The move came after seven House Republicans voted in favor of a resolution to end the Iran war
by Dave DeCamp | September 16, 2026 at 12:54 pm ET
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced he has canceled a planned House session for Thursday, sending lawmakers for an early seven-week recess and pushing back a vote to impeach US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth until after the midterm elections.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who introduced the resolution to impeach Hegseth, suspected Johnson might take drastic measures to avoid the vote, so he didn’t inform GOP leadership of his plan to introduce the resolution, which he did on the House floor on Tuesday.
“And there it is. Just as I predicted. They’re canceling Congress tomorrow to avoid the vote on IMPEACHING [Hegseth]. It will also make it harder for us to reach 218 signatures on the Epstein Discharge Petition before the election. We were at 190+ signatures last night,” Massie wrote on X after Johnson canceled the votes.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson talks with reporters about the House finishing votes today instead of on Thursday, in the US Capitol on Wednesday, September 16, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect)
While Johnson didn’t explicitly say the Hegseth impeachment was the reason for canceling Thursday’s votes, Reese Gorman, a reporter for The Washington Sun, reported right before the cancellation was official that some in House leadership “want to avoid a vote on the Hegseth impeachment set to come up tomorrow since it’s privileged.”
Johnson’s move also came after seven House Republicans voted against the Iran war by voting in favor of a War Powers Resolution that would direct President Trump to end the conflict. The bill passed 220-204, with all 213 Democrats present voting in favor.
The House has held multiple votes on the Iran war, but the Tuesday night vote had the highest number of Republicans supporting a resolution to end the conflict, signaling that Massie may get some Republican support over the Hegseth impeachment since it’s centered on the conflict with Iran.
Both the House and the Senate have already passed a concurrent Iran War Powers Resolution, which, under the 1973 War Powers Act, should direct the president to remove US forces from hostilities with Iran.
Massie argued in his eight articles of impeachment for Hegseth that passing the concurrent War Powers Resolution was one of the multiple ways Hegseth and the administration are breaking the law by continuing the Iran war.
The articles also address how Hegseth has ignored US laws designed to mitigate civilian casualties, his role in extrajudicial executions at sea (strikes on alleged drug-running boats), the attack on Venezuela to abduct President Maduro, the bombing campaign in Yemen last year, and his efforts to chill free speech.
The Trump administration is planning to move forward with a massive military aid package for Israel that will include 40,000 2,000-pound bombs, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, as the US continues to support Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and its wars and occupations in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria.
The report said the sale, paid for with US taxpayer dollars, will include 20,000 MK-84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, each weighing 2,000 pounds. It will be funded by the State Department’s Foreign Military Finance program, under which the US provides foreign governments money to purchase US weapons.
Tucker Carlson first reported the massive transfer in a post on X minutes before the Post published the report.
President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on July 28, 2026 (White House photo)
“An American-made Mark 84 has a destruction radius of half a mile. It releases a thermal wave the temperature of the surface of the sun. Within 100 feet of the explosion, rock melts and human flesh turns to vapor,” Carlson said.
“The bomb collapses apartment buildings and leaves craters thirty-five feet deep. Until the war with Iran, the US military generally avoided using the Mark 84 in urban areas. It kills too many civilians,” he added. A recent US strike in southern Iran that hit a house hosting a wedding, killing at least five civilians, was likely carried out with an MK-84, according to an investigation from The New York Times.
Carlson noted Israel’s extensive use of 2,000-pound bombs in Gaza. “In the weeks after October 7, the IDF dropped nearly six hundred 2,000-pound bombs on densely populated areas in Gaza, including on more than 100 officially designated civilian evacuation zones. The slaughter was so grotesque and embarrassing that for a moment the Biden administration paused a shipment of Mark 84s. Those shipments quickly resumed under Trump. Now they’ve accelerated,” he said.
According to Carlson, the Israeli request for the massive bomb shipment “originated at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, which is run by Christian Zionist Ambassador Mike Huckabee and his aide David Milstein, who is the stepson of Fox News host Mark Levin.” He said it was quickly approved by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and now needs the approval of Senate leaders, though the Trump administration has previously bypassed the normal congressional review process to arm Israel with 2,000-pound bombs.
President Donald Trump attends a meeting at the White House Oval Office in Washington, DC on September 9, 2026.
(Photo by White House)
“Even for the notoriously corrupt and lawless Trump, this explicit and desperate attempt to buy votes in the November election is a new low,” said one watchdog leader.
Many Democrats in Congress are on the growing list of critics calling out President Donald Trump for his Wednesday night vow to give US voters $5,000 each if they help Republicans win control of the Senate and House of Representatives—where they already have majorities—in the November midterm elections.
“Nothing says confidence like trying to bribe people for votes,” Congressman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) quipped Thursday.
When Fox News’ Laura Ingraham later asked, “Why not just give the money now?” Trump attempted to blame Democrats.
Noting the president’s jumbled response to that question, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said: “I don’t know what this even means, but I do know the reason Trump won’t give a straight answer is that he doesn’t really mean to send these checks to anyone. He has lied about this over and over again, and he’s lying now. Just like he lied when he said he would lower costs.”
Some critics highlighted other cases of Trump pledging to give Americans money, including alleged savings from the actions of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an effort spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk.
Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said: “So now it’s $5,000 bribes that Trump will never deliver to attempt to make voters forget what they are paying for gas and food. What ever happened to those promised DOGE checks? Americans are not fools, we know he lies daily.”
Blasting the president as “our pathological liar-in-chief,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also pointed to previous instances of Trump promising money, from a 10% cap on credit card interest rates to $2 for a gallon of gasoline.
“The Trump administration is not about helping working families,” the former presidential candidate stressed. “It’s about giving a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1% and throwing 15 million Americans off the healthcare they have.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has also sought the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, shared on social media Groundwork Collaborative’s roundup of 15 times Trump has promised a check, dividend, or rebate—and not delivered.
Some Democratic governors also took aim at Trump. California’s Gavin Newsom, who is expected to run for president in 2028, said: “After making you sicker and poorer with his war, Donald Trump now wants to buy your vote with $5,000 in taxpayer-funded blood money. The most corrupt man ever to occupy the Oval Office.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul emphasized that “Trump owes New Yorkers $13.5 billion for his illegal tariffs and hasn’t paid up.”
“Now he’s dangling $5,000 checks if Republicans win Congress. A trillion-dollar campaign bribe from a guy who doesn’t pay his bills,” she added. “Fool me once…”
It’s not just elected Democrats ripping Trump’s new pledge. Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a Thursday statement that “even for the notoriously corrupt and lawless Trump, this explicit and desperate attempt to buy votes in the November election is a new low.”
“Trump knows he can’t do this, and yet he’s attempting to bribe voters with the false promise of cash to help his party win an election, which is antithetical to every principle of American democracy,” she continued. “Every Republican at the convention and across the country should loudly and vehemently denounce Trump for proposing this dangerous and transparently illegal scheme. The fact that no one has done that yet is cause for deep alarm about the future of American elections.”
The US-Iran war entered a new phase on Tuesday, with Washington and Tehran exchanging missile strikes that included attacks on shipping and threats of further escalation across the Middle East.
The US destroyed five Iranian oil tankers after Iran reportedly launched ballistic missiles at a US Navy warship. Iran responded with missile attacks on a US military installation in Jordan along with threats against American-linked shipping in the Persian Gulf.
This image from video released by U.S. Central Command shows an explosion at Bandar Abbas Naval Base, Iran, as three Corsair unmanned surface vessels, also called one-way attack surface drones, fired by the US military, hit the port, July 12, 2026. [AP Photo/U.S. Central Command]
The latest escalation demonstrates the collapse of every claim by the White House that the war is being wound up through limited military actions, economic sanctions or temporary ceasefires. The conflict is spreading geographically and increasingly targeting the infrastructure upon which the global economy depends.
On Tuesday, US Central Command said American forces struck five Iranian crude-oil carriers, four in the Gulf of Oman and one near Kharg Island. One tanker was sunk, while the remaining vessels were described by the Pentagon as disabled or rendered inoperable.
The attacks followed what Washington said were two Iranian ballistic-missile attacks against a US Navy warship over the previous two days. CENTCOM said the American vessel evaded the missiles and no US personnel were injured. Iranian state media and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) gave a different account, claiming that Iranian forces had damaged US destroyers carrying cruise missiles and Aegis air-defense systems.
The US military’s action follows an increasingly explicit policy of reprisal against Iranian shipping. American officials have threatened to strike multiple Iranian vessels for every US ship attacked by Tehran. The policy amounts to a declaration that Washington will use military force to enforce its control over Iranian maritime trade, regardless of the consequences for global commercial shipping.
Iran has threatened to prevent vessels linked to the US and its allies from passing through the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC urged crews to abandon tankers in waters near Kuwait and Bahrain and warned that additional ships could be attacked.
Roughly one-fifth of the world’s petroleum supply passes through the strait. Any sustained disruption will affect fuel prices, transportation, food production and industrial supply chains throughout the world.
Iran claimed that its missiles struck facilities used for aircraft maintenance, deployment and shelter. US officials said the attack was ineffective and that all American personnel were accounted for. Jordanian authorities reported that 20 ballistic missiles were fired toward the country. Eighteen were intercepted by Jordanian air defenses, while two fell in unpopulated areas. No casualties were reported.
Iran also claimed that it had targeted American warships and other military assets in the region. The competing accounts of events could not be independently confirmed.
The attack nevertheless marks a significant expansion of the war. Jordan has attempted to avoid becoming a direct combatant, but its hosting of US forces makes it a potential target in any confrontation between Washington and Tehran. The same is true of US bases and military facilities across Iraq, the Gulf monarchies and the eastern Mediterranean.
The US military installation is generally identified as Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, located near Al-Azraq in eastern Jordan. The base is a major Jordanian air facility that hosts US military personnel and supports American air operations.
Iranian officials said their missiles targeted aircraft-maintenance and preparation facilities, deployment areas and hardened shelters associated with US F-35, F-16 and F-15 fighter aircraft. Some reports also referred to the nearby Prince Hassan Air Base as a target, but the precise facilities struck remain unclear.
Iranian officials have warned that the Middle East is “practically on the brink of World War Three,” according to The Independent. The statement, made by Tehran parliamentarian Kamran Ghazanfari, cited the widening conflict involving the United States, Iran and other regional and international powers. The war is drawing in US allies, Iranian-backed forces, commercial shipping and the global energy market.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday before leaving for Dallas, President Donald Trump predicted that the war would end “immediately after” the US midterm elections in November. “I think war is going to end immediately after the election because they can’t hold out any longer,” Trump said.
The US President accused Tehran of being “desperate to try and affect the election,” while insisting that Iran was weakening under American economic pressure. Trump also indicated that Washington was not seeking to restart negotiations after the collapse of earlier ceasefires.
The timing of Trump’s prediction reveals some of the political calculations behind the war. The president is presenting the conflict simultaneously as a military campaign, an economic siege and an election issue. Claiming that Iran will soon capitulate, Trump offers no explanation for why a government supposedly on the verge of collapse has been able to continue missile attacks, threaten shipping and deny Washington its stated objectives after six months of bombing.
Earlier this week, Trump declared on social media that oil prices would “drop precipitously” when the United States “WIN[s] the war with Iran.” This statement connects the administration’s effort to portray military domination of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s energy exports with a claimed solution to the economic inflationary consequences of the war.
Oil markets have responded to each new military escalation with sharp price increases. Brent crude rose to about $99 a barrel Tuesday after reports of renewed attacks on US Navy vessels and the destruction of Iranian tankers. West Texas Intermediate crude reached approximately $94 a barrel. Brent had already climbed above $90 earlier in September after the fighting intensified, while prices in August reached their highest levels in nearly a month after Trump threatened retaliation against countries supporting Iran.
The impact of the war is being felt by the working class internationally through higher gasoline, heating and transportation costs. The Independent cited an estimate from Brown University that the war had added $100 billion to US energy costs, or roughly $763 per household, with the total increasing by about $1 million every two minutes.
The price surge has created opportunities for energy corporations and financial speculators, including those with direct connections in the White House, to cash in on the market instability. Trump’s nine largest disclosed oil and gas holdings reportedly gained between $1.5 million and $4.4 million during the first six months of the war. His investment accounts continued buying and selling shares in companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.
These disclosures show that the president is running a war that directly affects asset values held by him and his family. The White House denies that Trump or his relatives have any role in investment decisions, saying the holdings are managed independently through discretionary accounts and automated investment models.
This denial does not resolve the issue since the president need not personally place every trade for the financial interests of his family and the entire ruling oligarchy to benefit from the war. Energy companies, defense contractors, shipping firms and banks are all profiting from the destruction of productive resources and the militarization of economic life. This is a fundamental tendency of imperialism.
While the Trump administration claims that military pressure will force Tehran to surrender, the facts point in the opposite direction. After months of bombing and blockade, Iran has not capitulated, the Strait of Hormuz remains contested and American forces are increasingly exposed across the region.
The latest developments confirm the analysis of the World Socialist Web Site, which has described the war as part of a broader imperialist struggle for control of energy resources, strategic chokepoints and global economic power, particularly against China, which had been the principal buyer of Iranian oil.
The war will not be ended by Trump’s election timetable. Washington’s objective is not simply about shipping in the Strait of Hormuz but the strategic imperative that US imperialism must assert its domination over Iran and the entire Middle East.
Meanwhile, Tehran’s response is incapable of ending the conflict and reflects the dead end of bourgeois nationalism under conditions of an escalating imperialist military siege.
The alternative to this spiral toward a new world war is the independent mobilization of the working class in the United States, Iran and internationally against imperialist war and the capitalist system that produces it. The immediate demand must be the end of all US military operations, the withdrawal of American forces from the Middle East and the lifting of sanctions and the naval blockade.
Iranian military personnel take part in an exercise titled “Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz”, launched by the Naval Forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is being carried out in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz on February 16, 2026. [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Anadolu Agency]
Iranian state television has broadcast footage it said showed ballistic missile attacks on a US aircraft carrier and destroyer, as Iran and the United States exchanged strikes on military and oil-related targets in and around the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the two US warships were targeted with Iranian-made Qasem Basir ballistic missiles, alleging that the vessels had participated in a naval blockade of Iranian shipping.
The IRGC claimed the missiles damaged both vessels and forced them to withdraw from the area. The footage broadcast by Iranian state media was presented as documenting the attacks, but the claims of direct hits and damage could not be independently verified.
The Iranian military described the strikes as retaliation for US attacks on three Iranian oil tankers.
The US military said on Saturday that it had targeted three tankers linked to the Revolutionary Guard, permanently disabling two and destroying a third. It described the vessels as part of a network generating funds for the IRGC and Iran-aligned groups in the region.
According to the US military, one tanker was targeted off Kharg Island, the site of Iran’s largest oil export terminal, another near the Strait of Hormuz, and the third in the Gulf of Oman.
The Revolutionary Guard confirmed that three Iranian tankers had been attacked and subsequently announced retaliatory operations against US naval assets.
In a separate statement on Sunday, the IRGC said its naval forces had targeted a US unmanned surface vessel that it claimed was attempting to enter a restricted area of the Strait of Hormuz. The outcome of that attack was not independently confirmed.
Iranian authorities also said their forces had targeted three oil tankers that were allegedly transiting the strait without authorization, as well as several US warships in other locations.
The exchanges come amid heightened military tensions between Washington and Tehran and stalled diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. The United States has also intensified economic pressure on Iran through sanctions and restrictions targeting Iranian oil revenues and entities linked to the Revolutionary Guard.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on Wednesday, September 2 that it had set a record for the number of arrests of immigrants for the third straight month. The department, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), claimed it kidnapped 50,925 people in August, exceeding the nearly 50,000 the month before and the 49,000 in June.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents make an arrest during an early morning operation in Park Ridge, Illinois, Sept. 19, 2025. [AP Photo/Erin Hooley]
“For the third straight month, ICE set a new record for the highest number of illegal aliens arrested in a single month, nearly 51,000,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin gloated in a DHS press release.
DHS claims over 3 million people have left the country since Trump returned to the White House. This includes those who were deported, illegally renditioned to a third country, or, under threat of being kidnapped and held in a for-profit concentration camp, “voluntarily” left the country.
While the Trump administration scapegoats immigrants for all the problems created by the capitalist system—from rising home prices and stagnant wages to every form of criminality—ICE arrest data analyzed by Cato Institute immigration analyst David Bier showed that 79 percent of those arrested had no criminal conviction. Fifty-five percent had neither a conviction nor a pending criminal charge, while only 4 percent had been convicted of a violent offense. Bier testified before the House Judiciary Committee last week.
The assault on immigrants is part of a broader attack by the ruling class directed against the entire working class. Under conditions where the national debt has soared past $40 trillion and workers and young people are increasingly interested in socialist politics, the US government is criminalizing opposition and making people “illegal” who had lived legally in the country for years.
In July, the Trump administration terminated Temporary Protected Status for some 350,000 Haitian immigrants, and TPS protection is scheduled to end for roughly 170,000 Salvadorans on September 9.
In Springfield, Ohio, some Haitian immigrants have gone underground while more than 100 have been fitted with GPS trackers, typically reserved for violent felons under criminal supervision. ICE has imposed restrictions on many Haitians as to where they can travel or if they can leave the state.
One of the Haitians fitted with the equivalent of a modern-day yellow star, Wright State University college student Pierre Damas Bel, died August 31 in what his family calls a suicide, when he was struck by a tractor trailer on Interstate 70 near Springfield.
“After my son was outfitted with an ankle monitor, he felt like he was treated like an animal,” his father, Pierre Ronal Bel, said in a written statement. “He took two trips to Cincinnati and Westerville to plead with the officers to remove the bracelet since he’s a soccer player and he felt embarrassed and humiliated. When he’s among his classmates at the university—he’s a student at Wright State—he was bullied a lot with a lot of people telling him he’s a criminal.”
In a July 30 Instagram carousel post, Pierre Damas Bel highlighted his accomplishments and spoke in defense of immigrants and Haitians.
“I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone,” he wrote.
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. I came here to study, to build my future and to live a better [life], not to be treated like a criminal. So now, how am I supposed to play college sports with a GPS monitor on my leg?
Screenshot of Pierre Damas Bel’s July 30 Instagram post describing the shame and humiliation of being forced to wear an ICE GPS ankle monitor.
On Thursday, the Trump administration carried out its third consecutive weekly deportation flight to Haiti since TPS ended, and at least the 11th flight this year. The flight originated in Alexandria, Louisiana and landed in Cap-Haïtien with 101 deportees aboard, according to a Haitian Foreign Affairs Ministry official.
In a fascistic post celebrating the deportation, DHS Secretary Mullin shared an image on X featuring black men in chains, with the caption, “Good morning, America. Today’s deportation destination: HAITI.”
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s September 3 post on X gloating over a deportation flight to Haiti, accompanied by an image of men in chains waiting to board a plane.
Haiti remains under a State Department Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory due to “crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest and limited healthcare.” As the World Socialist Web Site previously reported, war criminal and Trump ally Erik Prince’s private military company Vectus Global is carrying out an undeclared drone war with Haitian government forces against the population, which has resulted in over 1,000 deaths.
As ICE is increasing its kidnapping operations, resistance is growing among workers, students and community members throughout the country.
Last Wednesday, September 2, more than 1,000 people protested against ICE kidnapping operations in Danbury, Connecticut. In the week prior, Connecticut Mirror reported that ICE had taken over 100 people in the state, a majority from Danbury. The town is located about 50 miles north of New York City and is home to just under 90,000 people.
Danbury, Connecticut residents gather outside a courthouse to protest ICE kidnappings in the area, Thursday, August 27, 2026. [AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey]
Residents report that ICE thugs have been going after immigrants at work, while shopping for groceries and even while dropping off their kids at school bus stops. Juliana Soares, a lead organizer of the group “Danbury Unites for Immigrants,” told NBC that at least 65 families in the community had been impacted by ICE operations.
Speaking with Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now!,” Soares surmised that Danbury was being targeted by ICE because “Danbury is a diverse city, it’s one of the most diverse cities in the country.” Roughly one third of the city’s population is Latino, according to the US Census Bureau, including a large Brazilian population.
Describing the police terror, Soares said, “The streets were empty, kids stayed home from practice, kids stayed home from school, kids were seeing [their parents taken] from inside the bus, as agents, masked agents often, would shut down the street to just abduct people.”
In Colorado on Friday, September 4, students from more than 200 high schools throughout the state walked out of class to protest attacks on immigrants. Walkouts featuring dozens to hundreds of students occurred in Denver, the surrounding suburbs, Colorado Springs and, significantly, Greeley, where some 3,800 meatpacking workers went on strike earlier this year in the largest meatpacking struggle in decades.
A majority of the workers at the JBS plant in Greeley are immigrants, with dozens of languages spoken inside the plant. During the strike, a worker at the plant told WSWS reporters, “We represent the immigrants and all the people of color. That’s us, that’s the people that are doing these jobs.
“Without immigrants, there is no food, there is no work.”
Video from Friday’s protest in Greeley shows students marching while chanting, “Get ICE out!” Students carried handmade signs that read, “Immigrants make America great!” and “Abolish ICE.”
In an interview with the Greeley Tribune, Greeley Central High School student Josely Vazquez said, “People shouldn’t be scared to leave their houses.” Vazquez is originally from Mexico and moved to Greeley when she was 9.
The students marched to Lincoln Park. Along the way, drivers honked in support and flew flags from many countries, including Mexico and Palestine.
In Denver, hundreds of students rallied at La Alma-Lincoln Park to protest ICE kidnapping operations. In an interview with ColoradoNewsline, 15-year-old student Macy Brown said, “I think human rights are really important, and I think we all need to speak up against injustices that are happening right in front of us.”
Naya Ferguson, a 16-year-old student at Bear Creek High School in Jefferson County, said she drove to the park to attend the protest after seeing students walking out of her school. She told ColoradoNewsLine, “What ICE is doing is just unconstitutional, unlawful. It’s inhumane, and I just don’t want to sit back and just watch it happen. It’s not who I am.”
On Friday, on the other side of the country, in Fredrick, Maryland, ICE thugs, with police watching, bludgeoned and assaulted non-violent protesters who had formed a human chain around a house targeted by the immigration Gestapo. Residents and local reporters claim ICE began menacing residents in Fredrick on Monday, August 31, and specifically in the Taskers Chance neighborhood beginning on Wednesday.
Residents reported seeing SUVs with tinted windows and masked and armed men on street corners and parked outside houses. In response, residents began organizing shifts to observe the agents and their activities.
On Friday night, after agents had occupied a section of the neighborhood for more than 40 hours, ICE thugs lined up several vehicles and began to surround a house. Observers on the sidewalk were forced to move out of the path of the ICE vehicles, which drove onto the sidewalk, nearly striking several observers.
César Díaz, Frederick City Council president, told the Baltimore Banner he witnessed Katie Nash, vice president of the Frederick City Council, nearly run over by an ICE agent. “People had to move or risk getting run over,” he said, identifying Nash as a person at risk. “I had to step back to avoid from getting hit by the car.”
In front of the home, several community members and anti-ICE protesters were seated with locked arms to prevent ICE officers from entering. It is unclear if ICE agents ever presented a warrant of any kind, judicial or administrative.
With local police watching, ICE goons began attacking the nonviolent protesters in front of the house. Video taken by bystanders shows ICE agents swinging batons at people seated on the ground.
After clearing a path to the door, ICE agents entered the house but left without making any arrests.
The Trump administration is able to carry out the mass deportation operation only because of the collaboration of the Democratic Party. Last week the House, in a resounding bipartisan 370-48 vote, passed legislation to fund the federal government, including DHS, through December 11.
The bill, which was supported by Trump, had already cleared the Senate. It was signed by Trump on September 2.
The necessity of building an independent movement in the working class against both parties and the capitalist system they represent could not be any clearer. While posturing against Trump’s fascistic regime, the Democrats do everything in their power to ensure that his legislative and police state agenda moves forward.
The protests against ICE in Colorado, Maryland and throughout the country point the way forward. But protesting is not enough. The protests must become the starting point for uniting the working class, immigrant and native-born, and mobilizing its social power independently of both capitalist parties on the basis of a socialist perspective.
There is a point in the decline of republics when the problem is no longer that government breaks its own laws. Governments will always behave unlawfully. The deeper problem comes when the constitutional machinery designed to prevent those acts stops functioning — when spending becomes detached from arithmetic, presidential power becomes detached from law, and Congress and the courts become detached from the Constitution.
That’s where America is today.
The fiscal warning could hardly be clearer. The government’s debt has now passed $40 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.9 trillion federal deficit for fiscal year 2026, with annual deficits rising to $3.1 trillion by 2036.
Worse, borrowing itself is becoming more expensive. Ten-year Treasury yields recently reached 4.6% and 30-year yields 5.2%, as investors demand greater compensation for lending money to Washington. The July 2026 deficit alone reached $432 billion.
The uniparty government in the past 110 years has produced a vicious circle: It spends more than it collects, borrows the difference, pays interest on the borrowing and borrows still more to pay the interest. Eventually, arithmetic becomes destiny.
But fiscal insolvency is only half the story. What is more frightening is the simultaneous deterioration of constitutional norms.
The president increasingly acts as though his personality is the source of his legal authority.
The United States has gone to war without the congressional authorization that the Constitution was designed to require. And the U.S. has attacked speedboats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, with more than 220 people murdered and no legal basis for killing and dispensing with due process.
In January, the United States military killed 47 persons in Venezuela during its violent kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Whatever one’s opinion of Maduro, the fundamental question remains: By what constitutional authority does an American president decide that a foreign head of state may be violently seized by the United States? None.
This is not a defense of Maduro. It is a defense of the principle that American presidents do not possess a roving commission to decide whom the United States may depose, kidnap or kill.
The distinction matters because constitutional government is supposed to stand between political power and its targets. The president is supposed to enforce the law, not create it. Congress is supposed to write the laws, not ignore them. The courts are supposed to enforce the Constitution, not evade it.
Yet Congress increasingly behaves as though presidential power is someone else’s problem.
Members of Congress complain loudly when the other party occupies the White House and become remarkably accommodating when their own party holds it. The result is an informal bipartisan transfer of power from the legislative to the executive. Every president inherits the precedents accumulated by his predecessor and then adds a few of his own. The next president inherits those precedents and stretches them further.
Eventually, there are no meaningful limits.
The same disease infects the courts. Judicial review remains theoretically formidable, but judicial intervention often comes after the government has already exercised power unconstitutionally. A constitutional right that can be violated first and litigated later is a fragile right. The person who has been silenced, imprisoned, deported, injured or killed cannot be restored to his previous condition merely because a court eventually announces that the government acted unlawfully and awards damages. Nor can a half-built, never-congressionally-authorized, $1 billion ballroom-for-billionaires be feasibly demolished.
The central question should be: What are the government’s legal authorities and what are their limits?
Instead that question has become: What can the president get away with?
A free people should not have to depend upon the temperament of the person occupying the Oval Office. The Constitution was designed precisely because the founders understood that limited government cannot depend upon a few good people. They assumed that presidents would sometimes be venal and unscrupulous, Congress sometimes pliant and cowardly, and judges sometimes wrong. So they constructed competing institutions, with divided authorities and checks and balances, making governing difficult.
That difficulty was intentional.
A government that can spend without limit, wage war without Congress, kill without trial, kidnap without consequence and employ overwhelming force without due process is a government behaving outside the Constitution.
And the financial numbers make the constitutional deterioration even more ominous. A government approaching $40 trillion in debt cannot endlessly promise every constituency that someone else will pay.
This is how great powers decline — not necessarily with a dramatic explosion, but through accumulated exemptions, exceptions and evasions.
The president says the Constitution permits whatever he wants to do because the national security demands it. Congress permits the president to do what he wants because confronting him is politically inconvenient. The courts intervene only after it is too late to undo the damage and strain at a gnat to avoid hard decisions. The Treasury borrows another trillion dollars because balancing the books would be a nightmare.
The public becomes accustomed to extraordinary government power because yesterday’s outrage becomes today’s precedent.
Then, one morning, people wake up and discover that the constitutional republic they inherited exists mostly on paper.
But the night before this realization — at twilight’s last gleaming — the nation that once possessed protections for personal freedoms, opportunities for wealth, and a unique cultural environment sees its former fidelity to the first principles that made those things possible slipping away.
A republic survives only when the passionate among us light brushfires of freedom by insisting that the U.S. stays out of other countries’ business, presidents obey the law, Congresses exercise constitutional powers, courts enforce constitutional limits, war is a last resort, and governments acknowledge that borrowed money is not free money.
The alternative is gradual normalization of unlimited debt, unlimited executive discretion and unlimited rationalizations.
The twilight of our constitutional republic has not arrived because the sun suddenly disappeared. It has arrived because, little by little, nearly everyone became accustomed to the darkness.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the US Constitution. The most recent isSuicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2025 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO – DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) speaks during the Senate Budget Committee hearing titled Should Taxpayer Dollars Go to Companies that Violate Labor Laws?” in Dirksen Building on Thursday, May 5, 2022.
(Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
We face an unprecedented fascist and imperialist threat from the Trump administration; mealy-mouthed centrist imperialism just won’t do the trick.
On Friday, the Trump administration announced a “deal” handing the United States65 billion barrels of Venezuelan crude oil, roughly a fifth of the country’s total reserves (the largest on Earth), on leases running up to 100 years. They would give $200 billion, or just about $3 a barrel (just 3% of market value) to Venezuela. If this was a fair “deal,” following market value, it should be over $6 trillion. That may be the biggest fraud in human history.
Marines have openly occupied the streets of Caracas since, doing numerous muscle-flexing helicopter raids across the city. The administration has said Venezuela is “not ready yet” for elections, despite running their own elections for decades—plus, why does the US get to dictate when and if countries can have elections, anyway?
The Pentagon itself reportedly holds a 35% stake in the venture set to extract the oil, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio runs the country as its de facto “viceroy,” according to The New York Times. The whole scheme was backed by neocons like the Vandenberg Coalition and the Florida lobby.
Would the US accept it if China, Russia, Iran, or Mexico kidnapped a US president, bombed American fishermen, seized American oil fields, and installed a puppet government because officials in Beijing or Tehran deemed it “in the national interest”?
I guess they’ve stopped pretending this was ever about democracy or drugs (the original bogus reason). It is now even being sold as the cure-all for a worsening recession and a pre-midterm buy-off, even as the affordability crisis worsens.
President Donald Trump and the neocons’ message seems to be: It’s fine to steal trillions from other countries, kidnap their leaders, kill civilians, and install puppet governments, for profit. We skipped the Cold War and went straight back to old-school imperialism.
As almost always, most of the windfall from this “deal” will go to the super rich. Gas prices keep climbing, but oil majors are hitting record highs on Wall Street. Chevron’s stock sits near an all-time high as it committed $7 billion to the new venture. Canada’s largest oil investor also hit an all-time high in the stock market the day of the news.
You may ask yourself, how have Democrats responded to all this depravity and barbarism? Well, would it shock you if I said most Democratic politicians have attacked Trump from the right, and legitimated his warmongering? Unfortunately, it probably won’t.
My home state’s senator, the ever-boring Tim Kaine (D-Va.), joined by Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), filed a war-powers resolution to block what they called an “illegal war” with Venezuela. “Illegal” is the operative word. Their objection is that Congress never voted on this, not that invading, bombing, and looting a sovereign country is morally wrong.
In a Tweet, quoting the right-wing oil-funded Wall Street Journal, Kaine added that Trump had “Invaded Venezuela, Removed the dictator Maduro but… Kept his VP in power While blocking opposition leader and Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado from returning home and delaying all talk of elections,” ending on “So the US could control Venezuelan oil in violation of its constitution!”
He’s basically saying, “We want to coup foreign governments to put in a far-right puppet and take their oil, LEGALLY.” We don’t need Mickey Mouse anti-imperialists.
If Congress had passed a resolution approving all of it, the way it did for the wars in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, would that make it morally acceptable? Of course not. Torture under the Bush administration was legal, as was the US colonization of the Philippines, and even the Transatlantic Slave Trade, for that matter.
But for Democratic leadership, this was never about principle, or backing a truly progressive foreign policy vision; they just care about opposing Trump for its sake, and respecting the oh-so-perfect process. Though legislating morality is the purpose of law, legality and morality are not the same—and in this case, legal approval means nothing.
This is nothing new. Democrats have spent decades backing a hawkish, neoliberal Venezuela policy. During the 2002 coup that briefly ousted democratically elected president Hugo Chávez, then-Sen. Joe Biden dodged the question on television before pivoting, months later, to demand Washington “ratchet this up” against Chávez. By 2006 he was warning of an “axis of oil” led by Venezuela, echoing talking points from neoconservatives like Iraq War architect John Bolton.
Washington-aligned opposition forces also waged the 2002-2003 PDVSA oil lockout meant to strangle Chávez’s government economically. In 2019, when Trump anointed the unelected Juan Guaidó as president, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recognized him, and most congressional Democrats stayed silent or lined up behind her.
Now, with the Pentagon routinely bombing fishing boats off Venezuela’s coast for months, which it says, without evidence, are narco boats, killing hundreds of civilians, Democrats’ loudest objection was, again, that Congress hadn’t authorized it.
They wanted to see “proof” of these being narco boats, rather than focusing on the more important point: Are we okay with just murdering any suspected criminal? This is the kind of logic that leads to right-wing politicians arguing to kill thieves and petty drug peddlers, like in Brazil and the Philippines.
Hillary Clinton, of all people, said more than many elected Democrats would. Now Democrats are lining up behind Delcy’s far-right replacement-in-waiting, María Corina Machado. Even the Central Intelligence Agency thought she was too extreme and alienating to be Maduro’s replacement. Yet, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) met with Machado months before she shamefully won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize (before giving it to Trump). Durbin later co-sponsored a resolution honoring her alongside far-right Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rick Scott (Florida). Most Democrats have been backing her as the next president, calling her a “champion of democracy,” among other ridiculous stolen valor.
Machado, backed by the Bush administration and US intelligence agencies, backed the 2002 coup; relentlessly pushed for and defended the sanctions that starved her own country; wants to privatize PDVSA and hand away her country’s, in her own words, “trillions of dollars of natural resources” to the US on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast; and has praised autocrats like Daniel Noboa, Javier Milei, and Nayib Bukele.
Machado is “completely aligned,” historian Greg Grandin told Democracy Now!, “with the most militarist and darkest face of US imperialism. She was the main force lobbying for the coup against Maduro, and has supported the boat strikes on fishermen, her own fellow citizens. She has been supported by neocon war criminals like John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Mike Pompeo—does that sound like someone the Democrats should be backing?
There are, still, some exceptions worth naming. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has made the actual moral case, not just the legal one, calling Trump’s approach a return to “the era of gunboat diplomacy where might makes right” and saying plainly, “It’s not just that it’s strategically wrong. It’s morally wrong.” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has also warned against letting “control of the world’s most powerful military” rest in one man’s hands, and called out Trump’s imperialism plainly.
Expanding the anti-war coalition, libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has repeatedly co-sponsored bipartisan war-powers resolutions with Democrats Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.) and Joaquin Castro (Texas), arguing, “This is not about drugs; this is about oil and regime change… our troops are not pawns to be risked for the profits of oil companies and investment bankers.” A real transpartisan anti-war bloc is possible, it just needs bold politicians to lead it.
We face an unprecedented fascist and imperialist threat. Washington is using its world-bending power to expand its territory, remove leaders who won’t play ball with US crony and intelligence interests, and turn sovereign countries into de facto American possessions. Venezuela, as even the often-disappointing New York Times has reported, has effectively become a US colony.
Mealy-mouthed centrist imperialism just won’t do the trick. A legal invasion is still an invasion. Pursuing “US interests” doesn’t give any official carte blanche to roam the world like rogue thugs. Would the US accept it if China, Russia, Iran, or Mexico kidnapped a US president, bombed American fishermen, seized American oil fields, and installed a puppet government because officials in Beijing or Tehran deemed it “in the national interest”? They might nuke them within the hour.
All empires end at some point. When it does, no power will grant the US the mercy it denied the countries it pillaged.
Democrats, and American officials generally, should recognize their precarious position in a world increasingly turning toward rivals like China, and finally build that coalition in earnest. Thankfully, there are now constituencies challenging Washington’s neo-imperial consensus, in academia, in think tanks, at the State Department, and even in Congress, that are growing too significant to ignore.
US fuel prices and global energy costs are soaring as a result of the illegal war and Iran’s retaliatory strikes, as polls indicate significant discontent among voters
US President Donald Trump is having discussions with his senior aides about “whether to declare the Iran war over,” according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on 2 September.
“Trump has said he favors the idea. Trump also tells aides that he believes sticking with economic pressure will eventually force the regime either to dismantle its nuclear program or collapse,” the report states, citing US officials
“Aides are advising Trump that an escalation of the Iran war beyond recent tit-for-tat strikes could endanger Republican prospects in the November midterm elections,” WSJ added.
Despite this, a massive US military buildup across the region continues. The outlet notes that Washington is maintaining a presence of 50,000 troops in West Asia.
This is “in part” to give Trump “flexibility” on “next steps,” given that “he isn’t taking electoral consequences into account when making decisions on the war.”
“US forces … stand ready to launch larger offensive attacks should Trump choose to escalate the war,” WSJ writes.
The report coincides with major discontent among the US public with the illegal war launched by Washington and Tel Aviv in February.
As part of the widespread global energy consequences of the US-Israeli war, US citizens are now facing surging fuel costs that have reached record levels.
Long-term US borrowing costs have climbed to a two-decade high as investors pull away from US Treasuries, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz pushing Brent crude above $92 a barrel, driving up fuel prices for US consumers and feeding the inflation fears that weigh most heavily on long-dated debt.
“That energy spike is reinforcing inflation worries in a bond market already nervous about America’s $40 trillion mountain of debt,” CNN wrote this week, adding that “yellow lights are flashing” in the US bond market.
“The bond market stress will make it more expensive for consumers to get a mortgage, for businesses to borrow and for Washington to pay the bills,” the report goes on to say, while noting a “problem for the global economy.”
Polls also indicate opposition to the war among US citizens in general.
A University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst national survey revealed on 1 September that Trump’s approval rating has dropped to a record low of 32 percent due to the war on Iran and its economic fallout.
Late on Tuesday, Washington carried out a new and massive escalation, launching a series of strikes on the Islamic Republic, including a strike that killed and wounded dozens at a wedding in the country’s south.
Tehran has responded with heavy missile and drone attacks on US military infrastructure across the region.
The escalation follows the declaration of a US economic war of illegal sanctions against Tehran.
“With these desperate struggles, you will not only fail to escape the depths of the hell you have created for yourselves, but you will soon see that Iran’s new strategy on the battlefield, in diplomacy, and in confronting the economic blockade will shatter your very foundations,” the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, vowed on Wednesday.
US military bases across the region have been heavily damaged since the start of the war.
Tehran has responded to Trump’s repeated threats of wiping out Iranian energy assets by warning that its forces will destroy all US-linked oil and gas infrastructure across the region.
Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Whether he actually said it or not, the definition stands.
This definition also very well describes the Trump Administration’s war with Iran. According to media reports, President Trump was cajoled by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that this would be an “easy war,” like Venezuela. Just assassinate the Iranian leadership, he promised, and the regime change would bring in a pro-America regime in Iran.
The CIA disagreed with the assessment, but Trump went with Netanyahu and the rest is history.
The “decapitation strikes” did not change leadership in Iran. As was the case in the US after the 9/11 attacks, the people rallied around the flag. The new leadership was less interested in a compromise than their murdered predecessors.
So the bombing began. Weeks of bombing. But that didn’t work – it only depleted our already-low weapons supplies.
Then “diplomacy” was substituted for bombs and a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by both sides. The US side immediately broke the agreement by attempting to open a new ship corridor by force and the bombs started flying again.
For the past month, the bombs stopped only to start up last weekend, with a US strike on an Iranian island. This was followed again by multiple Iranian strikes on US bases in the region.
Bombs then diplomacy, bombs then diplomacy. President Trump has told us dozens of times that us the war is over, and we have won, but no one believes it any longer. He claims that the US completely controls the Strait of Hormuz while the shipping corridors are empty.
The US military has been stretched to the breaking point. US sailors and Marines endured a record-breaking deployment with terrible conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and other ships at sea. But this past weekend we saw the most telling sign of a military pushing back against orders that make no sense. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned his position, reportedly due to disagreements with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the toll the war is taking on military readiness. Driscoll follows several high-ranking US Army officials who have resigned. It seems clear that US Military leadership does not believe in the mission.
Maybe President Trump should listen to them instead of his “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth?
Doing the same thing and expecting different results may be the definition of insanity, but another definition might be starting a war halfway across the globe against a country that has neither attacked nor threatened you. Insanity might be starting a war based on the self-serving lies of a foreign leader who just happens to benefit from the fighting. Insanity might be further depleting the US arsenal of missiles and other weapons after years of proxy war against Russia through Ukraine. Insanity might be burdening future generations with a national debt of $40 trillion and climbing.
It is time for some very difficult decisions to be made. This war will not be won with more bombing, and the Iranians no longer trust us as negotiating partners after broken agreements and false claims. The only course of action is to pack up and come home. Let the people of the region solve their own problems.
![Iranian military personnel take part in an exercise titled "Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz", launched by the Naval Forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is being carried out in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz on February 16, 2026. [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/AA-20260216-40574970-40574965-IRAN_LAUNCHES_MILITARY_EXERCISE_IN_THE_STRAIT_OF_HORMUZ_AGAINST_SECURITY_THREATS.jpg?fit=920%2C613&ssl=1)
(Photo credit: AFP)
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