"You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity." - Robert A. Heinlein, "Logic of Empire."

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. - Grey's Law

"There is very little deliberate wickedness in the world. The stupidity of our selfishness gives much the same results indeed, but in the ethical laboratory it shows a different nature." - H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 31, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 01, 2026

Courtney Kube, Monica Alba, Peter Nicholas, Gordon Lubold, Katherine Doyle, and Andrea Mitchell of NBC News reported Wednesday that President Donald J. Trump is “exasperated” that the Iran war is dragging on and that his advisors can’t agree what to do next. Reportedly, he erupted last week during a meeting with his national security team, shouting expletives at the officials in the room. One of Trump’s allies told the reporters that Trump had not expected the war to last as long as it has. “There was not a real strategy for how long or what they should do to get to the endpoint.... He did not intend this to be a long, drawn-out war,” the person said.

Yesterday the war began to widen as a drone hit a gas storage tanker owned by a U.S. company in Egypt near the Suez Canal—no one has claimed responsibility—and Iran struck at American installations in Jordan. U.S. and Saudi Arabian forces launched strikes against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.

At a Cabinet meeting at Camp David today, Trump told reporters he intends to hit Iran with heavy military strikes again to force Iranian negotiators to give in to his demands. “We will be hitting them very hard,” he said. “And you know at some point, they’re going to say, ‘We just can’t take it anymore.’” “We just want to win,” he said. “We’re doing very well.”

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not appear to have a strategy for their war on Iran. Instead, they had an ideology. That ideology elevates individualism over the idea behind the modern American state: that government should regulate business, maintain a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, protect civil rights, and support an international order based in rules rather than in military might.

Since the 1950s, opponents of that modern state have celebrated the American individual, especially the American cowboy, as the figure the American government should privilege and protect. In their mythology, the cowboy wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone to rise through his own hard work, protecting himself and his family from wrongdoers with his gun and his principles. The education, expertise, cooperation, and coalitions on which the modern U.S. stood before Trump were signs not of strength, but of weakness.

That ideology seems to have been what was behind the attack on Iran. In 2015 the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Iran negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium significantly and allow inspections, in exchange for relief from some sanctions. The Strait of Hormuz remained open. Although inspectors said Iran was honoring the deal, Trump maintained it was “[o]ne of the worst deals ever made by our Country.” He took the U.S. out of the JCPOA in 2018, and the following year, Iran resumed work on enriched uranium necessary for a nuclear weapon.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth brought this ideology into the Defense Department, which he tried to rebrand the “Department of War.” In 2024, Hegseth published a book titled The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. In it, he claimed that the U.S. military was weak and “effeminate” because its leaders had embraced diversity, equity, and inclusion.

His prescription for the country involved getting rid of the Geneva Conventions, which recognize human rights for noncombatants in war, claiming they forced the U.S. troops to fight “with one hand behind our back.” In his confirmation hearings, Hegseth refused to tell Senator Angus King (I-ME) that he would honor those agreements.

On September 5, 2025, Hegseth said changing the name of the Defense Department to the Department of War was part of his campaign to spread a “warrior ethos” at the Pentagon. The rebranding, he said, was part of “restoring intentionality to the use of force…. We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders. So this War Department, Mr. President, just like America, is back.”

But Trump’s war on Iran has illustrated the weakness of that vision. Trump reiterated yet again today that the U.S. has dominated Iran’s military. “They’re being decimated. They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no anti-aircraft,” he said. But for all that, they retain their ability to choke world trade by controlling the Strait of Hormuz—the very condition previous presidents worked to avoid through negotiations.

An article yesterday by Politico senior foreign affairs correspondent Nahal Toosi suggests that the “cowboy” approach to foreign policy has another downside. Toosi called out the extreme attacks of Trump and his aides on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and wrote that, although the U.S. is not a signatory to that court, former government officials and legal scholars suspect Trump and administration officials are worried about future prosecutions.

On July 13, Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the administration intends to “dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.” A press release from the State Department on the same day said that the U.S. “will feature a whole-of-government response to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty.”

A Republican operative close to the White House, Bill Cortese, told Toosi that some administration officials are afraid that “if Democrats come into power…, an unchecked ICC and other international institutions are going to unleash a wave of litigation against this administration and anyone associated with it.” Toosi notes that during the administration, U.S. law enforcement and military officials have been accused of human rights violations that reach across borders.

Notably, on September 2, 2025, three days before Hegseth’s “maximum lethality, not tepid legality” speech, the administration began strikes against small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Those strikes have killed more than 220 people, but the administration has offered no evidence to prove its claims that those killed were “narcoterrorists” killed to stop the flow of cocaine to the U.S.

Trump claims the strikes have virtually ended drug trafficking by sea, but on July 27, Alex Horton, Terrence McCoy, Samantha Schmidt, and Dylan Moriarty of the Washington Post reported that according to Pentagon officials and officials from the Drug Enforcement Agency, the strikes have not reduced the cocaine coming into the U.S. Indeed, the dropping price of the drug suggests there is more of it now than there was a year ago. Instead, the strikes have simply prompted criminal organizations to find new routes. The strikes have also disrupted the law enforcement system in which lower-level participants inform on higher-ups, as the lower-level sources are being pulled back.

While the strikes appear to have done little to stop the flow of drugs, legal analysts say they look a lot like former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers and users. Law professor Charlie Trumbull reminded readers of Foreign Policy that in 2017, Trump called Duterte to congratulate him for doing “an unbelievable job on the drug problem.” Trumbull also noted that “Duterte is now behind bars in the Hague,” charged with crimes against humanity for trying to get rid of criminals by unlawful means, including murder.

“The Trump administration should be concerned,” Trumbull warned.

On July 25 the U.S. State Department cheered Venezuela’s withdrawal from the treaty that established the ICC and said it welcomed “the new Venezuelan government’s partnership on American-led efforts to dismantle the corrupt and worthless ICC.” It continued, “The ICC is neither credible, independent, nor legitimate,” and called on all members of the ICC to abandon it.

Today Missy Ryan and Nancy A. Youssef of The Atlantic reported that in the wake of the U.S. strike on the Minab school that killed 168 people, mostly schoolchildren, in the first hours of the war, the Pentagon is considering reversing some of the deep cuts Hegseth made to the staff at the Defense Department. A report by the Pentagon inspector general found that cuts to the civilian-harm protections staff who work to protect noncombatants may have violated laws.

Ryan and Youssef explain that the U.S. military had spent decades building its civilian protections. Leaders understood that battlefield victories were insufficient to win military operations and that protecting civilians is crucial to public support for those operations. Ryan and Youssef noted that to reflect this understanding, the Pentagon in 2006 “formally added legitimacy, restraint, and perseverance to its Principles of Joint Operations, defining legitimacy as ‘the legality, morality, and rightness of the actions undertaken.’”

A U.S. official told Ryan and Youssef that the leadership of U.S. combat commands uniformly support the restoration of the personnel whose job it is to protect civilians. But Hegseth has not committed to the restoration of the old system, the journalists note, and even if he does, it will have little effect unless he changes his own rhetoric.

For his part, Trump appears to be addressing concerns about future prosecutions, whether by the ICC or at U.S. courts, by keeping control of the government after the midterms. Today Trump disagreed with the assessment of investigators that a recent cyberattack on municipal water systems in Minnesota was likely the work of Iranian hackers. Instead, he blamed Democrats.

“We heard in Minnesota there was a cyberattack and they blame it on Iran,” he told reporters. “I don’t think so. I think. I blame it on Minnesota because they’re grossly incompetent. There was a cyberattack of thirty water plants. And I would blame it on Minnesota and the governor, the corrupt governor of Minnesota.”

There is another piece of evidence this week that the abandonment of education and expertise in favor of a “warrior ethos” has weakened the U.S. on the world stage. At an international conference on AIDS in Rio de Janeiro, an official of the U.S. State Department showed a map of Africa on which six fake countries were identified with the names of random real countries—including Nigeria, where several hundred U.S. soldiers are deployed. Reuters identified the image as AI.

Attendees took screenshots and posted them online. “Whoever ⁠created and approved this slide did not know where countries in Africa are and did not care to check their work,” one wrote.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

We are beginning to see the outlines of accountability

August 1, 2026

Robert B. Hubbell

In many ways, Friday was just another day of outrageous stories from the Trump administration. But as I thought about the throughline for tonight’s newsletter, I realized that every major story hinted at the possibility of accountability for the lawyers who are enabling Trump’s corruption and lawlessness.

True, the stories do not scream “accountability,” but it is there nonetheless, just below the surface in the details of perjured testimony to Congress, bad faith indictments issued by a grand jury that was likely misled by a prosecutor, and a remarkable 19-case losing streak that is almost statistically impossible but for the fact that Trump orders his lawyers to keep filing the same baseless losing case over and over again.

Beneath it all are the lawyers. Men and women who swore to uphold the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, have broken their oaths to grovel before the most corrupt president in American history. Several lawyers from Trump’s first administration have already been disbarred. Several from the current administration have been referred to their respective licensing boards for attorney discipline. And it will only get worse. Pro-democracy organizations like Lawyers Defending American Democracy are filing complaints with state bar associations against Trump lawyers who have violated their ethical duties in egregious ways.

Accountability is coming for the lawyers because Trump cannot pardon them for violating their ethical duties. Their licenses hinge on their continued good standing with their state bar associations. (In some states, the courts preside over attorney discipline, but the result is the same.)

As we look at the major stories of the day, think about the possibility—indeed, the likelihood—that the lawyers featured in the stories will be held accountable

Trump undercuts Todd Blanche’s testimony to Congress that the $1.8 billion Weaponization Fund was “dead”

Trump made a liar of Todd Blanche by undercutting Blanche’s testimony to Congress that the $1.8 billion Weaponization Fund was “dead.” During a cabinet meeting on Friday, Trump said, “I wish it weren’t,” a statement that Senator Tom Tillis reasonably interpreted to mean that the fund “is still alive.” See CNN, Trump further muddies Blanche negotiations, saying he wishes ‘anti-weaponization’ fund weren’t dead.

Senator Tillis posted on Twitter,

The President made it clear today that the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund is still alive, which is exactly why we are attempting to formally end it.

Moreover, Trump filed an appeal from a district court order that ruled the fund was the product of collusion between Trump and the DOJ. See CNBC, Trump appeals order slamming IRS lawsuit, referring lawyer to bar. Although Trump has not yet specified the grounds for the appeal, his attempt to overturn the district court order can reasonably be interpreted as an effort to resurrect the weaponization fund.

In short, while Blanche claims the fund is dead, Trump is telegraphing to anyone paying attention that the fund is very much alive notwithstanding Blanche’s testimony to the contrary.

Here’s the thing: No one believes Todd Blanche’s testimony that the fund is dead, not Trump, not the GOP Senators who oppose him (for now), and not the GOP Senators prepared to vote for him no matter what. Most Republicans are willing to overlook Blanche’s lies because they are part of the pantomime that has replaced the Republican Party. Republicans are willing to give Blanche a “pass” on his lies today and won’t shed a tear when he loses his license after Trump is out of office.

DOJ lawyers working under Blanche (who is Acting Attorney General) have been referred to the Florida State Bar for a disciplinary investigation in connection with the weaponization fund. It is a short step from disciplining a front-line attorney doing Blanche’s bidding to disciplining Blanche himself. When discovery finally reveals the backstory of the weaponization fund, we should expect to find that Blanche’s congressional testimony was riddled with mental reservations and word parsing that violate Blanche’s obligations of candor and honesty when making statements to Congress or the courts.

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro dismisses indictment against former Olympic canoeist for allegedly vandalizing the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial.

When the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial began to spontaneously shed large flakes of rubberized waterproofing, everyone knew that the contractor had botched the job because of time pressure from Trump. On Friday, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro dismissed the indictment against the former Olympic canoeist, David Hearn, who allegedly vandalized the Reflecting Pool. In doing so, Pirro confirmed that everyone’s suspicions about the cause of the flaking—a flawed installation—were correct. See New York Times, Charges Dropped in Reflecting Pool Case as Prosecutors Say Work Was ‘Botched’. (Gift link.)

Per the Times,

Ms. Pirro blamed both the government’s vendor and the administration’s timetable, saying the pool’s poor state “was the result of a flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration” on July 4. Pirro claimed that the false indictment was the result of misrepresentations by the Department of the Interior about the cause of the flaking. (“[O]n Friday, Ms. Pirro said that her prosecutors had been misled by the Interior Department . . . .”) Pirro had earlier claimed that the DOJ had “tremendous evidence” to support felony charges against Hearn.

Pirro’s contradictory statements about the evidence available to the DOJ are irreconcilable. Indeed, they strongly suggest that the prosecutors did not have sufficient evidence to support the indictment, but instead relied on representations by the Department of the Interior.

If true, someone misled the grand jury that issued the indictment, which must be based on evidence to establish probable cause that a crime has been committed. Per the DOJ’s Justice Manual, Section 9-27.000,

The attorney for the government should commence or recommend federal prosecution if he/she believes that the person’s conduct constitutes a federal offense, and that the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction.

Statements by the Department of the Interior are not admissible evidence—unless someone at the Interior Department witnessed David Hearn committing vandalism. (They did not.)

The strong inference is that someone at the DOJ misled the grand jury about the evidence that was available to prosecutors or the applicable law. Attorneys for Hearn have filed a request for a complete copy of the grand jury transcript, citing “irregularities” in the grand jury proceedings. See NBC, Ex-Olympian in Reflecting Pool case seeks grand jury transcripts.

Indeed, the timing of Pirro’s request to dismiss the indictment is suspicious. She may be trying to get the case dismissed before the grand jury transcript is released. The fact that Pirro is attacking the Department of Interior for misleading the DOJ suggests that the transcript will be ugly. And the fact that Pirro is contradicting Trump’s claims of vandalism suggests that Pirro is more worried about her law license than Trump’s wrath.

This could get very ugly, fast. Stay tuned!

Trump administration has a 0-19 track record on demands for state voter rolls. That’s impressive—in a bad way

As reported in Democracy Docket, the Trump administration has now lost 19 cases in which the DOJ demanded state voter rolls. See Democracy Docket, After brutal Illinois defeat, Trump DOJ’s voter roll crusade is 0 for 19. The most recent loss occurred in Illinois, where U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Lawless “denied DOJ’s motion to compel Illinois to surrender its complete statewide voter registration list.”

The odds of losing 19 straight cases are astronomical. To lose that many cases, you have to have a bad case, a bad lawyer, or both. And you have to be acting in bad faith. At some point, say after 10 losses, the DOJ lawyers know that their cases are meritless and should stop filing them.

In dismissing the case, Judge Lawless wrote that the DOJ had failed to show a legitimate purpose for the demand. The DOJ claimed it was trying to determine whether Illinois had complied with the National Voter Registration Act’s requirements for voter list maintenance. But Judge Lawless wrote:

Congress did not confer a general auditing power to the DOJ over state election officials.

When the next Democratic Attorney General is appointed by a Democratic president, the internal decision-making process at the DOJ can be reviewed. Who made the decision to file 19 meritless cases? Were those decisions made by a DOJ lawyer exercising good faith, or were they made to advance Trump’s partisan political interests?

We already know the answers to the questions, and we have a very good idea of who is making the decisions. The only question is whether the next Attorney General will have the courage to act quickly and forcefully to hold accountable those who decided to file 19 meritless lawsuits to help Trump suppress the vote in 2026.

Concluding Thoughts

As I wrap up this newsletter on Friday evening, the world is on watch after Trump vowed to attack Iran’s energy infrastructure. To be clear, disabling Iran’s energy grid would threaten the lives of millions of civilians. That is why attacking civilian infrastructure is considered a war crime under international law. Indeed, even making threats to attack civilian infrastructure is a war crime. (The US does not recognize the International Court of Justice, the body that has jurisdiction over war crimes.)

We are fighting not only to save our democracy, but also to reestablish the rule of law and rehabilitate America’s standing in the world. Those are daunting tasks. But we have already taken the first steps in a process that may take generations to complete.

BY  ERIC TUCKER. July 31, 2026

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department moved Friday to dismiss a criminal case charging a former Olympian with deliberately damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, saying evidence prosecutors had recently received refuted the idea that vandals were to blame.

Government lawyers said in a 20-page court filing that additional documents provided by the Interior Department since the indictment of David Hearn show that the damage was the result of a botched installation by a contractor as well as “the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.” In addition, a recent visual inspection revealed damage throughout the pool, including in the middle — where prosecutors say a vandal would not likely have attempted to peel the lining.

“Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt,” said the filing from U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, which asked a judge to formally dismiss the case.

Hearn’s lawyers said in a statement that the case against him should never have been brought. 

“Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong. The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology,” the lawyers sai

The dismissal marks an embarrassing setback for a Justice Department that had billed the prosecution as accountability for damage at a Washington landmark where President Donald Trump had launched a massive renovation project before the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations. Trump, without providing evidence, has alleged the damage was caused by vandals. 

But the case has long been saddled with evidentiary problems and challenges. Hearn has for weeks maintained his innocence and his supporters have characterized the prosecution as a politically motivated attempt by the Trump administration to deflect blame and scapegoat others.

Earlier this week, Hearn’s lawyers sought access to grand jury transcripts because of what they said were “irregularities” in the process. They said a National Park Service official testified that the pool already was damaged before Hearn allegedly touched it, couldn’t quantify any damage attributable to Hearn and said the same repairs would have been required regardless of his conduct.

“The witness’s testimony established that the pool had substantial preexisting damage requiring repair before any alleged conduct by Mr. Hearn,” his lawyers wrote. “According to the witness, the pool was leaking more than one million gallons of water per week; its expansion joints had exceeded their service life; and the liner already contained a rip.”

Hearn pleaded not guilty earlier this month to one felony count of property destruction and had a trial scheduled to start Sept. 28 in D.C. Superior Court. The charge, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years upon conviction, accused Hearn of causing at least $1,000 in damage to the pool.

In court papers Friday, prosecutors said they had only recently received new information that undermined the basis for the prosecution.

“It was not until after these documents were produced that (prosecutors) first became aware of information showing that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented” by the Interior Department. Prosecutors could “only rely,” they wrote, on the initial information suggesting that the damage was caused by vandals.

Hearn has told The Associated Press he was detained by National Guard troops and U.S. Park Police for five hours after stopping by the pool during a bike ride on June 19. He said he reached in to examine the pool’s newly peeled coating and briefly touched a chunk attached to the side of the pool, but said he obeyed a park worker who told him to let go of it.

Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Maryland, competed in three Summer Olympics, earning his best finish, ninth, at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee says on its website.