Trump's New Spy Chief and the Logic of Retribution. What Could Go Wrong?

The job of Director of National Intelligence was designed to be, above everything else, boring in a specific way. After the catastrophic intelligence failures of September 11, 2001, Congress created the position in 2004 to give the country a single senior official who would coordinate seventeen federal intelligence agencies, synthesize their findings, and deliver unvarnished analysis to the President of the United States — regardless of what that president wanted to hear. Previous holders of the office were people whose entire careers had been built inside the architecture of national security: four-star generals, career intelligence officers, diplomats, senators with decades on oversight committees.

On Tuesday, June 2, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that the new Acting Director of National Intelligence would be Bill Pulte.

Pulte, 37, is the grandson of a homebuilder. His primary government job is running the Federal Housing Finance Agency. His main qualification, as far as anyone can determine, is an extraordinary willingness to use the instruments of government to go after the people Donald Trump doesn't like.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, sized up the appointment in a single sentence: "What could go wrong?"

It wasn't a rhetorical question.

The Attack Dog: A Brief Biography

To understand what Pulte's appointment actually means, you need to understand who Pulte actually is — not the polished Truth Social persona, but the full record.

He is the grandson of William J. Pulte, who founded PulteGroup in Detroit and built it into one of America's largest homebuilders. By the time Bill Pulte was born in 1988, the family fortune was already built. What he added, over the following decades, was a talent for combat.

An Associated Press investigation last October concluded that "before Bill Pulte started targeting President Donald Trump's political enemies, he practiced on his own family." Court records from a bitter legal battle over PulteGroup's leadership show a picture that, in any other administration, would have been disqualifying. He reportedly called one relative "a fat slob," a "weirdo," and a "grifter." He was allegedly the driving force behind a website that described an aunt as a "fake Christian." He accused his grandfather's widow of insider trading. His boasts and online conduct were flagged as a concern by company officials. He developed 3 million followers on X partly by deploying this same energy against strangers.

In Trump's Washington, that is called a résumé.

He was confirmed as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency in March 2025 — the regulator of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Bank System, institutions that collectively underpin roughly seventy percent of the American mortgage market. It is, in normal times, a critical but unglamorous position. He made it anything but. He appointed himself chairman of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after removing their independent board members — a step his targets' lawyers argued was itself illegal, since agency regulations require the chairs to be independent of the regulator. He then turned the vast mortgage databases under his supervision into a weapon.

The method was elegant in its viciousness. Pulte used his access to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac records to comb through the private mortgage files of people who had crossed Donald Trump. When he found anything he could characterize as irregular — a secondary residence classification, an occupancy agreement, a discrepancy in how a home's primary use was described — he sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department. His targets included New York Attorney General Letitia James, who had won a landmark fraud judgment against Trump; Senator Adam Schiff of California; Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, whose position Trump had sought to eliminate; and Representative Eric Swalwell of California.

All four denied any wrongdoing. Their lawyers described the referrals in terms that leave little to the imagination. Letitia James's legal team called it a violation of the Fifth Amendment, a "brazen, continuous disregard for the law and the Constitution," and alleged that the charges stemmed from Pulte improperly accessing records inside Fannie Mae itself — records that internal Fannie Mae officials privately acknowledged were "certainly not clear and convincing evidence" of any fraud. A federal judge agreed in part: James's indictment was dismissed on grounds that the interim U.S. attorney who secured it was improperly appointed. The Justice Department is reportedly seeking yet another indictment.

The Government Accountability Office launched an investigation into Pulte's conduct in December 2025. He responded to the growing scrutiny by firing ethics investigators and an acting Inspector General who were probing his behavior.

This is the man who, as of June 30, will oversee all eighteen American intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the National Security Agency.

A Law, and Its Violation

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, the legislation that created the Director of National Intelligence, did not leave the question of qualifications to chance. It stipulated, in plain language, that anyone appointed to the position "shall have extensive national security expertise."

Senator Mark Warner, vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stood before a hearing this week and methodically read Pulte's record against that requirement. No time in the military. No time in Congress. No time in the diplomatic corps. No time in law enforcement. No time in intelligence, in any capacity, in any country, at any level.

"Mr. Pulte has none of that," Warner said. "Zero."

He paused before adding the assessment that cut through all the procedural language: "What qualifications does Mr. Pulte bring to the office? He has shown that he is willing to do anything that President Trump wants, legal or otherwise."

As an acting appointment — bypassing Senate confirmation — Pulte can hold the position for 210 days. The Senate cannot vote him down. Senators Cassidy, Collins, and Murkowski voted this week for a Democratic amendment that would have barred any confirmed head of a federal agency from simultaneously serving as DNI. The amendment failed 49-49, a near thing that nonetheless illustrated how unusual it is for three Republican senators to side with Democrats to check their own party's president.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who holds Trump's legislative agenda in his hands, did not endorse the appointment. He offered words that may be the most damning possible assessment of a cabinet pick from the president's own party: "We don't need a weaponized DNI. We need professionals there."

It is worth sitting with that sentence for a moment. The most powerful Republican in the Senate, asked about a nominee from a Republican president, warned publicly that the concern was weaponization. He did not say Pulte was inexperienced. He said the worry was that the intelligence apparatus would be turned against political opponents.

Even a former CIA station chief, speaking anonymously to CNBC because the professional consequences of going on record were too serious, put it simply: appointing a loyalist with no intelligence background is "emblematic that he doesn't have any respect or need for DNI."

The Keys to the Kingdom

Here is the part that should focus the mind.

The Director of National Intelligence does not just coordinate intelligence. The DNI oversees the most powerful surveillance apparatus in human history. The NSA alone processes more data daily than most countries generate in a year. Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the most powerful domestic surveillance authority in the American legal toolkit — the government conducts warrantless collection of communications from foreign targets, sweeping up, incidentally and by design, enormous volumes of communications involving Americans.

We know what Pulte did when he had access to mortgage databases. He used those records to target Letitia James, Adam Schiff, Lisa Cook, and Eric Swalwell — the four people who appeared on that list being not a random sampling of Americans but an almost exact map of prominent figures who had publicly crossed the current president.

Now consider what happens when the person who built that pattern at the FHFA gains access to something incomparably larger: intelligence reports, foreign intercepts, surveillance authorities, the full machinery by which the United States government monitors the world. Tulsi Gabbard already showed where this can lead — she made a criminal referral from the DNI's office targeting a whistleblower whose complaint had led to Trump's first impeachment, triggering a sweeping federal investigation run out of Miami. Pulte arrives with a more established track record and no counterbalancing reverence for the role.

Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, put it plainly: "Couldn't have picked a worse person."

Collateral Damage, Already Visible

The appointment has already broken things.

Section 702 of FISA — the surveillance authority that counterterrorism officials across both parties describe as essential — expires on June 12. Before Pulte was announced, a bipartisan deal to reauthorize it was within reach. After the announcement, Democrats moved to block its renewal, calculating, correctly, that the question of who oversees the program is inseparable from the question of whether the program is safe to extend.

On Friday, the Senate voted 47-52 on the motion to proceed to the reauthorization bill. It failed. Every Senate Democrat except one voted against it. Six Republicans joined them, though on separate privacy grounds. The most important spy tool in the American counterterrorism arsenal is now headed toward expiration because the president chose to put an attack dog with no intelligence experience in charge of the intelligence community.

Senate Majority Leader Thune called it a "dangerous mistake." Speaker Mike Johnson called the Democrats' response "absolutely outrageous." Both of these things can be true simultaneously, and the fact that they are is entirely the consequence of a single appointment made on a Tuesday afternoon with no apparent regard for the consequences.

The Pattern Holds

It would be a mistake to treat this as an isolated lapse in judgment. It is the continuation of a pattern so consistent that calling it a lapse at all strains credibility.

The pattern runs like this: identify a powerful government institution; install someone whose primary qualification is personal loyalty to the president; and direct the resulting power toward the suppression of political opposition. The Justice Department becomes a referral engine for settling scores. The FHFA becomes a tool for digging up private financial records on critics. The FBI makes raids on political adversaries. Independent inspectors general are fired. Ethics investigators are dismissed. The civil service is hollowed out and replaced with loyalists.

What changes when Pulte takes over the intelligence community is not the logic — it is the scale. A housing regulator with access to mortgage databases can target a handful of prominent names. A spy chief with access to eighteen agencies, foreign intercepts, domestic surveillance authorities, and the full information apparatus of a global superpower can, in principle, target anyone.

This is the definition of a weaponized state — and the person being handed the keys has a documented, court-record-confirmed, GAO-investigated history of using every lever available to him to hurt the people who oppose his patron.

The founders of this country understood this danger in the abstract. Americans in 2026 are watching it materialize in the concrete.

Courts will not save the moment. The 210-day acting appointment is legally available to the president; legal challenges to the statutory qualification requirements have uncertain odds and uncertain timelines. Congress showed this week that even a near-majority of senators are alarmed, but near-majorities do not win votes.

What remains is the thing that always remains in a democracy when institutional guardrails bend but do not break: the election.

November 2026 is a midterm election. Every seat in the House of Representatives is on the ballot. Thirty-four Senate seats are in play. The voters who are watching a housing regulator with a gift for retribution get handed the keys to the intelligence community — the voters who watched the Letitia James indictment get built on mortgage paperwork and dismissed by a federal judge — the voters who watched the Senate Majority Leader publicly warn against a "weaponized DNI" without being able to stop one from being installed — those voters will have a say.

The argument being made in Washington this week, by Republicans and Democrats alike, is that the intelligence community must remain independent of political pressure to function. The argument being made by this appointment is the opposite: that loyalty to one man is the only qualification that matters, and that the tools of the state exist to serve that loyalty.

One of these arguments will determine what kind of country this is.

The answer has to come from the ballot box. It is the only place left where it can.

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The Stopwatch Stops: How *60 Minutes* Came Apart

On the first Monday in June, the most respected newsroom in American television held a staff meeting that felt less like a planning session than a hostage negotiation.

The new executive producer, Nick Bilton, had been on the job for less than a week. He stood in front of a room full of people who had spent their careers at 60 Minutes and tried to introduce himself as their future. Scott Pelley, who had been reporting for the program since before Bilton ever set foot in a newsroom, was not interested in the introduction. He wanted to talk about the people who had just been fired to make room for the man standing in front of him. He called those firings cruel. He asked Bilton, more or less to his face, what exactly qualified a former tech columnist to run the most important investigative program in the country. And then, according to people who heard it and to a recording later obtained by the media newsletter Status, he said the part that turned a personnel dispute into a national one: that Bari Weiss had been brought in to kill the show, and that she was doing exactly that.

By Tuesday evening, Pelley had a letter. His employment, it said, was terminated for cause, effective immediately. He had heard Pelley's hostility "loud and clear," Bilton wrote, and he had heard it.

That is how an institution ends — not with a grand farewell, but with an HR letter sent on a weeknight.

What "continuity" used to mean

For most of its history, the story 60 Minutes told about itself was a story about staying. Correspondents arrived in their forties and left in their seventies. Producers built entire careers without changing the name on their paycheck. The program's whole authority rested on that permanence: the ticking stopwatch on Sunday nights was a promise that something in American media would still be standing on Monday morning, regardless of who had won what in Washington that week.

That promise has now been broken in public, and quickly. Run the names. Bill Owens, the executive producer, gone. Wendy McMahon, the president of CBS News, gone. Anderson Cooper, who declined to renew as a correspondent after fighting over what he reportedly called abnormal edits to one of his segments. Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, fired. Tanya Simon, a thirty-year veteran who had stepped up to run the show, fired. The executive editor and a senior producer, fired in the same stroke. And now Pelley.

Of the correspondent lineup that posed together for a portrait just three years ago, only three remain on the masthead — Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim — and at least some of them are said to be weighing whether they want to be there at all. An institution that once defined itself by who would never leave is now defined by who is left.

The slow part, then the fast part

None of this began this week. The collapse had a long fuse, and it is worth following, because the sequence is the argument.

It starts in the fall of 2024, when Donald Trump sued CBS and its parent company, Paramount, over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. He pointed to the fact that two different versions of one Harris answer had aired. He demanded the raw transcript and, in his complaint, a sum of money so large — twenty billion dollars — that the figure read more like a message than a legal theory. Most First Amendment lawyers, across the spectrum, regarded the case as thin. Editing an interview is what television news does.

What made the lawsuit dangerous was not its merits. It was its timing. Paramount was, at that very moment, trying to close a roughly eight-billion-dollar merger with David Ellison's Skydance Media — a deal that required the blessing of regulators inside the Trump administration. A weak lawsuit and a pending merger are usually two separate problems. Here they became one.

In April 2025, Bill Owens resigned after thirty-seven years, telling colleagues he had lost his independence from corporate. He later went further, describing what he characterized as an internal spy ring set up to monitor the news division. Pelley did something almost unheard of in response: he went on the air and told viewers, in plain language, that Paramount had begun supervising the show's content in new ways, and that Owens had quit because he felt he could no longer do honest journalism. No story had been blocked, Pelley said. But a man had still walked out the door.

Then, in July 2025, Paramount paid. The settlement with Trump came in at sixteen million dollars, plus a promise to release future transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates. The show's correspondents — Whitaker, Stahl, Pelley, Cooper, Alfonsi, Wertheim, Vega, all of them — signed a letter opposing it. The settlement went through anyway. So did the merger. Around the same time, CBS announced the end of Stephen Colbert's Late Show, retiring one of the president's sharpest nightly critics. Coincidence, the company said. Few people heard it that way.

That was the slow part. The fast part started in October, when Ellison installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News, having acquired her publication, The Free Press, for a reported one hundred fifty million dollars. Weiss had built a real audience as a writer and an entrepreneur. She had never worked in television news. In one of her first meetings with the 60 Minutes staff, she reportedly asked them why the country thought they were biased — a question that lands very differently depending on whether you mean it as an invitation to self-reflection or as a verdict already reached.

The first real rupture came in December, when Weiss pulled an Alfonsi segment about CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration had sent deportees, just before it was scheduled to air. It ran about a month later. Alfonsi did not forget. She accused Weiss of choosing access over accountability — of holding a story that made the administration look bad. By late May, Alfonsi's contract had expired, Vega was out, Simon was out, and Bilton — a former New York Times tech reporter and Vanity Fair writer whose most recent credit was producing a Netflix documentary about a couple accused of laundering Bitcoin — was in.

A week after that, Pelley said the word murder in a staff meeting, and the long fuse finally reached the powder.

Two stories that cannot both be true

In the statement he released after his firing, Pelley raised the stakes from grievance to accusation. New management, he wrote, had instructed him to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story, and to include claims that had not been verified. He did not name the story or supply the specifics. CBS, as of this writing, had not directly answered the charge.

The company's version is narrower and quieter. Bilton's letter framed the firing as a matter of conduct — a performative display of hostility staged in front of the staff rather than handled like an adult in a closed room. Weiss told employees the next morning that she had tried to find a way back with Pelley and could not. Pelley, through The New York Times, called that untrue, saying no one in the room had offered any path to a resolution at all.

So you have two irreconcilable accounts: a newsroom being bent toward a political agenda, or a difficult star being managed out for insubordination. What is remarkable is not that both stories exist. It is that they are being fought out loud, in dueling statements and leaked recordings, by an organization whose entire culture used to be built on never airing its laundry. The silence broke before the institution did.

There is also a small, sharp irony worth keeping. A year ago, accepting a Cronkite Award, Pelley told an audience that despite the pressure of the Trump lawsuit, the show had experienced no corporate interference of any kind. He meant it as reassurance. Read it now and it sounds like a man describing the calm before he understood what kind of weather was coming.

Why a TV job became a national fight

It would be easy, and a little lazy, to say this is just a newsroom changing hands. Newsrooms always change hands. Anchors retire, owners shift, formats get blown up and rebuilt. American media history is one long chronicle of exactly this.

What is different is the way every single move now arrives carrying more weight than it can comfortably bear. A correspondent's dismissal becomes a referendum on press freedom. A merger becomes a proxy war over political influence. A Sunday news program becomes a stage on which the country argues about whether its institutions still have a spine.

And the argument has spilled past CBS entirely. Calls to boycott Paramount and its properties have moved through activist and progressive circles, less because anyone expects a boycott to dent an eight-billion-dollar company than because the boycott is a way of naming a fear. The fear is that the pattern is general. Universities settling. Law firms folding. Corporations adjusting their behavior in anticipation of trouble from Washington before any trouble has actually arrived. Whether each case deserves the accusation almost stops mattering, because what is hardening into place is a perception — that powerful organizations now make their decisions with one eye on the government, and that the safest move is always to give a little ground in advance.

CBS has become the most legible example of that anxiety, which is a cruel fate for a program built on holding the powerful to account.

What gets decided, and where

Some of this will end up in court. Several of the fired employees are reportedly weighing legal options, and there will be the usual long tail of employment disputes, shareholder questions, and regulatory attention to the next round of media consolidation. The interest in Pelley is real enough that Rachel Maddow has publicly invited him to join her network, framing his exit as one episode in a broader takeover of the press by the very rich.

But the verdict that matters most cannot be filed or litigated. It will be rendered in ratings, in subscriptions, and in the quiet, cumulative judgment of whether audiences still believe what they are watching on Sunday nights. That kind of trust is built over decades and spent in a week. It cannot be ordered into existence by new management, however confident, and it cannot be won back by press release.

The stopwatch still opens the broadcast. The ticking has not changed. But a sound only means what its listeners decide it means, and a lot of the people who used to hear continuity in it now hear something closer to a countdown.

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The Long Resistance: How a Country in Opposition Learned to Stay

Sixteen months into Donald Trump's second term, something has shifted — not the anger, but where it lives.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, on a Saturday morning in late March, a retired schoolteacher named Carol stood in front of a folding table she had hauled from her garage. She was handing out handmade signs near the Capitol rotunda. She had attended all three "No Kings" protests. She had driven three hours for the first one. This time, the rally was four blocks from her house. "The protests moved to us," she told a reporter. "We stopped waiting to be organized."

That small logistical shift — the protest arriving rather than departing — captures something essential about the resistance that has taken shape in the year and a half since Donald Trump returned to power. What began, tentatively, as a reprise of the 2017 Women's March playbook has evolved into something harder to map and, perhaps for that reason, harder to stop. The movement has grown not by consolidating around a single leader or organization but by fragmenting into thousands of local nodes: community groups, labor chapters, faith coalitions, neighborhood associations, roofers' unions. The center did not hold because there was no center to hold.

The numbers bear out what the people on the ground describe. According to data compiled by the Crowd Counting Consortium at Harvard University, anti-Trump protest activity has consistently and significantly outpaced pro-Trump rallies across the country. The Consortium documented major spikes in April 2025, when the "Hands Off" demonstrations drew an estimated three to five million people across more than 1,400 locations, and again in June and October 2025, when successive "No Kings" events drew roughly five million and seven million participants respectively — figures the Consortium described as among the largest single-day protests in American history. By March 28, 2026, the Center for American Progress estimated that the third iteration of "No Kings" had reached eight million participants in approximately 3,300 cities and towns across all fifty states. The protests had spread, according to organizers, into districts that had voted for Trump in 2024 and, notably, into fifteen countries beyond the United States.

These are extraordinary numbers, and they require a qualifier: protest size is notoriously difficult to measure, and organizers have an obvious incentive to report high. But even skeptics of crowd-count methodology acknowledge the trend is real. The Crowd Counting Consortium itself noted that its data "rebut the narrative that there is 'no resistance' to the second Trump administration." The trajectory is not ambiguous.

What the numbers don't capture is the texture. The 50501 movement — its name originally an abbreviation for "50 protests, 50 states, one day" — traces its origins to a Reddit thread in early 2025, organized by people with no budget, no central structure, and no official affiliation. That improvised model has proven durable. By January 30, 2026, according to the Museum of Protest, the same network helped coordinate a fifty-state economic blackout in 72 hours, drawing on labor unions, student organizations, faith communities, and small businesses. The catalyst was not an election or a legislative vote but a specific, local tragedy: the death of Renée Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother of three, shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on January 7 during what the Department of Homeland Security called "Operation Metro Surge," a deployment of an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 federal immigration agents into the Twin Cities. Within weeks, the sustained pressure from Minnesota protesters had, according to the Center for American Progress, forced the administration to end Operation Metro Surge and sharply curtail public enforcement activity in the state. It was, for the movement, something new: a concrete, datable, verifiable win.

The lawyers noticed. Over the past year and a half, the legal architecture of resistance has expanded in parallel with the street-level mobilization, and in some ways with more measurable effect. A coalition of twenty-three attorneys general from Democratic states and the District of Columbia had been planning litigation before Trump's second inauguration, guided partly by their study of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which had telegraphed the administration's intentions with unusual candor. The first lawsuit was filed the day after the swearing-in, challenging the administration's attempt to end birthright citizenship. By January 2026, according to Stateline, the coalition had filed 71 lawsuits, a record pace. According to a tracker maintained by the Progressive State Leaders Committee, state attorneys general had won 43 of the 53 resolved cases.

The suits range across nearly every domain of federal action. A coalition led by Massachusetts, California, Nevada, and Washington — eventually joined by 24 total states — challenged a Trump executive order in April 2026 that sought to impose federal restrictions on mail voting and voter eligibility ahead of the 2026 midterms. The attorneys general argued the order would upend existing state election procedures within weeks of primary elections, potentially disenfranchising millions who had voted by mail for decades, including military families and rural residents. Oregon's Dan Rayfield, described by Stateline as one of the most prolific litigators in the coalition with 52 suits led or joined, has framed the legal effort in explicitly institutional terms: "It's not a slogan or a political brand." Maryland's Anthony Brown has articulated the stakes more starkly, describing the coalition's central mission as protecting "the rule of law" at a moment when it cannot take institutional protection for granted.

The courts have been, to a meaningful degree, receptive. But some legal scholars have begun to raise a quiet concern: that the sheer volume of partisan state litigation, multiplied across two administrations in quick succession, risks corroding the judiciary's perceived neutrality — turning the courts into another arena of political combat rather than a check upon it.

Inside the federal government itself, the resistance has taken a quieter, more precarious form. A March 2026 survey from the Partnership for Public Service found that nearly sixty percent of federal employees reported that their engagement had decreased since 2024. The mood is not revolt but erosion: people doing less, communicating less, documenting more. In February 2026, the administration finalized a rule — long pursued by conservative operatives — stripping civil service protections from tens of thousands of government workers whose roles were deemed "policy-influencing." The 250-page rule, reported by HuffPost, cited what it called "policy resistance" as a fireable offense, including, as an example, scientific reports from Trump's first term affirming the reality of climate change. The message was explicit: dissent as a professional act would now carry professional consequences.

And yet the federal workers have not disappeared quietly. In Philadelphia, workers gathered in front of Independence Hall, calling their action "Save Our Services Day of Action." The city's councilmembers warned that layoffs at Independence National Historic Park could disrupt plans for the country's 250th birthday celebrations in 2026. The juxtaposition was almost too pointed to use: the nation's founding documents housed in a building whose caretakers had been let go.

Within the Republican Party, the contradictions have become harder to manage as the midterm elections approach. Trump's grip on his coalition has been simultaneously tightened and tested. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who had voted to convict Trump after January 6, lost his primary in May 2026 to a Trump-backed challenger — ending a two-decade career. Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a libertarian who had voted against the administration's signature tax bill, challenged the classification of secret Epstein files, and opposed the war in Iran, was also defeated in his primary after Trump personally lobbied Kentucky voters against him. The message was unmistakable.

But, as Newsweek noted, the victories may carry an ironic cost: legislators who have already lost their primaries face no further threat from the president, and several have wasted no time in demonstrating it. Cassidy, within days of his concession speech, publicly criticized the administration's proposed $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, writing on social media that Americans were worried about paying their mortgages, not about funding what he called an accountability-free slush fund for the president's allies. According to CNN, Republican senators across both chambers have grown privately restive — one unnamed source reportedly told the network, "All 53 Republican senators are not happy right now." The dissent remains, for now, scattered and episodic. But with six months until the midterms, and the administration pursuing policies on Iran, immigration, and spending that poll poorly with swing-state voters, the calculations are shifting.

The movement that has grown up outside those walls is grappling with its own questions of sustainability and direction. The Women's March of 2017 flared brilliantly and faded. Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, Black Lives Matter — each wave of mobilization has taught its own lessons about the gap between protest and power. An analysis by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, published after the March 2026 demonstrations, noted that mass protests succeed in checking authoritarian tendencies not simply by filling streets but by shifting the balance of power — shrinking support for the government and growing the coalition of opposition actors. The No Kings movement, Carnegie argued, had done something structurally distinctive: by hosting rallies across hundreds of locations rather than converging on a single symbolic site, organizers had lowered the barriers to participation and, crucially, strengthened local civic networks in places where Trump enjoys genuine support.

The question now — asked openly by labor organizers and quietly by Democratic strategists — is what becomes of that network as it gets pulled toward electoral machinery. International Viewpoint, a socialist publication covering the movement's internal debates, noted in March that after May Day, there would be a strong institutional push from organizations like Indivisible to orient the protest energy toward the November midterms, which some within the movement fear would have a "demobilizing effect." The Axios data is not reassuring in a different direction: survey data shared by movement researcher Dana Fisher showed that as of January 16, 2026, 34 percent of protesters polled agreed that Americans "may have to resort to violence in order to save our country" — up 11 percentage points from the October No Kings protests.

That number sits in the air like a weather reading no one wants to discuss at the table. The movement has been, by every observable measure, peaceful. Its leaders have been deliberate about that. But fatigue has a way of migrating into despair, and despair into something harder to predict.

What is unambiguous is that this is not 2017. The movement that took shape across the second term has been larger, more geographically distributed, more tactically varied, and — in at least one documented case — more effective than its predecessor. The schools and unions and roofers and retired teachers and state attorneys general and civil servants quietly filling out extra documentation are not waiting to be told what to do. They have been, for sixteen months, building something without a name for it yet. The country in motion does not look the same from every vantage point. From Carol's folding table in St. Paul, it looks like neighbors.

References

1. As Americans Deepen Their Nonviolent Mobilization, the Trump Administration Begins To Make Concessions — Center for American Progress (March 2026)
2. May Day protest organizers call for boycott of work, school and shopping — NPR (May 2026)
3. 50501 protests — Wikipedia
4. Democratic state AGs will lead opposition to Trump in new year — Stateline (January 2026)
5. Attorney General Mayes and Secretary of State Fontes Sue Trump Administration over Unlawful Executive Order — Arizona Attorney General (April 2026)
6. State Attorneys General Are Fighting Trump's Agenda — SAN (January 2026)
7. January 23, 2026 Minnesota protests against ICE — Wikipedia
8. How Organizers Coordinated a 50-State Economic Blackout in 72 Hours — Museum of Protest (January 2026)
9. Anti-Trump Protests Outweigh Supporter Rallies — Statista (2026)
10. Trump Admin Makes It Easier To Fire Federal Workers — HuffPost (February 2026)
11. Under Trump 2.0, federal employees disengaged, dissatisfied, survey shows — Federal News Network (March 2026)
12. Sen. Bill Cassidy's defeat shows the price of dissent in Trump's Republican Party — NBC News (May 2026)
13. Donald Trump Faces Growing Republican Revolt Against Key Priorities — Newsweek (May 2026)
14. 'Senators are not happy': How Trump pushed the GOP to the breaking point this week — CNN (May 2026)
15. Protests Like No Kings Can Only Go So Far to Stem Authoritarianism — Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (April 2026)
16. "We will be ungovernable": Resistance 2.0 pivots to disruption — Axios (January 2026)
17. Growing Convergence of the Anti-Trump movement in the US — International Viewpoint (March 2026)
18. What's Next for the Normie Anti-Trump Protest Movement? — The New Republic (January 2026)

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Death of El Mencho Triggers Nationwide CJNG Retaliation and Raises Succession Risks

On February 22, 2026, Mexican security forces carried out a high-risk operation in the mountains of Tapalpa, Jalisco, targeting Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, alias "El Mencho," the founder and leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). The raid—led by Army Special Forces and supported by six Air Force helicopters, the National Guard's Immediate Reaction Force, the National Intelligence Center (CNI), and the Attorney General's Office (FGR)—was the immediate trigger for a wave of violence across the country after El Mencho was critically wounded and later died during transfer to Mexico City.

Authorities say the operation followed tracking of a man linked to one of El Mencho’s romantic partners; federal forces also received complementary intelligence from the United States before arriving at the property. On arrival the security contingent came under heavy fire, initiating a firefight that left several cartel members dead and precipitated the capture attempt that ended with El Mencho mortally wounded.

Officials reported an overall toll of eight criminals killed, two detainees, and three soldiers wounded. Four CJNG members were killed at the scene while others died during or after transfer, including El Mencho. Security forces also seized an array of weapons, armored vehicles and rocket launchers capable of threatening aircraft, underscoring the cartel’s considerable firepower and operational capacity.

The CJNG responded immediately with a coordinated campaign of violence aimed at disrupting security operations and pressuring authorities. Tactics included massive road blockades using burning vehicles, arson attacks on well-known retail chains such as OXXO convenience stores and Farmacias Guadalajara, assaults on gas stations and Banco del Bienestar branches, and the torching of public transit buses—measures designed to paralyze movement and sow fear among the population.

Analysts note the attacks were synchronized across the cartel’s zones of influence, demonstrating operational coordination despite the loss of the leader. Experts such as David Saucedo said the violence had a political element as well: to cripple economic activity, damage the government’s reputation at home and abroad, and show the CJNG could inflict rapid, widespread disruption when targeted by state forces.

The scale of the unrest was large by objective measures: authorities recorded 252 roadblocks on February 22 across about 20 states, with Jalisco the hardest hit at 65 blockades. By night most had been cleared—229—but 23 remained active and partial closures persisted in some areas. Significant concentrations were reported in Michoacán (13 municipalities) and Guanajuato (multiple cities including León and Irapuato), while Oaxaca alone saw 14 burned vehicles across four municipalities.

Operational and security consequences were immediate: 23 inmates escaped from the Puerto Vallarta prison amid the chaos, and the Tapalpa firefight left three soldiers injured. Two suspects were detained in the aftermath even as authorities worked to reestablish control over highways, cities and key infrastructure disrupted by the CJNG’s actions.

By the morning of February 23 officials, including President Sheinbaum, reported that the country had woken with no active blockades, suggesting containment had progressed. The situation, however, remained volatile: by late morning armed groups in Michoacán had reignited violence in Apatzingán, Aguililla and Coalcomán, setting more vehicles alight and showing how quickly localized escalations could flare back up.

The unrest prompted a range of institutional and commercial reactions: the U.S. Embassy issued travel alerts for several Mexican states; Air Canada suspended flights at Puerto Vallarta; Mexico City’s Northern Bus Terminal halted westbound routes; Palacio de Hierro closed its Guadalajara store; and federal courts were allowed to declare a non-business day on February 23. These measures reflected concern about continuing instability and the immediate economic impact of the cartel’s campaign.

Looking ahead, experts outline three broad scenarios for the CJNG after El Mencho’s death: a negotiated internal succession, a limited factional dispute, or extreme fragmentation with violent infighting. Analysts warn that the cartel’s established line of succession appears disrupted—El Mencho’s son is serving life in the U.S., and other relatives lack consensus support—raising the risk of internal struggles or opportunistic attacks by rival groups. Intelligence agencies have named potential successors and power brokers, while public narcomantas and threats suggest the cartel is willing to engage in overt, high-level confrontation. The government’s operation removed Mexico’s most-wanted drug lord, but the immediate containment of violence leaves a larger, more uncertain danger: a succession battle that could destabilize criminal networks and provoke further violence, with heightened stakes given Guadalajara’s upcoming World Cup matches.

Comments for the news

• How do U.S. Embassy travel alerts for Mexican states translate into actions or advisories by the U.S. Consulate in Seattle, and what services or guidance do they provide to Seattle’s Mexican and traveling communities? - U.S. Department of State travel alerts/advisories for Mexico originate with the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and are published online; there is no "U.S. Consulate in Seattle" that issues separate travel warnings. In Seattle the practical response is: (1) the Consulate General of Mexico in Seattle (serving Mexican nationals) will inform its community and may issue guidance or consular services; (2) local U.S. government offices (State Department regional outreach, district staff for members of Congress) will point constituents to official State Dept. guidance; and (3) community groups, universities, employers, and travel agencies in Seattle relay advisories and may update travel policies. Services available to Seattle’s Mexican and traveling communities include consular assistance from the Mexican Consulate (passports, emergency help, repatriation advice), U.S. State Dept. emergency enrollment (STEP) for U.S. citizens traveling abroad, and local NGO/community-organization alerts. Emergency helplines, safety briefings, and coordination with local media or diaspora networks are common ways advice is transmitted.

• Are there direct commercial flights between Seattle–Tacoma International Airport and Puerto Vallarta or Guadalajara that would have been affected by the Air Canada suspension, and how common are Seattle–Mexico routes for tourists and family travel? - Pre-pandemic and currently, SEA has seasonal and year-round direct flights to several Mexican destinations; historically SEA has had direct service to Puerto Vallarta (PVR) and sometimes Guadalajara (GDL) operated by U.S. carriers (Alaska Airlines, WestJet, others) on seasonal schedules. Air Canada’s suspension would affect its own Canada–Mexico routing and connecting passengers through Canadian hubs rather than direct SEA flights. Seattle–Mexico routes are common: many Seattle residents travel to Mexico for tourism, family visits, and conventions; SEA records high seasonal traffic to Mexican resort cities and Guadalajara is a major destination for family and cultural travel. Frequency varies by season and carrier; travelers also use connections through Vancouver, Los Angeles, or Mexico City.

• Do Seattle-based fan groups, travel agencies, or ethnic community organizations organize trips to international events like the World Cup in Guadalajara, and how would sudden security crises there typically disrupt those plans? - Yes. Seattle-area fan clubs (sports supporter groups), specialized travel agencies, and Latino community organizations sometimes organize group travel packages for major events. Universities and alumni groups occasionally arrange trips too. A sudden security crisis typically disrupts plans by prompting cancellations, insurance claims, rebooking or evacuation assistance, and coordination with consulates. Organizers often rely on travel insurance, vendor/airline policies, and State Dept advisories; they may postpone or cancel, arrange safer alternate itineraries, or coordinate shelter/transport with local consulates. Costs and logistical complications (lost deposits, seat availability) are common effects.

• Which U.S. federal law enforcement or intelligence agencies with offices or task forces in the Seattle region (for example FBI or DEA units) commonly coordinate international intelligence with Mexican authorities, and how might that coordination be involved in operations like the Tapalpa raid? - Agencies with regional presence that commonly coordinate internationally include the FBI (Seattle Field Office), DEA (Pacific Northwest Field Division offices), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) under ICE, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) intelligence units. These agencies work with the State Department and the Department of Justice and maintain liaisons and legal frameworks (MLATs, task forces) to share intelligence with Mexican counterparts. Coordination can involve sharing investigative leads, facilitating requests for arrests or evidence, and joint operations through established bilateral mechanisms. For an operation like a raid in Mexico, U.S. involvement would typically be limited to intelligence support, information sharing, or assistance requested by Mexican authorities; direct operational involvement on Mexican soil requires Mexican authorization and diplomatic/legal agreements.

• How could the CJNG’s attacks and broader instability in Mexico impact Seattle-area businesses that rely on Mexican imports, seasonal tourism, or supply chains—are there local examples of such economic links? - Instability can affect Seattle businesses by disrupting supply chains (delays at Mexican ports, factory shutdowns), increasing logistics costs, and reducing tourism from travelers canceling trips. Local examples: Washington state imports agricultural products (avocados, berries at times), nursery plants, seafood processing inputs, and parts for manufacturing that may come via Mexico. The region’s tourism industry (hotels, airlines, travel agencies) can see reduced bookings to Mexican destinations. Tech and aerospace firms with North American supply chains could face parts delays if Mexican suppliers are affected. Many Seattle companies diversify suppliers and monitor risks, but small businesses and seasonal-tourism operators can be particularly vulnerable.

• What emergency protocols do the City of Seattle, local universities, or major employers have for residents, students, or staff in Mexico, and how are those protocols activated when a foreign country faces sudden unrest? - Common protocols: organizations maintain emergency contact databases, require travellers to enroll in government programs (U.S. State Dept STEP for citizens), have travel approval and risk-assessment processes, and keep crisis response teams that issue advisories and coordinate evacuations. Universities (University of Washington, Seattle University) have international travel policies, 24/7 emergency hotlines, and registries for students abroad; employers (major tech companies, hospitals) have duty-of-care teams, travel assistance providers, and evacuation plans. Activation typically follows monitoring of State Dept travel notices and local partner reporting; triggers include official travel advisories, direct threats to staff, or on-the-ground requests for help. Actions range from sending safety instructions and relocating personnel to arranging charter flights or working with consulates for evacuation assistance.

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Seattle’s Second Lombardi

Less than 48 hours before kickoff, a veteran NFL player jokingly grumbled that Bad Bunny’s halftime show choice “wasn’t football,” a jab that now seems almost quaint compared to what actually happened on and off the field. (Reddit)

Last night, the Seattle Seahawks clinched their second Super Bowl title, defeating the New England Patriots 29-13 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. Seattle’s defense — suffocating from the first whistle — held New England scoreless until the final quarter, turning what many expected to be a tight matchup into a celebration for the Emerald City’s fans from kickoff onward. (Reuters)

For Seattle, this wasn’t just a win. It was revenge, redemption, and validation — the Seahawks’ first championship since 2014, avenging painful memories tied to the last time these two franchises met on football’s biggest stage. (People.com)

Seattle’s defense set the tone early. Led by Kenneth Walker III’s 135 rushing yards and a relentless front seven, the Seahawks pounced on New England’s inexperienced quarterback and limited the Patriots’ offense throughout the night. Special teams provided scoring consistency: kicker Jason Myers — perfect on five field goals — set a new Super Bowl record and ensured Seattle always held command of the scoreboard. The final margin was rarely really in doubt. A critical interception returned for a touchdown by Uchenna Nwosu late in the game sealed the outcome and ignited celebrations around the Pacific Northwest. Quarterback Sam Darnold, in his second full season with Seattle, delivered a poised performance under pressure — one which erased doubts about his leadership in big games.

A Halftime Show That Stole Headlines — and Hearts

While Seahawk fans were glued to the defensive masterclass unfolding on the field, the Super Bowl LX halftime show became one of the most talked-about cultural moments of the night — maybe even the week. Headlining was Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar coming off his record-breaking Grammy win — a choice that sparked intense debate leading up to the game.

Bad Bunny delivered a high-energy, 13-minute set that embraced Latino musical culture, dance, and pageantry — with appearances from Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin adding breadth to the performance.

Highlights from the show included:

• A dramatic opening with the hit “Tití Me Preguntó,” setting an electric vibe throughout Levi’s Stadium.
• Lady Gaga performing a Latin-inspired rendition of “Die With a Smile.”
• Bad Bunny ending with a unity message — raising a football inscribed “Together we are America” and declaring “God Bless America,” while flags of nations across the Americas waved on screens behind him.

Reactions: A Mix of Acclaim, Spark and Debate

Online reactions ranged from joy to sharp criticism. Many fans and NFL players called the show a vibe and iconic, celebrating its energy and cultural richness. Social media buzzed with highlights, memes, and praise long after the set ended.

Yet some viewers took issue with the artistic direction — a reminder that the Super Bowl halftime stage, once dominated by sharable pop hits, now sits squarely at the crossroads of entertainment, identity, and cultural expression.

This performance may be remembered less for football and more for its broader cultural resonance — a halftime show that felt like a conversation piece as much as a performance.

For Seahawk fans still buzzing this morning:

• This win cements Seattle as an elite franchise again, eight years on from their last Lombardi moment.
• It’s a triumph built on defense, grit, and strategic execution at every level.
• And it’s tied to one of the most talked-about halftime shows in recent memory — one that echoed far beyond Levi’s Stadium and will be dissected in pop culture conversations for weeks.

Tonight, Seattle sleeps well. Tomorrow, the city awakens to champions, conversation, and — yes — a halftime show that won’t stop trending.

Sources:

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Echo — Cirque du Soleil: A World You Can Still Put Back Together

When you step into Echo, you’re not just entering a circus tent — you’re walking into a living, breathing question about the future. Created by Cirque du Soleil, this production blends breathtaking acrobatics, live music, and symbolic storytelling into an experience that feels both intimate and epic.

Currently playing in Redmond, Washington, Echo unfolds inside the iconic Grand Chapiteau, where the boundaries between stage, audience, and imagination seem to dissolve.

A Story Told Through Movement and Metaphor

At the heart of Echo is a young girl named Future — a curious observer and active participant at the same time. She represents hope, imagination, and humanity’s eternal desire to understand its place in the universe. By her side is Ewai, her loyal dog, who is far more than a companion. Ewai embodies instinct, joy, and an unbroken bond with nature, grounding the story in emotion rather than words.

The world they inhabit revolves around a massive Cube — the visual and conceptual centerpiece of the show. Constantly assembled, dismantled, lifted, and balanced, the Cube acts as a metaphor for civilization itself: knowledge, systems, ambition, and fragility all wrapped into one evolving structure. Through it, Echo asks a deceptively simple question: can we build something new without destroying what already exists?

Along their journey, Future and Ewai encounter a cast of symbolic figures. The Cartographer is a thinker and guide, always searching for direction, mapping paths that may or may not hold. His presence reflects humanity’s reliance on knowledge — and the risks that come with it.

Then there are the playful, chaotic characters endlessly moving objects, dropping them, stacking them again. Their humor masks a deeper truth: even with good intentions, humans often create disorder. Echo treats this gently, with irony rather than judgment.

Equally important are the fragile, animal-like beings and nature spirits that drift through the performance. Dressed in pale, almost paper-like costumes, they move carefully, quietly, as if the world might break beneath them. Their vulnerability is intentional — a reminder that every human action reverberates through the natural world.

Music in Echo is not background — it is a character of its own. Live musicians and vocalists weave sound directly into the performance, guiding emotions from hushed wonder to soaring intensity. The score feels organic, as if the world itself is breathing along with the performers.

An Ending Without an Answer

Echo doesn’t conclude with a moral neatly tied in a bow. Instead, it leaves you with a feeling — a sense of possibility. The world, it suggests, is still unfinished. What comes next depends on whether we learn to listen to the echo of our own actions.

This is not a spectacle meant to be simply watched. It’s an experience meant to be felt — and remembered.

This is an article of Planet Seattle.

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From Expansion Underdogs to Super Bowl Contenders: The Seattle Seahawks' 50-Year Journey

When the Seattle Seahawks stepped onto the field for their inaugural game in 1976, no one could have predicted that exactly 50 years later, they'd be preparing for their fourth Super Bowl appearance. Yet here they are in 2025—their golden anniversary season—heading to Super Bowl LX in a story that rivals any Hollywood script.

The Lean Years: Forging Identity in the Shadows

The beginning wasn't pretty. One of two expansion teams added to the NFL in 1976 (alongside the Tampa Bay Buccaneers), the Seahawks stumbled out of the gate with a brutal 2-14 record. Playing in the cavernous Kingdome, they spent their first decade as the league's lovable losers—a team fans supported more out of civic duty than genuine championship hopes.

But something was brewing in the Pacific Northwest. Even in those lean years, when victories were rare and playoff dreams seemed laughable, there was an undercurrent of passion. The fans who showed up in mismatched jerseys and worn-out gear weren't just watching football—they were building something bigger.

Everything changed in 1999 when Mike Holmgren arrived as head coach. A Super Bowl-winning coach from Green Bay, Holmgren brought structure, strategy, and most importantly—belief. His philosophy was simple but revolutionary for Seattle: build through the draft, dominate on defense, and never accept mediocrity.

The results were undeniable. By 2005, the Seahawks found themselves in Super Bowl XL against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Though they fell short in a controversial 21-10 loss, they'd proven something crucial: Seattle was no longer an afterthought. They were contenders.

The Legion of Boom: Tasting Glory

Then came Pete Carroll and Russell Wilson, and the NFL would never be the same. Carroll's infectious energy and defensive genius transformed Seattle into a juggernaut. The "Legion of Boom"—featuring Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor, Earl Thomas, and Bobby Wagner—became the most feared secondary in football.

Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014 remains one of the most dominant performances in championship history. The Seahawks absolutely demolished Peyton Manning's record-breaking Denver Broncos offense, 43-8. For one glorious night, Seattle sat atop the football world.

The following year brought heartbreak. Leading the New England Patriots 24-21 with 26 seconds remaining in Super Bowl XLIX, Seattle had the ball on New England's 1-yard line. What happened next is seared into every Seahawks fan's memory: Malcolm Butler's interception of Russell Wilson's pass at the goal line. Instead of back-to-back championships, Seattle walked away with nothing but what-ifs.

The years that followed tested the franchise's resilience. From 2016 to 2021, the Seahawks missed the playoffs entirely—a painful drought for a team accustomed to January football. Key players departed, injuries mounted, and the dynasty seemed to crumble.

Then came 2022, and with it, a seismic change: Russell Wilson was traded to Denver. The Wilson era was over. Many predicted years of rebuilding. They were wrong.

The Macdonald Miracle: Full Circle in 50 Years

In 2024, the Seahawks hired Mike Macdonald, the youngest head coach in the NFL at just 37. The former defensive coordinator brought fresh energy and a modern approach. But he still needed a quarterback.

Enter Sam Darnold. After seven years of unfulfilled potential with the Jets, Panthers, and 49ers, Darnold finally broke through with a career year in Minnesota. When the Seahawks traded Geno Smith and signed Darnold, skeptics abounded. They were silenced quickly.

The 2025 season—the franchise's 50th—became magical. Seattle retooled on the fly, trading for Pro Bowl receiver Rashid Shaheed at the deadline and signing veteran Cooper Kupp in free agency. Jaxon Smith-Njigba, in just his third season, emerged as one of the NFL's elite receivers, setting a franchise record with over 1,300 receiving yards.

The Seahawks finished 14-3—their best record since the 2013 Super Bowl championship—and earned the NFC's #1 seed for the first time since 2014. They won their first NFC West title since 2020. Then came the playoffs.

In the divisional round, they demolished the San Francisco 49ers 41-6, with Shaheed returning the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown. The NFC Championship against the Rams turned into an instant classic—a 31-27 thriller that had Lumen Field shaking to its foundations.

The Rematch: Redemption Awaits

Now, on February 8, 2026, the Seahawks will face the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. It's a rematch of Super Bowl XLIX—the game that broke Seattle's heart eleven years ago.

The Patriots, led by coach Mike Vrabel and young quarterback Drake Maye, finished 14-3 themselves. They're seeking their seventh Super Bowl title. The Seahawks? They're seeking redemption, vindication, and the perfect exclamation point on their 50th anniversary season.

ESPN's experts favor Seattle 82% to 18%. But this isn't about statistics. It's about a franchise that started with a 2-14 record and never stopped believing. It's about the 12th Man—that deafening roar at Lumen Field that's been measured as an earthquake. It's about Sam Darnold proving every doubter wrong, Jaxon Smith-Njigba ascending to stardom, and Mike Macdonald cementing his legacy as a coaching prodigy.

Most of all, it's about a team that spent 50 years building toward this moment.

The journey from expansion underdog to Super Bowl favorite has been anything but straight. There were lean years, heartbreaking losses, and painful rebuilds. But through it all, Seattle kept one thing constant: resilience.

This Sunday, in the Bay Area, the Seattle Seahawks have a chance to write the perfect final chapter of their golden anniversary season. Win or lose, they've already proven something extraordinary: that in the NFL, and in life, the distance between underdog and champion is measured not in talent alone, but in belief, persistence, and the unshakable support of those who never stopped believing.

The Seahawks' 50-year journey comes down to 60 minutes. For everyone who's followed this team from the Kingdome to Lumen Field, from 2-14 to 14-3, this isn't just another game.

It's the culmination of everything.

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"We are not smart enough…"

Part One. And the Ponies Just Keep Galloping

Last year's report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) aimed to "decode" and interpret Moscow's nuclear rhetoric. As Russia's war in Ukraine approached its one-year mark, Putin repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons, and it would have been good to understand why he was doing this and what could be done about this beauty. Well, for example, if it turned out that Putin was grabbing for the nuclear club when things were going badly at the front, this would have allowed for building at least some kind of strategy. Unfortunately, everything turned out much worse, and perhaps the Americans' main mistake was trying to analyze facts - this doesn't work with Russia. Therefore, based on the interpretation of Russia's nuclear vacillations, the report's authors came to a logical conclusion: "Hell knows what this all means, sir!" Analyst Lachlan Mackenzie suggested that if you try to analyze what appears in the media, "Russian threats seem disconnected and unrelated to each other." Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and Director of Policy Planning Heather Conley suggested listening only to Putin and taking his statements seriously, even if they're meant for domestic consumption: "Although Putin and Xi Jinping are autocrats... perhaps they're the ones we should believe." Between the options "all this is done to satisfy the domestic audience and reassure the Russian military elite" and "Putin himself believes that this way he can deter NATO troop deployment and win the war with Ukraine," the authors couldn't decide.

Nevertheless, the report contains much important information. Firstly, the authors described for history three phases of escalation in Russian nuclear rhetoric:

Phase I (February – July 2022): Russia's imitation of deterring NATO intervention in the first months of the war. Russian threats were mainly focused on deterring an allegedly planned NATO intervention in Ukraine and the implementation of a no-fly zone. Under this pretext, in late February, Putin ordered Russia's nuclear forces to move to a heightened combat readiness status, and a couple of months later stood them down, and after the convening of the UN Conference on the Review of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Moscow quieted down for some time.

Phase II (August – October 2022): with Ukraine's successes on the front, nuclear rhetoric intensifies. When Ukrainian forces began their counteroffensive in August-September, Russian statements about the possibility of using nuclear weapons resurfaced. Putin stated that Russia would use "all available means to protect" the annexed Ukrainian territories, which many interpreted as a hint at the use of nuclear weapons. (I'll note that Putin didn't limit himself to rhetoric: during this time, there was a large-scale transfer of tactical nuclear weapons, which the Americans missed).

Phase III (November 2022 – early 2023): respite and further escalation. Under pressure from China and India, Russian threats to use nuclear weapons temporarily ceased. In late 2022, the G20 summit issued a statement on the inadmissibility of using nuclear weapons under any circumstances, and Moscow's responsive silence was interpreted by many as "Moscow was cooled down by this." It seemed like the danger had passed. But in January 2023, Putin suspended Russia's participation in the nuclear arms reduction treaty without any apparent reason. At this point, the authors reasonably stopped looking for logic in his actions.

Secondly, in the CSIS report, the section "Growing Support for the Ban on Nuclear Weapons" is worth noting. It begins with the statement that "while world leaders try to prevent Moscow from starting a nuclear war," the number of countries supporting the UN-developed draft treaty on the complete prohibition of nuclear weapons "continues to slowly increase and has reached 69 countries." And further: "the list of countries supporting this treaty still doesn't include any nuclear powers." Maybe they weren't invited? - No: many "nuclear" NATO members "attended the council meetings of these countries as observers, cautiously stating that they don't intend to join the treaty." Why? It turns out that the UN-developed draft treaty on the complete prohibition of nuclear weapons doesn't mention Russia at all. Not once! That is, in the UN, there's a fight against a spherical nuclear threat in a vacuum, but there's no Putin who's brandishing a nuclear club and withdrawing from treaties. (Are you also not surprised?) And the CSIS report correctly points out that the UN draft treaty "missed an opportunity to gain greater support by pointing out the danger of Russia's nuclear threats against Ukraine," which indicates "continuing disagreements between the idealistic global prohibition of nuclear weapons and pragmatism in the face of Putin's war. The TPNW may have moral authority on paper, but it has yet to clearly limit the actions of real nuclear forces, such as Russian ones." That's how you find out that the UN not only has problems with its head, but herds of pink ponies are parading in formation there, and there's still much to deal with regarding them.

Part Two. "Russia Launches Low-Yield Nuclear Strikes on Polish Infrastructure"

On October 18, 2024, the same Center for Strategic and International Studies released its next major study "Project Atom 2024." (The subtitle "Nuclear Deterrence: What Does Washington Think?" is almost symptomatic here: having despaired of finding any logic in Moscow's actions and statements, the experts decided to focus on a simpler task. But in reality, work on the study began in early 2024, when leading American nuclear weapons experts gathered in Washington to discuss the most unpleasant scenario: what to do if nuclear deterrence fails?)

The study's authors acknowledge that neither treaties nor old nuclear deterrence models developed during the Cold War work anymore, new approaches are needed that take into account both the changed balance of powers and the emergence of new players on the world stage. Deterring monkeys with nuclear grenades may end in failure. Should we prepare for nuclear war? Yes. ("But that's not certain"). So, what's this about?

At the center of the current confrontation is the real opponent. China. Russia is viewed as an unhinged but very serious player, capable not only of decisive actions but also of pushing China toward starting a nuclear conflict. This wasn't always the case, and American analysts view Putin's war with Ukraine as the turning point. "The failure of deterrence is rooted in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea," notes Rebecca Davis Gibbons. In her opinion, it was the anemic Western reaction to the occupation of part of Ukraine that significantly influenced Moscow's subsequent strategic calculations and prompted it to begin nuclear blackmail.

Moving to the present, American experts are trying to rationalize Russian nuclear doctrine as conceptually amounting to "the use of tactical nuclear weapons under the pretext of de-escalating military actions." It would seem this only applies to Ukraine, but - no. As Ankit Panda notes: "Russia may be more inclined to go all-in and try to preemptively destroy U.S. nuclear forces." (At this point, you start to better understand Europeans' concern for their own security and the helplessness of claims that "we are protecting the West from Putin").

Meanwhile, Europe is strictly speaking absent from the confrontation formula: experts point to the unequivocal and overwhelming superiority of Russian nuclear forces over European ones. "European allies cannot count on British and French nuclear forces as a real alternative to the American nuclear umbrella." (Here it should be noted that although formally the effectiveness of the American missile defense system supposedly exceeds 80%, even one Russian nuclear bomb exploding on European and U.S. territory is considered a catastrophic scenario).

And what about China? Two directions are important here. On one hand, it's clear that Americans are extremely concerned about partnership with Russia: China coordinates its actions with Moscow, conducting joint naval exercises, Russia is ready to provide China with any resources to strengthen military and economic cooperation, both countries share a "vision of a multipolar world" opposing American hegemony. Well, everything is clear here, and this wouldn't cause concern if Beijing wasn't simultaneously building up its nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, China views "reunification" with Taiwan as a key goal, and its leadership is ready to use military force (including nuclear weapons) to achieve it, and this is truly frightening.

Now - the most fascinating part. The document doesn't present direct evidence of China's readiness to use nuclear weapons, but part of the study is devoted to the "2027 scenario." This is a hypothetical scenario where the use of nuclear weapons is considered as a "last resort." The hypothetical scenario for the start of nuclear war considered by the Center for Strategic and International Studies looks like this.

In 2027, growing tensions around Taiwan lead to a large-scale military clash. The situation begins to escalate after pro-independence sentiments strengthen in Taiwan, and presidential candidates make statements supporting the island's independence. In response, China begins military preparations in Fujian province, bordering the Taiwan Strait.

During this same period, Xi Jinping and Putin hold a joint summit, where Putin expresses support for China's position on Taiwan. The countries announce joint naval exercises in the Pacific Ocean, which are to coincide with Russian military exercises near western borders, including both conventional and nuclear forces.

The U.S. and its allies, perceiving the situation as an immediate threat, strengthen their military presence in both regions and warn that "wars of conquest will be punished." The situation sharply escalates on May 14, when China begins missile strikes on Taiwan as part of preparation for a full-scale invasion. The next day, Russia strikes Polish transport infrastructure and attempts an invasion. The U.S. and allies successfully counter these actions: American and allied forces intercept Chinese landing ships, while Polish and Lithuanian forces repel the strikes and enter the Kaliningrad region.

In response to military failures, both Russia and China resort to using nuclear weapons. Russia launches low-yield nuclear strikes on Polish infrastructure and NATO forces, resulting in approximately a thousand casualties, including American military personnel. China delivers a 50-kiloton nuclear strike on a U.S. naval base in the Philippines, resulting in about 15,000 deaths.

Part Three. "Let Whatever Burns Burn, As Long As There Will Be No War"

The hypothetical scenario of the start of nuclear conflict described in part two, developed by CSIS, is an analytical exercise aimed at helping politicians and military strategists better understand the complexity of decision-making in extreme situations. The document's authors repeatedly emphasize that due to the absence of historical precedents for the use of nuclear weapons in conflicts between nuclear powers, any assumptions about the development of such events remain purely theoretical.

At the same time, in general, the authors view China as a rational economic partner who has so far demonstrated measured strategic decision-making. According to Ankit Panda's analysis, China "adheres to a more cautious approach to nuclear deterrence," and the main regional risk is associated with China's policy toward Taiwan. Russia, however, is viewed as "more inclined to take risks and more ready for preemptive actions" (and we've all repeatedly seen these "preemptive actions" - in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria).

Christopher Ford believes that even in the case of territorial gains, "Moscow lacks the economic, demographic, and material resources to hold them in the long term," and this too could push the irrational Putin toward unhealthy actions. This variant of starting a nuclear conflict is considered the most likely: beyond the "2027 scenario," experts primarily consider the scenario of unmotivated use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia under the pretext of de-escalation.

And, let's say, Putin starts a nuclear conflict. What do the experts recommend? In the short term, in case such a scenario develops, they suggest the U.S. focus on preventing full-scale nuclear war, even if this requires certain tactical concessions. Meanwhile, the military response should be decisive enough to demonstrate readiness to protect allies, but not so aggressive as to provoke further escalation.

Based on Project Atom 2024, several response scenarios can be identified.

In case of a single use of tactical nuclear weapons, the "moderate scenario" is considered most likely. It assumes a "restrained but decisive reaction," including:

• A powerful conventional response against military targets
• No immediate nuclear response
• Intensive diplomatic campaign
• Complete international isolation
• Demonstrative increase in NATO nuclear forces' readiness.

In general, "the main goal [at this stage] should be preventing further nuclear escalation leading to large-scale nuclear exchange."

There's no consensus on what to do in case of multiple nuclear weapons use. Melanie Sisson suggests continuing conventional response: seeking diplomatic paths to de-escalation and readiness for compromises to prevent global catastrophe. Gregory Weaver's approach: inevitable nuclear response, use of tactical nuclear weapons against military targets, readiness for further escalation, and demonstration of determination to protect allies.

What will determine the response type? Formally, the main factor is the context. The reaction will depend on the scale of destruction, chosen targets, collateral damage, and military situation at the moment. Here, Ankit Panda makes an important observation: "the president's personality plays a critical role." A normal U.S. president "will seek to avoid the risk of full-scale nuclear war, even at the cost of losing allies' trust," and even 10 years ago one might not have worried about the sanity of American leadership. But now it's impossible to exclude the factor of the Trump factor: we remember how he boasted that he has a nuclear button on the first floor and can get down and press it at any moment.

However, that's a separate sad topic. Let's return to our subject. In the scenario where Putin unilaterally starts a nuclear war with tactical weapons, China's reaction is considered an important factor. Although Putin has repeatedly shown that he can ignore everyone, including Xi, the authors hope that China will take a rational position, and Putin's dependence on China will play a deterrent role.

Part Four. Ballet and Ceramics

What will follow? Under any scenario, the authors predict that one should expect complete international isolation of Russia, maximally harsh economic sanctions, increased NATO military presence in Europe, and a complete revision of the global nuclear deterrence system. The experts pay special attention to the question of U.S. allies. According to Ford, even if the U.S. doesn't respond with an immediate nuclear attack to a Russian strike, they must demonstrate readiness to protect allies by all means. (I'll add from myself that this reads almost like "When they start bombing, then call us, we'll definitely think of something." But on the other hand - what else can be done?)

Further follows a rather detailed list of recommendations for preventing such a scenario. I don't know how interesting all the details are (the study is actually significantly broader than just looking at China or Russia and considers possible reactions from a wide spectrum of countries, including other nuclear states), but I'll list the key points. U.S. leadership is recommended to:

1. Strengthen preliminary planning and coordination with allies. Pay special attention to the necessity of conducting joint war games and exercises that will help better prepare for such scenarios.
2. Discuss possible actions in crisis situations with allies in advance.
3. Develop a more flexible nuclear arsenal, especially in terms of regional capabilities. This will allow for more response options in case of limited nuclear weapon use by an opponent.
4. Strengthen strategic communications with both allies and potential adversaries. It's important to clearly indicate intentions and "red lines," while avoiding ambiguity that could lead to miscalculations.
5. Pay special attention to maintaining ally unity. The document emphasizes that losing allies' trust could have more serious long-term consequences than tactical military failures.

The report notes that the main goal of all these measures is "not preparation for war, but its prevention through convincing deterrence and demonstration of readiness for decisive action if necessary."

What else? When discussing long-term prospects, the study reports that "economic restrictions, demographic problems, and limited material resources for maintaining long-term confrontation with technologically developed opponents" can drive Russia to the edge in the long term. But we know this ourselves: a couple of times per century, Russia is bound to collapse due to internal problems.

Well, that's about it. 90 pages in small print. The authors don't even ask the most important questions like "What can actually justify a nuclear strike?" or "If any outcome of nuclear war will be unconditionally worse than its cause, can one win a nuclear war?": in the world of Putins and Trumps, not seeking justifications and passing off the bombing of civilians as victory has become commonplace.

But, since we've ended up in a world where "red buttons" are in the hands of people bound neither by moral obligations nor treaties, the authors offer a choice between dying standing and living on your knees. Based on the pragmatic postulate that peace means when they're not bombing you, they essentially suggest living with the hope that Putin will use nuclear weapons against someone else and - only once. They propose not solving the problem but postponing it, hoping that somewhere in the distant perspective, Russia, like the USSR, will collapse from systemic problems.

The "preemptive strike" option isn't considered: if you kill tens of millions of people with the best intentions, you become the villain. And if you're fighting a monster, the line beyond which you yourself become a monster is always closer than it seems, so it's best not to even approach it.

I'll add from myself that an atomic bomb continues to be an atomic bomb, and somehow we need to stop calling it a weapon: this is self-deception. Nuclear arsenals are not weapons, but destroyer of worlds. Let's call it as such. And Russia will continue using it to its advantage: to scare, manipulate, divide and concur. And if that fails, Putin will have only two options: destroy millions of people or admit before the whole world that this was a bluff.

Therefore, the words of George Kennan, architect of the USSR "containment doctrine," remain valid: "The Kremlin's neurotic view of world politics is traditionally based on an instinctive sense of insecurity, fear of more competent, stronger, better organized society... Russian rulers have always felt that their power doesn't stand up to comparison with Western countries' political systems." This is how Kennan explained to President Truman that the Kremlin's aggressiveness was caused by Russia's primordial inferiority complex, it cannot be appeased by gestures of goodwill. As we know, this worked, and the authors of "Project Atom 2024" in a milder form essentially propose the same thing: strengthen, establish, develop...

I read that Robert Oppenheimer once said that not that there's no alternative to a nuclear war, but that we are not smart enough to see the alternative. Isn't that a scary thought?

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