The Washington Spectator

All of a sudden, during a single week in early June, a Marine sergeant turned oyster farmer named Graham Cunningham Platner, Democratic candidate for the Senate in Maine, became the most famous veteran in America. Or, if you prefer, the most infamous. Vets running for elected office have always occupied a special place in the hearts and minds of American voters of both parties. An October 2025 Gallup poll found that 80 percent of American voters have a strong belief in their leadership skills.

Trump produced this latest one through an unprecedented legal maneuver: suing his own government over disclosure of his tax returns, then settling the case through his former criminal defense lawyer, now Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. The legality of that settlement is now under active judicial review, even as Trump appears to be backing away from the fund after unusually strong political opposition, including from Republicans in Congress.

I am the North Carolina lawyer who served as lead counsel for the Black citizens whose lawsuit led to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Thornburg v. Gingles. That case gave life to Congress’s 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act. Those amendments were born from a simple reality that every voting rights lawyer understood: what matters most is what happens when we deny Black communities the ability to elect representatives of their choosing.

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The Department of Agriculture estimates that in 1960 it cost middle-income families $259,711 (in 2025 dollars) to raise a child. In 2015, it cost $414,000 (again, in 2025 dollars), an increase of over 50 percent—substantially more than median household income increased over this time period. As a result, women are having fewer children. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the U.S. fertility rate (the average number of children a woman had in her lifetime) exceeded three.

National polling currently places President Trump’s approval rating at 40 percent or lower. Most models and prediction markets expect the 2026 congressional elections to shift control of the House, and more narrowly, the Senate, to the Democrats. That outcome would trigger investigations, subpoenas, and likely impeachment proceedings directed at members of the administration.

In our collective memory of the war in Vietnam, certain phrases have come to symbolize the self-delusion and the savagery of that traumatic episode in American history. The light at the end of the tunnel. Bomb them back into the Stone Age. That second line is generally attributed to the U.S. Air Force chief of staff, four-star Gen. Curtis LeMay. In fact, he denied ever saying it.

Growing up as a typical American Jew, I had it drilled into my head from a very young age that a strong Israel was a necessary condition for my safety. America was our home, sure, but as the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, I knew the history—at any moment our security could be shattered. Only the guaranteed protection of a Jewish state, made possible in part through the steadfast support of our Jewish community and all its institutions, could ensure my well-being in the long term.

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Support The Washington Spectator today Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok Trump’s War on Iran — In His Own Words 1. Why He Started the War February 28, 2026 Quote: “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.