No Kings Day is TOMORROW! - Saturday, March 28

Indivisible Team <info@indivisible.org>

We the People don't do kings -- not in 1776, and not now. Let's be loud about it. Tomorrow is No Kings Day! A day of mass, record-breaking protest, across the country and around the world -- millions of us taking a stand against wannabe-king Trump’s assaults on our rights and our communities, and demanding an end to the illegal wars and foreign interventions that have already caused so much grief and suffering for innocent civilians around the globe. In June, the first No Kings brought five million of us into the streets; the second, in October, saw seven million -- and tomorrow we have more protests planned in more towns and cities than ever before. But just how big No Kings 3 will be depends a lot on you. Simply put: We need world-historic numbers tomorrow. We're at a frightening inflection point, brought about by an assemblage of the incompetent and corrupt, doing all they can to establish a fascist regime that elevates Trump and lines their pockets. To defend our democracy, protect our neighbors, and make it crystal clear that Americans will never do kings, we need to be louder than ever. You'll find everything you need to help make No Kings 3 an inescapable roar of nonviolent defiance, below. Find a No Kings event There are more than 3,250 events planned for No Kings 3! Find one near you here -- then spread the word to folks who might not be convinced yet. We're far more likely to listen to people we know than anyone else. Let your people know! BUT: A lot of folks who want to be there simply can't -- and that's ok! Nobody can be everywhere, always. If you can't attend a No Kings event in person, you can livestream the flagship event in the Twin Cities starting, at 3pm ET/noon PT. What to wear and bring No matter how you dress or nonviolently express yourself, you're always welcome at No Kings. Inflatable animals, religious attire, work uniform, tuxedo -- just show up as you, and join the fight! That said! Some outfits are more suitable for marching than others (so… maybe not the tuxedo?), and there are things to do and bring that'll help the day run smoothly, with an emphasis on joy, safety, and a loud, unified voice. Check the weather! And dress comfortably and accordingly. Many of you will be on your feet and outdoors for hours, so don’t forget to wear comfy, sturdy shoes and bring sunscreen, an umbrella, a poncho -- you know what you need on a late March day. Just make sure you wear/bring it! (Snacks and water, too.) Signs and flags welcome! Draw on your own creative impulses or download a free No Kings sign. An American flag speaks to the patriotism of protest, and unicorns, frogs, and dinosaurs (etc!) are a reminder that joy is an essential part of resistance. Let's be loud, colorful, and unmissable! Know your rights (KYR). It's always a good idea to review our Constitutional right to peacefully protest ahead of any protest we attend. You can watch an ACLU KYR training here and/or read this No Kings KYR resource (also available in Spanish). Plan ahead: How are you getting there, how are you getting home? Make a note of where you parked/got off public transportation, take a minute to note what No Kings safety marshals and volunteers are wearing, where they're stationed, and how to exit and return to your event, should you need to. Who are you going with? It's a good idea to set up a group text for communicating with your group, but be sure to also agree on a meeting point, just in case you get separated and cell service is overloaded. Haven't talked about No Kings with three other people yet? No time like the present! Here are some resources to help out: bare-bones info about the movement; searchable map of events; social media toolkit; talking about No Kings video; and even more on the website. Be undeniable. Protests, big or small, are never the point; they're a point on the road. A tactic, not the goal. The more attention they draw, the more powerful the message -- to those in power, of course, but also to a whole lot of folks who've never engaged in activism before. Protests tell people they're not alone, and help them find their own courage. Ultimately, protest is one of the most significant ways we grow the movement. And then we keep working, in a myriad of ways, until we win. So it's essential that No Kings 3 grab a lot of attention! One way to amplify tomorrow's events will be to make sure No Kings is inescapable on social media. If you’re comfortable doing so, please post and reshare photos from your event with the hashtag #NoKings. Always be mindful of others and ask before posting close-ups of other protestors' faces. Our commitment to nonviolence A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to No Kings events. Please refer to the No Kings Know Your Rights Guide (also available in Spanish), our de-escalation pocket guide, and the additional resources on Nokings.org for important information to maintain a safe, joyful protest. Tomorrow, we'll stand for democracy and each other, for justice, honesty, and compassion, with millions and millions of others standing for those same things, right alongside us.  We the People don't do kings -- not in 1776, and not now. Let's be loud about it.  See you soon! Indivisible Team P.S. Join us on Tuesday at 8pm ET / 5pm PT for the No Kings post-protest call! We’ll join friends and partners nationwide to celebrate our impact and discuss specific, actionable plans to funnel the momentum of our day of action into ongoing political organizing work in communities across the country.

BE WARY: ICE is locking up legal white people too

 

Tania Warner and daughter, Ayla. (photo: Warner Family)

Canadian Woman Held With Daughter by ICE Warns All Immigrants to ‘Lie Low.’

Tania Warner says she has documents showing she is in the US legally, but immigration agents were not swayed.

Olivia Bowden / Guardian UK 

25 March 26 

A Canadian woman who has been imprisoned with her seven-year-old daughter by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has cautioned other immigrants that they are at risk of detention, even if they follow the correct legal process – and warned them to keep out of sight for as long as Donald Trump is president.

“Don’t go anywhere near a checkpoint, and if your papers are in processing, just lay low. Trump meant what he said – he is trying to get rid of everyone, whether they are good or bad,” said Tania Warner, 47, who is currently held with her autistic daughter, Ayla, at the Dilley immigration processing center in south Texas.

“The people in here are not criminals … They’ve had their dignity and their freedom stripped from them because they have their papers processing,” she told the Guardian. “You shouldn’t be putting children, families in jail. It’s unjust.”

The pair moved from British Columbia to Kingsville, Texas, in 2021 when Warner married Edward Warner, who is a US citizen.

The family was driving home from a baby shower in Raymondville, Texas, on 14 March when they were stopped at a border patrol checkpoint in Sarita. Tania Warner and her daughter were taken in by ICE agents to be fingerprinted, and neither returned.

Warner’s husband told the Vancouver Sun last week that ICE officials said “she overstayed her visa,” though he provided the paper with a copy of a US “employment authorization” card issued to his wife last year, and it had an expiry date of 8 June 2030.

They were originally held at Rio Grande Valley central processing center in McAllen, Texas, but were moved early on Friday to Dilley – which was originally opened under Barack Obama but later shuttered during the administration of Joe Biden. It reopened in early 2025 to hold detained families and has been heavily criticized for inhumane conditions.

Tania Warner described the treatment of her and her daughter as “horrific” from the start. After being held for about five and a half hours at the checkpoint, they were sent to the first facility, where “every single person … was handcuffed – including children”, the mother said.

There, they slept on the floor on 2in mats and the lights were on 24 hours a day. Agents would not let Warner call a lawyer and constantly pressured her to sign documents agreeing to “self-deport”.

“They’re abusive, and their tactics are to threaten you and to be so inhospitable that you deport yourself,” Warner said. She and her family say she has made it clear they have all the correct documents to live and work in the US, but that has been ignored.

“My life is here with my husband. I love him. I don’t want to leave. But at the same time, I’ve gotten a really ugly taste in my mouth for the United States,” she said.

Throughout the ordeal, Ayla has put on a brave face, befriending other children who also “just want to go home”, said Warner. But she has also developed a persistent full-body rash, for which she has been given Benadryl.

“I think she’s internalizing a lot,” she said.

Conditions at Dilly are marginally better, Warner said – inmates have access to windows and can sometimes go outdoors – but they have no privacy and are watched round the clock by guards.

The family’s lawyer is working to get the pair released on payment of a $15,000 bond.

Amelia Boultbee, a member of the legislative assembly of British Columbia, where Tania Warner is originally from, said she is urgently lobbying Canada’s federal government to help get Warner and her daughter released.

“We’re exploring diplomatic and legal avenues to have these Canadians released from detention, and I’m hoping that we take a strong stand against these illegal and unethical detentions by ICE,” she said.

But the course of action for Canadian authorities is unclear as there are few precedents of cases of Canadian families held in US detention, Boultbee said.

“There isn’t a clear template to follow, diplomatically or legally. So we’re exploring the best way … to advocate for this family and get them out of detention,” she said.

Global Affairs Canada, the federal ministry that handles consular services and diplomatic relations, said on Thursday it was “aware of multiple cases of Canadians currently or previously in immigration-related detention in the US”.

“Consular officials advocate for Canadian citizens abroad and raise concerns about justified and serious complaints of ill-treatment or discrimination with the local authorities but cannot exempt Canadians from local legal processes,” a spokesperson said. “Due to privacy considerations, no further information can be disclosed.”

Approached for comment on 20 March, ICE asked for more information about the Warner’s case. The Guardian provided that information, but four days later ICE had still not replied.

If it's not the color of your skin, could it be the color of your beliefs?

No Kings is around the corner!

 

More protests March 28 than any day in American history.  Join us.

 

Ezra Levin and the Indivisible Team <info@indivisible.org> It’s time for No Kings Spring. The only way out of the Trump mess is by recruiting a lot more people to do a lot more organizing in a lot of more communities. There’s no bigger or better opportunity to make progress against the fascists in the month of March than No Kings 3.  No Kings 3 will be historic because we will make it historic. Less than one week out, I can now confirm that there will be more No Kings protests on March 28 than on any previous day in American history.  But, as with Hands Off last April, No Kings last June, and No Kings 2 last October, I know this isn’t done until it’s done. We need this to be an enormous, historic rebuke to Trump’s regime. But whether it’s successful depends on far more than just me or Indivisible -- it depends on the leadership, courage, and commitment of millions of people around the globe.  This is a grassroots-driven event, which means it will succeed or fail because of what we all do to organize, recruit, and prepare. There are no corporate sponsors, there’s no massive advertising campaign, and despite what the right-wing wackjobs obsess about, nobody’s sending big checks to protestors. It’s up to us -- all of us.  The good news is we’re not alone. Momentum is building -- you can hear it. Last weekend, Leah and I went down to Selma for the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee's commemoration of the 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the fight for a real, multiracial democracy. We were there because Indivisible received the Freedom Flame award, and we wanted to experience the history of that pivotal moment in Civil Rights History first-hand. I’d recommend anyone and everyone go next year. You’ll learn from and be inspired by the leaders who paved the road for our democracy with blood, sweat, and tears.  You’ll also find lots of friends. We were humbled when Faya Ora Rose Touré, the civil rights legend who cofounded the Jubilee, came up to us and shared a song she'd written for No Kings. You can see the lyrics here. All of us can organize. I love that No Kings is becoming so well-known that talented people all over the world are creating art in support of the movement. Nils Lofgren -- guitarist for the E Street band with Bruce Springsteen -- sent us his new song: No Kings, No Hate, No Fear.  Neither he nor Springsteen had planned to write new protest music or even go on tour this spring, but after the crackdown in the Twin Cities, they decided they had to do a No Kings protest tour, kicking off in Minneapolis after the flagship No Kings protest there on March 28.  But you don’t have to be a world famous artist to help make No King 3 into something historic. I’m not talking about money -- I’m talking about effort. With twelve days left to go, here are the three things I’d recommend: Register your local No Kings events! If your No Kings protest isn’t yet on the map, you’ve got until Wednesday, March 25 at 11:59pm PT to register it. Rule of thumb: if you go to the map and can’t find a protest within 30 minutes of where you live, start planning your own!  Train up. If you’re looking for training on safety, de-escalation, marketing, digital, or constitutional rights, we’ve got you covered. If your Indivisible group needs support, reach out to your organizer to walk you through the esources we provide. Ultimately this is up to you and your group, but you’re not alone and we can help! Recruit. Yes you should post to social media, but don’t just rely on the largely regime-friendly tech platforms to spread the word. At your favorite coffee shop, on Nextdoor, or among friends -- invite folks to join you. Find three people who didn't attend No Kings last year. Have a conversation about the moment we’re in, and ask them to come with you on March 28. This is old-school and more time consuming than just posting online -- but nothing is more effective at actually building the movement. As Faya Rose put it, without democracy, we cannot be free. That’s why we march, that’s why we sing: No kings, no kings. Your weekly to-dos Tell Congress: Stop Trump's War! Since Trump launched his war on Iran, as of this writing, thirteen US servicemembers, more than 1,400 Iranians, and hundreds of civilians across the region have been killed. Tell your Members of Congress to use every lever they have to end it: conduct oversight; force more votes on War Powers Resolutions; restrict funding; and oppose the war publicly. Call your senators and tell them to press Trump's nominee for DHS secretary, MAGA loyalist Markwayne Mullin, for real answers during his confirmation hearings. Kristi Noem is out at DHS, but Trump's nominee to replace her is at least as dedicated to sending ICE and Border Patrol to terrorize our cities. Markwayne Mullin's Senate confirmation hearings begin on Wednesday. Tell your senators to hold Mullin's feet to the fire and when his confirmation vote comes around, to vote NO. Tell Congress: Our right to vote is non-negotiable! The Senate votes this week on the "SAVE America" Act, a bill that could disenfranchise millions of Americans through burdensome voting requirements that would disproportionately impact married people who’ve changed their names, trans Americans, students, and voters of color. Tell your senators to vote NO! Email Your Members of Congress: Americans reject ICE's plan to warehouse people. DHS is buying up warehouses to retrofit into concentration camps -- but several grassroots campaigns to halt such sales have been successful! Members of Congress must do all they can to block the warehousing of human beings. Sign the open letter from alumni across the country calling on college presidents to keep their campuses free from ICE terror. Students, faculty, and staff at our institutions of higher education deserve safe environments in which to learn, teach, and work, without any threat of ICE violence. Calling all Courage Collectives members (and potential future members): Join our infosession on leveraging No Kings to advance noncooperation work! (Wed, 7pm ET/ 4pm PT). Autocrats need the support of society's most influential sectors – business, academia, civil service, etc -- to succeed. But when courageous people within those sectors join forces and refuse to cooperate, the "pillars" that prop the regime up start cracking. Join the call to learn more! P.S. No Kings (March 28) is almost here -- have you made your plans? In the face of the regime's illegal war, threats to voting rights, ongoing ICE terror, and bottomless corruption, we need this No Kings Day to be the biggest single-day protest in American history. Planning a national event that big, loud, and inescapable requires enormous resources, though, and we need your help! If you can, please pitch in to make No Kings 3 the day of world-historic protest this moment demands. Countdown to No Kings! No Kings 3 is just around the corner! If you haven't already found a protest near you, take a look at our map (2,800 events and climbing!) -- and if you don't find something right away, keep checking. New events are being added by the hour. (Or! If you don't find a protest within about 30 minutes of your home, consider hosting one yourself!).  But don't stop there! We've gathered and are hosting a number of helpful resources for anyone planning to be in the streets on March 28: Spread the word on your social media accounts, across your social circles, wherever you can, ask at least three friends to attend, wherever they may be across the country. Attend the No Kings Kick Off call (Thurs, 8pm ET/5pm PT). We'll be talking with movement leaders about the strategic and moral imperatives behind this national day of action. Attend a training - Whether you're a host, a long-time activist, or protesting for the first time, we're hosting a bunch of training calls to help folks gear up for March 28 -- from how to have conversations about No Kings that move people to join the movement, to an ACLU-led training about our Constitutional right to protest peacefully and best practices for making protests safe and successful (in both English and Spanish). Find all that information and more, right here

First American pope wants no part of Trump's U.S.

 

As Trump watches fireworks and flyovers, Pope will be "greeting strangers at the door."

Story by Adam Lynch

 

Alternet

Pope Leo XIV has officially dissed Catholic JD Vance’s formal invitation to the upcoming July 4th 250th festivities in the United States. Instead, the Pope, formerly of Chicago, will be celebrating that day “on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa — a migrant gateway in the Mediterranean,” reports Christopher Hale, who chronicles the Vatican’s doings with his “Letters from Leo” reports.

Back in May 2025, JD Vance personally invited Pope Leo to take part in the anniversary celebrations. Many assumed Trump and Vance would welcome the first American pope with open arms during this historic jubilee. But Pope Leo never accepted the offer, reports Hale, adding that the rejection came days after the Vatican also rejected an invitation to President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace.”

Worse, the Vatican quietly confirmed the pope has no plans to visit the United States at all in 2026.

“Instead, on the very day of America’s 250th, [the pope] will kneel on a rocky outcrop closer to Tunisia than to Washington, bearing witness to those dying in desperate search of freedom,” said Hale. “The contrast could not be sharper. President Trump envisions F-35 flyovers and fireworks in the capital’s sky; Pope Leo will stand under the same sun on Lampedusa, greeting strangers at the door.”

“Trump wraps himself in the trappings of national glory, while Leo embraces what he calls the ‘moral obligation’ to welcome the migrant and refugee. Their clashing itineraries speak volumes about their clashing values,” Hale said.

This is not the first rebuke Pope Leo has dished to Trump. On June 14, 2025 Trump ordered a military parade for his own birthday, despite taking multiple deferments to avoid military service in his youth. That same day, Pope Leo XIV upstaged the president by appearing by video in Chicago and delivering an “uplifting message of unity and hope to 30,000 hometown faithful attending a Mass in honor of his election.”

But Hale reports Pope Leo XIV’s refusal to take part in President Trump’s 250th pageant or his Board of Peace “is not a snub for snub’s sake. It is a conscious moral stance.”

“The 70-year-old pontiff has made clear that true greatness is measured by our treatment of the least among us, not the size of our parades,” reports Hale. “He has repeatedly condemned what he calls the ‘inhuman’ persecution of immigrant families, aligning the Church firmly against the mass deportations and border cruelty of the Trump era.”

Leo recently opined that political leaders can’t rightfully claim to defend life while demeaning the lives of migrants. And in turning down Trump’s Gaza board, Hale said Leo made clear that peace built on billion-dollar buy-ins and exclusion of the weak is “not peace at all.”

“Trump may still bask in fireworks on the National Mall this July 4. But the true Independence Day message,” said Hale, “won’t be delivered from a marble podium in Washington — it will rise from a humble Mass on Lampedusa’s rocky soil.”

Where have all our values gone?

The Great Voter Fraud Fraud

 

Voters at a polling precinct. (photo: City of Fenton, Michigan)

 

"Trump's massive scam to mislead us and take over our elections" 

 

Senator Angus S. King, Jr. / The Bulwark17 March 26 

DURING HIS STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS on February 24, President Donald Trump asked Congress to “stop illegal aliens and others who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections. The cheating is rampant in our elections. It’s rampant.”

The accusation that there is rampant cheating in our election is dramatic, alarming, and oft-repeated. It is also totally false.

After years of audits, recounts, lawsuits, academic studies, and investigations across red states and blue states alike, there is absolutely no evidence—zero—that substantial, outcome-changing voter fraud is present in American elections. There simply isn’t proof.

It turns out that the real fraud is not at the ballot box; it’s claims like the one the president made as he addressed a joint session of Congress.

The president made this fraudulent statement for a reason. Both he and his Republican allies in Congress are trying to advance the SAVE America Act, which they have breathlessly touted as necessary to protect our elections from “rampant” fraud. 

But the bill, which would place excessive new ID requirements for voting—in the process effectively disenfranchising many lawful voters—is based upon the entirely phony premise that there is a massive fraud problem to be fixed. 

Every study, every lawsuit, every audit, every recount has reached the same conclusion: You are about 13,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to find a fraudulent vote by an undocumented immigrant.

Last year, for example, the right-leaning Heritage Foundation updated its database of voter fraud by state between 1982 and 2025. After laboring mightily, they pinpointed 1,620 cases in the entire country during the last forty-four years out of a total of more than two billion votes cast. And how many of those cases involved undocumented immigrants trying to vote? Ninety-nine. You read that right, ninety-nine out of two billion. (Those odds—99/2,000,000,000—are three orders of magnitude longer than the National Weather Service’s estimated 1/15,300 odds of being struck by lightning at some point during an eighty-year lifespan.)

Let’s look at my state of Maine. We have Election Day registration, no voter ID, no-excuse absentee voting, voting by mail, and dropboxes—in other words, all the voter fraud bogeymen. The Heritage study found two cases of voter fraud there in the past forty-four years, neither of which involved illegal immigrants. Give me a break.

The phrase “rampant voter fraud” suggests something widespread, systemic, decisive. Yet every serious investigation into this claim has come up empty. Courts have dismissed sweeping allegations for lack of evidence. (Trump was 1 for 62 in lawsuits alleging voting irregularities in the 2020 election.) Recounts have confirmed results with only minor numerical adjustments. Post-election audits consistently show extremely high accuracy rates. Republican secretaries of state, Democratic governors, and federal judges appointed by presidents of both parties have all acknowledged the same reality: There is no evidence of significant, coordinated voter fraud sufficient to alter election outcomes.

But the drumbeat continues and plenty of people seem to be marching to it.

If you convince people that the system is rotten, you do not need to prove it. Repetition can substitute for evidence. Suspicion can substitute for fact. The more frequently a claim is made, the more normal it sounds.

BUT HERE IS THE REAL DANGER: Democracy depends not only on secure systems, but on public trust in those systems. When leaders and commentators repeatedly claim elections are “rigged” without substantiation, they chip away at that trust. Citizens begin to believe their votes do not matter. Election workers—ordinary people volunteering long hours—face harassment and threats. Peaceful transitions of power become contested spectacles. The damage is not theoretical. It is real and measurable. We saw it on January 6, 2021.

Fraud is deception for gain. What do we call it when the public is told, again and again, that their elections are corrupt, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary? What do we call it when isolated irregularities are inflated into sweeping indictments of the entire system? When normal human error is presented as proof of conspiracy?

We should call this “voter fraud fraud” what it is: a massive effort to mislead the people in order to justify taking over our elections and manipulating the results.

The SAVE America Act is a solution in search of a problem. Instead of fixing the nonexistent problem of “rampant voter fraud,” it would create real-life barriers to everyday Americans trying to exercise one of their most fundamental rights as an American citizen: the right to vote. 

The bill would require American citizens to show documents like passports or birth certificates to prove their citizenship to register to vote. Other forms of identification, including the REAL ID, wouldn’t be good enough. These same documents would need to be shown anytime you update your voter registration, such as when you move and change your address, or even when you do something as simple as changing your party affiliation. Over 21 million eligible voters lack access to the necessary documents to comply with these requirements. Obtaining these documents costs time—often during working hours—and money, so the SAVE America Act would effectively create a poll tax for tens of millions of Americans.

The bill will also create unnecessary barriers for people who have changed their name. Let’s take one particular American voter, for example: our vice president, JD Vance. Vice President Vance was born James Donald Bowman and later changed his name on his birth certificate to James David Hamel after he was adopted by his stepfather. He again changed his last name to honor his grandmother, who raised him, in 2013. If JD Vance were one of millions of regular American citizens without access to a passport, the SAVE America Act would make it harder for him to prove his citizenship with documents with mismatched names, and make it that much harder for him to register to vote.

Equally problematic, the SAVE America Act would place a massive burden on state and local election officials—many of whom are volunteers trying to serve their community—and impose complicated legal risks. For example, the bill would establish criminal penalties against any election official who registers an applicant who fails to provide the right documentation to prove citizenship. These criminal penalties apply even if the individual is actually an American citizen and the official just makes a clerical error on their paperwork. I worry that this will discourage public-spirited citizens from volunteering to serve at the polls and that it will result in citizens being denied voter registration and, ultimately, their right to vote, because local officials would live in fear of running afoul of these burdensome provisions.

As if all of that weren’t reason enough to oppose the bill, the SAVE America Act would also severely restrict vote by mail, which would have an outsized impact on rural voters. It also requires states to turn over their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security to run through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program, a program that was rebuilt by DOGE and has already misidentified American citizens as being ineligible to vote. I am worried that DHS will use this opportunity to purge state voter rolls, even further limiting who is able to vote.

The SAVE America Act would be, in short, not just a disaster but a direct assault on one of America’s most sacred principles.

FOR MORE THAN TWO CENTURIES, the United States has conducted elections during wars, depressions, social upheavals, pandemics, and times of intense partisan division. Power has changed hands peacefully between bitter rivals. Razor-thin margins have been recounted, litigated, and resolved within constitutional boundaries. That record does not reflect a fragile sham. It reflects a resilient framework that has endured precisely because it is structured with safeguards. And one of the primary safeguards is the decentralization of the system itself, its management at the local level. The president’s plan to “nationalize” our elections would sweep this all away.

To declare elections illegitimate without compelling evidence is not a defense of democracy—it is an assault on it.

Confidence in elections should be built on facts, not fueled by fear. Citizens deserve honesty about both the strengths and limits of the system. They deserve to know that while no system is flawless, there is no evidence to support the claim that ours is filled with rampant fraud.

The health of a democracy rests on a shared commitment to reality. And the reality here could not be clearer. Substantial voter fraud is not a significant feature of American elections. The far more dangerous threat today is the repeated assertion that it is.

Every study, every lawsuit, every audit, every recount has reached the same conclusion: You are about 13,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to find a fraudulent vote by an undocumented immigrant.

 

Trump’s Ignorance on Iran Was Willful

Cartoon: World on fire

by Nick Anderson / RawStory

Monday, March 16, 2026 at 5:59:07p MDT

Daily Kos

 The administration that went to war had every indication of how the regime in Tehran would respond. It chose not to pay attention.

 

By Bobby Ghosh / Substack12 March 26

ALSO SEE: Ghoshworld, Bobby Ghosh on Substack

15 march 26

In the days since Iran began raining missiles and drones on American military bases, Israeli cities, and the gleaming towers of the Gulf Arab states, a curious narrative has taken hold in Washington. Administration officials, we are told, were surprised by the ferocity of Tehran’s response. The White House, according to multiple reports, had not anticipated that Iran would strike so broadly, so rapidly, and so damagingly across so many countries simultaneously.

Let us be precise about what this claim requires us to believe. It requires us to believe that the people who planned and authorized a massive joint military operation against Iran — killing its supreme leader on the first day, targeting its nuclear infrastructure, its military command, its navy — did so without any serious reckoning with how Iran would respond.

That they launched what they called “Operation Epic Fury” without having read, or heeded, the library’s worth of analysis — from think tanks, from academics, from their own intelligence services, from their own Gulf allies — that described, in detail, exactly the retaliation that has now materialized.

That is not a failure of intelligence. It is a failure of attention. And there is a word for willful inattention to inconvenient information: ignorance.

Iran has never been shy about its doctrine. For years — decades, really — its officials have stated clearly what they would do if attacked. U.S. military bases in the Gulf are legitimate targets; this was not improvised after the bombs fell on February 28th. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said as much in the immediate aftermath, almost word for word: “All military bases, installations and assets that in any form or manner are being used to help the aggressors are regarded as legitimate targets. We had warned often that if they start war against Iran, that war would not be limited only to Iran.” That last sentence is worth underlining. We warned you. They had, and at length.

The Strait of Hormuz threat was equally well-documented. Iran has threatened the closure of that waterway, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes, every time it felt sufficiently cornered. When Trump ended sanction waivers for Iranian oil importers in 2019, Tehran’s response was to threaten the Strait. It is not a bluff that comes from nowhere; it is a standing card in a hand that Tehran has shown repeatedly. The International Crisis Group has maintained a running tracker of Strait of Hormuz flashpoints for years. The Stimson Center noted, in analysis published before the bombs fell, that Iran had “threatened repeatedly to close the Straits with mines or missiles if a major US attack occurs.” This is not obscure scholarship. It is the working consensus of everyone who has studied Iran with any seriousness.

As for Iran’s willingness to strike the oil and energy infrastructure of its Gulf neighbors, well, there is a word for that, too: precedent. In September 2019, Iranian drones and cruise missiles hit the Aramco processing facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais in eastern Saudi Arabia. The attack knocked out half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production overnight, representing five percent of global supply, and triggered the largest single-day spike in oil prices ever recorded. Washington attributed the strike to Iran. The UN eventually concurred on the origin of the weapons. Anyone — and I do mean anyone — paying attention to that attack understood that Iran had both the capability and the willingness to cripple Gulf energy infrastructure. To claim surprise in 2026 is to pretend 2019 never happened.

And then there was the dress rehearsal of June 2025. When U.S. and Israeli forces struck Iran’s nuclear facilities during the Twelve-Day War, Tehran responded by hitting Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest American military installation in the Middle East. No casualties that time, the strike was largely symbolic, but Iranian officials were explicit that any future response would be far less restrained. The lesson was there to be learned. Washington apparently filed it away without reading it.

The think-tank community, that much-derided “establishment,” had done the work. The Center for Strategic and International Studies published a detailed analysis of Iran’s retaliation options before the strikes, laying out precisely the scenarios that have since materialized: drone and missile attacks on Gulf bases, disruption of Hormuz shipping, cyber operations. The Middle East Forum’s pre-war assessment listed Iran’s “retaliation playbook” in sequence — “ballistic missiles struck at U.S. bases across the Gulf and at Israeli territory, Hezbollah opened fire from Lebanon, intelligence detected Houthi preparations from Yemen” — and watched it activate almost exactly on schedule. Responsible Statecraft had noted, in blunt terms, that Iran had “repeatedly signaled that U.S. bases in the region are legitimate targets,” citing the memory of the Al Udeid strike as still fresh in the minds of Gulf leaders.

None of this analysis came from fringe voices or contrarian provocateurs. It was the sober, mainstream assessment of serious regional experts. The American foreign-policy community, for all its many sins, has spent decades building up genuine expertise on Iran. That expertise pointed, with remarkable consistency, toward what is now unfolding.

The administration’s own intelligence was equally unambiguous. Pentagon briefings to Capitol Hill stated that Iran was not planning to attack unless struck first, directly contradicting the “imminent threat” justification offered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The Defense Intelligence Agency’s 2025 threat assessment said Iran was not producing nuclear weapons. Inside the White House, figures as unlikely as Steve Bannon and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reportedly warned against going to war with Iran. The warnings were not just in think-tank papers and academic journals. They were in the room.

Most damning of all: America’s Gulf allies said all of this to Trump’s face. In January 2026, leaders from Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt warned the president directly that an attack on Iran would have devastating consequences for the wider region — consequences that would, they noted, ultimately rebound on the United States. Trump hesitated. And then, when he decided to go ahead six weeks later, he didn’t bother to tell them. The countries whose territory would inevitably bear the brunt of Iranian retaliation — whose cities would be struck, whose airports shuttered, whose energy infrastructure targeted — were not given advance notice of Operation Epic Fury.

The Associated Press, reporting from Cairo, captured the fury of Gulf officials: they were “disappointed,” had been “ignored,” and had explicitly warned Washington of what was coming. A Chatham House analyst said the U.S. appeared to have assumed that American troops and Israel would be the primary targets of Iranian retaliation. “I don’t think they saw that there would be as much exposure to the Gulf,” he said. “This speaks to U.S. short-sightedness.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in an inadvertent moment of candor, acknowledged that while the exact response was not anticipated, it was “recognised as a possibility.” Senator Chris Murphy, emerging from a closed-door congressional briefing, was less diplomatic: the administration had “no plan” to safely reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

No plan. For the most foreseeable consequence of going to war with Iran.

There is a distinction worth making here between ignorance and surprise. Anyone going to war can be surprised by the enemy’s ingenuity, their speed of adaptation, the fog of battle. These are the inevitable companions of conflict. But to be surprised by the direction of an enemy’s retaliation — by the fact that they retaliate at all, and by the broad outlines of how they do it — requires something more active. It requires the deliberate filtering out of information that contradicts a preferred narrative. In this case, the preferred narrative appears to have been that Iran would fold, or fracture, or that its response would be limited and manageable, the Venezuela model, as one academic sourly put it.

Iran is not Venezuela. It is a large, proud, militarized state with a four-decade record of strategic patience, asymmetric capability, and ideological commitment to resistance. It does not bluff. It absorbs punishment and it retaliates. This is not a matter of cultural mysticism or Oriental inscrutability. It is a matter of documented behavior, stated doctrine, and the long public record of a regime that has made its intentions perfectly legible.

To go to war without absorbing that record is not naivety. It is a choice. Whether that choice was driven by ideological contempt for expert opinion, by Netanyahu’s urgency, or by a president who believes that shock-and-awe is a strategy unto itself, the consequences are the same. American soldiers are dead. Gulf cities are under fire. The Strait of Hormuz is partially closed, and oil markets are convulsing. Allies who were never consulted are now footing a bill they were never given the chance to refuse.

Ignorance, in a private citizen, is sometimes forgivable. In a government that just started a war, it is not. And when the evidence of what was coming was this abundant, this loud, and this accessible — ignorance stops being an excuse. It becomes a verdict.