The War Goes On With No Obvious End

As the war goes on, another letter to Congress:

Within a few days of the U.S. and Israel attacking Iran, gasoline jumped to $3.00 a gallon here in Opelika. Now, in the fourth week of this war, gasoline is $3.50, $1 more per gallon than the price before the preemptive and destabilizing attack. Other than raising prices, what has the administration’s war accomplished?

The Strait of Hormuz is blocked; the only oil and cargo transiting are ships allowed by Iran.

The president’s goal of a new regime in Iran? The new leader is the son of the former leader and cut from the same theocratic cloth.

The enriched uranium, which the president called an imminent threat, is still there.

While we have extensively damaged Iran’s military capabilities, the destruction seems to have strengthened the regime’s resolve.

Whatever trust we built through negotiation is gone. The president’s bellicose rhetoric intended to scare Iran into submission is not working.

The Pentagon now asks for $200 billion to fund the war. $200 billion could have reduced the nation’s debt, been invested in critical infrastructure, or restored the health insurance subsidies Congress refused to extend.

Astonishingly, the president is now talking about taking over Cuba.

Those of us who lived through the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 recall the aphorism “if you break it, you own it.” Donald Trump owns this war and its vast economic and humanitarian consequences.

I urge you and your Republican colleagues to exercise Constitutional oversight to end the war and limit President Trump’s imperial ambitions. Don’t be complicit by your support or by hiding in silence.

Make Voting Easier, Not Harder

My latest to Senators Britt and Tuberville:

I oppose the SAVE Act and urge you to vote “No.”

In my 73 years, more than 50 as a voter, I’ve never seen reports of more than just a few fraudulent votes, never enough to swing an election, usually by U.S. citizens. The claim that non-citizens are stealing elections is absurd, as false as the president believing he won the 2020 election.

Alabama has a poor record of voting, even after the Jim Crow era. In the 2024 election, only 60% of those registered voted, with only 66% of eligible voters registered. That’s only 40% of Alabama’s eligible voters. We should be encouraging everyone who is legally eligible to vote, making it easier, not harder. The SAVE Act will only add friction, creating obstacles to dissuade voting.

Birth and marriage certificates may not be easy to obtain. My sister-in-law, a longtime resident of Texas, was required to prove her citizenship when she last renewed her driver license. It took New York, where she was born, several months to send an original birth certificate. That delay could have prevented her voting in an important election, denying a core right of citizenship.

As the saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t try and fix it.” You’ll only break it more.

Stop the War

On Saturday, February 28, the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, killing Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and other leaders. This followed negotiations to end Iran’s nuclear program, the last session just two days before the attack. (See Wikipedia’s coverage.)

The Trump administration has offered numerous and changing rationales to justify the war: ending the nuclear program, destroying Iran’s ballistic missile capability, stopping support of terrorist groups in the region, and regime change. Initially, regime change was framed as creating a democratic government; then it morphed to a Venezuelan style puppet government serving at the pleasure of Donald Trump.

Iran’s response to the surprise and ongoing attacks has stopped all shipping — oil and cargo — through the Strait of Hormuz, which will have a devastating impact on the world economy if not resumed. Seven American service men and women have been killed, some 140 injured.

A war powers resolution after the war started failed in Congress, the Republican majority largely supporting the president.

This morning, I voiced my opinion to Senators Britt and Tuberville and Representative Rogers:

On Sunday, I paid $2.99 a gallon for gas in Opelika, around $0.50 more per gallon than recent fillups. That dramatic jump is the most immediate financial impact from the president’s unnecessary war with Iran. The $1 billion per day the war is costing would have been better invested in extending the premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act policies.

I saw no compelling reason for the U.S. and Israel to start a war with Iran. Among the changing rationales, the idea of regime change is absurd. The president’s goal to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with a puppet like Delcy Rodríguez has backfired. Khamenei’s son lost his mother, wife, and father in the Israeli attack and is unlikely to bow to the president and his sophomoric offer to Make Iran Great Again. Iran’s deep ideology will trump the president’s “art of the deal.”

Seven U.S. service members have been killed so far; some 150 have been injured. The president shows little concern for the loss of American life, even less for the death and destruction in Iran.

Please stop bowing to the president and demand an end to his warmongering madness.

My State of the Union Address

Last week, we heard President Donald Trump’s “State of the Union” address to Congress. I'd like to share my own view of the state of our union:

Cost of Living

Prices and inflation are still high.

I’m reminded every morning when I make coffee. Thanks to the president’s delusional tariffs, I’m paying $22 to $24 a bag for coffee beans from a small roaster here in Opelika. I used to pay $16 to $18. My friends who own this small business tell me their prices for green beans jumped with the tariffs and have not come down.

Health insurance premiums also jumped at the start of the year. Last year, my son’s ACA coverage was fully subsidized. This year, his same Bronze plan costs $484 per month. The premium for my wife’s Bronze plan jumped 27% to $1,144 per month.

Affordability is not fake news, Mr. President.

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling against the president's unilateral tariffs, he is doubling down and pursuing ways to maintain them. Tariffs are a hammer he can use to threaten and bully countries and companies to accede to his wishes.

As waves of economic uncertainty ripple across the globe, Republicans in Congress remain stone faced rather than exercising their Constitutional responsibility.

Immigration

The president claimed his administration would target only criminals illegally in the country. Yet he sent invasions of masked ICE and CBP agents into Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, and Minneapolis creating terror: Separating families. Detaining immigrants who are legally in the country. Deporting people without due process. Killing innocent Americans and labeling them domestic terrorists. Ignoring court orders.

Reuters reported that the administration unlawfully detained immigrants more than 4,400 times between October and mid-February.

In the case Anderson Jesus Urquilla-Ramos v. Donald J. Trump, et al., Judge Joseph R. Goodwin wrote

“Across the interior of the United States, agents of the federal government — masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons, operating from unmarked vehicles, acting without warrants of any kind — are seizing persons for civil immigration violations and imprisoning them without any semblance of due process.”

Another example of DHS’ cruel and inhumane treatment was Nurul Amin Shah Alam, nearly blind, who froze to death in Buffalo after Border Patrol agents left him at a closed Tim Hortons, jail booties the only protection on his feet. True to form, DHS lied about the incident, claiming agents left him at “a warm, safe location.”

Despite these flagrant, cruel, and illegal violations of law — a white nationalist strategy to purge the country of people of color — Republicans in Congress show no interest in reforming immigration laws. The country needs immigrants for our high technology industries as well as farms, food processing, and hospitality.

Corruption

The President has been using his power to enrich himself, his family, and members of his cabinet. David Kirkpatrick estimates the president and his family have made some $3.4 billion from crypto, real estate, branding, and other ventures. The jet from Qatar is arguably the most visibly egregious.

The corruption trickles down, such as the Boeing 737 Max 8 executive jet that Secretary Noem has been leasing, claimed to be for immigrant deportation flights. Yet the interior includes a bedroom suite.

Nary a murmur from Republicans in Congress.

Epstein Files

Is the Justice department incompetent or protecting the president? Certainly incompetent and, I believe, covering for the president.

With all the examples of philandering throughout Donald Trump’s storied life, I think the charge that he raped a minor is plausible. That he is morally bereft is more than plausible.

Iran

Now the President has unilaterally started a war with Iran, ignoring the Constitution, Congress, and international law. There is no legal or moral justification for preemptively attacking another country and targeting its leaders, no matter how heinous those leaders are. Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the U.S. Blatant and self-serving lies that Iran was close to having a nuclear bomb or had developed ballistic missiles capable of striking the U.S.

We’ve now lost American lives, and the president predicts “there will likely be more.” For what end?

The state of the U.S.?

This administration and the Congressional Republicans supporting it do not reflect American values, the values outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We have an imperialist president who is attempting to rule the world, a narcissist dismembering our country and enabled by Republican robots in Congress. That’s the state of the union I see.

Hoping for Mercy

Update — On March 10, two days before Sonny Burton’s scheduled execution, Governor Ivey commuted his death sentence to life in prision without the option for parole.

I cannot proceed in good conscience with the execution of Mr. Burton under such disparate circumstances. I believe it would be unjust for one participant in this crime to be executed while the participant who pulled the trigger was not. — Governor Ivey

Thank you, Governor Ivey.

Original Post — Alabama and Texas have made industries of the death penalty, determined to use the punishment as retribution and a warning to the marginalized, particularly Black, population.

Sonny Burton’s case is quintessential. He is scheduled to be executed by Alabama on March 12. Can Governor Ivey see the injustice of executing Burton?

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Governor Ivey,

Since moving to Alabama four years ago, I have been jolted by the state government fostering a Calvinist Hell under the guise of what it calls “justice.”

The case of Sonny Burton is the latest example. Franz Kafka could have written the story. Yet sadly, tragically, it’s true.

No doubt you are familiar with the facts and, I hope, see the unfairness of sentencing a man to death for a murder he did not commit — he was not in the store when the shots that killed Doug Battle were fired — and the actual murderer was resentenced to life in prison. Doug Battle’s daughter and several of the jurors in Sonny Burton’s case support clemency. Mr. Burton, now 75, has expressed remorse for his involvement in the murder and is asking to be spared the death penalty.

Micah 6:8 calls on us to bring justice and mercy to this life.

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

I urge you to show mercy and grant Sonny Burton clemency.

ICE Out

Congress must awaken and respond to the overreaching, unlawful, and cruel tactics used by ICE in Minneapolis and around the country. ICE should step back and deescalate, which is the will of the American people as reflected in numerous polls and the massive protests in Minneapolis — included hundreds of clergy from around the country.

Individual members of Congress should speak out and Congressional committees should hold hearings. Legislatively, Congress should cut ICE’s funding. With a FY26 budget more than CBP’s and the FBI’s, ICE is creating an unaccountable secret police where so many of its public justifications are provably false and racist. Unconscionable and un-American.

It’s long past the time for Congress to develop a rational immigration policy:

• ICE agents should not be allowed to wear masks.
• Per the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment, people must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, given due process rather than immediately “disappeared” to a detention facility for deportation. Anyone detained must be afforded full due process before being deported.
• Detention facilities must provide respectful treatment, with adequate food, water, and medical care. Agents who abuse detainees should be prosecuted.
• Immigrants who have applied for asylum or otherwise have their cases being reviewed by the courts should remain in the U.S. without detention until their cases are adjudicated. To speed adjudication, hire more judges to evaluate cases, not more ICE police.
• Immigrants who have established lives in the U.S. and have been here for — say 5, 10, or 15 years — should be eligible to legally remain in the country with a path to citizenship.
• Those who are registered under the DACA program should have a path to citizenship.
• So-called “dangerous criminals” should be deported. However, that does not mean someone in the U.S. simply without proper authorization, or with a traffic violation, or exercising their free speech rights. Truly, someone convicted of a serious crime.

As Jamelle Bouie recently wrote in The New York Times:

It is worth remembering that immigration enforcement is a civil procedure and that most people detained by ICE do not have criminal records. In the main, these are not violent people threatening the safety and integrity of the nation; they are ordinary men, women and children who have been caught in an authoritarian dragnet. Their treatment is less a necessary part of immigration detention than it is a punishment — deliberate pain inflicted on migrants in order to force them out of the country, whether or not they have a legal right to be here.

Masked ICE agents swarming cities, haunting neighborhoods, going door to door, separating young children from their parents, and attacking peaceful protesters are desecrating our American values, much like the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II. ICE is creating a travesty eerily similar to the horrors of the secret police rounding up the Jews in Nazi Germany.

Will you be complicit in this tyranny or raise your voice for “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine?”

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Sent to my Congressional representatives on Saturday, January 24, 2026: Rep. Mike Rogers, Sen. Katie Britt, and Sen. Tommy Tubberville.

Heartbroken

I am heartbroken knowing a six-year old will grow up without a mother, recalling how insecure I was at that age.

I am heartbroken knowing her other two children lost their mother, a wife lost her wife, parents lost a child.

I am sickened an overzealous ICE agent exercising unrestrained power shot Renee Nicole Good three times and then desecrated her life with the epithet “f^&#ing b&#ch!”

I am sickened the would be king, vice president, and all the sycophants of the regime express no sympathy, only blame the victim and lionize the shooter, then callously launch a spurious investigation of her wife.

I am sickened that Republicans in Congress are obsequiously enabling the regime’s massive push for unrestrained power, ignoring the Constitution.

No principles. No integrity.

What do you tell your own children about the future of their America?

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Sent to Alabama Senator Katie Britt on January 15, 2026.

Venezuela: Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3?

Following my email to my Congressional representatives (see earlier post), I received a prompt response from Senator Britt. Unsurprisingly, she supported the military incursion into Venezuela, the rationale being eliminating the head of Venezuela’s drug cartel, restoring democracy, and reducing the influence of China and Iran.

Beginning with the president’s news conference last Saturday, we’ve heard an incoherent string of rationales and intentions for what’s next, undermining the logic of Senator Britt’s response. I couldn’t resist replying to point this out:

Senator Britt,

Thank you for your response to my email opposing the U.S. intervention in Venezuela. While not surprised, I was disappointed in your full-throated justification of the administration’s talking points — which compels me to respond.

Maduro was a brutal dictator, yet his brutality primarily harmed countless Venezuelans. He did not “wage war” on Americans for decades. Maduro’s support of the drug trade didn’t justify a “necessary mission” at enormous cost and potential risk to our service men and women just to capture him for trial.

If stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S. was truly the objective — a narrowly targeted “law enforcement operation” — why did the president pardon the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of similar drug crimes and was serving a long sentence in prison? Stopping the flow of drugs is not a credible argument.

You wrote “the United States intends to oversee a peaceful transition and a return to democracy in Venezuela.” Yet, the administration has anointed Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president and now president, to lead the government. This leaves Maduro’s corrupt government and military in place and places no restraint on the drug cartels. Standing up democracy is not a credible argument.

It didn’t take long for the president to clearly state his motives: “oil, oil, oil.” He told The New York Times that the U.S. will be running Venezuela and extracting its oil for years, and he will decide how the proceeds will be divided among Venezuela and America, I suspect with a cut for himself. We’ll likely hear of a new Trump resort being planned for the Venezuelan coast, further enriching his family.

With a reality-TV demonstration of military power, the president has returned U.S. foreign policy to the colonial era where powerful countries dominate weaker nations. The U.S. has no legal right to the oil in Venezuela, yet we can threaten military force to establish a “deal” that gives us the “right” to plunder their oil. Stephen Miller affirmed that philosophy in a recent CNN interview, and the president told The New York Times that the only limits on his power are “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

I’m disappointed you didn’t join five of your Republican colleagues to support limiting further military action in Venezuela without Congressional approval. I pray you will have the courage to vote for the resolution next week. If Republicans continue to bow down, I fear the president who sees himself as God may well end the American democracy before the country reaches its 250th anniversary.

They Are Rolling Over in Their Graves

I sent the following to Senators Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville and Representative Mike Rogers:

I oppose the president's invasion of Venezuela. There's no legal or moral justification to invade the country to capture President Maduro, even with the U.S. indictment.

The president’s claim that the U.S. will run Venezuela is absurd. It will defocus the administration from priorities at home and lead to another longterm engagement like Iraq, likely with the tragic loss of American lives.

The president has no legal basis to unilaterally claim Venezuela’s oil for the U.S., regardless of the business losses when the Venezuelan government nationalized its oil industry in 1976.

The president’s military action is giving Russian president Putin justification for his invasion of Ukraine and emboldening China to invade Taiwan. His threats against Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Greenland, and Canada are deranged, the dreams of an imperialist madman.

I urge Congress to respond strongly to limit the president’s actions. If you remain acquiescent and continue fealty to this president, you are abdicating your responsibility to the Constitution.

The Founders must be rolling over in their graves.