Editorial Roundup: United States

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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Aug. 15

The New York Times says the GOP is trying to hide health care cuts

One of the federal government’s great achievements this century was making health insurance affordable to millions more Americans. In 2010, nearly 18 percent of people under 65 lacked insurance. By 2024, the rate had fallen below 10 percent, thanks to the Affordable Care Act and later legislation that built on it.

President Trump and congressional Republicans are working to dismantle that achievement. They have effectively cut subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, making it harder for people who do not receive insurance through work to afford a plan. This year, the subsidy cuts led three million people to lose their health insurance. In Ohio, nearly a third of previous marketplace enrollees lost their insurance.

The situation stands to worsen next year. In addition to reducing the marketplace subsidies, Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans enacted sweeping cuts to Medicaid, which expanded under the Affordable Care Act. They will take effect after this year’s midterm elections. (Yes, that timing is deliberate.) By 2034, the combined cuts will most likely erase about half of the gains from the Affordable Care Act, causing 14 million Americans to lose insurance.

Politicians from both parties have talked up affordability in the run-up to this year’s elections. Republicans, however, are taking deliberate steps to make health care less affordable. Many middle-class and poor Americans will struggle — even more — to afford important medical care as a result.

Americans have good reasons to be disappointed in their government. Progress on health care, imperfect though it was, represented a positive counterexample of the government working to genuinely improve people’s lives. The president and Congress are trying to ruin that success story.

In the passive approach, Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans allowed the expiration of enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats created the marketplaces for people who fell through the cracks. These people did not receive coverage through their jobs, and they were not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

In 2021, President Joe Biden and Congress increased the size of the subsidies, but they set them to expire in 2025, which mitigated their impact on the federal debt. Congressional Democrats shut down the government last year to call attention to the expiration and pressure Republicans to extend the subsidies. Mr. Trump and other Republicans refused.

The federal debt is a genuine problem, having soared in the 21st century relative to the size of the American economy. But taking away people’s health insurance is not the answer. Repealing Mr. Trump’s foolhardy tax cuts, which benefit mostly the wealthy, would have a bigger fiscal effect than his health insurance cuts.

Those health insurance cuts led premiums and deductibles to spike this year. As an example, a middle-income, middle-aged couple with two children could see their premiums more than double, costing an additional $3,500 a year.

In the more direct approach to cutting health care coverage, Republicans targeted Medicaid, the program focused on the poor and disabled. Last year, the federal government enacted what Republicans call a work requirement. In reality, it is a paperwork requirement — one that forces Medicaid enrollees, most of whom are working or have a valid reason for not working, to file repeated documents proving they have a job or a valid exemption. Americans lead busy lives, and many of them may not know of the new requirement. About two in three enrollees who will lose health insurance should, in fact, be eligible for it, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated.

Arkansas enacted a version of this policy before the federal law passed, and it was a failure: Work force participation did not rise, and eligible people lost their insurance because of paperwork problems.

The Affordable Care Act was a triumph of government, and it is justifiably popular. Mr. Trump and other Republicans once promised to repeal the law, but they have largely stopped making such statements. Instead, they have sought to weaken the law — partly out of an ideological aversion to government, partly to finance tax cuts for the wealthy — and hope that voters do not notice.

Democrats should not let the president get away with this subterfuge. They should make the health insurance cuts a central piece of their midterm campaign and, as important, offer voters a vision that includes other improvements to the nation’s costly, rickety health care system, both to continue expanding access and to reduce costs. The Affordable Care Act also happens to be a model on costs; it meaningfully slowed growth in health care prices over the past decade.

Congress should be looking for next steps, not moving backward. The Affordable Care Act demonstrated that progress is possible.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/opinion/trump-health-care-cuts.html

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Aug. 14

The Philadelphia Inquirer says there is no quick escape from the consequences of Iran war

The nation just learned that last month, when we thought President Donald Trump had fled his Qatari-donated luxury plane for the relative safety of a proper Air Force One, he was actually on a third plane out of Turkey. Fearing an Iranian assassination attempt, military and security officials had secreted him off the official aircraft and onto an Air Force C-32A inside a catering container.

That left a plane full of staff and press to fly to England — and potentially into the ayatollah’s crosshairs — as his unwitting sacrificial stand-ins.

Trump’s non-daring escape is an apt analogy for his self-defeating war with Iran. The president has reached a point of desperation to retreat from the conflict and save what little is left of his political hide. The rest of us, meanwhile, will be the unwilling targets of whatever consequences may come.

Trump’s frenetic ricocheting among ordering air attacks, leveling idle threats, and engaging in half-hearted diplomacy with the Islamic Republic has increasingly given way to a palpable apathy about the whole losing endeavor. A week after his latest empty vow to unleash more shock and awe, he told Axios that the administration is “low-keying” the conflict and “only semi-negotiating” with Iran, whatever that means.

His gambit in this “chess game,” he added, is to bide his time while the economic pressure on Iran does the work for him — never mind that the extremist regime has weathered such stresses for decades.

In reality, as Trump has essentially acknowledged in confessing his fear of becoming the next Herbert Hoover, it’s he who has been economically checkmated. Tehran underscored the strength of its position last weekend by demanding Washington meet a series of additional conditions before it loosens its choke hold on the crucial Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices upward.

Handing Iran this powerful weapon is the chief achievement of Trump’s war — and the main reason he hasn’t given up despite his fervent desire to do so. Bereft of international allies and domestic support, he has no solution to a problem he created.

A ground invasion to secure the strait, which could dramatically compound the cost of a war that has already wasted tens of billions of dollars and thousands of lives, is politically untenable, and the only alternative in the short term is continued Iranian control of the strait. The region’s fossil fuel producers have recognized as much by accelerating spending on pipelines and other means of circumventing the route, with further consequences for the price of oil and everything that relies on it.

It’s a dramatic deterioration from the international order that allowed about a fifth of the global oil supply to routinely transit the waterway before Trump undertook his second unauthorized war with Iran.

He has also exacerbated the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb, the weapon that most worried the world before the regime could hold the global economy hostage.

While Trump’s twin wars have degraded Iran’s nuclear sites, it still has substantial supplies of enriched uranium and no foreseeable international restrictions like those in place before the president dismantled them. And while Trump has continued to insist that preventing nuclear proliferation was the war’s primary purpose (among several other proposed rationales), he seems to be “low-keying” that mission, too, lately. The Wall Street Journal reported that he has told aides he is prepared to end the war without any agreement on the nuclear issue.

Another oft-stated goal of the war, degrading Iran’s capacity to wage war and sponsor terrorism, looks similarly unrealized given the recently demonstrated ability of the regime and its proxies to endanger ships in the strait, U.S. bases and allies in the region, and even Trump himself.

The image of the president of the United States being smuggled out of a NATO country in the back of a snack truck hardly suggests it’s the Iranian regime that has been humiliated.

We should hope the administration gets our troops, as well as Trump, out of harm’s way by ending this war soon. The security and economic repercussions for America and the world, however, are bound to be far-reaching and long-lasting.

ONLINE: https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/trump-iran-assassination-catering-truck-turkey-war-decoys-20260814.html

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Aug. 12

The Guardian says U.S. intervention in Japan’s economy might not be entirely altruistic

Japan’s yen has slid back towards 160 to the dollar, despite last month’s extraordinary US-Japanese intervention. Traders are betting that its role as a cheap funding pipeline for global finance will continue. Earlier this month the Trump administration stepped in to help Tokyo stabilise its currency. “Japan’s been very good to us, with the exception, of course, of Pearl Harbor,” Donald Trump explained. More help is likely to be on its way.

But this is less a rescue of the yen than an attempt by Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, to preserve a cash spigot that benefits the US. Japan’s ultra-cheap money has become a global funding utility: bankers borrow yen, sell them for dollars and buy higher-returning US assets, notably tech shares. Rising American stock markets support collateral and investment. Japan’s “carry trade” is one of the reasons Wall Street can lever hundreds of billions into AI. Research suggests AI sucks up more than 1% of US GDP.

Washington wants to keep this tap open, but not at the cost of a collapsing yen or US treasury sales. This column predicted this in April, warning that Tokyo’s monetary choices had bound US markets to the yen trade. What Mr Bessent did was to sell at least $10bn in euros and buy yen to arrest its slide to a 40-year low. Not telling the Europeans said it all: allies matter to Washington only when they are useful.

Traders are probing US resolve. Rising oil prices, driven by US-Iran tensions, stoke Japan’s inflation and weaken the yen. Suppose it slides back to 164 yen to the dollar? Tokyo might respond with aggressive rate rises. This would be unlikely, as it would choke off the investment cycle that Japan is trying to create. It could also trigger a chaotic market unwind: higher rates shrink the gap between investors’ returns and yen borrowing; a stronger yen also makes yen‑denominated debts costlier to repay; investors then sell US assets to buy the yen needed to close their positions. That strengthens the yen further, inflicting bigger losses and forcing more US asset sales. A currency correction could quickly become a Wall Street rout.

If Mr Bessent dislikes that option, he hates the alternative: Japan selling its $1.1tn treasury pile to buy yen. Dumping US debt would drive yields higher – and leave Washington with a costlier interest bill. Instead, Mr Bessent has allowed Japan to borrow dollars against its treasuries and use those dollars to buy yen. He has used a Federal Reserve lending facility to help – and wants its current $60bn daily limit substantially increased. This would give Tokyo room to stabilise the yen without having to choose between abandoning its reflationary programme and selling treasuries.

If Mr Bessent gets his way, the Fed could turn a substantial portion of Japan’s trillion-dollar hoard of US government securities into cash. Argentina showed Mr Bessent would put American firepower behind currencies, spending billions to prop up the peso. Japan is the bigger challenge. He is asking traders: are you sure that you want to return to 164 yen to the dollar? He has form as a currency trader. Mr Bessent made George Soros a billion dollars in 1992 by selling pounds and forcing sterling from the European exchange rate mechanism. In 2013, Mr Bessent helped George Soros make another billion dollars betting against the Japanese currency. Margaret Thatcher famously said that “you can’t buck the market”. Mr Bessent is saying you can – as long you rewrite its rules.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/12/the-guardian-view-on-japans-yen-trump-wants-to-keep-the-easy-money-machine-running

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Aug. 13

The Houston Chronicle says ICE must answer for lives from Texas to Maine

Editor’s note: This editorial is a joint publication by the Houston Chronicle editorial board and the Portland Press Herald editorial board.

The state of Maine and the city of Houston have little in common. But today we find ourselves speaking in a united voice about the violence and chaos that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has brought to our respective corners of the country.

One month ago in Biddeford, Maine, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a father and food-delivery driver, was fatally shot by an ICE agent. Less than a week before that, in a chillingly similar moment of bloodshed, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father and construction worker who had lived in Houston more than 30 years, was also killed by ICE.

Neither Durán Guerrero nor Salgado were formal targets of ICE investigations. Both were caught up in a deadly dragnet strategy that refuses to distinguish between dangerous criminals and hardworking immigrants. Both men were on their way to work.

In both shootings, ICE initially — and, it now seems, falsely — claimed that the men “weaponized” their vehicles.

In both shootings, ICE has failed to formally disclose the identity of the agents who killed Salgado and Durán Guerrero, to produce the weapons used in their deaths, or to release any other relevant information.

In both shootings, Salgado and Durán Guerrero leave behind families who want to know the truth about what happened to their loved ones. Those families deserve justice.

Outrage over these killings shouldn’t be limited to Houston and Maine. All of the United States now faces an out-of-control federal immigration agency that acts as if it can kill without accountability.

Salgado’s sons made this connection when they testified at a congressional forum in Houston last month.

“We’re not the only family living this Kafkaesque nightmare,” Lorenzo Salgado, Jr. said. “Shortly after our father was killed, a 3-year-old girl in Biddeford, Maine, watched federal agents shoot and kill her father.”

Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor ICE accepted the invitation to appear at that meeting (a similar forum will take place in Biddeford on Aug. 17 — the same invitations have not yet been accepted). So far, both agencies have refused to answer the American people’s questions about why two families are now missing their fathers.

In Maine, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero’s family is still waiting for investigators to return some of his belongings — which agency has custody of them, they do not know. As the weeks drag on, attorneys for the family, concerned about video evidence being overwritten, have sent preservation requests far and wide.

What is ICE’s current use-of-force policy? What training do agents undergo? Why are agents targeting people who don’t have deportation orders? Why is the release of future body camera footage being left to the “discretion” of an agency that was uninterested in using them? What will it take to hold agents accountable for recklessly, needlessly and cruelly spilling blood in American streets?

We call on our congressional delegations to hold formal public hearings and force DHS and ICE to answer these questions and many more. We need leaders like Sens. Susan Collins, Angus King, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz to speak in a single voice and demand transparency and accountability.

All Americans, from Houston to Maine, urgently need to be reassured that armed federal agents are not above the law. All of us know well that law enforcement should be accountable to the people. It is part of our nation’s founding, written into history that every American schoolchild learns — a story not from Houston or Maine, but Boston.

In the spring of 1770, in response to jeers, spitting and flying objects, a handful of British soldiers opened fire on an angry crowd of American patriots, killing five. Eight redcoats, arrested and charged with murder, were defended in court by John Adams. Two were ultimately convicted of manslaughter. The law, Adams told the court, “will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations and wanton tempers of men.”

Colonists under the rule of King George III could expect more transparency and more commitment to justice than Americans can expect under President Donald Trump.

Where are the arrests? Where is the trial? Where is the justice?

We cannot let these tragedies fade into mere headlines.

If our representatives cannot insist on real accountability, voters need to elect new ones.

ONLINE: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/houston-maine-portland-press-herald-ice-joint-22385776.php

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Aug. 16

The Washington Post says we’re on the precipice of a global race toward nuclear proliferation

The world is sleepwalking into a new nuclear arms race.

As arms-control treaties hashed out over decades lapse, countries that formerly rejected possessing nuclear weapons are starting to reconsider. The Doomsday Clock is set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been to the symbolic hour of the apocalypse.

The United States and Russia, which control 86 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal, are without an arms-limitation treaty for the first time since 1972. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 and extended under President Joe Biden in 2021, expired in February. President Donald Trump said he wants a better deal.

Bilateral arms control feels obsolete in a multipolar world. China, with more than 600 warheads, continues to rapidly expand its stockpile and refuses to join talks with the U.S. and Russia.

North Korea has an estimated 50 assembled warheads and enough fissile material for up to 90, but there have been no nuclear negotiations with Pyongyang since talks broke down in 2019.

Growing concerns about the credibility of America’s security guarantee have led South Korea and Japan to begin openly considering what was once unthinkable: building their own nuclear weapons. Polls this year show that nearly 70 percent of South Koreans now support their country building a bomb.

Japan officially adheres to the “Three Non-Nuclear Principles,” meaning not possessing, producing or permitting nuclear weapons on its soil. But Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has started hedging. And Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi broke a taboo in July when he pushed for more open debate about the subject as part of stepped up defense spending.

Some foreign policy realists — known as nuclear optimists — argue that allowing more countries to develop their own weapons may produce a more stable world. After all, the Cold War never produced a nuclear war. Similarly, India’s and Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons has probably stopped their bitter border clashes from escalating into full-scale conflict.

In that same vein, the realist thinking goes, allowing Japan and South Korea to develop their own bombs would help create parity and balance with China and North Korea. That could let the U.S. reduce its military footprint in Asia.

But proliferation creates more instability, not less. The more people who have the ability to push a launch button, the greater the danger of a mistake or miscalculation.

A ballistic missile launched from North Korea or China could take up to 30 minutes to hit D.C. But the same missile could wipe out Seoul or Tokyo in less than 15. That compressed time frame raises the risks of a hair-trigger response.

Sweeping disarmament talks appear extremely unlikely. Better to aim for smaller confidence-building measures to reduce the risk of Armageddon.

Ideally, to avoid misunderstandings, members of the nuclear club would voluntarily notify each other in advance of tests, ballistic missile launches and major military exercises. They would also be transparent about their nuclear stocks and allow inspections by international authorities.

A small but vital step would be establishing military-to-military contacts — hotlines — between all the nuclear nations. That includes China. Diplomatic spats over trade and technology should not be allowed to disrupt open lines of communication.

Alas, that would mean acknowledging North Korea as a de facto nuclear state. This does not require formally accepting its weapons program or giving up on disarmament. It’s just a nod to reality.

Forty years ago this October, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came tantalizingly close to agreeing to eliminate all nuclear weapons. That window has long closed. But incremental steps can wind back the Doomsday Clock.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/16/nuclear-weapon-guardrails-are-slipping-away-how-stop-armageddon/