Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
As so often happens in our hyperpartisan political environment, members of Congress and their constituents use events of the day to re-enforce positions they already have.
A perfect example is the Ukrainian crisis that has heightened the debate between those who believe we need to increase oil production and those who believe we need a more environmentally sustainable energy policy that is less reliant on fossil fuel.
Of course it is not surprising that our elected representatives are using the crisis to craft arguments and cherry pick facts to support their respective positions on the issues of climate change and the need for more or less oil production in the United States.
Those members of Congress who for years have been supporting a stronger clean energy policy are using the Ukrainian crisis, and the threat of a Russian cut-off of oil to the West, as an example of why we need to increase our efforts for energy sustainability.
On the other hand, many Republican lawmakers are using the Russian invasion as an opportunity to criticize President Biden’s energy policies they claim have limited domestic production, urging him to step up production so we can wean ourselves of dependence on Russia.
Kevin Stitt, the Republican governor from Oklahoma recently said: “The recent events in Ukraine are yet another example of why we should be selling energy to our friends and not buying it from our enemies."
The debate has been fueled by the dramatic increase in oil prices resulting from Vladimir Putin’s escalating war on Ukraine. Benchmark crude oil jumped past $110 per barrel last week to the highest level since 2014 and politicians have used the dramatic increase to support whatever position they already had as to the solution, as opposed to reevaluating and adapting their initial position based on the new circumstances that have arisen.
Unfortunately, members of Congress are reluctant to think deductively, analyze multiple premises and come up with conclusions based on the facts as opposed to preconceived opinions. How else can you explain that, despite the considerable change that the Ukraine crisis portends on the energy supply-and-demand equation, there is no apparent desire to adapt positions.
There is no doubt that the desire to get elected subjects political aspirants to what is called motivation emotion, influencing their reasoning and judgment. Peter Ditto, a social psychologist at the University of California, Irvine who studies how motivation, emotion and intuition influence judgment, explains the phenomenon this say: "People are capable of being thoughtful and rational, but our wishes, hopes, fears and motivations often tip the scales to make us more likely to accept something as true if it supports what we want to believe."
The energy issue is of course complex and all the more reason that all of the relevant facts need to be considered to make a balanced decision. Is it too much to ask our leaders to stop allowing their ideology to undermine their ability to think critically? Admittedly it is not easy to access the facts. Recently the Financial Times stated:
“Not only does the crisis demonstrate our dependence on such regimes, giving them the ability to blackmail us, but we should also understand that our energy imports, in fact, bankroll the dangerous revisionist adventurism of the current government in Moscow.
“In addition to the all-important climate motivation, replacing imported gas with renewable energy is now a geopolitical priority.”
Yet at about the same time Auke Hoekstra, an expert on the path to 100 percent renewable energy, states that “700 studies (and # growing fast) of many researchers and research groups are now showing 100% [renewable energy] systems are possible and cost-effective.”
Whatever your position is, on this issue or the other great issue that our country must address we need more from our elected officials. We need leaders who take full accountability for actions through a willingness to amend one's positions by seeking our current research and analysis, thus resulting in a more constructive approach to problem identification and solutions.
As a citizen we must demand more of ourselves and our leaders. While it is difficult to accept facts that challenge opinions and beliefs you already have, it is time we all do so.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.