How Social Security increases the "deficit", and why it doesn't matter

One of the unfortunate consequences of the public's debt illiteracy is that we use the words "deficit" and "debt" interchangeably, even though they aren't the same thing.

Deficit is an accounting statement of the government's cash flows over a period of time, usually for a fiscal year. Debt is the total amount of money the government owes to its creditors. You might think that the current year's deficit is simply added to the debt, but that is not the case.

Much is being made of the government's fiscal predicament, especially because the national debt just hit $40 trillion for the first time ever. It's quite appropriate to look at what's driving the ever-increasing debt, but unfortunately our very best journalistic enterprises (NPR and the Washington Post, for example) often botch the job. Three years ago NPR's Deirdre Walsh said Social Security and Medicare are the "biggest drivers of the debt." In March of this year the Washington Post's editorial board said "the money retirees receive today is funded by a combination of taxes on workers, who are on average poorer than retirees, and debt." Both statements are false.

Just the other day the Washington Post's editorial board said "Social Security and Medicare both add to annual deficits right now, even though the trust funds still have positive balances on paper," about which I wrote a scathing critique in which, alas, I called the board "stupid." Notice in this rendering the word "deficit," which we'll get to in a moment.

Over the years I've written many times about how Social Security is entirely self-financed through the payroll tax. I've explained why it doesn't increase the debt (also to be discussed shortly) and never has. See, for example, this, this, and this. I have never written about Medicare and am not doing so now. The two programs have very different financial realities and, quite crucially, Medicare's problems are deeply connected to the very high cost of healthcare in the United States, which is an outlier among advanced countries, and which we've never been able to adequately address.

Social Security is different. It has always paid its own way and still does. It has never added a penny to the debt and doesn't today. Thus Social Security isn't a "driver" of the debt at all. Somehow NPR, the Washington Post, and others never figured that out. How can that be?

Frequently in my explanations I've mentioned but perhaps haven't well explained the confusion in the public mind about the words "deficit" and "debt." I'm going to more explicitly clarify the distinction here (but without numbers), so you can understand how you should be thinking about Social Security's contribution to each.

As I said, deficit relates to an accounting statement of the government's cash flows over a period of time, usually for a fiscal year. The simplest way to think about it is that you add up all the government's revenues (ie., from taxes), and add up all the government's expenditures (ie., spending on everything the government buys or does), and subtract expenditures from revenues. If the result is positive you have a surplus. If the result is negative you have a deficit. When the government is running deficits it needs to borrow to make up the difference in order to fund its operations.

The government's debt is literally the sum total of everything it owes to its creditors. Whereas deficit is usually an annual statement of cash flows, debt can accumulate over years and decades. As I said, the government debt just hit $40 trillion. That's the total amount the government owes to all the entities that have loaned it money in various ways over time. If you hold treasury bonds, either through direct purchases or through your retirement accounts, you are one of the government's creditors. You naturally expect the government to eventually pay back the amount you loaned it, and to pay you interest in the meantime. Those are the two relevant features of debt: it needs to be paid back, and the government needs to pay interest on it.

You might think that each year's deficit adds exactly the same amount to the overall debt, but that is not so. Social Security is the best example of why.

Social Security, which has existed since the 1930s, is and has always been entirely self-funded through a dedicated payroll tax ("FICA" on your paycheck stub). The program was originally designed as a pay-as-you-go system, where current workers fund benefit payments to current retirees. But in the 1980s it became clear that when the baby boomers began retiring some decades in the future, the program would collapse because there would not be enough workers to pay the benefits of all those new retirees.

In the 1980s President Reagan impaneled a commission, headed by Alan Greenspan, to address the problem. The solution, which was enacted into law, was to increase the FICA tax rate beyond what was needed to pay current benefits, in order to build a massive trust fund which would help pay Social Security benefits when the baby boomers retired way into the future. This was extremely long term planning, looking out decades in advance.

It worked. Baby boomers have been retiring for quite a while, and current benefits to retirees are now being paid by a combination of current payroll tax receipts and withdrawals from the trust fund, which to this day carries a large positive balance. (But it's being depleted rapidly, and is expected to be entirely used up in several years. A fix is badly needed.)

Notice what this arrangement has done to our conception of budget deficits. By definition and intent, for several decades Social Security was running surpluses to build the trust fund. That means payroll taxes being collected exceeded benefits paid to retirees. Our definition of deficit, above, is revenues minus expenditures. For a considerable time Social Security had revenues well in excess of its expenditures. And here's the thing. When Social Security's revenues and expenditures were added to all the government's other revenues and expenditures, it had the effect of making the overall reported government deficit lower than it would have been if Social Security had been left out of the calculation. For a lot of years Social Security had the effect of masking the size of the federal budget deficit. By the way, Social Security's finances were supposed to be reported separately, but usually they weren't when communicating the size of the deficit to the public.

Now the situation is reversed. Tax revenues—the payroll tax—aren't nearly enough to cover benefit payments to retirees. The trust fund, which was intentionally fortified all those years, makes up the difference. The treasury simply makes withdrawals from the trust fund to pay for the portion of benefits for which current payroll taxes are insufficient.

Which is great. Really. The system is working exactly as designed, and kudos to the Greenspan Commission and the government for successfully planning decades in advance for this eventuality. But notice what the current situation does regarding our conception of deficit. Withdrawals from the trust fund don't count as current revenue. (The original tax receipts that went into the trust fund were revenue when they were collected, and they were accounted for as such long ago, which is why they masked deficits.)

So if we define deficit as a negative result when expenditures are subtracted from revenues, Social Security is running a deficit by that definition. And if we combine Social Security's revenues and expenditures to the government's overall revenues and expenditures, the effect is to increase the size of the government's overall budget deficit beyond what it would otherwise have been. Whereas Social Security masked the size of the deficit for many years, it's now making the deficit look bigger.

And it just doesn't matter!  Deficit is not debt. Deficit does not need to be paid back; debt does. Deficit does not require interest payments; debt does. And while Social Security increases the deficit by some increment, it does not increase the debt in the slightest! This is why you should fixate on the debt, not the deficit, and understand the difference.

The reason Social Security doesn't increase the debt is that its apparent "deficit spending," which is an accounting reality, is entirely a function of withdrawals from the trust fund, to make up the current tax (ie., revenue) shortfall. The trust fund contains real assets, intentionally accumulated for that very purpose.

You can surely see intuitively why paying with money you previously collected and set aside doesn't increase the debt, right? But critics such as the Washington Post insist that the government is pulling a fast one. Because the trust fund's assets consist of special issue (non-marketable) government bonds, the critics cry foul. They say that because the money the trust fund loaned the government has been "already spent," the trust fund consists of "worthless IOUs" from the government to itself.

The answer to this is twofold. Please please please work as hard as you need to to resolve this intellectually, by thinking it through until you get it. You'll be glad when you realize it makes sense, because understanding things is always more satisfying than not understanding. The Post was unable or unwilling to do the work, but you should. The links I provide above to my previous writing will help you do so.

But note also as an objective statement of fact that the government's official accounting of the national debt shows that I am correct. (You'll need to do some digging. This explains more about how to do so.) 

When the treasury needs to make withdrawals from the trust fund (which is a creditor to the government and duly noted in the government's debt accounts; see the previous paragraph), two offsetting transactions occur. First, the amount the government owes to the trust fund is reduced by the amount of the withdrawal. Government debt in the amount of the withdrawal is thus being retired. But to pay back the trust fund (in order obtain the money to pay Social Security benefits) the government needs to issue new debt, which it does by selling bonds to the public. The new debt increases debt. The new debt and the old, retired debt cancel exactly, and the overall indebtedness of the government remains entirely unchanged! Such offsetting transactions make perfect sense to any accountant, and they should to you too.

That's how it works and how it's always worked. Social Security collects taxes, makes trust fund withdrawals, and pays retiree benefits, all without changing the national debt one iota. Because deficits can be misleading, and because it's debt that actually matters, always concentrate on the debt. 

The Washington Post doesn't get it. It said (quoted above) Social Security "add[s] to annual deficits right now," but that just doesn't matter. It has also said (quoted above) that Social Security "is funded by a combination of taxes on workers ... and debt," but that is false.

Contrary to the Post, Social Security isn't funded by debt. It is and always has been funded by its own dedicated revenue stream, the payroll tax, some of which has been accumulated in the trust fund. It has never added a penny to the debt. Because the country will be increasingly wracked by concerns about its growing "debt crisis" going forward, it's crucial, as we consider solutions, to understand what does and doesn't drive the debt. Social Security just doesn't. Never has. So we need to quit implicating it in the problem.

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

 

When it comes to Social Security, the Washington Post's editorial board is indefensibly stupid

The Washington Post's editorial board keeps saying indefensibly stupid things about Social Security. Here's the latest. In an editorial titled "To get the national debt under control, start with the retirement state," the Post said:

"The trust fund concept is misleading. Both programs are, and have always been, pay-as-you-go, where taxes collected from current workers fund benefits for current retirees. Social Security and Medicare both add to annual deficits right now, even though the trust funds still have positive balances on paper."

Three moronic sentences strung together with mind numbing stupidity. The Post is counting on you being as ignorant and brain-dead as it is.

Take the sentences in order. The "trust fund," says the Post, is a "concept" that is "misleading." No. Social Security's (I'm ignoring Medicare, which is another matter entirely) trust fund is a real account with real assets. Nothing about it is in any way misleading, and it's not difficult to understand for anybody willing to make a minimal effort.

Social Security and Medicare, continues the Post, "are, and have always been, pay-as-you-go, where taxes collected from current workers fund benefits for current retirees." False. Social Security, which began in the 1930s, was initially conceived as a pay-as-you-go system, but way back in the 1980s it was clear that it could not continue to work that way, because a time would eventually come when current payroll tax receipts would be insufficient to cover current benefit payments. Many decades ago the Greenspan Commission recommended, and Congress enacted into law, additional payroll taxation beyond what was needed to cover then-current benefit payments, in order to build up a massive trust fund to help cover payments when the baby boomers eventually retired. The trust fund has been used exactly as anticipated, exactly as designed.

The Post adds that "Social Security and Medicare both add to annual deficits right now, even though the trust funds still have positive balances on paper." On paper? On paper? That's like saying your own savings or retirement accounts are only "on paper." The Post must think that only big bags of $100 bills count as real assets. How does one even begin to break through such stupidity?

The Post also seems to not understand the distinction between debt and deficit, even though from the standpoint of national finances the distinction is crucial. Deficit is an often misleading statement of annual cash flows. Debt is the accumulated amount the country owes to its creditors. Debt is what matters, period and full stop. And Social Security has never added a penny to the debt. Not a single penny.

Unfortunately, people tend to use the terms deficit and debt interchangeably, but they aren't the same thing. When Social Security was running huge payroll tax surpluses and building up its trust fund, those surpluses had the effect of masking the size of the government's overall annual budget deficit and making it seem smaller than it actually was. The two are supposed to be reported separately, but they were usually combined. Social Security's big surplus, when combined with the government's other revenues and spending, made the size of the government's overall deficit seem somewhat smaller than it was.

Once Social Security finally began tapping (as intended!) the trust fund to help pay retirement benefits, the situation was reversed. Now Social Security makes the overall annual budget deficit seem larger, because Social Security is actually taking in less in payroll taxes than it needs to pay benefits. But no worries: the trust fund makes up the difference. Again, as designed.

The key to avoiding any confusion is to concentrate on what actually matters, which is not the deficit but rather the debt. The debt is not the accumulation of reported annual deficits. Over time, the debt can grow faster or slower than the reported deficits would suggest.

It's the debt that just passed $40 trillion. It's the debt on which we pay interest. It's the debt that needs to be paid back (or, more likely, rolled over). And it's the debt that has not changed a bit as a consequence of paying Social Security benefits.

As I said, Social Security has never added a single penny to the debt. It's important to understand why that is so.

Thus the Post is emphatically wrong when it says, in the editorial's headline, "To get the national debt under control, start with the retirement state." But so far, the "retirement state," at least the Social Security component of it, hasn't been a driver of the debt at all. The only way that would change would be for the government to start directly borrowing money to pay benefits—something it has never done, and almost certainly won't do. Social Security is entirely self-funded. Social Security benefits are currently paid by a combination of payroll tax receipts and trust fund redemptions that don't change the debt one iota. It's crucial that you understand this. (Follow the links I provide above and below if you want to learn why.)

And changes to the system to extend solvency, which are long overdue, almost certainly won't affect the debt either. They will probably involve things like higher payroll taxes and higher caps on FICA taxes. (Currently earnings above $184,500 aren't subject to payroll taxes; that cap can be bumped up or even removed entirely.) None of this involves direct borrowing. None of it adds to the debt.

Please realize that it's within your ability to understand how Social Security is funded, even if the Post does not. I wrote an extensive piece in 2013 that goes to great lengths to explain these matters. That piece got a fair amount of notice at the time. The well known economist and commentator Dean Baker recommended it to his Twitter followers. See also this and this.

If the Post can't weigh in on the very real challenges facing our retirement systems without asserting abject falsehoods, it shouldn't say anything at all. We need an intellectually honest and informed discussion of these challenges, and the Post isn't up to the job.

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Do people never tire of the unending bullshit?

Donald Trump, the consummate buck-passer, said the other day that voters are "angry at Republicans," but not at him. "They’re not angry at me, but they are angry at Republicans," said the leader of the Republican party. Trump's personal approval rating has for some time been in the low to mid 30s across a range of high quality polls. He's deeply underwater on crucial issues such as the economy, inflation, and the war with Iran.

When Trump isn't throwing "Republicans" under the bus, he's in denial about his own low approval. "MY REAL POLL NUMBERS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN," he wrote on Truth Social in June.

But what's "real" (or "REAL") is the fundamental problem with Trump. Literally nothing he says should be taken as aligning with actual reality.

On the economy, for example. Even going back to his first term, Trump the bullshitter has portrayed himself as the worker of economic miracles. But the claim, which was always farcical, is now comical. "The economy's the greatest economy we've ever had by far," Trump riffed the other day.

By far! That "greatest ever" economy lost 23,000 jobs last month. GDP growth for the most recent quarter was a tepid 1.5 percent. It was just 2.1 percent for Q1 and a scant 0.5 percent for Q4 of last year. Not exactly a roaring economy. See the reality problem? Annual inflation is running around 3.4 percent. Prices are high, consumers are unhappy, and jobs are becoming harder to find, especially for persons just out of school.

Americans should take the "the greatest economy we've ever had by far" nonsense as an insult to their intelligence. If they have any.

In his version of a great economy, Trump has created an average of just 33,000 jobs per month for his first 18 full months in office. Joe Biden's monthly average was 321,000—ten times as many—over four full years. Obama averaged 226,000 jobs per month over his entire second term. Whatever he may be, Trump is not a job creator.

What he is is a bullshitter.

On the campaign trail running for his first term, Trump bellowed nonsensically that the "real" unemployment rate under Obama was 25 percent. Then he said "Our real unemployment rate is probably 30 percent." Next he said "I actually think it could be as high as 32, 35 percent." And finally, "As high as 35, in fact I even heard recently 42 percent."

No, Trump never "heard" that the real unemployment rate was 42 percent. Not from any authoritative source, at least. If you hear something from, say, your hair stylist, do not take it to the bank. And hilariously, in Trump's very first official unemployment report after taking office, the unemployment rate was instantly back down to less than 5 percent. In a briefing press secretary Sean Spicer said "I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly ... they [the unemployment numbers] may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now." Spicer was grinning at the undeniable absurdity he was spewing.

Trump's saying that he "heard" something is one of his common rhetorical tics. Another is his continual escalation of made-up statistics such as the ever increasing unemployment rate. I call that the "Trump ratchet." Trump can't resist using it, and it instantly flags him as an incessant confabultor or bulshitter or even liar. A recent example is the Reflecting Pool debacle, where Trump insisted vandals had cut the pool's lining with a knife, and in his subsequent retelling the size of the damage kept getting bigger and bigger. First Trump said it was a 250-foot gash. Two days later the gash had grown to 300 feet. Finally it became a 350-foot slit. Well, not finally. By July 13 the "slashes" had grown to "300 yards long." That's 3 football fields. In reality there were no slashes at all, just seams that were coming apart because of shoddy installation.

But Trump's ego was deeply tied up in the project, so he had to find a scapegoat. An innocent bystander got swept up in Trump's vandalism conspiracy theory and was indicted on felony charges for damaging the pool. He had merely stopped on a bike ride for a look, and touched a loose piece of the pool's liner. Those charges were ultimately dropped when Trump's own DOJ admitted in a court filing that "the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented."

The bullshitting is unending. Months ago Trump proclaimed that the U.S. won the war against Iran, yet six months in nothing has been resolved and the enormity of the debacle is increasingly apparent. (Trump loves to declare that he's "won" before the entire game has been played, such as his declaration of victory before all the votes were counted on election night 2020, and his shrieking that he'd been robbed when additional votes were counted.)

Some win. To this day the Strait of Hormuz is mostly closed, the U.S. has substantially depleted several major weapons systems, there's been significant damage to U.S. bases and allied energy infrastructure, U.S. forces have had extended deployments under deteriorating conditions, conditions on a major U.S. aircraft carrier are abysmal and morale is low, the ship can't be properly resupplied because of Iranian attacks on the navy's main supply hub in Bahrain, and Iran, which is surely taking pleasure from Trump's predicament, seems uninterested in even having serious discussions about a way forward. That's so even as Trump keeps pathetically bleating that Iran is desperate to talk. Trump has no idea how to clean up the enormous mess he has made, and so incessantly changes the subject to his ballroom.

Trump has always spewed monstrous lies, such as his despicable claim that Obama wasn't born in the U.S., and his false averment that he saw thousands of New Jersey Muslims celebrating when the Twin Towers came down. (It never happened.) But Perhaps Trump's biggest lie ever is his insistence, repeated to this day, that the 2020 election was stolen. Innumerable lines of evidence, including from Trump's own DOJ, his Department of Homeland Security, his campaign, state recounts and audits, and dozens of lawsuits, all show that the election was free and fair, and that there was no significant fraud of any sort. It's hard to imagine anything more noxious and destructive to our democratic institutions than Trump's constantly repeated big lie. The reprehensible and systematic undermining of Americans' confidence in their elections is truly unforgivable. 

The continual confabulation, bullshitting, and lying are deeply corrosive to the national polity and to society at large, and should be thoroughly disqualifying. A president who lives entirely in made-up realities can't well govern the country, and a citizenry that willingly lives in a deranged man's made-up realities can't govern itself. We have been seeing what that looks like. Our situation should be utterly intolerable, but somehow isn't. We elected Trump a second time, four years after the start of the big lie and the attack on the Capitol, knowing full well what he is. How can anybody deny that the country is deeply sick? Can an electoral repudiation this November be a sign of real healing? I have my doubts, but we can hope.

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

At least my book isn't "slop"

New York Times journalist Kashmir Hill recently wrote a piece titled "I Got Slopped," in which she describes learning that an AI-written "biography" of her life had been published on Amazon. Google informs us that "AI slop is low-quality, mass-produced digital content created using generative artificial intelligence."

Apparently there's a deluge of AI slop books, many of them biographies, appearing lately on Amazon, which has a print on demand service. Some "authors" produce massive numbers of them, using AI to find, organize, and "write" about information in the public domain regarding their subjects.

Hill quotes researchers as saying the number of  e-books published per month on Amazon has tripled, to 300,000, since the release of ChatGPT in 2022.

Wanting to explore the phenomenon she'd stumbled upon, Hill contacted and directly interviewed a prolific slop writer named Bill Johns, who was happy to explain how he operates. Johns has published 445 books—on topics such as sports, eccentric geniuses, famous bridges, alcohol, the Chesapeake Bay—for sale on Amazon. Johns says he sells a few hundred books per month, at an average profit to him of around $7 per book. "It’s bar money at least," he told Hill. Johns aims to "write" ten books per week.

Johns told Hill she deserved a 400-page biography, not the paltry 90-page one that she got. She declined his offer.

Welcome, then, to our brave new world, where reality is increasingly, if not created, then at least chronicled, by machines and software acting as intelligent agents.

I myself have been a lifelong writer of the human sort, though not professionally, and not, until recently, of books. This blog, which constitutes the largest accumulation of my work, is now 21 years old. And I got a late start. All the essays here have been written the old-fashioned way, by me. I work hard to write well. I hope I sometimes succeed, although that's for you, dear reader, to judge. A single essay can sometimes take eight hours, with sometimes dozens of further edits in the days after it's posted.

Having accumulated by now a decent-sized body of work, it occurred to me that there might be some stuff here worthy of a book. So last December I published Does It Hurt To Think about Climate?: Essays on Global Warming, available from Amazon. All the essays first appeared on this blog.

I introduced the book here last year. As I explained then, I make no money at all on sales, which might surprise you considering the book's price. Unlike for the slop authors, money making was never an objective. I priced the book as low as Amazon will allow, leaving nothing for me. The high price is due to the fact that I selected white paper and the highest quality color ink. The book contains some color photos and graphics that I wanted to reproduce well, but that drove up the cost of printing. I'd do it differently now.

Although I'd be truly honored for my book to be on your bookshelf, I can understand why you'd not want to fork over the dough. You can, however, read all the book's essays on this blog, for free. Here they are, in the order in which they appear in the book:

Waving at Volcanoes 

Ice Ages Revisited: A Story of Climate 

PragerU offers "thought-provoking questions"

Mike Johnson: "I don't think..."

Krauthammer Disappoints 

It's George Will's brain that is melting away 

The Reddest Herring

Lefty Liberal Tomfoolery

Reckoning The Scientific Consensus on Global Warming

The book also contains a Preface that isn't currently available online, plus an addition after the "Reckoning" essay titled "Skeptical Scientists: Roy Spencer as a case study". It also contains some postscripts at the end of some essays.

Global warming is presently going in two directions simultaneously. On the one hand, the U.S. public at large seems less interested and engaged than several years ago. Perhaps that's because of Covid, inflation, the high cost of living, stupid wars, and political discontent generally crowding out climate concerns.

On the other hand, the planet continues to warm rapidly, whether we're paying attention or not. The ten hottest years in the instrumental record have all occurred in the past decade. France has already had three major heatwaves this year. Europe had 10,000 heat-related deaths in late June. A shockingly strong "Super El Nino" is presently developing in the Pacific, which could easily drive global temperatures to new highs. As I write this, France and Spain are fighting historic climate-driven wildfires. A New York Times headline on July 29 reads: "112 Degrees in Paris, Flames Near Bordeaux. France Can’t Go On Like This." Air conditioning is somewhat uncommon in France. Can you imagine? A July 30 headline says "Europe’s Summer of Reckoning Is ‘Just the Beginning’".

A Swedish climate scientist said "2026 is just the beginning. It will inevitably get worse. It will get worse and worse and worse to the point where, I’m afraid, we’ll be passing the limits of adaptation."

A recurrent theme in my book is that while natural climactic variation has absolutely occurred over the eons, the planet is currently warming far faster—stupendously faster—from human causes than it ever has from purely natural ones. Uninformed persons (Mike Johnson, for example, who has his own essay) blather about "natural" variation, but they don't understand it in the slightest. The "PragerU" essay describes severe warming that occurred tens of millions of years ago, during which crocodiles and palm trees existed north of the Arctic Circle, and no ice sheets existed on the planet. Sea levels were hundreds of feet higher than today.

But it took millions of years for the planet to get that hot—a process that I describe in the essay. And as the essay explains, atmospheric CO2 concentration, which fundamentally drives climate, is increasing 10,000 times faster today than back then under "natural" conditions. More recently (geologically speaking) CO2 concentration never exceeded 300 parts per million (ppm) over the past million years; today it is 425 ppm and rising nonstop.

In the "Volcanoes" essay and others I point out that until now the climate has been remarkably stable for the entire period of human civilization, but that we are now moving outside that zone of stability at a frightening rate. Human civilization has never experienced what we're headed for in the not-too-distant future.

Given all that, I thought it could be useful to pull the relevant essays together into a book. I hope that, one place or another, you will read them.

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here. 

Chatbots agree on birthright citizenship

On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly affirmed the plain meaning (i.e., what the words say) of the 14th Amendment with respect to birthright citizenship. I've been reading the concurring and dissenting opinions by the justices, here. One expert historian I heard considers Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's concurrence to be particularly strong.

The decision has caused considerable outrage on the ideological right, which is surprising and amusing considering it affirms not just the plain language of the 14th Amendment, but also law, practice, and previous Supreme Court precedent going back over 150 years.

In other words, nothing has changed regarding our very long understanding of the law. Persons born in the U.S. have automatically been deemed to be citizens ever since the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868. And yet the far right is shrieking in horror that the Supreme Court's affirmation will be the nation's undoing.

As an interested citizen, there are various ways to begin to get your arms around this question. You can, for example, seek out and read deeply the works of bona fide experts. To that end, I ordered and have begun reading The Second Founding by Eric Foner. I've only just started, but the book looks promising.

I also decided to ask a few prominent chatbots (I prefer to call them "AI-based search engines.") the following question, to see if their answers would be consistent:

Recently the Supreme Court ruled on birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. As one would expect, Justices Thomas and Alito dissented. I'm curious as to whether and to what extent consensus exists among expert historians on the meaning of the 14th Amendment as regards birthright citizenship. Is it strong? Overwhelming? Mixed?

ChatGPT replied:

The short answer: among professional historians who specialize in the Civil War, Reconstruction, and 19th-century constitutional history, the consensus is very strong—arguably overwhelming—that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause was understood to establish birthright citizenship broadly. The disagreement is not nonexistent, but it is concentrated among a relatively small group of revisionist constitutional scholars, legal originalists, and some political advocates rather than representing a major split within the historical profession. [bold in the original]

Perplexity said:

Expert historians and constitutional scholars overwhelmingly interpret the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause as guaranteeing broad birthright citizenship to nearly everyone born on U.S. soil, with only narrow, traditional exceptions (children of foreign diplomats, hostile occupying forces, and—historically—members of sovereign tribal nations). The consensus is strong, though not literally unanimous; there is a well‑develop but minority “revisionist” line of scholarship arguing for a narrower reading that would exclude some children of non‑citizen parents, especially those here unlawfully.

And Google AI Mode added:

Historical consensus on the original meaning of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause is strong and overwhelming. The vast majority of legal historians and constitutional scholars agree that the framers intended to establish universal, soil-based birthright citizenship for essentially all children born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents' race, status, or citizenship. [bold in the original]

Along with additional discussion, Google went on to say:

While there is a dissenting faction of originalist scholars (who, along with Justices Thomas and Alito, argue the clause was only intended to apply to formerly enslaved people and exclude the children of unauthorized immigrants or temporary visitors), this perspective is considered a distinct minority among mainstream academic historians. The overwhelming weight of historical evidence points to a blanket application of birthright citizenship.

All three AI-based search engines had a lot more to say about this than I've reproduced to here. You can paste my question into each of them and read for yourself, and also ask them followup questions.

What's clear is that there's consensus about consensus: The chatbots overwhelmingly agree that historians overwhelmingly agree that the 14th Amendment should be interpreted broadly with respect to birthright citizenship, because that's what the amendment's drafters and ratifiers intended and said, and thus, what the amendment means.

As with many things (global warming, for example), on what basis would we, mere laypersons, deign to dispute the overwhelming consensus of actual experts whose life's work has involved understanding these matters? Because it applies to a lot of things, it's a question worthy of deep reflection.

Justice Samuel Alito does deign to disagree with the experts, but he tips his hand at the very outset, and shows himself to be less interested in what the 14th Amendment means than in his preferred policy outcome. It's a very bad look for a Supreme Court justice, whose job is to uphold the actual meaning of the Constitution as it is and not how he'd like it to be, and to promote the actual rule of law.

In the very second sentence (my goodness!) of his dissent, Alito complains: "As interpreted by the Court today, the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on virtually everyone who happens to be born in this country, including the children of “birth tourists,” women who come here solely for the purpose of giving birth to a child and then promptly return home."

Outrage about "birth tourists" is no way to begin a constitutional argument. It just isn't. Suppose, for sake of discussion, that Alito is correct about the prevalence of birth tourism—something that would not have been contemplated by the 14th Amendment's drafters. Does that change the meaning of the amendment? It does not. Is "birth tourism" an unfortunate loophole? That's a subjective question on which people will disagree.

Alito would happily change the meaning of the Constitution to align with his own policy preferences, but that is neither his job nor his right. Unfortunately, he thinks that it is.

The principle dissent in the birthright citizenship case was written by Justice Thomas. As David French put it,

Justice Thomas’s dissenting opinion represents a kind of originalism that seems to use the text as little more than a launchpad for an often idiosyncratic and contestable analysis of our very complicated history. The problem with such an approach is that it can place the judge’s subjective interpretation of history above the text in the interpretive framework, and that compounds the normal human temptation to see what we want to see in American history.

For example, he spends much time talking about a concept, domicile, that does not appear in the text of the amendment. If limiting citizenship to those domiciled in America was what the authors of the 14th Amendment desired, they could have said so. 

But they didn't say so.

Changing the Constitution and the law by judicial fiat is a project this Court has been eagerly advancing since it gained its overwhelming ideological majority in Trump's first term. For example, the Court essentially decided it was time for the Voting Rights Act to be done with; that it had gone on long enough. Except that "long enough" is a matter to be decided not by the Court by by Congress. The Act was most recently reauthorized in 2006 by overwhelming votes (390–33 and 98–0) in Congress.

The Court recently decided that the Federal Reserve is important enough to remain independent, but other agencies Congress intended by law to be independent are not. In this the Court substituted its policy judgement for Congress's. The Supreme Court refused to intervene in a Texas abortion law that went into effect September 1, 2021, even though at that point Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land. The Court didn't overturn Roe v. Wade until June 24, 2022. Thus did a lawless Court allow an unconstitutional law to remain in effect for nine months.

The examples are almost endless. The 14th Amendment has been a particular target of court conservatives. They've been happy to ignore the plain meaning of the language of the 14th amendment, and not just regarding birthright citizenship. Thus did the Court, in overturning Colorado's 2024 finding against Trump, neuter and basically do away with the amendment's provision that an insurrectionist can't hold office in the U.S. Poof! It's gone. In fairness, the decision was unanimous.

John Roberts wrote a very strong and correct opinion in the birthright citizenship case, but the decision only passed 5-4. (Bret Kavanaugh upheld birthright citizenship under a 1940s law, but not as a constitutionally protected right.) Expert historians may overwhelmingly agree about what the amendment means, but the nation's highest court does not. Such a tight ruling invites future attempts to undo it. We've not seen the last of this.

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here. 

The Washington Post's moderator bot didn't like my comment about Lindsey Graham

Occasionally I comment on pieces that appear in the New York Times and the Washington Post. (This, for example.) Recently I attempted to comment on a Kathleen Parker column in the Post. Parker was somewhat laudatory of Lindsey Graham.

The Post's moderator bot rejected my comment as violating its comment guidelines. Was I too harsh? Was there a requirement that one not speak ill of the dead? The bot said nothing specific about what it found objectionable, which was quite unhelpful. All it said was to revise my comment and try again.

No comment of mine has ever before failed moderation at the Post. The bot's rejection of this one was instantaneous. There was no human judgement at all. You would think an "intelligent" agent could provide some useful feedback, but no.

By contrast, the Times seems to use a good bit of human moderation (although still no feedback), at least if the sometimes very long moderation delays (sometimes hours) are an indication.

I wanted to have a record of my comment which the Post refused to accept, so I'm posting it here:

Lindsey Graham was a power grubber who effortlessly rationalized the abominable. In 2017 he justified the loathsome 2016 blocking of Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland by slandering Democrats, basically saying they were just as despicable as Republicans.

"I have no doubt in my mind," said Graham, "if the shoe were on the other foot, the other side would have delayed the confirmation process until the next president were elected."

No, they wouldn't have. It was Republicans, and only Republicans, who did the deed. They have a particular affinity for playing dirty. Graham should have been ashamed, but wasn't. At least he was in the party that suited his character.

In rationalizing the vile deed, Graham pompously proclaimed that a new rule was going into effect: "We're setting a precedent here today, Republicans are, that in the last year, at least of a lame duck eight-year term, I would say it's gonna be a four-year term, that you're not gonna fill a vacancy in the Supreme Court based on what we're doing here today. That's gonna be the new rule."

Graham wagged his finger for emphasis. "Use my words against me" should he violate it, he said.

And then he did violate it. Of course he did. Ever the rationalizing opportunist, and despite what he had previously proclaimed, Graham fully supported ramming through Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barret in the fall of 2020, shortly before the presidential election that Trump lost.

And he did it by once again slandering Democrats. Lindsey wrote this to Judiciary Committee Democrats: "I am certain if the shoe were on the other foot, you would do the same."

Amazingly, as George Will wrote, Graham excused his reversal by blaming Democrats for ending filibusters for circuit court nominees. In 2013!!!

So much for his phony highfalutin precedent. So much for the "new rule." So much for "use my words against me." Graham showed what he was made of in those two incidents.

Interestingly (to me), a revised comment did get through. It was accepted instantaneously by the Post's moderator bot. Here's how I did it:

Kathleen Parker had some laudatory things to say about Lindsey Graham, but I thought it necessary to take a critical look at how he'd become an unprincipled partisan operator. I thus produced a carefully considered comment that the Post's moderator bot rejected instantaneously. I said that Graham was a "power grubber."

The moderator bot said I should consult the Post's guidelines for writing appropriate comments and revise mine. Perhaps to make it more civil? It said nothing whatsoever about what it found objectionable, which was quite unhelpful, but it refused to post my comment.

Perhaps the bot didn't like that I said Graham "slandered" Democrats, which he did in fact do in 2017 when he said, regarding Republicans' blocking the Merrick Garland nomination, "I have no doubt in my mind if the shoe were on the other foot, the other side would have delayed the confirmation process until the next president were elected."

Thus did Graham ascribe to Democrats the very "despicable" behavior, which I also called "vile," that Republicans in fact committed. Maybe the bot didn't like those words. It might also have not liked my saying that Republicans "have a particular affinity for playing dirty." Can anybody deny that they do?

Back then Graham said "We're setting a precedent here today, Republicans are, that in the last year, at least of a lame duck eight-year term, I would say it's gonna be a four-year term, that you're not gonna fill a vacancy in the Supreme Court based on what we're doing here today. That's gonna be the new rule."

And then he abandoned that rule, which I said he had delivered "pompously" (another violation?) when he supported ramming through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett just before the 2020 election, which Trump lost.

Again, he blamed Democrats: "I am certain if the shoe were on the other foot, you would do the same."

My original comment contained no obscenity, no misstatement of fact. I have preserved it elsewhere. https://tinyurl.com/8bm8d2xp

By the way, my comments on Lindsey Graham were informed by two previous posts on this blog, in 2017 and in 2020.  

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Donald Trump has no self control

It has always been standard practice for communications from American presidents to be measured, carefully considered, consistent, and judiciously delivered. 

Except for Trump, who in his first term governed by tweet, presidential pronouncements don't erupt spontaneously out of the ether. Which is to say, out of a disordered mind. Normal presidents don't blurt out into the world whatever happens to fleet through their immediate unconsidered consciousness. (Like ingesting strong sanitizers, for example. Or depopulating Gaza. Or taking back the Panama Canal. Or ...)

In a normal administration there's a constantly working policy apparatus that sits behind and shapes what the president ultimately communicates, which ensures there's some sort of thought process going on, that things add up and make sense. And that they're not just plain stupid.

Of course, Trump is the obvious exception. It's almost silly that I should raise this now, but I'm exasperated. You should be too.

And so it happened that in a Monday Truth Social post announcing the reinstatement of a naval blockade against Iran, Trump added that the U.S. "will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to ​ this very volatile section of the World."

Which was stupid, implausible, illegal, and at odds with previous administration policy, which had rightly held that the Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway and that free passage is a requirement of international law. My reaction was a mental eye-roll: There goes our president again. It was clear from the moment Trump said it that such a toll structure would not happen.

And so it also happened that by the following day, Tuesday, the whole idea was canceled. Just like that.

One day, a twenty percent toll. Next day, never mind. 

It's reminiscent of how Trump announced "Project Freedom" in early May. That was a plan for the U.S. navy to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz. That lasted less than two days before being abandoned.

The problem is that the world gets to continually observe the workings of a highly disordered mind, a mind that is not worthy of the U.S. presidency but which nevertheless controls it. It's a cause both for embarrassment and for deep concern.

Of course, this sort of thing happens all the time, such as when Trump demanded, also on Truth Social, "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" very early in the war with Iran. How'd that work out?

But to refer to an embarrassing incident back in March is to lose sight of the fact that this kind of behavior occurs daily. It's a sad and sorry reality that the American president truly has no self control.

Think about how we got whipsawed by the constantly changing made-up justifications for the war as it unfolded. That Trump couldn't make up his mind about what he was trying to achieve demonstrated that he'd not given the matter due consideration in the first place. Which isn't how you're supposed to take a country to war. And so he just made a big mess of things.

Yesterday, when he backed away from his harebrained toll idea, Trump said that he doesn't actually "like the concept of a fee." Really? I mean, really? Then why did he announce it?

Trump also said that the tolls would be replaced by "Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making with the United States." Sure they will. The whole absurd thing gets made up moment by moment and barfed out into the world.

And so it always goes with this most unfit of presidents. Why do we tolerate it? 

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Other presidents understood risk and compexity. A self-aggrandizing Trump doesn't.

I previously wrote about how Trump bragged that he alone among all presidents was willing to do what needed to be done about Iran. Let's call him "Decisive Donald."

I wrote that despite Trump's bluster, including demanding "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" early in the war, the American and Israeli military onslaught was not sufficient to solve the nuclear problem, let alone all the other outstanding issues such as Iran's missile program (which remains substantially intact) and support for regional proxies. In the end we find ourselves, as I put it, "Crawling our way back to Obama's Iran nuclear deal." What a pathetic outcome for a self-aggrandizing president who loves to heap scorn on his predecessors—predecessors who are actually smarter and certainly wiser than he is.

Now we wait for a "Memorandum of Understanding," said to be very near, to be signed. That agreement will lay out the path for further negotiations, which could be difficult and protracted.

An analysis in The New York Times says:

Under any deal, experts say, Iran is likely to agree to a limited suspension of enrichment, and agree that half of its current stockpile of highly enriched uranium will be exported and the other half diluted to a lower level of enrichment. But Iran would still retain its nuclear knowledge and infrastructure, including advanced centrifuges.

That, together with an ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz again whenever it chooses, will give Iran a “card to prevent Israel and the United States from attacking again,” argued Danny Citrinowicz, a retired Israeli military intelligence officer who specializes in Iran. It will also give Iran renewed influence in the region.

“A war meant to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons will be the war that pushed them over the Rubicon,” he said. [my italics -mb]

The piece explains that Iran's previous leadership, which we decapitated, was more cautious than the present leadership, which has emerged in the cauldron of sustained war. The previous supreme leader, though vitriolic, was careful not to push certain matters too far. It's likely that Iran is now substantially controlled by an inflamed Revolutionary Guard Corps that is more bristly and combative.

Consider all that Iran has learned thanks to Trump. Iran has learned that it can absorb a lot of punishment. It has learned that despite being pummeled it can hold the world's energy economy hostage whenever it chooses. It no longer has to worry about provoking attack by the U.S. and Israel, because that attack has now happened. It no longer has to worry about a resumption of all-out war, because Trump is desperate to extricate himself from his mess. And it has learned (as North Korea has) that possession of a nuclear weapon is the ultimate guarantor of its security, which is the Rubicon that has now been crossed. All these lessons were previously theoretical. Trump has crystalized them.

What Trump has done has been to focus Iran's mind and clarify its interests. Some sort of nuclear deal will likely be negotiated, and it might look like Obama's. That alone will call bullshit on all Trump's bluster. But the Rubicon having been crossed, Iran's incentives are forever tilted in the wrong direction, thanks to this misbegotten war, which has created a new reality.

Good job, Don. 

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Max Boot agrees with me

In my previous post a week ago, I said we were "Crawling our way back to Obama's Iran nuclear deal." That's the deal that Trump abandoned in 2018.

Writing this morning in the Washington Post, columnist Max Boot agrees:

So now Iran has the world over an oil barrel. Trump hasn’t achieved his overly ambitious war aims, and he isn’t going to. Nobody even talks anymore about Iran ending its missile program or its support for regional proxies. The best Trump can hope for is that Iran will reopen the strait without tolls and accept limits on its nuclear program backed by international inspections. That would basically re-create the conditions that existed under Obama’s nuclear deal.

Despite the devastation its economy is suffering, you can almost imagine Iran wants to drag out the pre-negotiation negotiations, for the sheer pleasure of making Trump squirm. And squirm he should, if he were smart enough to understand where oil inventories are heading, and what that portends for the global economy.

The main question of the moment is who is most responsible for holding up the "Memorandum of Understanding" we've been waiting for these past weeks: Trump, seeking whatever face-saving provisions can be salvaged, or Iran, enjoying its stranglehold on the world economy, and wanting to maximize the return on that leverage. What is certainly true is that Trump is in no position to dictate terms.

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Crawling our way back to Obama's Iran nuclear deal

Donald Trump has claimed that of all the presidents going back decades, only he was willing to do what needed to be done about Iran. Only he was decisive and unwavering in confronting the Iran problem head on, and would finally resolve it.

Trump's decisive stroke was taking the country to war, a war which is illegal, unconstitutional, and a violation of international law. And which created the "greatest energy security threat in history." Among other nasty effects.

Trump's reasons, goals, and expectations were never coherently articulated, and have varied day to day and sometimes moment to moment. But let's go with Trump's insistence that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon. How has Trump's war got us any closer to that outcome?

It hasn't. Unresolved problems abound.

The first order of business is to figure out how to dispossess Iran of its more than 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium. The uranium is 60% purity, which is "a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%."

Except that isn't actually the first order of business. The most urgent issue is getting the Strait of Hormuz open, and oil and other commodities flowing. To do that a memorandum of understanding (MoU), currently being negotiated, must be signed with Iran. The MoU will specify further steps and negotiations that need to take place over a potentially long time horizon. Those negotiations, which will not be fast or easy, will determine the disposition of the highly enriched uranium.

There's also an estimated 2,200 pounds of 20% purity uranium. That too is considered highly enriched, and it too can be further enriched to weapons grade rather quickly. It too will be the subject of further negotiations, as will Iran's nuclear program overall.

After all his bluster, this creates a rather uncomfortable situation for Trump, who early in the war demanded "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" (Trump's caps) of Iran. Didn't happen. Trump thought the Iranian regime would collapse, and he, Trump, would reign glorious and supreme. Now, not being able to dictate, Trump finds himself in the position of having to negotiate, which is exactly what Obama did between 2013 and 2015.

CNN notes that "For a relatively short 'memorandum of understanding', the draft agreement between the United States and Iran is taking a very long time to finalize." Could it be that Trump is sweating the fact that the prospect of lengthy further negotiation will demonstrate that his misbegotten war wasn't the decisive stroke that he imagined?

Indeed, we're arguably crawling our way back to an agreement something like what Obama signed (called the JCPOA) in 2015, eleven years ago, with a couple of differences.

One difference is that we need to get the status of the Strait of Hormuz back to what it was before the war. Isn't that remarkable? Thanks to Trump, Iran has found a new lever and is willing to use it. In this and so many other ways, Trump has actually made things worse. Contrary to the tone and implication of Trump's boast, all those other presidents who didn't go to war understood complexity where Trump could not. As conservative commentator Mona Charon recently said, "he’s not very bright."

Understand this also: Iran was in compliance with the JCPOA until Trump withdrew from that agreement in his first term, in 2018. Under that agreement Iran was not allowed to enrich uranium beyond 3.67% purity, and it had turned over the 20% enriched uranium it had been accumulating since 2010, ostensibly to fuel its Tehran Research Reactor. Iran had never possessed 60% uranium as it does today. The stockpiles of very highly enriched uranium that are a problem today did not exist until Trump abandoned the JCPOA, at which point Iran resumed enrichment without constraint. Thus much of the difficulty of the current situation is of Trump's own making, going back to his first term, and then made much worse with his war.

Because of the complexity that Trump perhaps cannot fathom, it took Obama two years of very hard work to negotiate the JCPOA. Top level U.S. negotiators of that deal included Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman. Moniz was himself a nuclear physicist, so he well understood the intricacies of corralling Iran's nuclear program.

Note too that although the United States took the lead, the JCPOA was an international agreement between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus the European Union. Compliance was monitored by the the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

That's what Trump walked away from in 2018. Is there any surprise that we find ourselves back in the situation of having to negotiate a solution that could well be reminiscent of what Obama did eleven years ago, but after all the damage caused by this ugly war? And make no mistake: There has been massive damage. The Gulf region is littered with tens of billions of destruction to energy infrastructure that will take years to rebuild. The worldwide depletion of oil stocks, which is becoming critical, could yet send energy prices soaring in a "you ain't seen nuthin' yet" spiral. East Asian countries have suffered monumental energy shortages that have devastated their economies. A May 28 CNBC headline was "Exxon warns oil inventories will hit dangerously low levels in weeks, forcing prices to shoot higher."

So far, oil prices, though significantly elevated, have been held in check by what had been large worldwide inventories, which are becoming substantially depleted. "We’re approaching unheard of inventory levels," warned Exxon Senior Vice President Neil Chapman. "I mean really, really low levels. You can debate whether that’s going to hit, those really low levels, in two weeks or three weeks. Once you get to that point, then you’ll see price shoot up." When he says "shoot up," he means spot prices could rapidly hit $150 to $160 per barrel. Up until now, oil prices quoted in news reports have reflected futures markets, but at some point soon actual availability of oil could create a horrible new reality, where imaginary future oil collides with an inexorable present involving actual physical oil. It seems Obama knew what he was doing, and Trump didn't. Mona Charon was right.

On May 25, Daniel Shapiro, who was U.S. ambassador to Israel when the JCPOA was negotiated, said of the deal now being worked out:

It sounds like it's still work in progress. But I think we know the basic outlines of it. It's a fairly weak deal, but probably a necessary least bad alternative to end this ill-conceived war. Largely, it would mean opening the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, that that would alleviate the economic crisis that was caused when Iran closed it and caused inflation and gas prices and everything else to soar. And then there would be a period of negotiations - it's outlined for 30 to 60 days - to determine limits on Iran's nuclear enrichment - enriched uranium stockpile and further enrichment of uranium and the verification of that.

Shapiro notes that Iran is adept at dragging out negotiations, so those 60-day intervals could be renewed and go on for a long time.

Sixty days is not nearly enough to hammer out an agreement of such a complex dispute, so the negotiations will likely be protracted.  The MoU, being a short initial document, won't resolve any of the thorny issues currently in play. All it does is start the process.

Again, Shapiro:

It would set some limits on enrichment and on their nuclear stockpile, but it wouldn't do that permanently. It wouldn't address their ballistic missile program. It wouldn't address support for terrorist proxies. And so it's not surprising that the same critics of the Obama deal are looking very unhappy and looking askance at the deal that this seems to be shaping up with.

Iran is also insisting on the unfreezing of a large amount of its frozen assets—$25 billion, according to Shapiro. The $1.7 billion provided to Iran as part of the JCPOA, for which Trump has skewered Obama mercilessly—is chump change compared to that. Ironies abound.

But what is Trump to do, now that he's made such a mess? He'd like to somehow save face, but there's no good way to do so. I said the likely reason for the delay in signing the MoU is that Trump will be forced to admit he's negotiating, not dictating. Which is exactly what Obama did, except that Obama did it well. Of course, Iran too could be holding up the deal, maybe even for the sheer pleasure of causing pain and demonstrating it's operating from a position of substantial strength, as demonstrated by the crisis in the world's energy markets.

Trump's pathos is palpable. He said recently that Iran has "promised" not to acquire a nuclear weapon, but Iran has consistently promised that for the past 50 years, over and over and over! This is nothing new; it's been the official position of the country since the 1979 revolution. Trump will surely try to spin that promise as a vindication of his wretched war, but the promise is utterly meaningless. That's why Obama negotiated enrichment limits and inspections.

Negotiations with Iran are always difficult, but Trump has made them more so. He has validated over and over Iran's conviction that America cannot be trusted: first by abandoning a the JCPOA that the U.S. had agreed to, and then by attacking Iran—twice!—while negotiations were being conducted. The first attack was on the Iranian nuclear sites last June, and the second was the sneak attack on February 28 that started the current war. In both cases there were active negotiations underway that might well have led to better outcomes than what will be possible now.

Trump is surely squirming, and no wonder. He looks very weak, and that's not a look he likes. He solved nothing, made much worse, and needs to get back to something that looks similar to what his predecessor, who he loves to mock, actually accomplished.

 

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

 

And then there's the uranium ...

After 40 days of war, it's reasonable to attempt some sort of assessment of what's been achieved and, indeed, what it was all about in the first place. That's not so easy, because the objectives were never clear, and they have shifted constantly in tempo with Trump's disordered mind.

The disorder happens at the stream-of-consciousnesses level, with Trump sometimes contradicting himself moment by moment, but also over the longer sweep. For example, notice how Trump went from demanding UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER (his caps) in the early days of shock and awe to, at the end, very much wanting to find a way to stop the fighting in order to get oil (not to mention fertilizer, helium, and other commodities) flowing again into the world's markets. Thus did the administration acknowledge that the 10-point ceasefire proposal from Iran was a reasonable framework from which to begin negotiating.

Negotiating? That's a hell of long way from unconditional surrender.

As an indication of Trump's own desperation, we now have reporting that the Trump administration actually got Pakistan to publicly ask Trump to agree to a two week ceasefire. Going along with the "Pakistani" request saved Trump from having to make good, as his deadline approached, on his threat to destroy Iran's "whole civilization" by bombing all its bridges and power plants, which would have been a war crime. Actually, even the threat itself is a war crime under international law.

Although it's hard to believe the professional military was caught completely off guard, Trump himself seems to have never considered the likelihood of all the nasty outcomes that did in fact transpire, such as Iran attacking its neighbors, or closing the Strait of Hormuz, and creating what the IEA head called the "greatest energy security threat in history."

On that latter difficulty Trump and his administration have bounced around like a ping pong ball. Trump has said variously that the Strait is Europe's problem, and that the U.S. has no need of that oil anyway. He said so even as gasoline prices soared domestically (along with prices generally; U.S. inflation surged in March as a direct consequence of the war), as did the price of the U.S. oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate crude. The blustering Trump seems to not understand that oil is traded on a global market. Along the way Trump lied that he had actually anticipated the oil shock, and had thought it would be even worse than it turned out. If that is so, you'd think he'd have had a plan to deal with it. Early on energy secretary Chris Wright said that the U.S. military would handle the problem, but soon backtracked and said it would take a while longer, but that the Navy would begin escorting ships through the Strait in the not too distant future, at least by the end of March.

Uh, no. The Navy wasn't willing to do any such thing. It was plenty busy with other matters, and anyway who wants a U.S. warship to become an easy target? And so Trump insisted, indignantly, that Europe and NATO should clean up the mess he himself had made, as if it were their obligation. Trump told them to "go get your own oil." This after never having consulted allies in the first place before starting an ill-conceived war, and after his usual blizzard of insults aimed at the U.S.'s erstwhile friends—friends who by now are seriously souring on the relationship. Trump also seems to have forgotten that NATO is a defensive alliance, not a beck-and-call helper to fix his screwups. Then, bouncing around as always, Trump said the U.S. didn't need the help anyway. What he didn't do is get the oil flowing.

Thus we have a new situation that didn't apply before the war, where a presumptively defeated Iran now has de facto control over shipping through the Strait, and is currently charging a reported 1 to 2 million dollars for each ship it allows to transit. Iran is now asserting that control as its right, even though the Strait is international water governed by international law. This is not how things are supposed to go when you vanquish an enemy that you expect to surrender unconditionally. It's even been reported that Trump wants in on Iran's toll shakedown. Because, apparently, Trump always wants a cut, Mafia-style, of any lucrative action. You can't make this stuff up.

Another possible Trumpian rationale for the war is regime change, but all that was actually achieved was regime decapitation, and that isn't the same thing. Iran has always planned for decapitation. The regime goes on, perhaps more dug in and freshly radicalized (we will have to see) than ever. Trump, who was no doubt high on his own supply, must have thought that Venezuela was a happy and glorious model for what would happen in Iran. (Note that in the end the Venezuela action also had no articulated rationale other than Trump freely admitting that he wanted the country's oil. Any drug justification was nonsense. And there was no meaningful articulation of human rights.)

Anyway, talk about a big reality check. The hard truth is that an air campaign, even one as brutal and sustained as this one, has never, ever, caused a regime to collapse or surrender. It just doesn't work that way. To the contrary, the danger of a tactically successful air campaign is it becomes an "escalation trap," which can be a one-way ratchet to quagmire.

So we're still casting about for rationales. Here's one. Trump lied that an attack by Iran on the U.S. was imminent. That was nonsense at every level. Trump warned that Iran "would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America." But U.S. intelligence agencies judge that if Iran chose to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (which so far it hasn't), it would not have them before 2035. It would also have to figure out how to situate a nuclear warhead (assuming it ever developed one) atop the missile—no small undertaking. And Iran's purported willingness to attack the U.S.—which would of course be suicidal—is the same kind of absurdity that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Why would attacking the U.S., and thus destroying itself, be the first thing Iran did after acquiring longer range capability?

Trump has also insisted Iran has or would soon have a nuclear weapon. You might recall that Trump had previously claimed Iran's nuclear program had been "completely and totally obliterated" by a U.S. attack last June. Do not expect him be consistent or say anything that makes sense in light of whatever else he has said. It just doesn't work that way. In any case, U.S. intelligence agencies have judged that Iran has not resumed uranium enrichment, nor has it been working on a nuclear weapon.

So why did the U.S. attack? We are still trying to get a good answer. Trump was no doubt influenced by Bibi Netanyahu, who admits he's wanted all-out war with Iran for decades. Finally he got it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Israel was about to attack Iran, so the U.S. decided to join in. "We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action," Rubio explained. "We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties."

That's why we went to war? Why not just kibosh the Israeli plan rather than assembling a massive force and piling on? The White House later walked back Rubio's remarks over the unseemliness of the U.S. allowing itself to be dragged into war by Israel, and offered a vaguer explanation. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump "had a good feeling that the Iranian regime was going to strike the United States' assets and our personnel in the region." A good feeling. Trump's good feeling is why we went to war. Trump also told Fox's Brian Kilmeade that he'd know it was time to end the war "when I feel it. When I feel it in my bones."

We've gotten way too much of Trump's feelings and their unfortunate consequences, and not nearly enough reasoned analysis or careful planning. And no communication at all by way of explanation to Congress or the country, much less anything consistent with the constitutional requirement that Congress, not the president, declares war. No wonder it's all been a hot mess.

So much for our attempt to understand why. Let's move on to whatever vague metrics for success we might glean from the administration's statements. We've already seen that Iran has not surrendered unconditionally, or even conditionally, so scratch that off the list of achievements. If we want Iran to bend unconditionally to our will, we will need to bring to bear much more and a different kind of force, and that we will not do. Genuine conquest requires occupying ground, not just bombing things from the sky. Such occupation would require an unfathomably large force.

And Trump's early call for the people of Iran to rise up and take back their country was quickly abandoned as unreasonable and unworkable. How would they do such a thing? Among other impediments, the opposition is disorganized, and they have no weapons. Iran's navy has been destroyed, but so what? We went to war to destroy its navy?

We've blown a lot of stuff up, but Iran has demonstrated an ability and willingness to take a lot of punches. The reason Trump finally threatened civilizational destruction is that hitting large numbers of presumptive military targets wasn't causing Iran to "cry uncle" (Trump's words). Then what? A battered Iran still has substantial capacity to wage asymmetric war, which was always its most concerning capability. It can still fire missiles at—and hit—regional targets, and it can still launch waves of one-way attack drones, and manufacture them in large numbers.

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has reveled in the wholesale destruction, including of Iran's missile launchers, but missile diminishment might not be what it seems. An April 3 New York Times story says: "Iranian operatives have been digging out underground missile bunkers and silos struck by American and Israeli bombs, returning them to operation hours after an attack, according to U.S. intelligence reports." There have also been suggestions that Iran has been holding back, husbanding its missile stock amidst concerns that the stocks of U.S. and Gulf country interceptors are being depleted.

Even now some of Iran's missiles and drones are hitting their targets. The interceptors deployed to stop them are expensive, in limited supply, and are slow to be replaced. Some are borrowed from other theaters that have their own security concerns. Should the interceptor balance tip decisively in Iran's favor, it may be increasingly difficult to stop Iran's attacks should the war resume. A withering air war against Iran will not change that. After all, the U.S. has already claimed to have hit 13,000 Iranian targets, presumably the most obvious and fruitful ones. Yet Iran still has the capacity to manufacture massive numbers of drones, in dispersed, small scale operations that can't be found or attacked from the air. To the extent that they're stopped, cheap drones are being shot down with expensive interceptors. The only way to change this dynamic would be a massive ground invasion and occupation of the geographically large and populous country, which would be an undertaking on a scale that's almost impossible to contemplate, and certainly not anything the U.S. has prepared for. If (hypothetically speaking) it were attempted, it would be a stunning example of the escalation trap mentioned above: What was intended to be a quick and clean whupping taking just a few days becomes instead a monstrous commitment.

All of which shows why Iran still has a say in what comes next, and why air power alone is never enough. Trump's fevered imaginings of a fast, decisive, frictionless victory were always disconnected from reality. Isn't that what you'd expect?

And we've not yet even talked about the 800 pound gorilla in the room—Iran's stock of highly enriched uranium—which so far remains in Iranian hands. Any metrics for success would have to include the status of that uranium at the top of the list. Yet amidst all the destruction Hegseth so obviously relishes, the uranium has been scarcely mentioned, much less dealt with. If the war stopped now without this being resolved, it's hard to see how it could be called a success.

Hegseth says we know where the uranium is, and will go get it if it's not turned over. That remains to be seen. Retrieval by force would be a large, difficult, and wickedly dangerous operation. Thus, what is arguably the most profound and important question of all—whether Iran might become a nuclear-armed state—has been strangely underplayed so far in this war. At the very least, it's been lost in all the other incoherent and constantly shifting justifications. That is so despite Trump's claim that only he among all presidents has been willing to do what needed to be done. And by the way, there's a lesson in Trump's boast: Other presidents understood complexity; the simple-minded Trump thinks it's enough to display power.

What this war does demonstrate, at least to Iran, is why having a nuclear weapon matters, existentially. If we have pushed Iran into outright determination to acquire one, when previously there was at most ambivalence, then we will have made a grievous mistake. That could be one of the most profound consequences of this war, which could someday count as our monumental failure if Iran does manage to cross the nuclear threshold. We ourselves have seen to it that Iran's incentives have profoundly changed.

Another thing Iran has learned is that negotiating with the United States is a fool's errand, which makes future progress of every sort more difficult. It's now a demonstrated fact that we simply can't be trusted. It's remarkable that the past two U.S. attacks, the current one, and the one last June, both occurred while Iran was actively negotiating with the U.S. Iran should rightly suspect the negotiations were being conducted in bad faith, and were at least in part cover for the U.S. launching surprise attacks. Add to that Trump's 2018 withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated by the Obama administration, with which Iran had been in compliance until Trump walked away from it. That deal allowed Iran to enrich uranium to just 3.67 percent purity, and international inspectors confirmed it was abiding by the agreement. Once Trump went back on the deal, Iran expanded its enrichment. The stockpiles mentioned above have been enriched to 60 percent—close to bomb grade. Sadly, the U.S. has shown repeatedly that its word means nothing. What a dismal lesson from the Trump era.

Other consequences of this war include a U.S. burn rate of 1 to 2 billion dollars per day for military operations, which by now has added up to real money. There's also been a significant depletion of slow-to-replace weapons, including interceptors and large numbers of Tomahawk cruise missiles, and also JASSM-ER cruise missiles, which would be vital if the U.S. needed to defend Taiwan. The overall cost of the war to the Gulf states is estimated in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars.

There has been nontrivial infrastructure damage in the Gulf region. Among the most noteworthy examples, Iranian attacks wiped out 17 percent of Qatar's liquified natural gas (LNG) export capacity. The damage could take five years to repair. The Washington Post reports that countries around the world are rethinking their overall reliance on imported fossil fuels generally, which includes U.S. produced LNG. Some countries have already concluded that they'll be more secure if they meet their energy needs with domestic resources. That means a large move toward renewable energy sources, but also to coal.

Russia has been a big winner in this war. The surge in the price of oil, coupled with waived sanctions against Russian oil, have resulted in billions of dollars of additional revenue available to fuel Russia's war in Ukraine. From Russia's standpoint, it couldn't have come at a better time, because its economy has been under increasingly severe strain. And the Pentagon is considering diverting military aid intended for Ukraine to instead use against Iran. Finally, imagine Putin's enormous pleasure at seeing NATO come increasingly unraveled thanks to an unhinged Trump who doesn't value alliances.

Perversely, Iran too is seeing a lot of new revenue, which is pretty impressive for a vanquished enemy. Sanctions against its oil have also been waived, and now it is also charging million dollar tolls for ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's control of the Strait is a mind blowing outcome.

So here we are, with no compelling reasons for our adventure, and suspect or at least deeply contradictory claims of success. Iran was never a direct or imminent threat to the U.S. Russia and China have been taking notes. A thuggish U.S. has become increasingly and genuinely loathed around the world. Some smaller Asian countries have been profoundly harmed by severe energy shortages. Inflation is resurgent at home and abroad. The Constitution has taken another serious beating. Our relationships with our allies have come under even more strain than before, which is saying something. It's all quite an accomplishment for a president who was elected, first and foremost, to bring down prices.

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

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