Letters from an American - December 5, 2025

Late last night, the Trump administration released the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States of America. It did so quietly, although as foreign affairs journalist at Politico Nahal Toosi noted, the release of the NSS is usually accompanied by fanfare, as it shows an administration’s foreign policy priorities and the way it envisions the position of the U.S. in the world.

The Trump administration’s NSS announces a dramatic reworking of the foreign policy the U.S. has embraced since World War II.

Kushner, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia: The Conflict-of-Interest Story Everyone’s Ignoring

I don’t know why this wasn’t above-the-fold news all across the country over the past few days as the details of the “peace plan” Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff took to Putin this week came out.

Kushner, it appears, had added in a provision that would have forced both Ukraine and Russia to take actions that would specifically benefit Saudi Arabia, a country that is paying the presidential son-in-law at least $25 million a year.

Honduras election shock; Mass casualty flooding and fires in Asia; Netanyahu demands a pardon

Flood waters submerged residential buildings in Hat Yai in Thailand’s southern Songkhla province on November 26, 2025. Tens of thousands of people in Thailand and neighbouring Malaysia were displaced by widespread flooding, with streets submerged, homes inundated and at least 34 dead (AFP via Getty Images).

Letters from an American - November 29, 2025

In the wake of yesterday’s report from Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered Special Operations to kill the survivors of a September 2 strike on a small boat off Venezuela, the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees have announced they intend to conduct “vigorous oversight” and “gather a full accounting” of the operation. The two committees referred to the Department of Defense by that name, rather than by the “Department of War” rebrand Hegseth and Trump have pushed.

DOGE May Be Dead, but Its Crimes Live On

Can one eulogize a federal agency that never existed? The question has the quality of a Zen riddle. But Reuters informs us that the phantasm known as the Department of Government Efficiency, a.k.a. DOGE, n’existe plus. “That doesn’t exist,” Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, Director Scott Kupor told Reuters’s Courney Rozen when Rozen inquired about DOGE’s status.

Disobey an Order That Is Illegal Or From Trump (But I Repeat Myself)

A U.S. federal judge ruled Thursday that members of the so-called National Guard occupying Washington, D.C., do so only by obeying illegal orders. At Nuremberg, the U.S. and its allies tried and convicted Nazis despite their defense that they had been obeying orders, and despite some of the crimes having been invented after the fact for the prosecution.

Letters from an American - November 14, 2025

In a transparent attempt to distract from the many times his own name appears in the documents from the Epstein estate members of the House Oversight Committee released Wednesday, President Donald J. Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Democrats whose names appeared in the documents. He singled out former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, and Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn and who is a Democratic donor.

Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts

On Oct. 2, the second day of the government shutdown, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at Mount Rushmore to shoot a television ad. Sitting on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat, Noem addressed the camera with a stern message for immigrants: “Break our laws, we’ll punish you.” 

FBI Director Kash Patel Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Dan Bongino, Two Other Senior Staff

FBI Director Kash Patel granted waivers to Deputy Director Dan Bongino and two other newly hired senior FBI staff members, exempting them from passing polygraph exams normally required to gain access to America’s most sensitive classified information, according to a former senior FBI official and several other government officials.

Gaza Group Asks for Help Recovering Over 10,000 Palestinians Buried Under Rubble

Palestinians search the rubble of buildings amid widespread destruction due to Israeli bombardment in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on October 12, 2025. OMAR AL-QATTAA / AFP via Getty Images

 

A civil society group in Gaza on Thursday appealed for international assistance to help recover the bodies of more than 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces who remain buried beneath the rubble of the flattened strip.

Letters from an American - November 1, 2025

Yesterday I wrote that President Donald J. Trump’s celebration of his new marble bathroom in the White House was so tone deaf at a time when federal employees are working without pay, furloughed workers are taking out bank loans to pay their bills, healthcare premiums are skyrocketing, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are at risk, that it seemed likely to make the history books as a symbol of this administration.

Criminal regime: Federal agents kick down doors and zip tie children as constitutional freedoms crumble

Remember the old TV crime drama shows? A cop would bang on a suspect’s door, and the suspect would say, through the door, “Do you have a warrant?” The officer would then walk away, promising to come back later with the requisite paper signed by a judge.