The Republican-led Congress has been a “bitter disappointment,” the Bloomberg Editorial Board argues. It points to the body’s “lackluster effort,” its “ham-handed” cuts to medical coverage, and how it dropped much of its agenda “in favor of writing big checks.”

“After two years in charge of a unified federal government, what has the Republican Party accomplished? If current polling is any indication, not enough,” the Editorial Board writes. It points to the Senate’s $70 billion budget reconciliation bill — which passed the House of Representatives — “that will mostly add to a glut of immigration funding.”

This GOP Congress has “fattened the budgets of immigration authorities while doing little to fix the broken incentives that lure unauthorized migrants in the first place (let alone to rationalize the legal immigration system).”

The Board accuses Congress of pledging to fight inflation, while standing “aside as the president has imposed a costly global tariff regime. After coming into office promising ‘massive reform’ to the health-care system, they’ve mostly cut coverage in ham-handed ways.”

Saying Congress “has done nothing to rein in long-term liabilities,” the Board calls the trajectory of the federal government’s debt “unsustainable.”

“More egregiously, the party that flatters itself as fiscally responsible hasn’t lifted a finger to rein in budget deficits,” it writes. “Last year’s tax cuts alone increased projected deficits by $4.7 trillion over the next decade. For all the turmoil engendered by the Department of Government Efficiency, the country’s spending problem has worsened decisively.”

The Board warns that the midterms are just months away, and Congress shouldn’t “congratulate themselves prematurely” — but it could take several steps.

Among them, it could “commit to respecting the Federal Reserve’s independence under new Chairman Kevin Warsh,” and promote permitting reform “to slash red tape, reduce costs, and accelerate energy and infrastructure projects.”

Congress could work on expanding housing supply and medical transparency, or “remind the president that his tariffs are harming workers and inflating consumer prices.”

And in an apparent rebuke, Bloomberg writes, “With federal spending threatening to slow income growth and drive up interest rates — or indeed prompt a fiscal crisis — they could take the minimum step of empaneling a commission to ponder the problem.”

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Historian and professor of strategic studies Phillips P. O’Brien is warning that President Donald Trump’s military may be committing war crimes, and doing so seems to be “official” U.S. policy.

“The USA seems to have deliberately and with foresight, committed a war crime as an act of policy,” O’Brien writes at his Substack newsletter. “If this is right, and all evidence seems to say it is, committing acts of terror is now an acceptable method of war in the judgement of the US government and, by extension, the American people.”

O’Brien points to the U.S. military’s strike on “two reservoirs and a water treatment facility in southern Iran,” cutting off water to 20,000 civilians in what OBrien says is 115-degree heat, similar to America’s Death Valley.

He explains that it likely was a deliberate attack because there are no military installations in the area, “and the destruction was precise.”

It is “hard to see this as a mistake,” he writes. “The target was too specialized, too localized and the effect seems calibrated.”

Asking, “Is It A War Crime?” O’Brien answers, “Without a doubt.”

The U.S. “has attacked, seemingly deliberately, a facility vital to the maintenance of human life that has no discernible military utility. So yes, it is a war crime.”

Making the act even more “perverse,” writes O’Brien, is that “this war crime was deliberately committed because Donald Trump is getting frustrated that the Iranian government is not doing what he wants them to do and that the Iranian military attacked a legitimate military target, a US Apache helicopter that was enforcing a blockade (an act of war remember) against Iran.”

O’Brien calls it “typical, Trump,/organized crime style behavior.”

Trump “attacks a small civilian facility as a threat and warning to Iran that he might go on and commit even greater war crimes if they do not do what he wants.”

Later, “while speaking to Fox News reporters, Trump went ahead and said he might start mass attacks on Iran’s bridges and electricity power generation.”

“He also tweeted out that if Iran did not do what he wants it to do, that it would have to “pay the price” of their defiance,” says O’Brien.

He concludes that a “historic war crime” was committed “because the President of the USA can think of nothing better to do.”

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Political strategist Steve Schmidt warns that in Donald Trump’s America, shame — “one of freedom’s guardians” — has vanished. Humiliation now reads as a “badge of honor.” Conscience has curdled into “inconvenience.” Schmidt argues the result is institutional erosion and real danger to society.

“There was a time in America when public disgrace meant something,” says Schmidt at The Warning. “A man caught lying to the public would resign. A politician caught in corruption would retreat from public life. A leader who dishonored his office would feel the sting of judgment from neighbors, colleagues, family members and strangers.”

Under Trump, the America where people “understood that character mattered” and that “a good name took a lifetime to build and a moment to lose” is gone, because what is essential, shame, has “disappeared.”

Schmidt says the disappearance of shame may be “the most consequential political development of the last quarter century.”

Shame, he explains, was a “warning light.” It was “society’s way of enforcing standards when laws couldn’t,” and it “reminded people where the boundaries were.”

Schmidt points directly to Trump’s actions.

“Donald Trump was found liable for sexual abuse. He attempted to overturn an election. He incited a mob against the United States Congress. He has told thousands upon thousands of documented lies,” he writes. “None of it brought shame. None of it produced reflection. None of it inspired remorse.”

Scandals have now become fundraising appeals, disgrace has become “grievance.”

“The lesson was clear: the shameless man held power over the ashamed man because he no longer recognized limits.”

Schmidt points the finger at technology, and specifically, social media.

Public life has become “performance.”

“Attention became more valuable than respect,” Schmidt observes. “Fame became more valuable than honor. The ability to provoke became more valuable than the ability to inspire.”

He explains that in Trump’s America, someone can simultaneously be “condemned” by millions and “celebrated” by millions more.

“The result is a culture where shamelessness is often mistaken for strength,” he says, and warns about not just corruption, but “indifference” to it.

“The danger is the normalization of conduct that once would have shocked the conscience,” he explains.

Schmidt says that this may not be permanent. Societies and cultures can rebuild and recover — but that has to begin with honesty.

Image via Reuters