Janessa Goldbeck

Once again, it is American service members and families who will bear the consequences of a president who treats the military as a first resort instead of a last resort. Congress must do its job as outlined in the Constitution and debate and vote on this war of choice.

Reporter: How long are you willing to wait for a response from Iran? Trump: Don’t rush me. We were in Vietnam for 18 years.

I know it's a bit downmarket these days to point out Trump's crookedness and hypocrisy but MAGA simply cannot stop speedrunning the plot of Animal Farm, becoming everything they claimed to despise about the previous regime, except more so. Like, for four years, a central attack on Joe Biden was that Hunter was trading on the family name. They even launched a congressional investigation, iirc. Now they either say nothing or enthusiastically cheer on the president's kids as they run a cryptocurrency exchange, a bitcoin mining operation, a luxury real estate brand, and a social media company, all of which are getting money from foreign governments and sovereign wealth funds. Here Eric Trump is appearing on TV as an adviser to a company that just won a $24 million Pentagon contract! And Fox Business is like: "way to go, Eric, we're proud of you, you really knocked this one out of the park."

We’re in the middle of a pretty important naval blockade standoff with a country we’ve threatened to destroy, so it seems like a weird time for the Secretary of the Navy to abruptly depart. And by “weird” I mean, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

Shame on us. I think of the brave Afghans that stood alongside us against the Taliban, especially those I worked with personally during my four years in command of the NATO mission there. It is incomprehensible to me that we would not bring them here to the United States, fulfilling the most fundamental obligations of trust and honor. nytimes.com/2026/04/21/wor…

What a truly evil way to treat people who risked their lives for the United States

When the VA rolls back essential care, we step up. We partnered with @BrigidAlliance to launch our #WeveGotYourSix campaign with billboards outside VA clinics to ensure no veteran is left behind. Need reproductive care? We’re here to help with logistics and support.

Breaking: Trump orders the dismantling of the US Forest Service. All regional offices are being shut down and the research program destroyed.

Right before fire season. hatchmag.com/articles/trump…

I mostly avoid commenting on what President Trump says from day to day, while pulling no punches in my assessments, whether positive or negative, of his policy. His Iran ultimatums feel different. Making such threats is a policy. If he were to follow through on them, the consequences would be immediate, irreversible, and catastrophic on a world-historical scale. So while some will inevitably insist he should be “taken seriously rather than literally,” or that he is executing a sophisticated “madman” strategy in a complex game of 5-D chess, or that he needs everyone’s steadfast support to maximize his leverage, now rather than later seems the time to say that the actions that he is proposing would be a disaster for our country, both strategically and morally, which makes the remarks themselves a terrible mistake. Simply put, what’s the point of all this? If these are empty threats that we all know he will not carry out, then they are ineffective threats (the Iranians are on X too!), merely making the president and our nation look foolish. If they are not empty threats, then the president is asserting the American position that such actions are acceptable in this situation and ones we are willing to take. We are not living in some quantum thought experiment where he simultaneously is and is not serious. We cannot expect the Iranians, but only the Iranians, will believe him. Whether the threats are empty or not, we should be willing to say: This is wrong. We should not establish a pattern of threatening escalation from a blockaded strait to elimination of a civilization. We should not launch strikes intended to devastate the lives of millions of people and take our nation to total war without indisputable justification, or before the American people have deliberated upon and assented to the path with full understanding of what total war might mean for them. Those principles are vital to our Republic, independent of whether the strategy could “work.” But it’s also worth emphasizing that the strategy is a dead end. This war is actively weakening American power, increasing the danger to American citizens, and frustrating the president’s important efforts at addressing our many domestic challenges. It has closed a strait that was previously open, strengthened the incentive for other nations to pursue nuclear weapons, and in this most recent rhetoric made more plausible their use. Our choices for continuing the war appear to be catastrophic escalation of the air war or extensive deployment of ground troops, neither of which were planned or had support at the outset. Stepping back from these threats and admitting such actions do not offer a path to resolving the conflict may be unpalatable, but it is by far the least unpalatable option available. Let us all hope cooler heads prevail.

In the best case scenario, Trump struck a deal to reopen a Strait that was open before the pointless war he started, with the IRGC demonstrating its control over the Strait and potentially extracting fees plus sanctions relief. Thousands of innocents - including hundreds of children - dead in Lebanon and Iran for no reason. U.S. troops killed and wounded. U.S. embassies and bases in the Middle East badly damaged. U.S. standing in the world obliterated. U.S. munitions badly depleted. Hundreds of billions spent. Prices up everywhere. More global economic fallout to come. Putin strengthened and enriched. Just a catastrophic situation even in the best of circumstances. A profoundly shameful episode in American history no matter what happens next.

Via @theUCMJattorney: A U.S. President just threatened to wipe out an entire civilization. Under the law of armed conflict, that’s not just rhetoric, it’s a war crime.

"A whole civilization will die tonight” are words no President of the United States had ever spoken until this morning. Donald Trump’s behavior is unhinged and making Americans less safe. After a 25-year career in the United States Navy, I have never met or served with anyone who so completely lacks the qualities of good leadership as Donald Trump does. If the President takes the actions he has threatened to take, countless Iranian civilians will die, it will massively escalate this war, and the United States will be seen as a country without a moral or ethical compass. That will make Americans less safe right now and risk the lives of thousands of service members. The consequences will have a lasting and damaging effect on our nation. Trump's mistakes have led us to this perilous moment, but the solution is not to escalate even further. This must stop.

EMERGENCY RELEASE from Gen. Eaton. @votevets/note/c-239642229?utm_source=notes-share-action" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@votevets/note…

Dear @thejointstaff: The UCMJ and federal law prohibit war crimes. Striking civilian infrastructure that causes disproportionate civilian harm constitutes war crimes. You will disobey those illegal orders. If you commit war crimes, the next Administration will prosecute you.

33,000 military veterans are currently homeless.

JPM's Michael Cembalest: In the ~160 years after the Civil War, US presidents fired 11 four- and five-star military officers. In Trump's first 14 months, the White House has fired 9 of them.

Uncle Sam Wants You—Just Not Women or People of Color thefulcrum.us/inclusion-dive…

Trump was warned this would happen. He did it anyway. Now, over 10,000 Veterans lost their homes. 90,000 more are on track for foreclosure. On top of cutting jobs, slashing benefits and throwing our heroes into an unnecessary war. The most anti-Veteran President in history.

There are no circumstances where the @SecWar's personal stockbroker should be buying or selling *any* defense-related stocks — but particularly moments before the U.S. sends its service members to fight and die in war. We cannot allow this type of corruption to become normal, no matter how much President Trump and his Administration flood the zone with new ways to personally enrich themselves and their friends. reuters.com/business/finan…

Trying to make money off a war you helped launch is disgusting and disgraceful. Our Secretary of Defense should be protecting American troops, not profiting off putting them in danger. There must be a full investigation.