End of Time

Donald Trump argued that the Iran nuclear agreement was unacceptable because, despite its restrictions and inspections, Iran might eventually use its enrichment program as a path toward nuclear weapons.

Now his administration has approved a civil nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia that may allow the kingdom to develop its own uranium-enrichment capability.

The situations aren’t identical. Enrichment can legitimately produce fuel for civilian reactors, and the complete Saudi agreement—including its safeguards—has not yet been made public. This is not the same as “giving Saudi Arabia a nuclear bomb.”

But enrichment is also the most difficult and important technical step toward producing bomb material. That is why the strongest American nuclear-cooperation agreement—the one with the United Arab Emirates—prohibits domestic enrichment and reprocessing altogether.

The concern is especially serious because Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said Saudi Arabia would obtain a nuclear weapon if Iran did.

So the consistency question is unavoidable:

If limited enrichment under international inspections was an intolerable future danger in Iran, why is establishing that same latent capability acceptable in Saudi Arabia?

Trump may argue that Saudi Arabia is an American partner and Iran is an adversary. But alliances change, leaders change, and nuclear expertise cannot be taken back.

Kash Patel's actions were not very nice.

The post’s central facts are supported by the lawsuit and independent reporting: David Maltinsky had served at the FBI for 16 years, the bureau had given him the previously flown Pride flag, his supervisors had permitted its display, and Patel’s termination letter called it “inappropriate…political signage.” Maltinsky was reportedly three weeks from completing agent training. AP and CBS News corroborate those basics.

WHEN GOOD BECOMES BAD AND BAD BECOMES GOOD

America is experiencing a dangerous moral inversion.

Cruelty is called strength. Compassion is called weakness. Dishonesty is called loyalty. Lawlessness is excused as patriotism.

Orwell warned about a world where truth and morality are turned upside down.

THE WARNINGS ABOUT TRUMP WERE THERE.

Trump Says He Wants a Fair Election While Working to Make It Unfair

It can feel almost futile trying to protect an election that is supposed to be free and fair when the president himself is preparing people to distrust it before the voting even begins.

Trump says he wants “election integrity,” but his actions point in the opposite direction. By reviving debunked claims about 2020, exaggerating voting-machine fears, releasing selective information, and suggesting that only certain outcomes can be trusted, he is attempting to shape the election before a single ballot is counted.

A free and fair election requires neutral rules, independent officials, accurate information, and a willingness to accept the result. Trump is undermining all four.

The real danger is not simply that he may challenge a Democratic victory afterward. It is that he is trying to create the conditions for an unfree and unfair election in advance, while calling it protection.

Trump’s Thursday address appears designed to revive a discredited 2020 election conspiracy and wrap it in the authority of the presidency.

A voting-machine vulnerability is not proof that votes were changed. Selective documents are not the full truth.

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the former emir of Qatar who transformed the small Gulf state into one of the world’s wealthiest and most influential nations, has died. He was 74.

A person who writes that shows extreme narcissism, vindictiveness, recklessness, and an inability to separate personal grievance from national power.

Is American democracy going to die?

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat argues that democracies usually do not collapse all at once. They are weakened gradually through electoral manipulation, loyalty tests, attacks on independent institutions, intimidation of the press, normalization of extremism, and efforts to remain in power after losing an election.

That is what makes her warning so important.

The United States is not yet a full autocracy. Courts still push back. Independent journalists still investigate. Civil society still organizes. Elections still matter. But the damage is real, and pretending otherwise is not optimism. It is denial.

I agree with Ben-Ghiat’s diagnosis far more than I share her confidence that American democracy will definitely survive and return stronger. I hope she is right, but no democracy is guaranteed to endure simply because people assume it will.

Democracy survives only when institutions remain independent, elections remain free, political violence is punished rather than celebrated, and citizens refuse to accept authoritarian behaviour as normal.

The most dangerous belief in a declining democracy is that it cannot happen here.

It can.

When politicians start telling museums what history they are allowed to show, pay attention.

This is not about patriotism. It is about control.

The Smithsonian should tell the full story of America: the brilliance, the courage, the cruelty, the hypocrisy, the reform, and the people who forced the country to become better.

A democracy can handle honest history.