Editorial Roundup: United States

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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April 13

The Washington Post on appeals court ruling that federal government can’t ban at-home distilleries

Judges occasionally declare federal laws unconstitutional. But usually when a law passed by Congress has been on the books for more than 150 years, it’s in the clear. Not so for the federal ban on homemade whiskey, vodka and gin.

Last week, an appeals court invalidated a federal law dating to 1868 that criminalizes at-home distilleries. The spirited ruling is a boon to small-time liquor hobbyists and entrepreneurs — but also an important statement on the limits of the federal government’s taxing power.

Congress imposed the ban as a companion to legislation taxing alcohol and tobacco. The idea was that if Americans could distill spirits at home, they could more easily evade taxes.

The Treasury Department licenses distilleries. In 2023, its Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau told a handful of would-be, at-home distillers that they couldn’t get a license because of the federal ban. They sued.

The federal government defended the law — which carries a punishment of up to five years in prison — as justified by Congress’s taxing power. But as the opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit says, “The parties do not dispute that Congress may impose a tax on distilled spirits.” The question is whether it can ban the distillation of alcohol at home to aid the enforcement of that tax.

Nonsense, the unanimous three-judge panel held. There’s no reason the federal government can’t license at-home distilleries and tax them just as it taxes others. Perhaps those distilleries are harder to detect, but “preventing activity lest it give rise to tax evasion places no limit whatsoever on Congress’s power under the taxation clause.”

The Constitution’s necessary and proper clause gives Congress a little more leeway to achieve its objectives. But the court held it’s not enough to justify this ban. That’s because it doesn’t help raise revenue; it prevents taxable activity — the distillation of alcohol at a residence — from happening in the first place.

“Under the government’s logic,” the opinion explains, “Congress may criminalize nearly any at-home conduct only because it has the possibility of concealing taxable activity. Home-based businesses may be forbidden. Remote work may be deemed a crime.”

The federal government has sweeping taxing powers, but there are still limits on its power to command and control economic activity. This ruling is an affirmation of that principle, and the Trump administration would do the cause of liberty a favor by accepting the decision rather than trying to overturn it at the Supreme Court.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/04/13/home-distillery-ban-whiskey-fifth-circuit/

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April 12

The New York Times says Trump’s war is weakening America

When President Trump attacked Iran on Feb. 28, we called his decision reckless. He went to war without seeking congressional approval or the support of most allies. He offered thin and contradictory justifications to the American people. He failed to explain why this naïve attempt at regime change would end better than earlier attempts by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

In the six weeks since, the recklessness of his war has become clearer yet. He has disdained careful military planning and acted on gut instinct and wishfulness. After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel predicted to Mr. Trump that the attacks would inspire a popular uprising in Iran, the director of the C.I.A. countered that the notion was “farcical,” The Times reported. Mr. Trump proceeded nonetheless. He was so confident that he assembled no plan to respond to an obvious countermove available to Iran: causing a spike in oil prices by blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Nor did he develop a feasible strategy for securing the enriched uranium that Iran can use to rebuild its nuclear program.

Last week he careened from illegal and immoral threats about erasing Iranian civilization to a last-minute cease-fire that accomplishes few of his announced war aims. Iran continues to defy a central part of the deal and block most traffic from crossing the Strait of Hormuz. Mr. Trump’s irresponsibility has left the United States on the cusp of a humiliating strategic defeat.

As we have emphasized, Iran’s regime deserves no sympathy. It has spent decades oppressing its people and sponsoring terrorism elsewhere. And the current war, combined with the June attacks by the United States and Israel and other Israeli operations since 2023, weakened Iran in important ways. Its navy, air force and air defenses have been degraded, and its nuclear program has been set back. Its murderous network of regional allies — including Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria’s fallen government — has been eroded.

Yet these successes cannot mask the ways in which the war has weakened the United States. We count four main setbacks for America’s national interests that are the direct result of Mr. Trump’s carelessness. These setbacks likewise weaken global democracy when authoritarians in China, Russia and elsewhere were already feeling emboldened.

The most tangible blow to the United States and the world is the increased influence that Iran has secured over the global economy by weaponizing the Strait of Hormuz. About 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows through the strait, which is next to Iran’s southern shore.

Before the war, Iran’s leaders feared that blocking traffic would invite new economic sanctions and a military attack. Once the attack happened anyway, Iran closed the strait to nearly all traffic except its own ships. The policy is inexpensive because it mostly involves a threat, namely that a drone, missile or small boat may blow up a tanker. Forcibly reopening the strait, by contrast, would require an enormous military operation potentially including ground troops and an extended occupation.

Mr. Trump’s lack of foresight about the strait reveals glaring incompetence. The two-week cease-fire does not bring back the status quo because Iran is still limiting traffic and has threatened to impose tolls as part of a final peace deal. The war has shown Iran’s leaders that controlling the waterway is a real possibility. Eventually, other countries are likely to develop alternatives, including pipelines, but those solutions will take time. For now, Iran appears to have won diplomatic leverage that it could have only dreamed of six weeks ago. The only apparent way to change the situation would be for a global coalition to demand the strait’s reopening — the sort of coalition that Mr. Trump is distinctly unsuited to lead.

The second setback is to America’s military standing around the world. This war, together with recent U.S. assistance to Ukraine, Israel and other allies, has burned through a substantial portion of the stockpile of some weapons, such as Tomahawk missiles and Patriot interceptors (which can shoot down other missiles). Experts believe the Pentagon used more than one-quarter of its Tomahawk missiles just in the war against Iran. Returning the stockpile to its previous size will take years, and the United States will have to make tough choices about where to maintain its military strength in the meantime. Already, the Pentagon has pulled missile defenses from South Korea.

The war has also revealed that the U.S. military is vulnerable to new ways of warfare. America used billions of dollars’ worth of high-tech munitions to destroy Iran’s traditional air and naval forces, while Tehran used cheap, disposable drones to halt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and hit targets in the region. The world saw how a country that spends one-hundredth of what the United States does on its military can seek to outlast it in a conflict. It is a reminder of the urgent need to reform America’s military.

The war’s third big cost is to America’s alliances. Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and most of Western Europe refused to support the United States in this war — unsurprisingly, given Mr. Trump’s treatment of them. When he demanded their help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, most allies declined. These countries will remain allies in important ways, but they have made clear that they no longer consider the United States a reliable friend. They are working to build stronger relationships with one another so that they can better resist Washington in the future. “Perhaps the greatest long-term damage to the United States from the Iran war will be in its relationships with allies around the world,” Daniel Byman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington wrote on Wednesday.

The situation in the Middle East is more nuanced. Iran’s decision to attack its Arab neighbors during the war may draw those countries closer to the United States. But that prospect is uncertain. Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries have been damaged economically by the war and feel abandoned by Mr. Trump’s cease-fire. The past six weeks have given them reason to question his judgment and his understanding of their interests.

The fourth setback is to America’s moral authority. For all the flaws of this country, it remains a beacon to many around the world. When pollsters ask people where they would move if they could, the United States is consistently the runaway No. 1 answer. America’s appeal stems not only from its prosperity but also from its freedom and democratic values. Mr. Trump has undercut those values for his entire political career and perhaps never more than in the past week, when he made odious threats to erase Iranian civilization. His secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, made a series of bloodthirsty remarks, including a threat to offer “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.”

Those would be war crimes. Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth have embraced a brutal approach to armed conflict that the United States led the world in rejecting after World War II. By doing so, they have undermined the foundations of America’s global leadership, which claims to place human dignity at the center of an argument for a freer and more open world.

Our editorial board has long opposed Mr. Trump’s approach to politics and governing. Yet we take no pleasure in his failures over the past six weeks. For one thing, there have been deaths, injuries and destruction, in Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere. At least 13 U.S. service members have died in the war.

It is also a mistake for any Americans, including Mr. Trump’s critics, to root for this country to fail. We all have a stake in the nation that he leads. So does the rest of the free world. There are no other democracies with the economic and military strength to counter China and Russia. When America is weaker and poorer, as this war has made us, authoritarianism benefits.

The best hope now may sound naïve, but it remains true. Mr. Trump should at long last recognize the ineptitude of his impulsive, go-it-alone approach. He should involve Congress and seek help from America’s allies to minimize the damage from his war.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/opinion/trump-iran-war-incompetence-america.html

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April 14

The Boston Globe says Trump is targeting immigration judges, abandoning previous standards for new appointments

From Day One of the second Trump administration — literally — the president has targeted the nation’s immigration judges. After all, if the aim is to rid this country of unauthorized immigrants and any other foreign nationals the administration dislikes, then the path goes right through the network of immigration courts, which determine who will go and who will stay.

At least 113 judges have been fired since Trump returned to office — from an original corps of some 750. Among the most recent firings were six last Friday, including two in Massachusetts, both of whom presided over high-profile cases involving international students who had advocated on behalf of Palestinian rights.

Roopal Patel, an immigration judge in Boston, ruled in January that the government had no grounds for deporting Turkish-born Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, whose “crime” was writing an op-ed article in the Tufts newspaper promoting a set of pro-Palestinian resolutions. Also fired was Nina Froes, who sits in Chelmsford and made a similar ruling in a case involving Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi. Mahdawi had taken part in pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia’s campus.

Both judges were nearing the end of a two-year probationary period. Unlike other federal judges, immigration judges are not members of the nation’s judicial branch but are instead employees of the Justice Department — subject to hiring and firing by the attorney general.

Historically, the courts have not been administratively independent because their proceedings are considered civil matters where the judge’s role is just to decide whether a person can be deported. But that arrangement relied on presidential administrations’ allowing judges to handle cases independently — not firing them on a whim.

And firings there have certainly been. By the end of last year the Trump administration purge had claimed more than a quarter of California’s immigration judges (35 of 132) and eight of 34 judges in New York City. In Boston five judges remain from a corps that had originally numbered 11, and Chelmsford has gone from 19 to eight, including two listed as temporary.

But the volume of firings and the absence of any legal justifications — other than in many cases that they had been hired during the Biden administration — have led some members of Congress to call for a more independent court structure.

The Trump administration — and the mastermind behind its deportation effort, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — have never made any secret of the fact that it expects immigration judges to toe the administration line.

“Deliver justice to criminal illegal aliens. Become a deportation judge. Save your country,” an administration social media ad read.

And the DOJ website ad is no more subtle. “Help write the next chapter of America. Apply today to become a deportation judge,” it says. The agency is even offering a 25 percent recruiting bonus for those willing to serve in the now decimated offices in New York City, California, Boston, and Chelmsford.

“Ensure adherence to the law; combat fraud and ensure those seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in our immigration system are not successful,” it reads.

The process has been widely criticized for virtually abandoning previous standards, which called for at least 10 years of experience in immigration law. Newly appointed immigration judge Robyn Ross, The New York Times reported, worked on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign and was previously research director at a vaccine-skeptical organization headed by Kennedy. Other recent appointees are coming from the military, the Department of Homeland Security, and prosecutors offices.

The new appointees as well as those who remain on the immigration bench have been given clear marching orders. Under a ruling last September by the Board of Immigration Appeals — also under DOJ — detention of noncitizens while their cases are pending is virtually mandatory, further tying the hands of immigration judges.

The ruling has also caused US district courts to be flooded with thousands of habeas corpus petitions seeking the release of immigrants being held often under horrifying conditions for no good legal reason.

It was through that kind of action and ultimately an appeal on First Amendment grounds that thus far have kept Öztürk free, following six weeks of unlawful detention. The Department of Homeland Security has appealed the termination of her deportation to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Thus far the federal courts, operating with real judicial independence, not to mention courage, have managed to step up to uphold immigrants’ rights.

But well-functioning, honest, and independent immigration courts do serve a purpose — and prevent immigration cases from cluttering the federal judicial docket. Legislators such as Representative Zoe Lofgren of California and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin of Maryland are supporting legislation that would structurally reform the immigration court system, putting it in the same category as the US Tax Court. That court operates more independently than the immigration court but still falls under the executive branch’s Article I of the Constitution.

A structure like the tax court’s “protects judicial independence, shields decision-making from political pressure, strengthens public trust, and ensures that every case is decided fairly and impartially under the rule of law, not based on political preferences,” Jeremiah Johnson, executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration, wrote in support of the legislation on the group’s website.

The Real Courts, Rule of Law Act is the long-term solution to a problem that didn’t really exist before this administration decided to abuse the vulnerabilities of immigration courts. Meanwhile the excesses of a president determined to rewrite the law — or ignore it — will continue to burden the federal courts, the last refuge of the vulnerable.

ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/04/14/opinion/immigration-judges-fired/

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April 10

The Houston Chronicle on Artemis and President Trump’s proposed budget cuts that threaten such scientific missions

On the penultimate day of their 10-day mission, the Artemis II crew awoke more than 140,000 miles from Earth to the shuffling drumbeat and sharp guitar licks of “ Lonesome Drifter,” by country singer and Texas native Charley Crockett.

For those of us who have been locked into the daily streams from the Artemis mission, Crockett’s song was an apt needle drop. The music video for the propulsive, bluesy track introduces Crockett’s vagabond storyteller as a “wanderer” who had grown fearful of “isolated rebellion escalating into outright revolution after years of lawless corruption.” He rejected the advances of a crime syndicate “desiring only to be free on the open road.”

Who among us can’t relate? Tracking the Orion spacecraft’s journey down the lunar highway has been a welcome escape from the daily chaos and turmoil here on Earth.

On the same day that President Donald Trump set the world on edge by threatening to obliterate Iran, NASA released astonishing images from Artemis’ lunar flyby. Mission commander Reid Wiseman’s “ Earthset ” photograph captured our planet enveloped in darkness, save for a cloudy blue crescent hovering over the moon’s charcoal, cratered surface. Another photo showed a solar eclipse, rendering the moon a black orb shrouded in a ghostly white halo.

These images are sobering and humbling reminders that this natural satellite is, in the words of astronaut Christina Koch, “ not just a poster in the sky that goes by.” It’s essential to our existence, a ballast whose gravitational pull maintains the delicate climatic balance that allows life on Earth to flourish.

We’ve lived vicariously through this joyous astronaut crew. Their natural camaraderie was infectious even through a screen hundreds of thousands of miles away. We laughed when the livestream captured a floating jar of Nutella. We cried when the crew requested that a moon crater be named after Carroll Wiseman, the late wife of mission commander Reid Wiseman, who passed away from cancer in 2020. We grooved and nodded our heads to the wake-up call songs from Crockett, Chappell Roan and Denzel Curry.

We hope they have a safe and uneventful splashdown Friday evening in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California, and thank them for their service and inspiration. Yet whether the Artemis II mission will be a brief sugar high for NASA or a bellwether for continued human spaceflight remains unclear.

While the astronauts were drifting toward the moon, the Trump administration released its fiscal year 2027 budget, which included slashing NASA’s budget by nearly one quarter from its current level of funding. Most of those cuts encompass NASA’s scientific research, including a new telescope launch, the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s largest moon and the Juno probe currently observing Jupiter’s dense atmosphere.

“NASA’s budget is greater than every other space agency across the world,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told CNN, in support of the budget cuts.

Isaacman noted that the space agency’s Artemis program, which aims to build a lunar base and eventually send humans to Mars, would continue to receive federal funding. The timeline for the next phase of that endeavor, however, remains murky. While Artemis III, which will send astronauts to the lunar surface, is tentatively scheduled for mid-2027, NASA has yet to select a lunar lander. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin are building spacecraft for the mission that are still being tested.

Isaacman deserves some credit for the successful launch of Artemis II and restoring U.S. leadership in space science. But maintaining our momentum towards further exploration and discovery is crucial. NASA managed to stave off Trump’s draconian budget cut proposal a year ago. We urge Isaacman, as well as Texas’ congressional delegation, to not let politics interfere with critical scientific research.

For now, we will keep our fingers crossed for Artemis’ safe return on Friday. It would be a shame to allow our future space ambitions to fall back to Earth along with them.

ONLINE: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/artemis-ii-nasa-budget-houston-trump-22198428.php

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April 12

The Guardian on Trump’s diplomacy, energy-market dangers and a fragile ceasefire

As the US vice-president, JD Vance, took to a podium in Pakistan after 21 hours of diplomacy and said no deal had been reached to end the war with Iran, his boss Donald Trump was in Miami watching a mixed martial arts fight. The contrast was stark. Just when the outcome of a war and the stability of global markets hung in the balance, the president chose spectacle over engagement. Mr Trump may intend to project strength. But the impression he creates – in Tehran and among America’s allies – is of a president less interested in the substance of diplomacy than in the politics surrounding it.

The talks in Islamabad didn’t fail accidentally; the US and Iran were talking past each other. Washington’s position is that Iran must abandon its capacity to develop a nuclear weapon, while Tehran insists it is not seeking one and has the right to a civilian nuclear programme. The US vice-president’s “ final and best offer ” would have required Iran to give up that capacity altogether – terms that looked less like the basis of a negotiation than an attempt to impose the conditions of victory.

Washington also wanted free passage through the strait of Hormuz, a vital global energy artery. Tehran, instead, sought control of the strait through transit fees as well as having sanctions lifted, assets unfrozen and reparations paid, alongside a wider regional ceasefire. Given the gap, the positions were never likely to be reconciled in a single round of negotiations. The result was talks without trust – and a war without resolution.

Winston Churchill rightly argued that jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Talks are preferable because fighting is destructive, unpredictable and costly. The irony is that Mr Trump is negotiating over a nuclear programme that was once contained by a deal he ripped up, while trying to reopen a strait closed by an illegal war he chose to start. A deal between Iran and America – however imperfect – would leave the world better off than continued conflict. This is especially true when markets in oil, gas and finance are so intimately linked.

Time is running out to get back to the negotiating table. The fate of the current ceasefire depends not only on Washington and Tehran, but on Israel, whose forces’ expanded campaign in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah – razing villages to establish a buffer zone – has seen it accused of committing war crimes.

Markets are unlikely to respond positively to the weekend’s events. The White House treats threats as diplomacy, bizarrely expecting submission. Mr Trump may want to play the tough guy, but American voters are confronting a different reality each time they pull up at the pump. With fuel prices already surging, his decision to impose a naval blockade on Iran and the strait of Hormuz risks intensifying the very pressures it is meant to relieve. Disrupting a route that carries a fifth of global oil would send prices higher, with effects rippling far beyond the Gulf. For Tehran, survival is itself a form of success.

The ceasefire runs out in little over a week. The talks are not over, but there’s a stalemate. However, the logic of escalation is taking hold. Iran is unlikely to back down – opting instead to test US resolve at sea. A full-scale ground offensive may be constrained for now by the Gulf’s summer heat, but the conflict risks shifting into more dangerous forms – naval confrontation, airstrikes and proxy warfare – with no way out. There will be no winners in such a scenario, only losers.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/12/the-guardian-view-on-us-iran-talks-trumps-diplomacy-falters-as-risk-of-war-grows