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Trapped by His Own Image: Trump’s Iran War and the Politics of Ego

The judgment on the Trump administration’s war on Iran is already largely settled across mainstream media, public opinion, and much of the analytical sphere.

What remains supportive of the war is limited to two predictable camps: official government discourse and the president’s most loyal supporters, along with entrenched pro-Israel constituencies.

Beyond these circles, the war is widely understood as reckless, unjustified, and strategically incoherent.

Among the wider American public, this conclusion is not abstract. It is shaped by growing unease, economic anxiety, and a mounting sense that the war lacks both purpose and direction.

Since the outbreak of the war on February 28, 2026, polling has consistently pointed in one direction. A Pew Research poll in late March found that 61 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the conflict.

Another AP-NORC survey showed that six in ten Americans believe US military action against Iran has already “gone too far,” while even Fox News polling found 58 percent opposition.

These numbers confirm a broader trend that began early in the war and has only intensified. Reuters reported on March 19 that just 7 percent of Americans support a full-scale ground invasion.

In that same reporting, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believe Trump is likely to pursue one anyway, highlighting a growing disconnect between policy and public will.

Days later, Reuters noted that Trump’s approval rating had dropped to 36 percent, with rising fuel prices and economic instability cited as key drivers.

The longer the war continues, the more its consequences are internalized by ordinary Americans, turning distant conflict into immediate economic pressure.

Among the American intelligentsia, opposition is no longer confined to traditional anti-war circles. It now spans ideological boundaries, including segments of Trump’s own political base.

Reporting from the 2026 Conservative Political Action Conference, The Guardian observed that many MAGA supporters warned the war risks becoming another “forever war.”

This convergence is significant, reflecting not a passing disagreement but a deeper structural shift in public perception.

Yet mainstream media – from CNN to Fox News – has largely avoided confronting what many Americans already recognize: that the war aligns closely with the agenda of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Within Washington itself, unease is also becoming more explicit. The Wall Street Journal reported in March that lawmakers from both parties are increasingly skeptical of the administration’s approach.

At the strategic level, the war’s foundational assumptions have already begun to unravel. Israel’s early calculations that escalation might trigger internal collapse in Iran have failed to materialize.

Iran’s political system remains intact, its leadership stable, and its military cohesion unbroken under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

At the same time, Tehran has demonstrated its ability to retaliate across multiple fronts, targeting Israeli territory and US military assets in the region.

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The FBI’s FOIA Blacklist

The Freedom of Information Act was designed to empower citizens to hold their government accountable. But evidence suggests the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has quietly adopted a practice that turns that principle on its head: labeling some of the people who file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests as “vexsome.”

In effect, the agency has created a FOIA-specific blacklist. Yet when asked, it denies having done so.

The FBI has maintained what it calls a list of “vexsome” FOIA filers for years. The label itself is odd — the proper term would be “vexatious” — but the implication is clear enough. Certain individuals and organizations who file frequent records requests are flagged internally as troublesome.

That practice is deeply at odds with the very text of the Freedom of Information Act. FOIA exists because the late Representative John Moss (D-CA) spent 10 years encountering delays, evasions, and outright refusals by federal agencies and departments to give him information he needed for oversight purposes. Moss understood that many citizens and watchdog groups asked the same kind of persistent questions of executive branch officials as he did, but they lacked a statutory basis to force such information disclosures. It’s why Moss worked so hard to get FOIA into law. Investigative journalists, transparency organizations and researchers often file dozens — sometimes hundreds — of requests in pursuit of public records. The law anticipates and protects that behavior.

There is nothing in the FOIA statute authorizing federal agencies to maintain lists of “vexatious” requesters or to single out particular citizens for special scrutiny because they use the law frequently. The statute’s presumption is exactly the opposite: that access to government records belongs to the public, and that agencies must justify withholding them.

Yet internal records obtained through FOIA requests by transparency researcher John Greenewald, who runs the document archive The Black Vault, show that the FBI has indeed categorized certain requesters in this way.

The Cato Institute learned this firsthand when the FBI labeled it a “vexsome” FOIA requester during the previous administration. More recently, when I filed a FOIA request seeking records explaining how the FBI defines or uses that designation, the Bureau responded that it could find no records responsive to the request — even though records labeling individuals or groups as “vexsome” were previously available to Greenewald.

The FBI cannot both maintain a category of “vexatious” requesters and simultaneously claim no records exist describing how that category is used. That’s why Cato has filed a new FOIA lawsuit to force the FBI to produce the records at issue.

The deeper problem is what such labeling represents. FOIA was enacted in 1966 to prevent federal agencies from deciding which members of the public deserve access to government information. Congress deliberately structured the law so that requests are judged by their legal merits — not by who submits them or how often they do so. Indeed, the statute has been updated multiple times over the past 60 years in response to agency or department tactics designed to evade the statutes’ very purpose.

Once agencies begin categorizing requesters as nuisances or troublemakers, they create a de facto enemies list composed of the very taxpayers and citizens they are sworn to serve. A system meant to promote transparency risks becoming one in which the government quietly tracks and stigmatizes those who seek to hold it accountable for its conduct — or misconduct.

Agency and department heads routinely claim that FOIA is administratively burdensome — yet they never ask Congress for line-item appropriations to ensure processing is quick and efficient. Agencies process hundreds of thousands of requests each year — and in tens of thousands of cases invoke one or more of FOIA’s nine exemptions to keep information secret that in most cases should never have been withheld in the first place. Those tactics alone force requesters to retain lawyers capable of litigating through the delays, obfuscations, and denials. The FBI’s “vexsome FOIA filer” program takes this bureaucratic game to a whole new level.

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America’s Half-Trillion-Dollar Sewage Problem

Beneath city streets and suburban neighborhoods, a vast network of pipes and wastewater treatment systems is reaching the end of its life. This subterranean infrastructure is already suffering tens of thousands of failures per year, while exposing millions of Americans to contamination risks.

Utilities, plumbing experts, and environmentalists warn that the scope of the problem has expanded rapidly in recent years. As of 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that $630 billion in wastewater infrastructure investment would be needed to repair and replace deteriorating systems. At the same time, extreme weather events and growing populations were putting additional strain on America’s aging pipes.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), in its 2025 report card, gave U.S. wastewater infrastructure a D-plus, which the group largely attributed to a lack of funding to meet the needs of communities with failing systems.

Meanwhile, average utility prices for wastewater consumers increased from $35 per month to nearly $65 per month between 2010 and 2020, ASCE researchers found. Even still, they said, rising utility prices aren’t “keeping pace with the growing costs for utilities to provide routine operation and maintenance.”

Paradoxically, as household water and sewer bills increased more than 24 percent between 2020 and 2025, wastewater infrastructure renewal and replacement rates for large-scale projects actually decreased over the past decade, from 3 percent to 2 percent, according to the ASCE analysis.

The scope of the problem becomes clearer when considering the sheer volume of sanitary sewer overflows. As of April 2025, the EPA estimated there were between 23,000 and 75,000 overflow incidents per year, and that didn’t include sewage that backed up into buildings or residential homes.

Some of the reasons for these spills included blockages, line breaks, design defects, and overloaded treatment systems.

A spokesperson for the EPA told The Epoch Times that the agency is “committed to accelerating investments in water infrastructure by stewarding federal funding appropriated by Congress.”

Recent funding highlights from 2025 include the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, which committed $13 billion for infrastructure improvements in communities across the nation, according to the EPA spokesperson.

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Chief Justice John Roberts Appears Set to Throw a Wrench in Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Case

Chief Justice John Roberts signaled Wednesday that he might act as a thorn in President Donald Trump’s side.

During oral arguments over Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship, Roberts pushed back against Solicitor General John Sauer, who made the president’s argument.

Specifically, Roberts sounded skeptical that the Fourteenth Amendment, on which birthright citizenship rests, excludes children of illegal immigrants.

“Based on Chinese media reports,” Sauer said in a clip posted to the social media platform X, “there are 500 — 500 — birth-tourism companies in the People’s Republic of China, whose business is to bring people here to give birth and return to that nation.”

“Having said all that,” Roberts replied, “you do agree that that has no impact on the legal analysis before us?”

Sauer did not agree. Instead, he respectfully cited the late Justice Antonin Scalia in arguing that 19th-century Americans did not foresee such things. In other words, the people who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment did not intend it for the children of illegal immigrants.

“Well, it certainly wasn’t a problem in the 19th century,” Roberts responded.

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Trump Says He ‘Strongly’ Considering Withdrawing From NATO

President Donald Trump said that NATO is a “paper tiger” and he was considering pulling the US out of the Cold War-era alliance. This week, multiple NATO states declared that the US could not use their airspace for attacks on Iran. 

“I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,” the President said in an interview with The Telegraph on Wednesday. He added that he was seriously considering leaving NATO. 

NATO was created after WWII to prevent the USSR from further expanding into Europe. After the fall of the USSR, NATO expanded eastward into several former members of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. After the bloc attempted to add Ukraine as a member, Russia invaded and demanded that Kiev agree to neutrality. 

The bloc has used Ukraine as a proxy force to weaken Russia. 

While Trump has floated the idea of exiting NATO throughout his political career, he has been irked by the bloc’s response to the war against Iran. Several NATO countries have refused to assist the US and Israel in the conflict, and others have barred US warplanes from their airspace. 

“Beyond not being there, it was actually hard to believe. And I didn’t do a big sale. I just said, ‘Hey’, you know, I didn’t insist too much. I just think it should be automatic.” The President continued in his remarks to The Telegraph. “We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us.”

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Mystery of scientists dead or missing rises to EIGHT as two more men tied to America’s most coveted secrets join the list

The ominous web of US scientists and lab employees who have died or gone missing continues to grow as two more cases have been linked to the disturbing trend. 

NASA scientist Frank Maiwald reportedly died on July 4, 2024 in Los Angeles at the age of 61, but the cause of death has never been made public and officials confirmed that an autopsy was never performed.

Maiwald had been a prominent researcher at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) since 1999 and worked on multiple projects tied to advanced satellite technology that could scan Earth and other planets.

In June 2023, just 13 months before his death, he was the lead researcher on a breakthrough that could help future space missions detect clear signs of life on other worlds, including Jupiter’s moon Europa, Saturn’s moon Enceladus, or the dwarf planet Ceres.

Despite Maiwald being a JPL Principal – an award given to scientists ‘making outstanding individual contributions’ in their fields – NASA has never commented publicly on the scientist’s death, and the only public record marking his passing was an obituary posted online.

Meanwhile, another mysterious disappearance has come to light at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), one of America’s key nuclear research facilities, bringing the total number of unexplained incidents to eight since July 2024.

Anthony Chavez, a former employee at LANL until his retirement in 2017, vanished without a trace on May 4, 2025 – just seven weeks before a key assistant at the same lab disappeared.

The Los Alamos Police Department told the Daily Mail that the search for Chavez, 79, is still ongoing and no new information in the case has emerged, nearly one year later. 

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BLOOD ON HER HANDS: Florida Moves to IMPEACH Radical Judge After Sickening Release of Predator Leads to Murder of 5-Year-Old Stepdaughter

Florida state leaders are moving to IMPEACH a judge accused of enabling a horrific child murder, after releasing a convicted sex offender back into the community.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has formally called on the Florida House to begin impeachment proceedings against Leon County Circuit Judge Tiffany Baker-Carper following the tragic killing of 5-year-old Missy Mogle.

The move comes just hours after Governor Ron DeSantis signed “Missy’s Law,” a sweeping reform designed to END the dangerous practice of releasing convicted criminals before sentencing.

The legislation, signed Tuesday in Tampa, is named after Melissa “Missy” Mogle, a child whose life was cut tragically short by a monster who should have been behind bars.

The facts of the case are as gut-wrenching as they are infuriating. Missy’s stepfather, Daniel Spencer, was already a “big-time scumbag” in the eyes of the law.

In April 2025, a jury found Spencer guilty of traveling to meet a minor for sex, a serious felony. Despite this conviction, and despite the desperate pleas of prosecutors who warned that Spencer was a danger to the community, Judge Tiffany Baker-Carper refused to revoke his bond.

She ignored the warnings. She ignored the victim’s safety. She chose to put a convicted pedophile back on the streets—and right back into the home with Missy.

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FDA Warns of Deaths Linked to Drug It Wants Removed From Market

The Food and Drug Administration said in a March 31 alert that it has learned of eight deaths linked to a drug called avacopan that is used to treat blood vessel inflammation.

A review of studies, documents from avacopan manufacturer Amgen, and reports to the FDA’s adverse event reporting system resulted in the identification of 76 cases of drug-induced liver injury “with reasonable evidence of a causal association with avacopan use,” the FDA said in a drug safety alert.

Fifty-four of the cases led to hospitalization, and eight ended in death.

Some of the cases involved a syndrome that features the destruction of bile ducts in the liver, which can lead to permanent liver damage.

“Patients should contact their health care professional immediately if they develop any signs or symptoms that may indicate liver injury, such as: feeling more tired than usual; nausea; vomiting; unusual itching; light-colored stools; yellowing of skin or eyes; dark urine; swelling in the stomach or abdomen; or pain in the right upper abdomen,” the FDA stated. “Patients should talk to their health care professional about the safety risks associated with Tavneos and whether to continue therapy or switch to alternative treatments.”

Avacopan, also known as Tavneos, was approved by the FDA in 2021 for the treatment of severe active anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody-associated vasculitis, or blood vessel inflammation.

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Rogue ATF Defies Federal Courts, Continues To Target Law-Abiding Gun Owners Over ‘Illegal’ Pistol Brace Rule

The federal government is now being accused of continuing to enforce the same pistol brace interpretation that federal courts have already struck down, exposing law-abiding Americans to potential felony charges carrying up to 10 years in prison.

The Biden-era pistol brace rule, which reclassified millions of braced pistols as short-barreled rifles under the National Firearms Act (NFA), was vacated by federal courts and deemed unlawful.

Following that defeat, the Department of Justice quietly dropped its appeal, effectively leaving the rule dead and unenforceable nationwide.

Last year, the firearm community celebrated a definitive victory.

According to FFL Guard, in cases like Mock v. Bondi (formerly Mock v. Garland), federal judges slammed the Biden-era rule that overnight reclassified millions of braced pistols as “short-barreled rifles” (SBRs).

The courts found the ATF’s move was “arbitrary and capricious,” a blatant violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, and a direct assault on the Second Amendment.

Even the DOJ seemed to wave the white flag, dropping its appeal in 2025. But according to a March 2026 court filing in Texas v. ATF, the agency is now claiming that, while the rule is gone, its interpretation remains.

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Trump Administration Illegally Ended Parole for Immigrants Who Used Biden-Era App: Judge

The Trump administration failed to follow proper procedure when it terminated temporary protection for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, a federal judge said on March 31.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary can terminate parole, the temporary protection, but must only do so after finding that “the purposes of such parole … have been served,” according to federal law.

The Biden administration granted parole for more than 900,000 illegal immigrants in 2025, according to lawyers for some of the immigrants. Government officials ended the parole in 2025 after the DHS secretary found the purposes of the parole had been served.

But officials provided no documentation of that determination, meaning that the DHS did not adhere to the law and agency rules, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said on March 31.

“Accordingly, the parole terminations exceeded the agency’s statutory authority and contradicted the procedures set forth in its own regulations,” she said in a 25-page ruling.

Burroughs vacated an April 2025 email sent by officials to some foreign nationals who had been granted parole, telling them, “It is time for you to leave the United States” and “please depart the United States immediately.”

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