Chump began the Iran War because Benjamin Netanyahu told him to do so. And Chump has offered a variety of reasons for it. Recently, non-scholars and noted hypocrites JD Vance and Mike Johnson emerged to insist that Pope Leo was wrong to speak out against the Iran War because it followed Just War Theory. Problem was, it didn't and it doesn't. Brendan Rascius (INDEPENDENT) reports:
Top Republicans have invoked a centuries-old moral doctrine to defend the ongoing war against Iran.
Last week, Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson — first and second in the presidential line of succession — explicitly cited “just war” theory while speaking about the Middle East conflict.
They wielded the theory as a cudgel to castigate Pope Leo, whose staunch opposition to the weekslong war has ignited a high-profile clash between the Vatican and the White House.
But, the Republican leaders’ application of the doctrine — which dates back over a thousand years — is fundamentally flawed, according to experts in theology, philosophy and military strategy.
“You can apply the Just War principles to this conflict — and the current U.S. operation fails against every single criteria,” David Whetham, a professor of ethics and the military profession at King’s College London, told The Independent.
And THE INDEPENDENT didn't just speak to one expert, they spoke to four:
Of the four experts who spoke with The Independent, all said that the Iran war fails to meet the criteria laid out by just war theory. The most cut-and-dry violation, they argued, was the absence of a well-defined just reason for initiating the conflict.
“No clear set of causes has been enunciated by the U.S. president and none of the array stated at different times justify the U.S./Israeli unprovoked attack,” Walter Dorn, a professor of Defense Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, told The Independent.
Since the war began in late February, senior Trump officials have invoked a range of justifications, including that Iran posed an imminent threat to the U.S., a desire to enact regime change and a willingness to follow Israel’s lead.
This was not a war that followed Just War guidelines. Michael Tomasky (THE NEW REPUBLIC) observes:
As we barrel toward the ninth week of this two- or three-week war, virtually all of the reporting and most of the commentary is focused on the strategery of the moment: who really controls the Strait of Hormuz, when the ceasefire might actually end, what Donald Trump might do next. That’s all understandable. But it also means that this is a good time to take a step back and summarize exactly what Trump has done here, because if we look at it from 30,000 feet, we see exactly what so many of us knew was dangerous about putting this unstable and petty and frankly stupid man back in the Oval Office.
To put it in a phrase: He and he alone created the conditions that made war possible. He and he alone created the chaos that, he then told the American people and the world, made war necessary. Imagine the mayor of a town where there were acute ethnic or racial tensions taking office and inheriting a fragile but holding truce between the antagonistic parties. He then annuls that truce, calling it weak and fraudulent. Tensions, predictably, flare up again. And the mayor sends in armed agents to disarm the minority. And while he’s doing it, he threatens to destroy their entire culture and compares himself to Jesus, while the man in charge of the military operations constantly invokes God and Jesus as being on his side.
That’s what has happened here. Trump backed out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Barack Obama and five other nations had negotiated with Iran. Was it perfect? Of course not. It was a compromise, with an enemy that hates the United States. But it capped uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent—far, far short of the level required to make nuclear arms—until 2030. Most provisions expired in 10 years (2025). Still, that’s not nothing. Experts agreed that it was working, and Iran was abiding by its terms, and it left it for a future administration to pick up the baton.
Trump, far from picking the baton up, threw it in the incinerator. The JCPOA ran to around 160 pages. The chance that Trump actually read it is zero. In fact, the agreement, minus the annexes, was only 18 pages. And still, we know to a 99.55 percent certainty that the chance Trump read even those 18 pages is zero. Those 18 pages were agreed to by Obama. That was all Trump needed to know. So he withdrew from the agreement in May 2018. He imposed stricter sanctions and announced a policy of “maximum pressure.” Oooh, tough! Amurka, baby!
Saturday night, there was a shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association's Dinner. Robert Davis (RAW STORY) reports;
President Donald Trump's administration appears to be "faltering under the weight of its arrogance and accumulated mistakes" following the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night, a sign that the "energy and self-confidence" Trump's administration once exuded is starting to slip away, according to a new analysis.
During the event, a lone gunman fired several rounds inside the Washington Hilton, striking one Secret Service agent in their bulletproof vest, according to reports. Trump and several cabinet officials in attendance were swiftly evacuated from the event, and no one was killed. The alleged shooter, Cole Allen, was arrested at the scene.
David Frum, a staff writer for The Atlantic, argued in a new article on Sunday that in the past, MAGA would have used the event to go after their political enemies, much like they did after the death of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk. However, Trump has been imploring MAGA to support other aims, like completing his signature ballroom, which seems to be "radically beside the point," Frum wrote.
One who was faltering at the event was Ka$h Patel. Laura Esposito (DAILY BEAST) reports:
Kash Patel is once again under scrutiny—this time after shots rang out steps away from President Donald Trump and top administration officials.
The embattled FBI was seen appearing to linger aimlessly in a video captured after a man exchanged gunfire with Secret Service at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday.
In the footage captured by ABC News Journalist Linsey Davis, Patel is standing agape outside the Washington Hilton.
“Kash Patel standing around outside after the shooting like a random attendee and not the literal FBI Director is actually crazy,” Eric Spracklen, a rightwing political commentator, shared with his almost 300,000 followers in a post on X.
Other videos show Patel, who was a guest of the Daily Mail, crouched to the ground inside the venue, looking seemingly dumbfounded.
“There is a shooting and…The head of the FBI is just hanging out?” another X user wrote in a post that has racked up 850,000 views as of publication.
Patel was seen being ushered out of the Hilton through the front lobby at 10:02 p.m., about 90 minutes after shots were fired, The Washington Post reported. His girlfriend, who was also invited by the Mail, was hiding in a room holding hands with another man but later left with Patel, the New York Times reported.
Tonight, Chump appeared on CBS' 60 MINUES. Ryan Coleman (ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY) notes:
Donald Trump was not happy with Norah O'Donnell during a segment of her 60 Minutes interview regarding Saturday's shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
[. . .]
Less than 24 hours into the aftermath, Trump sat down for his first interview about the third attempt on his life since the 2024 presidential campaign. 60 Minutes correspondent Norah O'Donnell, who has interviewed Trump on several occasions, spoke to the president on a wide range of topics regarding the shooting, from accusations of poor security to Melania's reaction, and — to his fiercest resistance — the alleged shooter's intentions in his own words.
NBC News quoted the alleged manifesto on Saturday, which an unnamed senior administration official told the outlet Allen had sent to family members within minutes of the shooting. On Sunday, the New York Post published the alleged manifesto in full.
O'Donnell pointed the president to one particular section, which follows Allen's alleged apologies to family and friends, in which he notes, "I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes."
"I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you're horrible people. He did write that. I'm not a rapist, I didn't rape anybody," Trump responded. O'Donnell noted that Allen doesn't refer to Trump by name in that section, but the president cut in: "Excuse me. I'm not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person. I get associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated."
Robert Davis (RAW STORY) notes online reaction to Chump's lies:
Observers offered the president a swift fact-check on social media.
"A jury and a judge adjudicated him as a rapist," Norman Ornstein, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, posted on X. "A woman credibly accused him of rape when she was 13. He bragged about walking into a dressing room with naked teenagers. He bragged about grabbing women by the p----."
"Trump is a clinical-grade psychopath," journalist Nancy Levine Sterns posted on X.
"Trump is literally a court adjudicated rapist," novelist Patrick S. Tomlinson posted on X.
"Wow. This interview was epic. Trump’s nastiness and consciousness of guilt were off the f------ charts," podcaster Andy Ostroy posted on X.
In 2023, a jury found Trump liable in a civil sexual abuse and defamation case filed by E. Jean Carroll. A judge later clarified that the jury's guilty verdict meant Trump had been found liable for rape, the Washington Post reported at the time.
And his "exonerated" remark? He's been saying that since the January releases by the Justice Dept of some of The Epstein Files. He maintained that they proved he was innocent. He has not addressed the later release prompted by NPR's reporting -- the woman who gave four interviews to the FBI in 2019 ad stated in three of them that Chump had assaulted her when she was underage. He's never been asked about that -- not why did the Justice Dept not release those, not for his response to the accusations.
This week, King Charles is set to visit the US. Bradley Jolly (THE MIRROR) notes:
The family of Virginia Giuffre has made a desperate plea for King Charles to meet them during his US tour.
Sky Roberts, Ms Giuffre's brother, said the monarch would "show unity with survivors" if he were to see them, and survivors of paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. Charles and Queen Camilla are due to arrive in the US on Monday for a four-day visit during which they will meet President Donald Trump.
And Mr Roberts and his family see this as an ideal opportunity for Charles to spend just 10 minutes with them for the relations "to show him that we're real people, with real feelings".
And Luke Alsford (METRO) notes:
Epstein survivors will hold high-profile meetings and protests in Washington DC to mark King Charles’ state visit, Metro has learned.
Virginia Giuffre’s family will join a meeting with survivors and a top US lawmaker hours before the King addresses Congress on Tuesday.
Separately, Epstein survivor Rina Oh and other advocates will hold a ‘live art protest’ in front of the White House as the Monarch meets Donald Trump inside.
The events could pile more pressure on the Monarch over his brother Andrew’s links to the paedophile financier and the Royal Family’s response to the scandal.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Alex Padilla's office:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In case you missed it, U.S. Senators Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and John Curtis (R-Utah) authored a new op-ed in The Hill calling for urgent, bipartisan action to address the growing megafire crisis and strengthen the nation’s wildfire prevention and response strategy.
In the op-ed, the Senators reflect on the devastating toll of recent wildfires across the West and warn that the United States remains dangerously underprepared for the next major disaster. It underscores that Congress must act to pass the Padilla-Curtis bipartisan legislation, the Fix Our Forests Act, as a commonsense solution to modernize wildfire management to better protect communities across the country.
“We must stop viewing megafires as seasonal or regional nuisances and start treating them as the urgent, year-round crises they are,” the Senators wrote.
Padilla and Curtis outline how current wildfire policy relies on outdated approaches and emphasize the need to move beyond reactive suppression and toward proactive, science-based prevention. They highlight the escalating environmental and economic costs of inaction, from worsening climate impacts to rising housing and insurance burdens for families.
The Senators continued,“The status quo fails because it relies on 20th century tools to fight a 21st century problem.”
The Fix Our Forests Act would streamline forest management projects like prescribed burns and thinning, establish a new Wildfire Intelligence Center to improve real-time coordination, and help communities better prepare through investments in fire-resistant infrastructure.
“We have the science, the technology and a bipartisan consensus. All that remains is the political will to act before the next megafire breaks out. We cannot afford to wait for another anniversary to realize we should have acted today,” the Senators concluded.
Full text of Senator Padilla’s The Hill op-ed is available here and below:
The Hill: We still aren’t doing enough to prevent the next devastating wildfire
by Alex Padilla and John Curtis, opinion contributors
At the start of last year, ash and smoke consumed the skies over Los Angeles. Homes, businesses and entire neighborhoods went up in flames, and 31 lives were tragically lost. It’s been over a year since we promised to never forget the victims or the lives uprooted, yet families are still fighting every day to recover from the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires.
This isn’t a tragedy confined by state lines; it’s a crisis across the entire American West, as fire seasons continue to lengthen and intensify. In 2025, Utah faced its highest fire activity since 2020, with nearly 165,000 acres of land scorched — a staggering number that exceeds the 2022, 2023 and 2024 fire seasons combined.
We must chart a better path forward. While the smoke of last year’s catastrophes has cleared, the threat of the next megafire has only grown, and we still haven’t done enough to prepare for it. Our wildfire prevention and suppression policy remains stuck in the past.
To begin, we must stop viewing megafires as seasonal or regional nuisances and start treating them as the urgent, year-round crises they are. Wildfires are the single greatest threat to America’s forests, and a vicious driver of the very environmental crisis that fuels them. Consider the scale: greenhouse gases produced by California’s 2020 wildfires alone offset 20 years of the state’s emission reductions. This creates a catastrophic feedback loop: carbon from fires accelerates extreme heat and drought, which in turn creates the parched, tinderbox conditions for even larger megafires.
And this isn’t just an environmental concern; it’s also an economic one. The rising costs attached to this cycle are fiscally unsustainable.
Last year in Utah alone, the price tag to suppress the state’s 1,161 wildfires is estimated to be nearly $192 million — a bill footed by taxpayers at the federal, state and local levels. Moreover, megafires and other natural disasters are driving up insurance and housing costs. As losses increase, insurers raise premiums or exit high-risk areas altogether. This makes mortgages harder or more expensive to secure, pushing homeownership even further out of reach for millions of Americans.
The status quo fails because it relies on 20th century tools to fight a 21st century problem. Our response is choked by red tape and lacks urgency. Fortunately, in an era where bipartisanship often feels like a relic of the past, we’ve been working on a bipartisan solution: the Fix Our Forests Act.
The science is clear: focusing solely on putting out fires after they’ve already begun simply no longer works. Recently passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee with broad bipartisan support, our bill’s momentum is a testament to its commonsense design. It reflects lengthy consultation with the people who understand this crisis best: land managers, fire chiefs, Tribal leaders, and emergency response experts.
First, it cuts the red tape hampering active forest management. By streamlining permitting for selective thinning and prescribed burns in high-risk areas, we can make our forests less susceptible to megafires. An analysis of 40 peer-reviewed papers found that when wildfires reach areas treated with these tools, burn severity is reduced by up to 72 percent in western conifer forests. Our bill accelerates timelines so these proven, science-backed solutions can be implemented before the next disaster strikes.
Second, our bill establishes the Wildfire Intelligence Center to ensure our first responders aren’t flying blind. By providing local, state, Tribal, and federal agencies access to shared, real-time data and decision support, the center supports the full wildfire lifecycle — from prevention to suppression to recovery. This intelligence helps officials position resources earlier, conduct safer prescribed burns, and ensure existing wildfire investments work faster and more effectively.
Finally, while we can’t predict when the next megafire will strike, we can help communities better prepare and better protect themselves. The Senate’s Fix Our Forests Act creates a centralized new program to help homeowners build and retrofit their homes with fire-resistant materials and features, all while making grant applications easier to navigate.
Some critics argue this bill goes too far. Others claim it doesn’t go far enough. What’s clear is that the cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of compromise. In a divided Washington, the Fix Our Forests Act proves that smart, science-driven forest policy can still unite us. The act is now awaiting a vote on the U.S. Senate floor, and we’ll continue to push for this final vote.
We have the science, the technology and a bipartisan consensus. All that remains is the political will to act before the next megafire breaks out. We cannot afford to wait for another anniversary to realize we should have acted today.
Alex Padilla (D) is California’s senior U.S. senator and a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. John Curtis (R) is Utah’s junior U.S. senator and a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
The following sites updated:
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