Editorial Roundup: United States

Audio By Carbonatix

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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March 16

The Washington Post says narrowing tax base won't fund programs progressives want to provide

One of the most consequential trends in American politics is that Democrats are increasingly discovering what Republicans have known for decades: Voters don’t like taxes. Now the gubernatorial primary in California has become an experiment in how far tax cuts might take a Democratic politician in one of the country’s bluest states.

Katie Porter, one of the most progressive legislators during her six years in Congress, is running for governor and polling in the middle of a crowded field. To boost her languishing campaign, she has proposed eliminating state income taxes — for households making under $100,000 a year.

“I’ll work the issue at both ends,” she tweeted on Friday. “Lowering taxes for those who are struggling and raising them on the biggest corporations that can afford to pay.”

It’s encouraging to see a California politician acknowledge that high taxes have made the state’s residents struggle, and no doubt families would benefit from having a few thousand dollars more to budget each year. States like Mississippi and Indiana, which already have lower tax burdens, are also trying to phase out income taxes for everyone.

Yet those states are doing so over the course of many years, with deficit targets blocking cuts that wouldn’t be fiscally appropriate. Porter’s idea isn’t a plan so much as a slogan, and it presents plenty of problems.

For one, rather than push for spending cuts to match the tax cuts, Porter simply says she’ll go after corporations to help tackle California’s estimated $18 billion deficit. The state already ranks 48th in the Tax Foundation’s State Tax Competitiveness Index, and it can always get worse.

To her credit, Porter has rejected a disastrous wealth tax that could appear on the ballot in November. Yet that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t go after the “rich” in other ways, even though the top 1 percent of earners in California already contribute about 45 percent of state income taxes. Households making less than $100,000 contribute around 10 percent, though estimates vary.

Further raising taxes on the wealthiest – and most mobile – people in her state is risky and not guaranteed to increase revenue. Even if it does, California already suffers from wide fluctuations because it relies on so few people to pay so much.

Yet Porter also contradicts herself. Ever since President Donald Trump embarked on his tariff campaign, Democrats have rightly pointed out that higher taxes on corporations get passed down to the consumer. Porter herself has vowed to “fight Trump Administration policies like counterproductive tariffs that will only hit you in the pocketbook with higher prices for necessities and make the problem worse.” Why would Trump’s taxes on corporations affect prices but not hers?

The biggest problem, however, is that the plan is dishonest. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) responded this way to Porter: “So how will we pay for single payer healthcare? One of the things I admire about Bernie Sanders is he is honest that people need to pay taxes to fund foundational social services in healthcare, education, & childcare. The taxes should be progressive. But the math needs to work.”

Khanna is an imperfect messenger, but he’s right. The reality is that while both parties have tax cut fever, too few politicians on either side of the aisle are honest about how revenue and spending need to balance. Rather than tweaking the tax code to benefit select groups, everyone would be better off if politicians focused on growing the pie rather than dividing it up in increasingly complex ways.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/03/15/california-governor-race-katie-porter-income-tax/

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March 13

The New York Times on the rising use of the death penalty

The use of the death penalty has risen sharply in the United States, with more executions in 2025 than any year since 2009. It is a cruel and unjust development.

In theory, the death penalty is reserved for “the worst of the worst.” In practice, it is very different. People who are executed for their crimes are disproportionately poor or intellectually disabled and often lacked good lawyers. They are also more likely to be sentenced to death if they have been convicted of killing a white person.

Anthony Boyd, who maintained his innocence until Alabama executed him last year at age 54, had an inexperienced court-appointed lawyer and was convicted on disputed testimony. Charles Flores, 56, has spent 27 years on death row in Texas for a murder conviction based solely on unreliable testimony from a hypnotized witness. Robert Roberson, who has autism, remains on death row there despite having been convicted on now-debunked evidence that he had shaken his daughter to death.

Adding to the injustice, executions often go awry and become a grisly spectacle. As Alabama administered nitrogen gas to kill Mr. Boyd, he violently thrashed and drew agonized breaths for 30 minutes.

The death penalty is a fraught subject because most people on death row are guilty of murder and deserve tough punishment. But a life sentence without parole is a tough punishment. And the death penalty is both unavoidably flawed and unworthy of a decent society. As long it exists, it will disproportionately spare criminals with more resources and be used against people who are poor, mentally disabled or otherwise vulnerable.

Much of the world has come to this same conclusion. The list of countries that have abolished or effectively ended the death penalty includes all of Western Europe, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Morocco, South Africa and Australia. By continuing to execute people regularly, the United States puts itself in the company of only about 20 countries, among them Afghanistan, China, Iran and North Korea.

Over the past year, the United States has become even more of an outlier among democracies because the states that still conduct executions have accelerated the pace. Many of these states have in recent years passed secrecy laws to hide the details of what they are doing. We urge Americans not to look away.

In the initial years of the 21st century, more Americans recognized the flaws in the death penalty, and its use fell sharply. Opponents highlighted a wave of DNA-related exonerations, including of more than 20 people who were cleared after having spent time on death row.

Botched executions played a role too. After death penalty opponents pressured some pharmaceutical companies into stopping the sale of lethal injection drugs, states resorted to less reliable workarounds that led to gruesome scenes in execution chambers. Many doctors refused to participate, and amateurs filled the gap, sometimes administering lethal drugs improperly and causing prolonged suffering. Those cases contributed to public discomfort.

Political leaders from both parties responded to the growing recognition of the death penalty’s barbaric and arbitrary nature. In 2003, George Ryan, then the Republican governor of Illinois, issued a blanket commutation to death row inmates, citing “a shameless record of convicting innocent people.” Democrats went further, all but abandoning the practice in states they governed. Virginia, which executed 65 people in the 1990s, abolished the death penalty in 2021. The federal government contributed to the slowdown, too. It executed nobody during George W. Bush’s second term or in either of Barack Obama’s terms.

But popular support for the death penalty has never disappeared, despite the injustices. The last time that voters rejected it in a ballot referendum was in Oregon in 1964. Twenty states continued to put people to death in the 2010s.

The recent surge in executions has four main causes.

First, almost all states that have executed someone since 2012 have passed secrecy laws, allowing them to obscure the cruelty of executions. Indiana, for example, now blocks reporters from witnessing executions. Other laws allow states to hide the details of their shady efforts to buy lethal injection drugs. Consider that in 2012, Idaho officials reportedly set up a meeting in a parking lot where they traded a suitcase of cash for lethal injection drugs. The new laws try to minimize public backlash to wildly inappropriate practices.

Second, states have begun to seek alternatives for lethal injections, given the drugs’ cost and their unreliable supply. Last year, South Carolina executed three prisoners by firing squad. Yet this method, too, can go badly. In April, a firing squad’s bullets reportedly missed their intended target over the heart of Mikal Mahdi, and he cried out, groaned and gave labored breaths for more than a minute until his last gasp.

Third, today’s conservative Supreme Court is often indifferent to the horrors of the death penalty. From the 1980s through the early 2000s, the court issued several decisions that effectively restricted its use, including bans on the death penalty for children and the intellectually disabled. Since 2020, with a more conservative majority, the court has gone in the other direction. The justices have made it harder for some defendants to introduce new evidence and have quickly, and often without explanation, rejected lower courts’ requests to pause executions. The court has prioritized expediency over justice and made it more likely that the government will kill innocent people.

Finally there is President Trump. He has been enthusiastic about the death penalty since he was a tabloid figure in the 1980s. Since entering politics a decade ago, he has suggested it was an appropriate punishment even for drug dealers. His support has led the Republican Party to embrace the practice again. Shortly after returning to office last year, he signed an executive order encouraging states to pursue capital charges.

Florida embodies the recent changes. Last year, it executed 19 people; the state’s previous high in the modern era had been eight, in 2014. Florida’s laws are unusual in giving the governor broad control over who on death row should be executed, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has used that authority. This year, he has already signed five death warrants.

Last year, Mr. DeSantis signed a law that mandates the death penalty for undocumented immigrants who commit capital crimes, despite its apparent violation of a 1987 Supreme Court ruling prohibiting automatic death sentences for any category of crime. What is the name of this Florida law? The TRUMP Act.

This editorial board has long argued for the abolition of the death penalty. It is a form of institutionalized vengeance that causes a society to mimic the behavior of its worst offenders. It does not deter crime any more than life imprisonment does, studies show. These are the reasons that so much of the world no longer executes people.

This week has brought a rare recent piece of good news in the United States. On Tuesday, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama commuted the death sentence of Charles Burton, 75, who was involved in a 1991 robbery but was no longer on the scene when one of his accomplices shot and killed a man. He was set to be executed on Thursday. Ms. Ivey made the right decision, but it should not require a wave of media attention and public outcry to secure last-minute justice in every flawed case.

In the absence of abolition, this country should at least take steps to reduce the worst injustices of the death penalty. The chances that an innocent person will be executed remain far too high. People on death row should have every opportunity to present evidence that calls into question their conviction.

In its current term, the Supreme Court is hearing a case involving protections against executing intellectually disabled Americans, who are at greater risk of falsely confessing and often struggle to defend themselves in court. We hope the justices uphold those protections. We also believe that the court should continue to prevent states from imposing the death penalty for crimes other than murder, a ruling it made in 2008 and that Mr. DeSantis has challenged.

Finally, states should repeal their secrecy laws and allow the public to confront the grim reality of executions. That so many states would rather hide this truth offers one reason for hope during a dark new period of executions in the United States. Even many of the politicians who support the death penalty seem to grasp that it is indefensible.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/opinion/death-penalty-comeback.html

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March 16

The Boston Globe says Congress should investigate bombing of school in Iran

On Feb. 28, when the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran, the deadliest strike in terms of civilian casualties was on a girl’s elementary school in the town of Minab, Iran. The attack killed at least 175 people, most of whom were children.

In the immediate aftermath, neither Israel nor the United States took responsibility for the attack. But a New York Times visual investigation found that the school appeared to be targeted by a precision strike and that the United States was the likely culprit.

And yet, President Trump tried to pin blame on Iran. “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Trump told reporters. “We think it was done by Iran, because they’re very inaccurate with their munitions, they have no accuracy whatsoever, it was done by Iran.”

Since then, a preliminary investigation by the Pentagon found that the United States was indeed at fault for the strike. Iran does not even possess the type of missile that was used.

This kind of attack can’t be brushed aside as just the unfortunate cost of war. The high civilian death toll — many of whom were schoolgirls between the ages of 7 and 12 — and the fact that the site was a school, entitled to special protection under international law, should make the attack a scandal deserving of the utmost scrutiny.

That’s why a military investigation alone is not enough. Congress should launch an independent inquiry to find out what went wrong, how, and why. The findings of that investigation should be made public, and depending on what those findings are, officials responsible for any wrongdoing must be held accountable.

An independent investigation is about more than just accountability. It’s also about ensuring that an attack like this does not happen again. If it was a mistake, then what can be done to prevent that kind of mistake in the future?

One of the alarming findings that emerged in the aftermath of the strike is that it could have been a result of outdated data. The school was adjacent to an Iranian naval base, which was the target of the US strikes that day. According to The New York Times, the school at one point was part of the naval base but has since at least 2016 been partitioned off. If that’s true, then why is the US military operating on information that’s at least a decade old?

During the bombing campaign against what was then Yugoslavia in 1999, the United States accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three and creating an international uproar. Officials blamed that mishap on outdated maps — so why is that still a problem almost 30 years later?

There are also questions about whether artificial intelligence played a role in the deadly strike.

Congress can maximize pressure on the Trump administration to provide answers by using the power of the purse. It’s expected that the White House will require supplemental funding for the war — at least an additional $50 billion — and lawmakers should pause before considering such requests. They should demand answers and ensure that the Trump administration doesn’t stonewall any investigations and that taxpayer money isn’t spent funding operations that result in deadly attacks like the tragic one on the elementary school.

Getting to the bottom of this should not be a partisan issue. Republicans have also expressed their concerns about the strike on the school. “I think it was a horrible, horrible mistake,” Republican Senator John Kennedy, of Louisiana, said. “And when you make a mistake, you ought to admit it.”

Republicans should work with Democrats to get answers. After all, even if Republican lawmakers fully support Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran, it is still their responsibility to ensure that the United States is accurate and precise in targeting enemy combatants, not innocent civilians, let alone children. If this strike highlights something systemically wrong with the Pentagon’s operations, that would make clear that the longer this war lasts, the more likely it is that strikes like the one on the elementary school could happen again. For supporters of the war, that’s not only a moral stain but also a strategic blunder that would only strengthen popular support for the Iranian regime and further exacerbate anti-Western sentiments. And without Republican leadership, neither Congress nor the public will get the answers needed from the White House.

This is also an opportunity to review the Pentagon’s standards and procedures, especially under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Since Hegseth took this role, he has been boasting about US military strength and adamantly arguing that the United States should be less cautious when it comes to considering standard rules of engagement and international law. When Trump rebranded the Department of Defense into the Department of War, Hegseth insisted that the Pentagon will focus on “maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”

It’s worth digging into whether standards under Hegseth have indeed been lowered, and if so to what degree. It’s already been reported that he gutted the offices that would have been tasked with probing situations like the strike on the elementary school. What else has happened under Hegseth that could minimize accountability and potentially make strikes like this one all the more likely in the future?

Those are just some of the issues Congress should be investigating. And when lawmakers get answers, they should share them with the public. We might be at war, but we should still hold the Pentagon to the highest of standards.

ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/16/opinion/iran-school-bombing-congress/

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March 13

The Philadelphia Inquirer says Trump's attacks on Iran and Venezuela seemed catered to Big Oil

Apologies to Jed Clampett, but there is a common thread running through Donald Trump ’s attacks on Venezuela and Iran: oil, black gold, Trump tea.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump met with oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago club and essentially pledged to do their bidding in return for $1 billion for his reelection campaign.

At the time, Trump was facing four criminal indictments and was desperate to take back the White House and dodge the Big House.

Publicly, he told voters he would lower prices, deport the worst of the worst, and end America’s involvement in foreign wars.

Privately, he promised oil executives he would slash regulations, speed up permits, end green energy initiatives, and drill, baby, drill.

The public promises have all fizzled.

Prices are up, mass deportations backfired so badly Republicans can no longer mention them, and the United States is mired in a war of Trump’s making.

Even the unprovoked war in Ukraine that Trump promised more than 50 times to end on Day One drags on. That’s after he rolled out a literal red carpet for Russian ruler Vladimir Putin and ambushed Ukraine’s valiant President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.

Despite Trump’s hanging Ukraine out to dry, Zelensky has sent interceptor drones and experts to help protect U.S. military bases in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Trump looks the other way as Putin helps Iran attack the U.S.

How much humiliation can Trump endure?

Yet privately, all is good.

Trump is making billions and the Big Oil executives received a quick return on their investment. For only $445 million — less than half of the original ask — the president’s signature policy, his One Big Beautiful Bill, saved the oil and gas industry roughly $18 billion in new and expanded tax benefits, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, which analyzes tax policies for Congress.

That’s on top of the $35 billion in annual tax breaks baked into the tax code for the oil and gas industry.

In addition, Trump took 145 actions in his first 100 days to eliminate rules to protect clean air, water, and a livable climate.

He fast-tracked permits to allow for mining, drilling, and fossil fuel production and transportation on public land. The Trump administration canceled more than $83 billion in loans for clean energy projects to help fight climate change.

He installed fossil fuel allies to run government agencies, including climate change denier Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency and oil industry CEO Chris Wright to lead the Energy Department.

Last month, Trump eliminated the so-called endangerment finding, a 2009 EPA rule that found greenhouse gases were an existential threat to public life.

Erasing the landmark scientific finding eliminates the federal government’s ability to control the amount of carbon dioxide, methane, and four other greenhouse gases that contribute to worsening droughts, wildfires, heat waves, and other extreme weather.

In other words, pollute, baby, pollute.

ExxonMobile made nearly $29 billion last year, while Chevron’s net income was $12.48 billion. Profits at both companies were lower than the previous year, thanks to a drop in oil prices.

But that was before the war in Iran. Oil prices have jumped roughly 42% since the airstrikes began. The price for a barrel of oil increased to more than $100 from about $67 before the war, or “little excursion” as Trump called it.

For motorists, the price of gas has increased about 50 cents a gallon in less than two weeks.

Trump told Americans that higher gas prices were a “very small price to pay” for safety and peace.

Just over two weeks ago, Trump used his long State of the Union speech to tout lower gas prices that he said were “now below $2.30 a gallon in most states and in some places, $1.99 a gallon.”

Now, the national average is $3.58 a gallon.

While consumers dig deeper, the biggest winners of Trump’s war in Iran and invasion in Venezuela are the oil companies.

In fact, Big Oil has also profited handsomely from the war in Ukraine. Since the war started in February 2022, Shell, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobile, and Total Energies have made almost $500 billion.

Trump once boasted about how the U.S. was energy independent. But the wars in Ukraine and Iran both showed how the oil industry is interconnected.

The only true energy independence rests in freedom from oil.

But then Trump could not enrich his Big Oil buddies.

ONLINE: https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/trump-oil-war-iran-venezuela-ukraine-20260313.html

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March 13

The Guardian says Iran war is illegal, worse than a mistake

When Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the international condemnation from Europe and elsewhere was loud and clear. Leaders did not expect legal threats to shift Vladimir Putin or end war crimes by his troops. But they understood the importance of naming what had happened as an illegal act of aggression, and of seeking to hold those responsible accountable.

The same countries have been strikingly muted since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran. This too was an act of aggression. Spain’s Pedro Sánchez has been lonely in his forthright condemnation, though Norway and others also pointed to the breach of international law. Meanwhile, Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, offered unreserved support and Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, declared that it was “not the moment to lecture our partners and allies”.

As in Ukraine, the original sin has quickly been compounded, with the deaths of over a thousand civilians reported in Iran alone – including in the strike on a girls’ school which killed at least 175 people, mostly children: evidence points to US responsibility. Serious violations of the laws of war, reckless as well as deliberate, constitute war crimes. The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, declared on Friday that “no quarter will be given” to the enemy – a violation of international humanitarian law. Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, in retaliation for Hezbollah attacks defending Iran, are at a minimum disproportionate – as Katja Kallas, the EU foreign affairs chief, has implied – with vast civilian displacement and damage to infrastructure. That Iran is also committing war crimes does not lessen US or Israeli culpability.

The contrast between the west’s rhetoric about universal standards and its selective outrage is glaringly and increasingly evident to people around the world. They noted the bleak contrast between the passionate defence of Ukraine and the apparent indifference to genocide in Gaza. Some lives appear more important than others. When the Trump administration hit alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and kidnapped Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, allies said little. Each time, the belief in international law as an essential framework for conduct was further undermined. Each time, implicit licence was given for further breaches.

Double standards reflect disquiet about the Venezuelan and Iranian regimes, fear of angering the US president and the prioritisation of Ukraine’s needs. But some are also adopting US arguments. When Donald Trump declared that his “own morality” was the only limit on his global powers, the problem was not merely his character. Yet as the war on Iran began, Chancellor Merz asked “what should we do when international law clearly reaches its limits”.

As Dr Tamer Morris of the University of Sydney notes: “The purpose of international law is not to determine who is morally good; it is to maintain order in a world where every state believes it is waging the ‘good’ fight.” Mr Merz and others are growing more critical as this war’s impact becomes clearer. But it should not be challenged solely on pragmatic or even ethical grounds. The difficulty of upholding international law, and the limits of its scope, are no reason to jettison it. If those who lament the decline of the rules-based order remain complicit with the erosion of law, we will all be in greater danger.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/13/the-guardian-view-on-the-iran-war-and-international-law-its-worse-than-a-mistake-its-a