become unavoidable because of it.”
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The National Debt Hit $40 Trillion. Why Should You Care?
The United States crossed another financial milestone that should concern every American: our national debt exceeded $40 trillion for the first time. Earlier this year, federal debt held by the public reached roughly the size of our entire annual economy—more than 100% of GDP.
Why should the average American care? After all, nobody is going to send you a bill for your share of the national debt. Unfortunately, we pay for it in other ways.
Interest Is Eating Up Our Federal Budget: Just like a family with too much credit-card debt, the federal government must pay interest on what it borrows. As the debt grows, so does that interest expense.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that net federal interest costs will reach $2.1 trillion annually by 2036 if current policies remain largely unchanged. That is money that cannot be used for roads, defense, education, healthcare, scientific research or other national priorities.
We are increasingly borrowing money simply to pay the interest on money we previously borrowed.
It Can Make Your Own Borrowing More Expensive: When Washington borrows enormous amounts of money year after year, it competes for capital with businesses and individuals. Over time, heavy government borrowing puts upward pressure on interest rates. That can translate into higher rates for mortgages, auto loans and business loans.
So while you may never receive a bill marked “national debt,” you may experience its consequences when you finance a house, buy a car or when a business decides whether it can afford to expand and hire more employees.
It Can Reduce Economic Growth and Wages: There is another consequence that is less obvious.
When more of the nation’s available capital goes toward financing government debt, less is available for businesses to invest in factories, equipment, technology and expansion.
The Congressional Budget Office warns that high and rising federal debt eventually reduces private investment, productivity and economic growth. Lower productivity ultimately means lower wages and a lower standard of living than we otherwise might have enjoyed.That is particularly important for our children and grandchildren. They will inherit not only the debt, but also the economic consequences of servicing it.
It Leaves Us Less Prepared for the Next Crisis: The most overlooked danger is what happens when the next emergency arrives.
We borrowed heavily to fight the financial crisis in 2008 and again during COVID. There may someday be another recession, pandemic, war or financial crisis requiring extraordinary federal spending. The greater our debt before the crisis begins, the fewer financial options we have when we desperately need them. The CBO has repeatedly warned that growing debt reduces the government’s ability to respond to unforeseen events and increases the risk of a fiscal crisis.
This Isn’t a Republican or Democratic Problem: Perhaps most frustrating is that both political parties have contributed to the problem.
Republicans frequently talk about controlling spending but have supported large deficits through tax cuts without corresponding spending reductions. Democrats have defended or expanded expensive government programs without generating enough revenue to pay for them.
Americans want government services but don’t want either the spending cuts or tax increases necessary to pay for them. Politicians have learned that borrowing the difference is easier than telling voters the truth.
$40 Trillion Should Be a Wake-Up Call: There is nothing magical about $40 trillion. The country isn’t going bankrupt tomorrow because we crossed that number which is what makes the situation so dangerous.
The consequences of excessive debt generally develop gradually—higher interest costs, higher borrowing costs, reduced investment and fewer choices for future generations. By the time a genuine crisis develops, the solutions may be far more painful. It is like putting off changing your car’s oil. Eventually, we will pay dearly for our continued delay.
The Congressional Budget Office now projects debt held by the public will climb from roughly 101% of GDP today to 120% by 2036 if current laws remain largely unchanged.
We cannot solve this problem simply by cutting “waste,” nor can we tax a handful of billionaires enough to make it disappear. The numbers are simply too large.
Eventually, a serious solution will require Americans—and our elected officials—to have an uncomfortable conversation about spending cuts and tax increases. That conversation won’t be politically easy. But $40 trillion ought to remind us of something our parents taught many of us a long time ago: Eventually, somebody has to pay the bills.
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Election fraud is not the problem President Trump, and most Republicans are making it out to be.
Let me start with something on which I hope everyone can agree: Only American citizens should vote in American elections.
If someone knowingly votes illegally, that person should be prosecuted.
But that raises an important question. How big is the problem we are trying to solve?
President Trump and many Republicans have spent years warning Americans about widespread voter fraud, particularly voting by noncitizens. The argument is now being used to justify major changes in how Americans register and vote.
The evidence simply does not support the claim that noncitizen voting is a significant problem.
Consider a source Republicans should have difficulty dismissing: The Heritage Foundation, one of the country’s most influential conservative organizations. From 1982 through 2025, Heritage documented 100 cases of noncitizens voting of the 1,600 voting fraud cases that were documented.
During roughly that same period, Americans cast more than 1.3 billion votes in presidential elections alone. That works out to approximately 0.000008 percent.
Not satisfied with the Heritage Foundation information, the Trump administration decided to look for fraud. According to an August investigation by ProPublica, federal investigators generated tens of thousands of leads involving possible illegal voting. Homeland Security Investigations agents were dispatched around the country to investigate them.
What happened? Between January 2025 and May 2026, fewer than 150 alleged noncitizen voters were referred for prosecution. Just 41 people were charged with voting illegally or related election crimes, and through May prosecutors had obtained convictions or guilty pleas in 14 cases.
This confirms what most of us already knew, the evidence tells us something very different from the rhetoric, just like the 62 of 63 lawsuits that Trump filed following the 2020 presidential election that were dismissed by federal judges, many of whom he appointed.
We are talking about an extraordinarily small number of illegal votes in a country where more than 150 million Americans vote in a presidential election. So why does this matter?
Because the proposed solution could affect millions of perfectly legal American voters.
The SAVE America Act would require documentary proof of citizenship when registering or updating a voter registration. For many people that means producing a passport or an acceptable birth certificate along with government-issued identification. A 2023 national survey found that about 9% of adult American citizens cannot readily access documentary proof of citizenship. Think about that tradeoff.
We would potentially make voting more difficult for millions of eligible American citizens to address a form of illegal voting that the available evidence shows occurs extraordinarily rarely.
That is where election security can become voter suppression.
There is nothing wrong with wanting secure elections. We should maintain accurate voter rolls. We should verify eligibility. We should prosecute people who deliberately vote illegally. And we should continually improve the security of our election systems. But our laws should be based upon the size of the actual problem—not the size of the political rhetoric surrounding it.
Democracy depends on two things at the same time: Only eligible citizens should vote, and every eligible citizen should have a reasonable opportunity to vote.
We don’t strengthen democracy by protecting one of those principles while ignoring the other. The greater danger is convincing millions of Americans that our elections are riddled with fraud when the evidence says otherwise—and then using that fear to make voting harder for legitimate American citizens.
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Why was Dolly Parton loved by everyone?
There are very few public figures who were loved and respected like Dolly Parton. In all the articles I have read and all the videos I have watched in the last week, I did not find or hear one bad or controversial word about Dolly. She transcended everything and everybody.
Why?
Part of it was her extraordinary talent. She wrote Jolene, Coat of Many Colors, 9 to 5 and I Will Always Love You. She became a country music superstar, movie star and successful businesswoman. But lots of people are talented. Lots of people become rich and famous. Very few become almost universally loved.
I think Dolly’s secret was that she never seemed to forget who she was.
She grew up dirt poor in the mountains of East Tennessee, one of twelve children. She eventually became wealthy beyond anything that little girl could possibly have imagined. Yet somehow the rhinestones, wigs, fame and money never seemed to change the person underneath. She had a wonderful ability to laugh at herself. Nobody could make fun of Dolly Parton better than Dolly Parton but, there was something more important underneath all that humor.
She was kind.
Her father could not read or write, and Dolly never forgot the effect that had on him. So, in 1995 she created the Imagination Library, initially to provide free books to children in her home county in Tennessee. By the time of her death, the program had distributed more than 300 million free books to children around the world.
When wildfires devastated her home region in 2016, she helped provide $1,000 a month for six months to hundreds of families who had lost their homes. She donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for COVID research that contributed to development of the Moderna vaccine. She supported children’s healthcare, education, disaster relief and countless other causes.
Perhaps most remarkably, she managed to live in an increasingly divided America without allowing herself to become another symbol of that division.
People on the political left loved Dolly Parton. People on the political right loved Dolly Parton. Country music fans loved her. Rock musicians loved her. The LGBTQ community loved her. Christians loved her. Working-class people loved her. Hollywood loved her. She didn’t accomplish that by having no beliefs. She accomplished it by treating people with dignity even when they were different from her.
Dolly Parton reminded us that you can have strong beliefs without hating people who don’t share them.
· You can become enormously successful without forgetting where you come from.
· You can be rich without being selfish.
· You can laugh at yourself.
· You can help people without first asking how they vote.
· And you can disagree with somebody and still treat them with kindness.
She gave us permission to like one another. Maybe that is why her death feels like more than the loss.
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Quote of the Day:
“If you see someone without a smile, give ‘em yours!” — Dolly Parton
Orchid of the Day: To Dolly Parton—not simply for the music she gave us, but for the millions of children who opened a book because she decided that the little girl who grew up poor in the Tennessee mountains could help other children dream bigger. More than 300 million books later, that is one hell of a legacy.
Onion of the Day: To politicians of either party who knowingly exaggerate the threat of election fraud because frightening voters is politically more useful than telling them the truth. Election fraud should be prosecuted whenever it occurs. But Americans deserve election laws based on evidence, not fear.
Second Onion of the Day: To every member of Congress—Republican or Democrat—who complains about our $40 trillion national debt while refusing to tell voters the uncomfortable truth: balancing our nation’s finances eventually requires some combination of spending restraint and additional revenue. There isn’t a magic third choice.
Question of the Day: If noncitizen voting is so widespread that America needs sweeping new voting restrictions, why has an intensive federal effort to find it produced so few prosecutions?
Lyrics of the Day:
If I should stay
I would only be in your way
So I’ll go, but I know
I’ll think of you each step of the way
And I will always love you
I will always love you
Bitter-sweet memories
That’s all I am taking with me
Good-bye, please don’t cry
We both know that I’m not
What you need
Video of the Day:
I never knew the words to i will always love you.
I cried when I listened to what it said