The Trump administration plans to convene the so-called God Squad, a high-level federal panel that has the power to override protections under the Endangered Species Act, for a meeting related to oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico.
The meeting, scheduled for March 31, will be the first time in three decades that the group, officially called the Endangered Species Committee, will gather.
Notice of the meeting was released on Friday and officially published in the Federal Register on Monday. The Gulf, which the administration calls the Gulf of America, is home to the critically endangered Rice’s whale, a species that exists nowhere else. According to the latest available federal estimates, around 50 of the animals remain on Earth.
Information in the notice announcing the meeting, called by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, is sparse.
“The Committee is meeting regarding an exemption under the Endangered Species Act with respect to oil and gas exploration, development, and production activities in the Gulf of America associated with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Program,” the notice states.
When emailed for additional information on what had prompted the move, the Interior Department declined to directly answer questions and repeated the published information. But President Trump has wanted the God Squad to convene since he returned to office last year.
Here’s the story of the God Squad from Wikipedia. It long predates Trump which just goes to show you that this level of cruelty and stupidity has been with us a long time:
The 1978 amendment to the ESA “attempts to retain the basic integrity of the ESA, while introducing some flexibility which will permit exemptions from the Act’s stringent requirements.” The amendment clarified the ESA of 1973 in many ways, including clearly defining the term critical habitat, clearly defining penalties for non-compliance and determining the future appropriation of funds. The most important change that was brought about by the 1978 amendment was the creation of the Endangered Species Committee, known as the “God Squad” because of the substantial impact of its decisions on the natural world.
there must be no reasonable alternative to the agency’s action
the benefits of the action must outweigh the benefits of an alternative action where the species is conserved
the action is of regional or national importance
neither the federal agency or the exemption applicant made irreversible commitment to the resources.
Just imagine what the freak show of a cabinet we have now will do with this.
By the way, this is the horror you’re greeted with at all the government web sites:
It is NOT the Gulf of America and it never will be. I don’t know how we have just let these atrocities add up one after the other but it’s going to take a full-blown demolition team to get rid of it all. And God help them if they fail to do it.
Will they be wearing masks and carrying Ar-15s? Will they be dressed like they’re invading Fallujah?
I think this is going to go over very really well with a public that is impatient dealing with airport security on a good day and right now is having to get to the airport three hours early. They’ll love being rousted by these thugs for failing to follow orders. Should be great.
GENERAL MOTORS JUST ROLLED OUT A CAR that’s perfect for the moment. It’s the 2027 Chevrolet Bolt—a relatively cheap, all-electric subcompact that will let you drive right past gas stations, and dodge those high prices from the war in Iran.
But if you want a Bolt, you’d better act fast, because they won’t be on dealer lots for long. GM has already confirmed that production will end next year. The plan is to convert the Bolt’s factory in Kansas City back to manufacturing vehicles with internal combustion engines.
GM says it made its decision to limit the Bolt a while ago, and remains committed to producing other EVs. That’s almost certainly true. But it’s also true that GM has dialed back its overall EV ambitions—by, for example, shelving plans to convert more factories to EV production—and that other companies are doing the same. Just this past week, Honda announced it was scrapping plans for three EVs it had been preparing to manufacture at factories in the United States.
There’s no single, simple explanation for the retrenchment. But a big part of the story is Donald Trump. Since taking office, he has launched an all-out assault on EVs—by working with Republicans in Congress to eliminate tax breaks for vehicle production and purchases, and by using his regulatory powers to gut federal and state emissions standards that favored fuel efficiency.
“It wasn’t just the subsidies that Trump removed,” Corey Cantor, research director at the Zero Emission Transportation Association, told me. “It was the fuel economy standards. It was the California regulations. So it was almost a triple whammy of policy pullback.”
Trump has insisted that these old policies—the bulk of which were put in place by former President Joe Biden and the Democrats—were forcing the auto industry to make unprofitable vehicles, while sapping America of its petroleum-powered swagger. But high gas prices are turning that swagger into a stagger: Edmunds, the website for car buyers, says it has in recent weeks seen a rise in customer inquiries about EVs. You can safely assume that’s going to continue as long as gas prices stay high, which means that more American consumers are going to be looking for vehicles that U.S. manufacturers are becoming less able to provide.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s election and is investigating whether they were fraudulently counted.
“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes recorded,” Bianco said at a news conference Friday.
The unusual probe drew a sharp rebuke from California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who said in a statement Friday that it is “unprecedented in both scope and scale” and appears “not to be based on facts or evidence.”
“There is no indication, anywhere in the United States, of widespread voter fraud,” Bonta said. “Counts, recounts, hand counts, audits, and court cases all support this.”
According to Bonta’s office, Bianco’s department on Feb. 26 seized about 1,000 boxes of ballot materials in Riverside County related to the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas.
The sheriff said his investigators are looking into allegations by a local citizens group that “did their own audit” and found that the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes — a claim that local election officials have refuted.
You’d think that the fact he’s the leading GOP candidate for Governor should give any judge pause but I guess we’ll have to see how this plays out. But they’re just doing this and I would guess it’s going to happen all over the country after the midterms if Democrats win.
I honestly think the most likely election shenanigans will be to turn the post-election into 2020 style post-election chaos with the hope they can paralyze the Congress in whatever way they can. The lower courts are not likely to support their ridiculous claims but they could find some allies as it goes up the line.
The whole point of the endless drumbeat of “voter fraud” is to persuade at least 40% of the country that any election they lose is illegitimate. And since these are generally dumb, self serving people they are more than willing to buy into this fatuous notion.
One might be tempted to think that the most shameless shape-shifter in the Trump administration is JD Vance. After all, the vice president once called Donald Trump America’s Hitler, and ten years later, he is one of the president’s most ardent supporters. But Vance is a piker compared to the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. No one in American politics is more brazenly hypocritical — and considering the contenders in the Republican Congress, that’s saying something.
Gabbard appeared last week before the House Select Intelligence Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee and, along with FBI Director Kash Patel and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, delivered the worldwide threats assessment. But most of the questions were about the war in Iran.
Gabbard’s testimony was of particular interest because, prior to joining the Trump administration, she was known for her strident and uncompromising anti-war philosophy. In fact, when she ran for president in 2020 while serving as a congresswoman for Hawaii’s second district, her platform was explicitly built around an anti-Iran war message, which she specifically aimed at Trump. She even sold T-shirts that said, “No War With Iran.”
Although Gabbard had been a Bernie Sanders supporter in previous races, after she dropped out of the primary campaign that year she endorsed Joe Biden, even though Sanders was still in the race. That move came as a surprise, but in retrospect it was just the beginning of her move away from the left, and it wasn’t long before she began to play footsie with MAGA. With Trump running on his “America First” platform, and as the man who didn’t start any new wars, his camp was a natural place for her to land. By 2024 she had fully transitioned to being a Trump supporter, and her support provided important validation for Trump’s phony peacenik image, particularly among independent voters.
Still, it came as a shock when the president named Gabbard as the director of national intelligence since she had little expertise or experience. But she wound up being just one of many with such a pedigree in his Cabinet, and she’s kept a low profile ever since. Along with Vance and a few others who emerged from the right-wing fever swamps to buy into Trump’s isolationist pretenses, Gabbard was assumed by many political observers to be a quiet force within the administration against the so-called deep state. But it soon became clear that Trump didn’t have much use for her, or her analyses.
According to POLITICO, as Trump was preparing to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025, he was reminded by a reporter that Gabbard had reiterated the intelligence community’s conclusion that Iran wasn’t close to getting a bomb. “I don’t care what she says,” Trump responded. When quizzed about it again a couple of days later, he snapped, “She’s wrong.” As we know, he went ahead and hit the facility, using the United States’ most lethal bomb short of a nuclear weapon and immediately declared that Iran’s nuclear capacity had been “obliterated.”
Despite the president’s obvious disdain for her, Gabbard kept her head down and continued going to work. Completely marginalized during the administration’s Venezuela incursion, she was reportedly not even being invited to the White House Situation Room to observe the operation. Soon after she was spotted lurking around the FBI raid on the Fulton County, Georgia, election office, apparently on some secret mission from the White House to oversee their election suppression efforts.
All this has led to speculation that Gabbard will soon be reassigned to an ambassadorship in a country far, far away. Still she’s hanging in there, apparently willing to debase herself before the world in an attempt to cling to a job that the Tulsi Gabbard of 2020 would have spat upon if the person in it had turned in the performance she gave before Congress last week.
Gabbard was playing for an audience of one: Trump. She attempted to distance herself from the intelligence community’s finding that there was no imminent nuclear threat from Iran. In her written testimony she had used the president’s own words, saying that the nuclear program had been “obliterated.” But she omitted those words when she delivered the statement to the Senate committee, a change that was noted by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.
She was quick to try to clean up her faux pas, claiming she had skipped over the section because her statement was running long, but no one believed it. The omission clearly came because Trump and other administration officials, including Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, have said that Iran was “a week away” from possessing nuclear weapon-making capability, and Gabbard didn’t want to contradict them, particularly on live television.
Her tap dance was, and is, awkward. Recall that Gabbard had always agitated against waging preemptive war. As a congresswoman in 2018, she introduced the weirdly specific No More Presidential Wars Act, which stated that the president must “seek congressional authorization prior to any engagement of the U.S. Armed Forces against Syria, Iran, or Russia.” Eight years later, here she was defending Trump for launching the war without congressional authorization, despite her personal knowledge that Iran posed no imminent threat.
The biggest moment of the hearing came when Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., asked Gabbard if the intelligence community had determined if the Islamic Republic presented an imminent threat to the safety of the United States. This is, of course, the only acceptable reason a president can unilaterally launch an attack against another sovereign nation unless America has been attacked. (The definition of the word “imminent” is currently up for debate, with GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas saying that “Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years.”)
Gabbard disingenuously replied that “only the president can determine if there is an imminent threat.” No doubt Trump was thrilled to hear that, seeing as he has been telling everyone who will listen that the only thing that can constrain him is his “own mind and morality.” In the case of Iran, the White House has explicitly said that he started the war because “he had a good feeling.” Likewise, the president said he will end the war when “I feel it in my bones.”
Based on this, what Gabbard said is technically true: Trump decides based on his feelings if there’s an imminent threat that requires him to start a war. The actual facts, though, do not matter.
Gabbard’s performance led MAGA influencer, conspiracy theorist and Trump whisperer Laura Loomer to predict that she would soon follow counterterrorism chief Joe Kent’s lead and resign. Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said he expected Gabbard to be fired. But it also called into question the role of the U.S. intelligence community in the decision-making about Iran; it would once have been tasked with making determinations about imminent threats. And it also shined a spotlight on Gabbard’s effectiveness in her position, since she basically serves the function of a potted plant.
One can’t help but wonder what is motivating her at this point. If she sincerely thought in 2024 that Trump had become an anti-war president, why is she going along with his war of choice today? Or has she actually changed her mind and joined Trump’s crusade to conquer the world? Or is it something else entirely?
Gabbard has an odd habit of defending American adversaries. In fact, her support for Iran over the years can easily be seen in that light, although she’s been all over the map.
Gabbard has an odd habit of defending American adversaries. In fact, her support for Iran over the years can easily be seen in that light, although she’s been all over the map. During the debate over the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, she inexplicably voted to increase sanctions on the regime, which puzzled those on the left who expected her to back diplomacy as they did. At the time, that position was understood to be a GOP tactic designed to sink the deal, so one might assume her actions were to help the Iranian hardliners. Who knows? She’s nothing if not enigmatic.
Then there’s her very odd behavior toward Syria. While she was still a congresswoman in 2017, she took an unauthorized trip to the country and met with its despotic war criminal leader Bashar al-Assad. This violated the prohibition against individuals speaking to governments in dispute with the U.S. and came at a time when the Syrian government was slaughtering thousands of civilians. Gabbard’s trip shocked both Democrats and Republicans, and she has never adequately explained why she made it, nor did she disclose what she and Assad talked about. But upon her return she filed a bill titled “Stop Arming Terrorists” that demanded a halt of American support for Syrian rebel groups. She urged the U.S. to “end our war to overthrow the Syrian government and focus our attention on defeating al-Qaeda” and ISIS.
Syria, like Iran, was a strong ally of Russia, and if she has one consistent position through all of this, it is her support for Russia. As the New York Times pointed out in 2024, she is a favorite of Russian state media for that very reason — and for her apparent willingness to parrot Vladimir Putin’s propaganda. While it may be hard to understand why she’s now going along with Trump’s war against a Putin ally, perhaps she calculated that the president would attack Iran no matter what and saw an upside — the temporary lifting of Russian oil sanctions. This will do wonders for Russia’s war effort against Ukraine, which she has appeared to support. Gabbard may just feel that supporting this war in Iran is for the greater good. The question is: for whom?
Our Despot-in-Decline is issuing threat after threat like he’s the Big Bad Orange Wolf. Including threatening to completely “obliterate” Iran’s largest power plants if Iran doesn’t cry “Uncle.” Two can play that game.
Iran warns of ‘irreversible damage’ to regional infrastructure if power plants attacked
In a post on X, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf warned that critical infrastructure and energy facilities in the Middle East could be “irreversibly destroyed” if Iranian power plants are attacked. He wrote:
Immediately after the power plants and infrastructure in our country are targeted, the critical infrastructure, energy infrastructure, and oil facilities throughout the region will be considered legitimate targets and will be destroyed in an irreversible manner, and the price of oil will remain high for a long time.
The comments come after Donald Trump gave Iran 48 hours to reopen the strait of Hormuz to shipping or face the destruction of its energy infrastructure.
On Saturday evening, the US president wrote on Truth Social that the US would “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants – “starting with the biggest one first” – if Tehran did not fully reopen the strait within 48 hours, or 23:44 GMT on Monday according to the time of his post.
The comment on the price of oil was a rhetorical missile targeting Donald Trump.
Iran just demonstrated its potential reach with a failed attempt to hit the U.S. base on Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean:
Iran’s attempt to strike a US-UK base over 2,000 miles (over 3,000 kilometers) off its coast has renewed questions about Tehran’s military capabilities and how far its missiles can reach.
On Friday morning local time, Iran launched two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean, a US official told CNN, adding that neither of them struck the base. This marks what appears to be the first known attempt to target the base, which was deliberately built in a remote location beyond the reach of many adversaries.
While the attack was unsuccessful, it shows that Iran may not be adhering its self-imposed missile range limit of 2,000 kilometers, raising concerns about whether Tehran could hit US and European interests farther away than previously thought.
The New York Times reports that one missile failed mid-flight and an American warship shot down the other. Meanwhile:
Iranian missiles evaded Israel’s formidable air defenses and struck Dimona and the nearby city of Arad, shattering buildings, seriously injuring at least a dozen people and demonstrating that Tehran can still inflict damage even after three weeks of devastating airstrikes from the United States and Israel.
“This is a very difficult evening,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a social media post.
CNN offers a graphic on Iranian missile capabilities:
It’s all a video game to Secretary of WARfighting and his boss (The Hill):
The White House does argue this conflict is to keep the U.S. safe, but instead of strictly adhering to that type of somber tone, the Trump administration is producing AI-generated content, including video game memes channeling “Call of Duty” or “Grand Theft Auto” as its official messaging for the conflict. They’ve even dubbed the war Operation Epic Fury.
“We’re over here just grinding away on banger memes, dude,” a senior White House official told Politico. “There’s an entertainment factor to what we do. But ultimately, it boils down to the fact that no one has ever attempted to communicate with the American public this way before.”
That’s because Americans never allowed emotionally stunted juveniles near the highest perches in the Executive Branch before.
I don’t know who this is at @theendofnews. It’s not an editorial you’ll see in The New York Times on Sunday. That’s a shame. Tagline: “Reporting from the frontlines of civilization’s descent into stupidity. Perspectives on the news from the dumbest timeline imaginable.”
“[O]ur office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” Barack Obama’s spokesman Patrick Rodenbush told the press in 2025. Obama’s office is so far too dignified to issue even a nonresponse to the sitting president’s Trump-dancing on Robert Mueller’s grave.
There is nothing left of Trump but a steady stream of threats and insults. The problem for us all is that he has the power of the presidency and the U.S. military backing them.
Years ago, when my dearly departed landlady’s mind was going, she merely accused absent siblings of stealing her steak knives.
“The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.”
-J. Robert Oppenheimer
Well, this happened a few days ago:
Trump: "Some of this weaponry is unthinkable. You don't even want to know about it. Oh, you could end this thing in two seconds if you wanted to."
Now, I don’t mean to be alarmist, but I recently posted this on Bluesky:
I know, I know…there is enough happening right now to keep you up nights without adding that old chestnut to the mix. That said…there must be something in the air:
As Netflix hit “Adolescence” continues to make waves and potentially inspire policy, the team behind it has turned its attention to a new impactful project – a “Threads” reboot.
Warp Films has confirmed it will be turning the BBC’s pivotal TV film into a series. For those unfamiliar, “Threads” aired on BBC Two in 1984 and depicted the devastating effects of a fictional nuclear apocalypse.
Mark Herbert, founder and chief exec of Warp, said: “Threads was, and remains, an unflinchingly honest drama that imagines the devastating effects of nuclear conflict on ordinary people. This story aligns perfectly with our ethos of telling powerful, grounded narratives that deeply connect with audiences.
“Re-imagining this classic film as a TV drama gives us a unique opportunity to explore its modern relevance.”
Emily Feller, chief creative officer and exec producer, added: “This adaptation will allow us to uncover fresh interpretations in light of today’s world. We imagine highlighting how resilience and connection can offer hope even in the most challenging of times. […]
Not much else is known about the reboot at this stage, or which, if any, original cast members might make a return.
Threads debuted on the BBC in 1984, later airing in the U.S. on TBS. Director Mick Jackson delivers an uncompromising realism that makes The Day After (the 1983 U.S. TV drama that depicted the aftermath of nuclear war on an American city) look like a Teletubbies episode. It’s a speculative narrative that takes a medium sized city (Sheffield) and depicts what would likely happen to its populace during and after a nuclear strike, in graphic detail. The message is simple and direct-nothing good comes out of a nuclear conflict. It’s a living, breathing Hell for all concerned-and anyone “lucky” enough to survive will soon wish they were dead.
There was a proliferation of Cold War nuclear paranoia films in the 80s. In addition to the aforementioned made-for-TV movies Threads and The Day After, other notable releases included the funny-scary doc Atomic Cafe (1982), the riveting made-for-TV thriller Special Bulletin (1983), and the feature films War Games (1983), One Night Stand (Australia, 1984), TheManhattan Project (1986), the animated drama When the Wind Blows (UK, 1986) and Miracle Mile (1988).
There was definitely “something in the air” in the early 80s, vis-à-vis the looming specter of global thermonuclear annihilation. The 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to America’s withdrawal from the SALT II arms treaty (signed by President Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1979, the treaty had limited the total of both nations’ nuclear forces to 2,250 delivery vehicles). When President Reagan took office in 1981, he wasted no time ratcheting up anti-Red rhetoric and aggressive posturing toward the USSR (UK PM Margaret Thatcher added her twopence to the chiding, further fueling the unease).
1983 was a particularly dicey year on the nuclear front, beginning with Reagan’s infamous “evil empire” speech in March (he was addressing the National Association of Evangelicals). That was also the year that Reagan proposed his so-called “Star Wars” defense strategy (aka the Strategic Defense Initiative) which he envisioned as a space-based shield. Critics (and the Soviets, unsurprisingly) took the view that this would increase the threat of a nuclear war by giving the U.S. a more assured first-strike capability.
1983 also saw mobile, intermediate-range Pershing II ballistic missiles deployed by the U.S. Army at American bases in West Germany and aimed at targets in the western Soviet Union. And then there were two unnervingly close calls in the Fall of that year:
At the height of the Cold War, the Soviets designed an early-warning radar system meant to track fast-moving threats to increase the chance of reprisal. On September 26, 1983, however, the system, code-named Oko, malfunctioned. At around midnight, Oko’s alarms rang out, alerting the base of one incoming nuclear missile. The screen read, “LAUNCH,” which was not a warning, but an automatic order to prepare for retaliation.
Believing that a U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was incoming, the base went into a panic. However, some officers on duty were skeptical that the United States would choose to send only one ICBM, knowing that it could not affect the Soviets’ counter-strike capability. Stanislov Petrov, an officer that helped create the code for the early-warning software, also knew that Oko was prone to error. He reset the system, but the alarms persisted.
Rather than following protocol, which entailed alerting superiors up the chain of command, Petrov awaited corroborating evidence. No evidence came, and the alarms soon stopped. Petrov’s actions, or inaction, almost certainly averted a nuclear disaster.
Just 11 days later, NATO forces in Brussels took part in a joint military exercise that simulated a response to a hypothetical Soviet nuclear attack. The exercise was code-named Able Archer 83.
The primary purpose of the exercise was to test the command-and-control procedures for NATO’s nuclear forces in the event of a global crisis. Unlike previous wargames, however, Able Archer 83 featured new elements specifically meant to confuse and disorient the Soviets.
KGB observers alerted Moscow of the unusual activity, and paranoia set in. Working off dubious intelligence that a NATO offensive against the U.S.S.R. could be cloaked under the guise of a military exercise, the Soviets began preparations for a large-scale retaliation. Then Soviet leader Yuri Andropov mobilized entire military divisions, transported nuclear weapons to their launch sites, and scrambled a fleet of bombers carrying nuclear warheads. Military command handed Andropov the nuclear briefcase, known in Russia as the “cheget.”
Lenoard Perroots, a high-ranking intelligence officer for the U.S. Air Force stationed in Europe, observed that the Soviets were responding as though the exercise was real. In what the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board has called a “fortuitous, if ill informed” decision, Perroots did not reciprocate by raising western asset alert levels. Instead, he waited. The Soviets eventually realized that the exercise was not a surprise attack and aborted their planned response.
This was the shaky and unsettling political climate in November of 1983, which is when Testament, a modestly budgeted PBS Playhouse production, opened in theaters. The official PBS premiere wasn’t until a year later in November of 1984; the film had been so well-received in previews that Paramount Pictures gave it a theatrical release (while this has become standard practice for production/streaming studios like Amazon, Apple TV+ and Netflix, it was unusual for the time).
“They” say that history is, if anything, cyclical. As Fate would have it, not two days before the current occupant of the White House whimsically mused “Oh, you could end this thing in two seconds if you wanted to” within earshot of the prime minister of the only nation on earth to date that has experienced the horrific effects of nuclear war firsthand, Criterion has reissued Testament on Blu-ray.
Beautifully directed by Lynne Littman, Testament (with a screenplay adapted by John Sacred Young from a story by Carol Amen) takes a low key approach, but pulls no punches; I think this is what gives her film’s anti-nuke message more teeth and makes its scenario more relatable than Stanley Kramer’s similarly-framed but more sanitized and preachy 1959 drama On the Beach (or more contemporaneously, the relatively histrionic and sensationalistic 1983 TV movieThe Day After).
Jane Alexander (who received a well-deserved Best Actress nomination for her work here), her husband (William DeVane) and three kids (Roxana Zal, Ross Harris, Lukas Haas) live in sleepy Hamlin, California, where afternoon cartoons are interrupted by a news flash that nuclear explosions have occurred in New York. Then there is a flash of a different kind when nearby San Francisco (where DeVane has gone on a business trip) receives a direct strike.
There is no exposition on the political climate that precipitates the attacks; this is a wise decision, as it puts the focus on the humanistic message of the film. All of the post-nuke horrors ensue, but they are presented sans the melodrama that informs many entries in the genre. The fact that the nightmarish scenario unfolds so deliberately, and amidst such everyday suburban banality, is what makes it very difficult to shake off.
As the children (and adults) of Hamlin succumb to the inevitable scourge of radiation sickness and steadily “disappear”, like the children of the ‘fairy tale’ Hamlin, you are left haunted by the final line of the school production of “The Pied Piper” glimpsed earlier in the film… “Your children are not dead. They will return when the world deserves them.”
Criterion’s Blu-ray features a new, director-approved 4K digital restoration. The new print is gorgeous; a night and day upgrade from the 2004 Paramount DVD (which I will now happily retire). Criterion has ported over two of the extra features from the Paramount release, Testament at 20 (featuring a moving 2004 reunion of the director and principal cast) and Nuclear Thoughts (featuring nuclear science experts)
Other extras include an engaging new conversation between Sam Wasson and director Littman (she has had a fascinating career), two restored short documentaries by Littman (from 1976 and 1985), and an audio recording of Jane Alexander reading the short story “The Last Testament” (on which the film was based).
Highly recommended…watch it while you can. And don’t forget to say your prayers.
One more thing…
More 80s Cold War nostalgia- Siskel & Ebert’s Testament review:
Former Marine, U.S.Attorney, FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert Mueller passed away Friday evening. He was a giant of a man whose commitment to justice and fairness was staunch. I met him for the first time during the investigation into the murder of my Father-in-Law shortly before I went to DOJ. His, was one of the good examples. Every prosecutor who came in contact with him was better off for it.
When the Mueller report was finished during Trump’s first term in office, Trump‘s Attorney General, Bill Barr, claimed it was a total exoneration. That, of course, was not the case. Once the entire, albeit redacted, report became available, it was clear that it was a stunning indictment of a sitting president—but one that respected constraints on prosecutors that prevented an actual indictment of a sitting president. It should’ve been a roadmap for Congress to impeach and convict, but they did not take up Muller’s invitation.
Mueller and his team were not up to the task of dealing with these monsters. In their defense it was early in his first term and everyone was still learning what we were dealing with. And Vance is right that he left and explicit road map for the congress to impeach — and the DOJ to then prosecute him. That’s now pretty well been foreclosed by the daft Supremes who granted him immunity (because they have Fox News Brain Rot and were apparently convinced that the investigations against Trump were all partisan witch hunts.)
That post by Trump says it all. He’s lost his marbles and there’s not a goddamned thing we can do about it.
I’m sharing this analysis of what’s wrong with this war by Richard Haas, old-hand diplomat and expert on the region, because it’s clearly written and very honest. As far as I can tell, and I’m far from an expert, this is it:
They have gotten it wrong at just about every turn. There was no new intelligence or development justifying the decision to go to war. Even the loyalist serving as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, could not provide evidence to the contrary. That said, her comment that “it is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat” is flat-out preposterous. That is precisely its responsibility. And the president’s responsibility is to make policy decisions informed by sound intelligence.
The errors did not end there. There were expectations that Iran would quickly capitulate—and no expectations that it would retaliate effectively. Regime change was seen, at least by the president, as likely. The list goes on. What explains this record? I would suggest hubris in the aftermath of the Venezuela operation and more broadly in the wake of Trump’s reelection. Then there was the hollowing out of government agencies, from the National Security Council staff to the State Department, resulting in a marked lack of expertise and experience. The appointment of people to jobs they had no business holding – from Gabbard to Hegseth to the two envoys handling or, more accurately, mishandling the negotiations with Iran (not to mention Russia and Ukraine and Gaza) – is another factor. The absence of much in the way of a formal policymaking process where truth is regularly spoken to power compounds the mistakes and helps explain what has gone so wrong.
Some are blaming Israel and its prime minister for where we find ourselves. I disagree. Bibi Netanyahu is free to make his case to this president, as is any foreign leader. It is up to Trump, though, to decide what is in the best interests of the United States.
The problem is that Trump has not done this. He has failed to stand up to Netanyahu even though the interests of the two countries have been and remain different. Israel was pressing for war to eliminate much of Iran’s ballistic missile inventory. The United States was, ostensibly, far more focused on the unresolved nuclear issue. Yet the Trump administration walked away from negotiations that showed some potential to deal with nuclear matters, instead launching an ill-advised war that, thus far, has left Iran’s nuclear capabilities intact.
And now the divergence between the interests of the two countries is even greater. Israel’s strategy toward Iran mirrors its strategy toward Gaza and Lebanon: an open-ended war of attrition to reduce military capabilities and destroy leadership. The preference is for regime change, but Israel is willing to accept disarray, in the leadership, the country, or both. It is willing to pursue this policy for as long as it takes, i.e., forever if need be, as the bulk of its interests as it sees them are in play.
By contrast, U.S. priorities are largely elsewhere (or at least should be), namely in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, where rival major powers reside, as well as in the functioning of a global economy. This war is at odds with all this: it has seriously disrupted the global economy and is consuming U.S. resources better deployed and employed elsewhere.
From Worse to Even Worse
Israel made a bad situation worse this week by attacking Iran’s South Pars gas field. Trump has been all over the place since, at times denying and at other times admitting his involvement, but there is little doubt that he knew of and even approved the misguided Israeli action, one that led to multiple Iranian attacks that destroyed energy infrastructure in Qatar and other neighboring countries.
Not surprisingly, Trump is now frantically looking for a way out. For only the second time in his experience as president (the other being the COVID-19 pandemic in his first term), Trump is up against something he cannot control. He has let slip the dogs of war, and in their own way both Israel and Iran have seized the initiative. Instead of an easy victory, which is how Trump viewed Venezuela, he finds himself struggling with what could be the defining moment and failure of his presidency.
Trump’s latest idea, advanced by Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, is to “unsanction” Iranian oil that has left Iran but has yet to reach its destination. It is a singularly bad move. Any impact on oil prices will be small and fleeting, but the offer signals to Iran that the U.S. is increasingly desperate for the conflict to end, a signal that will only increase Iran’s price for ending it and the lengths Iran will go to ensure it ends on its terms. Any easing of sanctions on Iran should be conditioned on changes in its behavior. That this offer came just hours after Iran attacked many of its neighbors who also happen to be U.S. partners and allies only made a bad decision worse. The price tag for this war, no matter how it ends, will be large and long-lasting.
He has some ideas for how to possibly get out of this thing which you should read at the link.
This mess gets worse every day. Trump is just flying by the seat of his pants impulsively making decisions that have no strategic logic. There is simply no way of telling where this is going but it will be sheer luck if the consequences aren’t catastrophic.
