How can the US-Israel war on Iran possibly end? The Trump people have painted themselves into a corner, freezing negotiations by maintaining a blockade on Iranian ports while supposedly in a ceasefire. Iran has doubled down on its leverage, its ability to control the traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. The world economic crisis that helped to push the Trump people to the negotiating table only grows, with the oil and fertilizer blockades starting to cripple economies in the Global South. The pressure is on the Trump people to follow through with their agreement with Pakistan to negotiate with Iran on the basis of Iran’s 10-point program. There is little indication so far that Trump can or will do this. Impasse.
While Trump’s war on Iran is blatantly unconstitutional, mainstream media generally ignores this and goes directly to the wording of the War Powers Act, which says that a War President acting legally (e.g. in defense against an attack) must obtain the consent of Congress after 60 days of war. This would be on May 1. Presidents have before now found ways to claim that the War Powers Act does not apply to the case at hand, but Trump would be hard put to do that in this case. We can look for another round of crisis soon, therefore, as Congress acts or fails to act, and Trump complies or does not comply, with the necessity to end this war. Grass roots agitation can strengthen the forces for peace by a strong national tsunami of agitation next Friday, May 1st. Please join CFOW at the VFW Plaza at 2 pm that day, as we add our bit to the general clamor for peace.
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING THE NEWS OF THIS WEEK
The War Powers Resolution Is Not What You’ve Been Told
By David Swanson, World Beyond War [April 19, 2028]
---- According to The Hill, in an article typical of U.S. media, Trump’s war on Iran is totally legal for 60 days if Congress does nothing, after which it becomes illegal, unless Congress has explicitly OK’d it. This is supposedly because of the War Powers Resolution of 1973. And The Hill is not alone in pushing this idea. ... However, the War Powers Resolution consists of words that you can read for yourself, and here are some of them: “The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” The same law says that a president who launches a war in any of those three situations, then has 48 hours to submit his first report explaining himself, and 60 days after that report (62 days total — plus a possible extra 30) to entirely knock it off. But none of those three situations exists. So, the president must immediately knock it off — must, in fact, have never started the war. It is simply not true that the war will become illegal after 60 days; it has been illegal since the instant it was begun. It is factually false that it must be ended after 60 days in order to comply with the law; it must be ended immediately. [Read More]
How the International Community Obtained a Nuclear Weapons-Free Agreement with Iran – and Lost It Thanks to Donald Trump
By Lawrence Wittner, Antiwar.com [April 23, 2026]
---- If the objective of the U.S. war upon Iran is to ensure that that country does not develop nuclear weapons, that goal was attained more than a decade ago through a far different approach than the one now being followed by the Trump administration. Iran, as a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1970, had agreed to forgo the development of nuclear weapons. … The final agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was negotiated by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Germany, and the European Union. Signed in July 2015, it granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for significant restrictions on its nuclear program. These included Iran’s agreement to ban production of highly enriched uranium or plutonium, ensure that its key nuclear facilities pursued only civilian work, and limit the numbers and types of centrifuges that it could operate. In addition, Iran agreed to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, unfettered access to its nuclear facilities and undeclared sites. [Read More]
‘Zionism Led to Genocide. It Must Disappear’: [Omer Bartov’s New Book]
By Etan Nechin, Ha’aretz Magazine [Israel] [April 24, 2026]
---- In May 2024, the Israeli-born historian Omer Bartov concluded that what he was watching in Gaza met the definition of genocide under the 1948 UN Convention. It was not a conclusion he wanted to reach. He had publicly resisted using the word despite criticism from peers. When he did, it caused a stir not only in academia, but in Jewish communities and Israel. … “I’m not anti-Zionist. I grew up in a Zionist home. It was self-evident to me that Israel was my place. I’m not opposed to the existence of the State of Israel. But Zionism as an ideology didn’t just run its course. It became something I don’t recognize. It became the ideology of the state. And it became not only militaristic and expansionist but also racist, extremely violent and ultimately an ideology that deeply harms both the individual and the collective. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST is “What went wrong in Israel? A genocide scholar examines ‘what Zionism became,’” by Aaron Gell, The Guardian [April 21, 2026][Link].
(Video) The Looming Food Crisis: Why the Strait of Hormuz Is Disrupting Global Agriculture
---- The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have raised fuel costs and caused shortages of key fertilizers around the world, wreaking havoc on the agricultural industry. Adam Hanieh, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute at the University of London, says the effects could be felt for a long time, particularly in the Global South. “About a third of the world’s basic fertilizers now pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” says Hanieh, who adds that the “coming food crisis” is compounded by the climate and debt crises in much of the developing world. “It’s a perfect storm.” [See the Program]
Boris Kagarlitsky on Hungary’s Election
By Suzi Weissman and Boris Kagarlitsky, The Nation [April 22, 2026]
---- [SW] Boris Kagarlitsky, Russia’s most prominent leftist intellectual and Marxist critic of both Western imperialism and Putin’s domestic authoritarianism, is two years and two months into a five-year prison sentence for his outspoken opposition to the war in Ukraine and the Putin regime. He is confined to Penal Colony No. 4—yet he is anything but idle. From his cell he maintains an extensive correspondence, produces essays and articles on current political questions, and is at work on larger projects: a rethinking of imperialist conflicts and the crisis of the left, a major essay on the significance of 1968–73 as a moment of missed revolutionary opportunities, and sketches of a book about his time in prison.
[BK] The defeat of Viktor Orbán in the Hungarian parliamentary elections was unanimously assessed by all commentators as bad news for the Kremlin, which has lost its main ally in Europe. At the same time, Orbán’s failure was also a blow to Donald Trump’s prestige, as the American president publicly expressed support for the Hungarian prime minister, and Vice President Vance actually campaigned on his behalf. It made no difference: Hungarians rejected the ruling party at the polls. And yet, when Hungarian citizens went to the polls, geopolitics was probably not their primary concern. For many years, while Orbán kept a firm grip on the country, he had maintained considerable support—which suddenly seemed to evaporate. What happened? To understand this, we need to think carefully about the socio-political nature of national-populist movements, of which Orbán was a typical representative. [Read More]
“ALL OUT FOR MAY DAY!”
Please join CFOW next week for a May Day rally on Friday, May 1, at the VFW Plaza in Hastings. We will rally from 2 to 4 pm with signs and banners, music and song, and an “open mic” so that all who wish can do so. According to the national organizing hub, May Day Strong, some 3,000 events will take place “as workers, educators, and communities demand ‘workers over billionaires.’” To get us started, here is a useful 3-minute video, “The Origins of May Day: Working Class Pride and Power [Link]. Veteran organizer Kim Kelly runs down some history and the state of national/international organizing for this year’s event in “What is May Day Strong, the ‘no work, no school, no shopping’ protests against Trump?” [The Guardian, April 22, Link].
NEWS NOTES
Another flotilla has set sail to deliver humanitarian supplies to the people of Gaza. This one has 70 vessels and more than 1,000 participants from all over the world. Previous flotillas have been stopped by Israel, with arrests and some fatalities. This article by a participant, “New Flotilla Shows Palestinians in Gaza That the World Has Not Abandoned Us,” stresses the importance of practical solidarity. One of the vessels joining the flotilla is from Greenpeace. Earlier this week Democracy Now! Interviewed two people about the vessel, Arctic Sunrise, about the flotilla, and you can see the interview here.
The Trump people are preparing the congressional budget request for the next fiscal year, which begins in October. So far, the official request for Pentagon funding is $1.5 trillion, a 50 percent increase over the current year’s budget. An article linked in last week’s Newsletter showed how the real budget request for “defense” was $2.5 trillion. Now we learn that the Trump people will make a further request for funding the cost of the Iran war, which may be as much as $200 billion. You can learn more about this high finance here.
We are preparing/standing by to stop whatever Trump does to try to “take over” or cancel the November mid-term election. Mainstream pundit commentary says that the Republicans will lose heavily in November, with the Democrats maybe gaining control of both the House and the Senate. Trump’s possible plans to prevent this from happening our laid out concisely in this video from ProPublica.
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
REWARDS!
With the Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers this week, I hope to introduce some of the amazing versatility of genius woman Elle Cordova. I’ve put some of her music in the Rewards before; here she is in Europe with her friend Toni Lindgren. She’s also a strong critic all things Trumpist and reactionary. And she has an on-going struggle with the grammar terrorists. And there’s even more, leaving you to find out. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
‘The Right Amount of Crazy’
By Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books [May 14, 2026 issue]
---- The case for invoking the Constitution’s Twenty-Fifth Amendment and removing Trump from power is strong, and Trump himself joked about it during a cabinet meeting in late March. “I can’t say what we’re going to do, because if I did, I wouldn’t be sitting here for long. They’d probably—what is it called? The Twenty-Fifth Amendment?” Democrats in Congress have become much more willing to call openly for Trump’s ejection on the grounds of his mental incapacity to govern. But the same Republican obsequiousness that has made Trump’s madness ever more dangerous makes his removal a practical impossibility. The madness, after all, is not just personal. It is structural. When the balance of power is lost and democratic accountability is replaced by a cult of the divinely inspired leader, the conditions that exacerbate derangement become the principles of governance. [Read More]
Flowers Bloom on Soldiers’ Graves: Lessons in Power and Consequence
By Rebecca Solnit, Meditations in an Emergency [April 12, 2026]
---- What is power? It is at its most essential the ability to influence an outcome on any or all scales, to protect one’s own at a minimum and to influence, even control others at a maximum. Violence is constantly misunderstood as power, and it certainly looks like power, and in some respects it is power, but a limited kind of power to harm and destroy. … Botanist David George Haskell’s new book How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries describes a kind of power often ignored or dismissed, just as flowers themselves are. … The lesson flowers offer is that when you treat others well, when you meet their needs, you can enter into relationships that serve you as well as them. When you use violence or otherwise exploit and coerce to get what you want, you create adversaries, not allies, and they too often turn out to have power. In a world of increasingly equality over the past few centuries, cooperative power matters more, and violence has become an increasingly weak way to get what you want (though of course it’s still necessary at times in self-defense). [Read More]
3 Female Front-Runners Challenging NY’s Mike Lawler Make This a Race to Watch
By Joan Walsh, The Nation [April 24, 2026]
---- Running for Congress in a Democratic primary to face GOP Representative Mike Lawler in New York’s purple 17th Congressional District, up in the Hudson Valley, Effie Phillips-Staley and Cait Conley have essentially the same strategy: to dramatically expand the electorate. But for Tarrytown Village trustee Phillips-Staley, the district’s Democratic coalition needs to widen to win progressives, young people, poor people, and people of color, especially Latinos (her mother is an immigrant from El Salvador). For political newcomer Conley, a decorated Army veteran, Democrats need to embrace “the estimated 50 percent of the district that has a family member, if not themselves, who is a first responder or a military veteran, or actively serving in the military.” Plus, West Point graduate Conley says, “people who don’t see themselves as voting Democrats.” Such people, she told a recent forum, “relate to me.” But will they relate in a Democratic primary? We’ll find out June 23. [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
No Day After for Gaza: Israel has Killed 1,000 during “Ceasefire”
By Dr Mustafa Fetouri, Middle East Monitor [April 26, 2026]
---- The international community remains fixated on a phantom: Gaza’s “Day After.” While Washington, Cairo, and Doha debate elaborate governance frameworks and the “Board of Peace,” these plans share a fatal flaw—they lack a viable “buyer” on the ground. This diplomatic theatre has been eclipsed by the US-Israeli aggression against Iran that began on 28 February. Since then, Gaza has been sidelined globally, yet the genocide—begun in October 2023—has never stopped. Even before the Iran escalation, the 10 October ceasefire was a hollow promise; Israel violated the agreement over 2,400 times through near-daily air raids and shelling. Since that supposed de-escalation, nearly 1,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed, pushing the total death toll past 72,300. [Read More]
THE WAR ON LEBANON
(Video) Lebanese Journalist Amal Khalil Killed in Israeli Strike, Medics Blocked from Saving Her Under Rubble
From Democracy Now! [April 24, 2026]
---- Israeli forces killed the prominent Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil on Wednesday despite a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. Khalil and her colleague, photographer Zeinab Faraj, were reporting from southern Lebanon when an Israeli drone struck a car near them, killing two civilians. Khalil and Faraj sought shelter in a nearby building, but then Israel struck that building, as well. Emergency and medical workers rescued Faraj but came under fire before they could rescue Khalil, and were prevented by the Israeli military from returning for over six hours. Khalil died by the time her body was recovered from under the rubble. [See the Program]
WAR ON VENEZUELA
Trump’s Venezuela, Boat Strike Campaign Have Cost Nearly $5 Billion So Far
By Sharon Zhang, Truthout [April 24, 2026]
---- The Trump administration’s operations in Latin America over the past seven months have cost nearly $5 billion, finds a new analysis — enough to fund Medicaid for half a million Americans for a year. Thus far, the combination of the military costs for the deadly raid of Venezuela and abduction of then-President Nicolás Maduro as well as the U.S.’s boat strike and surveillance campaign in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea is at least $4.7 billion, according to an analysis released on Thursday by the Brown University Watson School of International and Public Affairs’s Costs of War project. Naval deployment is the single most costly factor, the report finds, at $3.8 billion between August of 2025 and March of 2026. This amount only reflects public information on naval, aircraft, and Special Operations deployment, as well as costs of equipment and munitions used, pulled from the Congressional Budget Office, researchers noted. It does not reflect costs from any covert operations like potential Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) programs that Donald Trump has hinted at. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor: The Case for Asylum
By Liz Theoharis, Tom Dispatch [April 20, 2026]
---- For more than a century, the government has been required to undertake a legal process of inspection when people seek asylum at official ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border (as they must inspect all noncitizens seeking admission to the United States). That requirement is supposed to ensure that this country doesn’t send vulnerable people back into danger without first allowing them to seek protection. A wide range of immigration lawyers and legal experts argue that the first Trump administration’s turnback policy, euphemistically called “metering,” directly undermined the government’s responsibility to process such asylum claims. As a result, vulnerable children, families, and adults were regularly forced to remain indefinitely stranded in perilous conditions in Mexico. [Read More]
(Video) “Data Colonialism”: Native Communities Fight AI Data Centers on Indigenous Land
From Democracy Now! [April 22, 2026]
---- The artificial intelligence industry’s data center boom is the latest chapter in a long history of environmental racism and resource exploitation in vulnerable Native communities, says Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne activist Krystal Two Bulls, the executive director of Honor the Earth, an Indigenous-led environmental justice organization that is tracking over 100 proposed data center projects on tribal and rural lands. We speak to Two Bulls about the myriad impacts of what she calls a “modern-day iteration” of “settler colonialism,” including noise pollution, cancers and respiratory illnesses, water depletion, energy grid overload and even “ecological collapse.” As tech companies set their sights on Indigenous lands, Two Bulls says, “We’re always the one that ends up having to sacrifice our relationship to land, air, water, our communities and our nonhuman relatives.” [See the Program]
THE “STANDARD OF LIVING” UNDER TRUMP
[FB – The Trump people have slashed many programs originally intended to help low-income people keep afloat. Not only that, however; they have also slashed data collection and evaluation activities that would allow effective planning. This is part of the GOP effort to “shrink the state and drown it in a bathtub.” This week a few good articles were in print that surveyed some of the wreckage.]
The Trump Administration Has Changed Almost Every Aspect of Food Stamps
By Linda Qiu, New York Times [April 26, 2026]
---- President Trump and his top officials have cast a sharp decrease in the number of food stamp recipients over the past year as evidence of economic progress and increasing self-sufficiency. But the decline of more than three million participants since Mr. Trump took office to December 2025 is the result of some of the most consequential changes and the largest funding cut to the program since its inception. [Read More]
Overcoming Trump’s U.S. Health Care Wrecking Ball
By Robert Pollin, Dollars & Sense [April 10, 2026]
---- The Trump administration has been rolling out disasters on a near-daily basis since Trump returned to office 15 months ago, with the latest installment being, of course, his current war of choice in Iran. Amid this ongoing barrage, one can easily overlook the outrages that Trump and company inflicted only months ago, even as the effects of these earlier measures start to hit people hard, with worse to come. One of the most consequential such measures affecting the daily lives of millions of people are the huge cuts in federal health care support enacted last July 4, when President Trump signed his absurdly named “One Big Beautiful Bill.” [Read More]
No Place Like Home
By Norman Stockwell, Progressive Magazine [April 21, 2026]
---- In There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America, journalist Brian Goldstone showcases America’s “working homeless” by sharing the lives of five families in Atlanta, Georgia. Through a series of intimate portraits, Goldstone illustrates that “families are not ‘falling’ into homelessness, they are being pushed.” The “2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress” by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development cites an unhoused population of “771,480 people—or about twenty-three of every 10,000 people in the United States,” an increase of 18 percent from the previous report. But Goldstone explains in the book’s introduction that “recent research reveals that the actual number of those experiencing homelessness in the United States, factoring in those living in cars or hotel rooms, or doubled up with other people, is at least six times larger than the official figure.” [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Facing Up to the Horrors of the Mỹ Lai Massacre
By Michael G. Vann, Jacobin Magazine [April 2026]
[FB - Last month, Vietnam marked the 58th anniversary of the Mỹ Lai massacre, when US soldiers killed hundreds of defenseless civilians. US public memory largely ignores the history of atrocities like Mỹ Lai, making it easier to repeat them in the future.]
---- The road to Sơn Mỹ does not resemble the bustling circuits of Vietnam’s booming tourist economy. It veers away from the curated lantern light of Hội An and the resort sheen of Nha Trang, cutting instead through quiet rice fields and low houses, where daily life proceeds with little regard for foreign itineraries. Here, in Quảng Ngãi province, stands one of the most important, if less visited, sites of historical memory in Vietnam: the Sơn Mỹ Memorial, commemorating what Americans call the Mỹ Lai massacre. Each year, roughly 40,000 Vietnamese visitors make the journey. Only 6,000 to 7,000 foreigners follow. The imbalance is telling. For domestic visitors, Sơn Mỹ is a place of mourning, reverence, and national memory. For many international travelers it remains peripheral, distant from the narratives and routes that structure how the Vietnam War is remembered abroad. Yet if one wants to understand how memory of that war is constructed, contested, and lived in Vietnam today, there are few more revealing places. [Read More]
The Constitutional Origins of the War in Iran
By Richard Drake, Counterpunch [April 22, 2026]
---- Much of the criticism aimed at Trump for taking the United States into the ruinous Iran war concerns his alleged authoritarian departure from constitutional norms. A loud chorus online and in the press denounces him for flouting the Constitution’s separation of powers principle with regard to the provision granting Congress the role of declaring war. … It might be well to review some of the key anti-Federalist arguments of 1787-1789 for insight into the origins of the abyss now stretching before our feet. The anti-Federalists thought that the machinations of any fool or knave who happened to occupy the presidency would be furthered by the 1787 Constitution devised in Philadelphia. In the vast literature that they produced, two speeches by Patrick Henry before the Virginia Ratifying Convention synthesized the dangers lying in wait for the American people under the proposed new government. In the first of these addresses, on June 5, 1788, it is as if Henry were looking ahead to the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis this past January 7 and 24, respectively. [Read More]
