Source: Reason
by Jacob Sullum

“The president neither understands nor appreciates the vital role of judicial independence in upholding the rule of law.” (02/23/26)

https://reason.com/2026/02/23/trumps-tantrum-over-the-tariff-decision-highlights-his-narcissistic-authoritarianism/

Source: Digby’s Hullabaloo
by digby

“Trump will forever be known as the president who was intent on sowing doubts about the integrity of America’s elections — despite a total lack of evidence and dozens of investigations and judicial findings. When all is said and done, this may be his greatest legacy. But as much as Trump has taken these cries of voter fraud and rigged elections to an extreme, it is not one of his narcissistic innovations. He merely took what has long been conservative orthodoxy and put his own deceitful spin on it. Decades before he came along, the right was pushing the voter fraud myth — and using it as an excuse to suppress the vote.” (02/23/26)

https://digbysblog.net/2026/02/23/trump-didnt-invent-the-voter-fraud-myth/

Source: The Hill
by Harlan Ullman

“With two U.S. carrier strike groups assembling in the Arabian Sea, the chances of an armed conflict with Iran are uncomfortably high …. Unfortunately, other contingencies loom that raise uncomfortable historical parallels. I refer specifically to June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his pregnant wife Sophie were shot and killed on a bridge in Sarajevo by 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip. That assassination triggered a series of mobilizations among the major European powers, based on faulty, outdated premises that whoever mobilizes first wins and that Prussia could easily and quickly defeat France by using railroads to mobilize. More than 110 years later, it is not mobilization that catalyzes catastrophe, but a series of crises that could ignite into a conflagration by a single spark or even a smoldering ember.” (02/23/26)

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5748465-us-iran-conflict-arabian-sea/

Source: Common Dreams
by Yader Lanuza

“After the Trump administration illegally kidnapped the legitimate president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3, 2026, we saw two distinct and divergent responses from Venezuelans. On the one hand, the Venezuelan diaspora, especially in the United States, celebrated President Maduro’s kidnapping and bombing of their birth country. They congregated in small gatherings the weekend of the abduction, including in Miami. These celebrations, alongside videos online, were widely disseminated in corporate and social media for a US-based (and broader Western) audience, all broadcasting the same message: Venezuelans support President Maduro’s abduction. On the other hand, inside Venezuela, for weeks after the illegal abduction, citizens engaged in (almost) daily and massive demonstrations to condemn the attack that killed and wounded over 100 people.” (02/23/26)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/propaganda-venezuela