ATTENTION NEWSPAPER EDITORS:
This commentary is available online at www.rutherford.org.
Long Version ([link removed]) • Short Version ([link removed])
View this email in your browser ([link removed])
[link removed] Share ([link removed])
[link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fmailchi.mp%2Frutherford%2Famerica-last-war-abroad-tyranny-at-homeand-the-theft-of-a-nation-by-john-nisha-whitehead Tweet ([link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fmailchi.mp%2Frutherford%2Famerica-last-war-abroad-tyranny-at-homeand-the-theft-of-a-nation-by-john-nisha-whitehead)
[link removed] Forward ([link removed])


** America Last: War Abroad, Tyranny at Home—and the Theft of a Nation
By John & Nisha Whitehead
April 7, 2026
------------------------------------------------------------

“We’re fighting wars, we can’t take care of … daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things… We have to take care of one thing: military protection. ([link removed]) ”—President Donald J. Trump

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft ([link removed]) from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”— President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Every bomb dropped abroad is a bill sent home.

Every war waged in the name of “security” is paid for by Americans who go without—without affordable healthcare, without stable housing, without a government that prioritizes their well-being.

As the U.S. pours trillions into endless wars and military expansion, Americans are left paying the price—not just in dollars, but in lost freedoms and eroded constitutional protections.

This is not national defense.

This is organized theft.

While Americans struggle with rising gas prices, soaring grocery bills, and mounting debt—fueled in part by reckless tariffs and preemptive wars—the federal government is spending money it doesn’t have on military expansion, foreign conflicts, and presidential excess.

This is not America First.

If anything, it is becoming painfully clear that Donald Trump’s “America First” approach to governing puts America last every time.
MAKE THE GOVERNMENT PLAY BY THE RULES OF THE CONSTITUTION ([link removed])

Trump has not made it a priority to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure. He has not made it a priority to invest in innovation or ensure that the nation remains competitive in a rapidly advancing technological world. Nor has he shown much concern for caring for veterans, the elderly, or the young.

Instead, the government is cutting back on programs that make Americans healthier, smarter, and more secure—while the president builds monuments to himself and indulges in a taxpayer-funded lifestyle of staggering excess.

Despite once claiming he would be too busy to play golf, Trump is on track to leave taxpayers with a bill exceeding $300 million in travel and security expenses ([link removed]) —much of it tied to frequent trips to his Florida properties. Each visit to Mar-a-Lago costs an estimated $3.4 million ([link removed]) .

Meanwhile, taxpayers are shelling out $273,063 per hour ([link removed]) to keep Air Force One in the air.

And while millions of Americans struggle to afford basic necessities, Trump is demanding $377 million—an 866 percent increase ([link removed]) —to renovate the White House residence.

But these excesses, outrageous as they are, pale in comparison to the true cost of this administration’s priorities: war.

The Trump administration has requested $1.5 trillion for its FY 2027 military budget ([link removed]) —separate from an additional $200 billion in emergency funding for the war in Iran ([link removed]) .

The sitting president of the United States is spending money that is not his to spend in order to fight endless wars unauthorized by Congress ([link removed]) that do nothing to protect the American people or our interests, while insisting that the federal government’s only priority should be the military industrial complex.

The president’s fiscal priorities include:

* $65.8 billion for Navy shipbuilding, including a new “Trump-class” Golden Fleet battleship ([link removed]) .
* Pay raises for military troops, while freezing pay raises for civilian federal workers ([link removed]) .
* $152 million to start rebuilding Alcatraz ([link removed]) as a working federal prison.
* $10 billion for beautification projects ([link removed]) in Washington, D.C.


In addition to increasing the budget for the military, prisons, nuclear weapons, and a weaponized Justice Department, the Trump administration has also proposed budget cuts of $73 billion to non-military programs ([link removed]) —slashing funding for medical research, public schools, and low-income heating assistance, as well as cuts to affordable housing, job training, small-business lending, anti-poverty programs, agriculture, NASA, research in social sciences and economics, humanitarian assistance and global health programs, among others.

As Dominik Lett writes for Cato, “Shifting dollars from domestic programs to the Pentagon is shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic ([link removed]) given our mounting fiscal crisis.”

This is how empires fall.

The Constitution does not permit a president to wage war on a whim.

The founders were clear: the power to declare war rests with Congress, not the executive. The president, as Commander in Chief, was meant to oversee the military—not unleash it unchecked.

And yet, once again, we find ourselves embroiled in an unauthorized war—funded by taxpayers, justified with shifting narratives, and carried out without meaningful oversight.

With Congress unwilling to act as a check on executive overreach, and the courts increasingly sidelined, the constitutional safeguards meant to prevent this very scenario have all but collapsed.

War is no longer a last resort.

It has become a business model.

The man who campaigned on a pledge of “no new wars” ([link removed]) has instead propelled the nation into endless military conflicts that promise to become endless wars that enrich defense contractors, reward political allies, and deepen the financial burden on the American people.

Reports of insider profiteering tied to shifting policy decisions ([link removed]) only reinforce what many Americans already suspect: that war, in the Trump era, is as much about profit as it is about power.

Historian Timothy Snyder, who has written extensively on authoritarian regimes, sees the administration’s expanded war budget through a darker and more troubling lens—by which military spending functions as a way to bribe the military into supporting a Trump-led government takeover.

Translation: the Trump administration could be laying the groundwork for a false flag terrorist attack ([link removed]) that would allow Trump to declare martial law, cancel or nullify the midterm elections and shift the nation further towards a dictatorship.

There is precedent for it, not only with Trump’s own actions in January 2020, but also by the man he most admires—Vladimir Putin, who masterminded his own false flag terrorist attacks ([link removed]) in Russia in 1999 as a means of entrenching his own power.

In that light, the obscene escalation of military funding raises the specter of a government preparing not just for foreign conflict—but for domestic control.

This tracks closely with the Pentagon’s chilling Megacities training video ([link removed]) , which predicts that by 2030, armed forces would be used against civilian populations to solve domestic political and social problems.

The danger is not theoretical.

History has shown, time and again, that leaders who accumulate unchecked power, surround themselves with loyalists, and normalize perpetual war often turn those powers inward.

But what happens when that unchecked power is placed in the hands of someone who appears increasingly erratic and unmoored from reality?

In recent weeks, Trump has issued profanity-laced threats on social media targeting civilian infrastructure in Iran—actions that would constitute war crimes under international law.

On Easter Sunday, when Christians the world over were celebrating the hope and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Trump shared a profanity-laden post to his Truth Social account, threatening to target civilian infrastructure in Iran—war crimes under the Geneva Convention. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell ([link removed]) - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

He has used public appearances to rant about political enemies, threaten foreign nations, and boast about military actions with little regard for accuracy or consequence.

In front of an audience of children gathered for the White House’s annual Easter Egg Roll, Trump ranted about Biden’s autopen, expounded on the war in Iran, referred to Kamala Harris as a “low IQ person,” described the Biden administration as not knowing “what the hell they were doing,” ([link removed]) and once again threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants and bridges, which constitute a war crime.

He has suggested he could start charging “tolls” on global shipping ([link removed]) through the Strait of Hormuz, claimed victory in the war with Iran even while American forces and Middle Eastern allies continue to come under fire, and floated fantastical political ambitions untethered from constitutional limits, including the idea that he could quickly learn Spanish in order to run for president of Venezuela and win.

This pattern of behavior—reckless, inflammatory, and detached from reality ([link removed]) —has prompted a growing number of voices, across the political spectrum, to question whether the president should be removed from office under the 25^th Amendment.

Not surprisingly, the very same individuals who loudly called to invoke the 25^th Amendment against Joe Biden have fallen silent in the face of Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior ([link removed]) .

The standard, it seems, is not constitutional—it is political.

Which brings us back to the war in Iran—a costly, dangerous, and deeply suspect conflict that raises more questions than answers and provides a conveniently timed distraction from Trump’s presence within the Epstein files.

Despite President Trump and Pete Hegseath’s incessant claims of lethality and success, victory is not a foregone conclusion.

And the price we are paying is high indeed, in treasure and life.
YOUR SUPPORT HELPS THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE SOUND THE ALARM OVER THREATS TO OUR FREEDOMS: DONATE TODAY ([link removed])

Credible concerns point to the fact that key details about the true cost of this war—which “we the people” are entitled to know—are being withheld from the public.

An investigative report by The Intercept suggests that “U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, appears to be engaged in what a defense official called a ‘casualty cover-up,’ ([link removed]) offering The Intercept low-ball and outdated figures and failing to provide clarifications on military deaths and injuries.”

Far from providing a true accounting of the human and financial burden to be borne by the American people, the Trump administration has apparently continued to stonewall and slow-walk information ([link removed]) about the numbers of troops injured and killed, and the number of U.S. bases attacked. Indeed, U.S. troops throughout the Middle East have reportedly been forced to abandon their bases and retreat to hotels and office buildings ([link removed]) , which are ill-equipped to provide defensive cover.

Even the administration’s account of a dramatic rescue mission of a downed weapons system officer—one involving massive resources and the destruction of U.S. aircraft—is coming under scrutiny, with some suggesting it may have been something far more ambitious and far less successful than advertised.

Although Trump has insisted that he directed the military to send in more than 150 aircraft—including 64 fighter jets, four bombers, 48 refuelers, 13 rescue aircraft and 26 intelligence and jamming aircraft ([link removed]) , hundreds of troops, munitions, and multiple aircraft (two of which were reportedly destroyed by U.S. forces to avoid them falling into enemy hands ([link removed]) ) to rescue this one airman, there is a growing groundswell of voices suggesting that the administration’s rescue mission was, in fact, a failed ground invasion to seize Iran’s enriched uranium—a prospect Trump has teased for weeks.

As Financial Review concluded, “Trump’s daring special ops rescue comes at a hefty price. ([link removed]) Some 100 special operations forces were involved in the high-stakes mission while several multimillion-dollar US aircraft were destroyed to secure the airman.”

Which begs the question: can we trust the U.S. government to tell us the truth?

Can we trust a government that has historically engaged in cover-ups ([link removed]) —medical, military, political, and environmental?

Can we trust a government that treats its citizens as data points to be tracked, monitored, and manipulated?

Can we trust a government that wages wars for profit, jails its own people for profit, and shields those in power from accountability?

This is a government that lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, and overreaches its authority at almost every turn.

It treats human beings as expendable—resources to be used, controlled, and discarded.

It is not guided by morality, restraint, or constitutional principle.

It is power unbound—corrupt, unaccountable, and increasingly indifferent to the freedoms it was meant to protect.

This is a government that wages wars for profit and turns a blind eye while its agents abuse their power.

And increasingly, the wars being waged are not just overseas.

Those wars are also here at home.

Through mass surveillance programs that track every movement and communication. Through militarized policing and the deployment of National Guard units against civilian populations. Through federal agencies empowered to detain, deport, and disappear individuals with little regard for due process. Through policies that attempt to redefine who is entitled to the protections of citizenship—and who can be stripped of them.

This is what it looks like when the machinery of war—built for foreign battlefields—is turned inward.

This is what it looks like when “we the people” become the enemy.

And in this moment, we find ourselves brought full circle.

Nearly 250 years after the American colonists rose up against a distant ruler for waging war against his own people—through standing armies, arbitrary rule, and the stripping away of rights—we are once again confronting a government that views its citizens not as sovereign individuals, but as subjects to be controlled.

As I make clear in Battlefield America: The War on the American People ([link removed]) and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries ([link removed]) , the government was never meant to be trusted. It was meant to be restrained by the chains of the Constitution.

The greatest threat to freedom is not a foreign enemy.

The greatest threat to freedom is a government that no longer fears, values or serves its people.

Don’t fall for the lie.

WC: 2170

Source: [link removed]
[link removed]
ABOUT JOHN & NISHA WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His latest books The Erik Blair Diaries ([link removed]) and Battlefield America: The War on the American People ([link removed]) are available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

[link removed]
PUBLICATION GUIDELINES AND REPRINT PERMISSION

John W. Whitehead’s weekly commentaries are available for publication to newspapers and web publications at no charge. Please contact [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) to obtain reprint permission. Click here ([link removed]) to download a print quality image of John W. Whitehead.

Click here ([link removed]) to read more of John & Nisha Whitehead's commentaries.

[link removed] PODCAST AVAILABLE

Freedom Under Fire, a weekly podcast of constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead's popular syndicated column, is available on SoundCloud and iTunes. Click here ([link removed]) to access the podcast.

============================================================
** KEEP FREEDOM ALIVE ([link removed])

To donate via PayPal, click on the link below:

** ([link removed])
** Twitter ([link removed])
** Twitter ([link removed])
** Facebook ([link removed])
** Facebook ([link removed])
** The Rutherford Institute ([link removed])
** The Rutherford Institute ([link removed])
Copyright © 2026 The Rutherford Institute, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because of your interest in the work of The Rutherford Institute. Founded in 1982 by constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute is a civil liberties organization that provides free legal services to people whose constitutional and human rights have been threatened or violated. To discontinue your membership electronically, or if you feel you are receiving this message in error, please follow the link below.

Our mailing address is:
The Rutherford Institute
Post Office Box 7482
Charlottesville, VA 22906
USA
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
.
Under the regulations of the United States Internal Revenue Service, The Rutherford Institute is incorporated as a 501(c)(3) tax exempt nonprofit organization. Donations to support The Rutherford Institute’s legal and educational work help to safeguard the constitutional rights of all Americans. Donations are tax-deductible. In compliance with general industry standards of a nonprofit organization, the Institute is audited annually by an independent accounting firm.