By John W and Natasha Whitehead

May 30, 2026

Who is actually running the government?

That is no longer a rhetorical question.

As America’s war with Iran lurches from escalation to ceasefire to renewed threats of military force, Americans are being asked to trust that someone, somewhere, knows what they are doing.

But who?

This is the constitutional crisis hiding in plain sight.

The question is not merely whether Donald Trump is fit to lead. The question is whether any president still leads in any meaningful constitutional sense once the permanent war government gets moving.

The Iran war is merely the latest test case.

If the war machine keeps moving even when the public cannot tell who is steering it, then what remains of constitutional government?

This is the nightmare Rod Serling warned about in Seven Days in May.

Released in 1964, Seven Days in May imagined a dramatic military coup: generals plotting in secret to overthrow an unpopular president because they believed they knew better than the American people what was best for the nation.

The coup is eventually foiled. The republic is saved. The Constitution survives.

At least on screen.

In the real world, the plot has thickened and spread out over decades.

The old fear was that the military might seize power from the civilian government.

The modern reality is that the permanent government does not need to seize power.

It already has it.

The coup no longer requires generals in smoke-filled rooms plotting to overthrow the president at midnight. It does not require tanks on Pennsylvania Avenue or soldiers storming the Capitol. It does not even require an official suspension of the Constitution.

All it requires is secrecy, fear, endless war, executive power, emergency declarations, classified intelligence, compliant courts, cowardly legislators, corporate profiteers, militarized police, and a public too distracted, exhausted or frightened to resist.

That coup has been underway for decades.

It is the coup that occurs when Congress surrenders its war powers to the president.

It is the coup that occurs when presidents of both parties wage war without meaningful constitutional authorization.

It is the coup that occurs when intelligence agencies spy on the American people and then hide behind national security.

It is the coup that occurs when federal agencies arm themselves like military units.

It is the coup that occurs when local police are transformed into extensions of the military.

It is the coup that occurs when whistleblowers are punished, dissenters are surveilled, protesters are treated like enemies, and the public is told to trust whatever version of events the government chooses to release.

It is the coup that occurs when unelected bureaucrats, contractors, data brokers, intelligence analysts, defense executives and crisis managers exercise more practical control over government policy than the voters do.

This is how freedom disappears: not all at once, not in one dramatic seizure of power, but incrementally, bureaucratically, profitably and in the name of national security.

Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about this in 1961.

A five-star general who understood war better than most modern politicians ever will, Eisenhower cautioned Americans to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.” The danger, he warned, was that “misplaced power” would endanger liberty and democratic processes.

He was right.

The military industrial complex has become one of the most powerful governing forces in America.

This is not a left-right problem.

Both parties built this.

Republicans and Democrats alike have funded the wars, renewed the surveillance powers, armed the police, expanded executive authority, protected intelligence agencies, rewarded defense contractors, and treated the Constitution as an inconvenience whenever fear could be used to silence dissent.

One president abuses power. The next one inherits it. The next one expands it. The next one normalizes it. The next one weaponizes it.

This is how emergency powers become everyday powers.

This is how temporary measures become permanent law.

This is how the president becomes a king in all but name.

And this is how the people become spectators in their own government.

This is exactly where we are.

We have allowed the government to wage war without declarations of war.

We have allowed intelligence agencies to operate behind walls of secrecy.

We have allowed presidents to rule by executive order.

We have allowed Congress to become a spectator.

We have allowed the courts to defer to national security.

We have allowed police to become soldiers.

We have allowed corporations to profit from fear.

We have allowed unelected officials to make decisions that alter the course of the nation.

And then we act surprised when no one seems to know who is actually in charge.

The answer is as obvious as it is disturbing.

The permanent war government is in charge.

This is the coup that does not end.

This is the lesson of our age: the greatest threat to freedom is not always a madman seizing power in a single moment of crisis. Sometimes it is a bureaucracy that never sleeps, a war machine that never stops, a security state that never shrinks, and a political class that never says no.

So what do we do?

We stop allowing the government to turn every crisis into a blank check for more power.

And we start insisting, relentlessly, that those who claim to defend the United States must defend it with the tools the Constitution supplies.

If the government wants war, make Congress vote on it.

If the government wants surveillance, make it get a warrant.

If the government wants to police dissent, make it answer to the First Amendment.

If the government wants to spend trillions on war, make it explain why the American people are being robbed blind to enrich defense contractors.

If the government wants emergency powers, make it prove the emergency and surrender the powers when the crisis passes.

If the Pentagon wants to run foreign policy, remind it that in a constitutional republic, the military answers to civilian authority, and civilian authority answers to the people.

The permanent war government has given us endless wars, bankrupting debt, militarized police, mass surveillance, constitutional erosion, fear-driven politics, and a republic that increasingly resembles an occupied territory.

If we are to remain free, the war machine must be brought back under constitutional control.

The generals, bureaucrats, contractors, intelligence agencies, police forces and presidents must all be reminded of the same truth: They do not own this country.

[…]

Via https://ronpaulinstitute.org/the-permanent-war-government-whos-really-calling-the-shots-in-washington/

For those unfamiliar with the intricate machinery of Israeli politics, the unanimous 110-0 vote to dissolve the Knesset on May 20 appears to be an earth-shattering event. On the surface, it looks as if the days of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition of far-right extremists are numbered. The reality, however, is far more complex.

Israel’s current political implosion is fundamentally tied to its failure to escape the ghosts of October 7. When the country’s military defenses collapsed on that day, Israel was transformed from a state with a formidable reputation as an invincible regional superpower into one trapped with a struggling army, structurally incapable of decisively winning a single war.

Since the launch of the devastating genocide in Gaza, neither the Israeli government nor the military establishment has been able to answer two fundamental questions:

One, how did the world’s self-proclaimed “invincible army” collapse in a matter of hours, leaving the entire Southern Command – whose sole job was to keep Gazans besieged – in total shambles?

Two, why has that same heavily funded military machine failed to achieve a decisive victory despite the near-total destruction of the Strip and the unprecedented slaughter and wounding of much of its population?

Complicating the matter is Benjamin Netanyahu’s pathological refusal to honestly investigate either the October 7 intelligence failure or the subsequent conduct of the Gaza war. Instead, he focused entirely on domestic damage control and image management, aggressively marginalizing or firing intelligence official, or high-ranking bureaucrats who challenged his narrative. Rather than pursuing a viable exit strategy, Netanyahu treated the defense apparatus as a public relations shield.

Consequently, opposition voices – initially led by Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party – began demanding Netanyahu’s resignation and snap elections. What began as predictable political fallout quickly evolved into a sweeping popular movement.

Public confidence in the government continues to plummet. Recent opinion polls consistently show that a vast majority of Israelis believe Netanyahu acts out of personal political survival rather than national interest. Data suggests that if elections were held today, his right-wing bloc would suffer a catastrophic defeat at the hands of a newly consolidated opposition – namely Beyachad (‘Together’), the newly formed unified list established by Naftali Bennett and Lapid.

Netanyahu, whose legacy as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is now defined by strategic failure, subsists in a profound personal and political crisis. His deliberate escalations of regional conflict served no distinct military purpose; instead, they merely highlighted his desperation, turning his rhetorical pledges of “total victory” into a hollow attempt to prevent his coalition from fracturing.

Meanwhile, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich exploited Netanyahu’s vulnerability to advance their own extremist agendas. Bent on rapid colonial expansion, they accelerated West Bank annexation, pushed draconian laws to execute Palestinian prisoners, and tightened the siege on occupied East Jerusalem.

Under normal circumstances, the sheer scale of the domestic, economic, and diplomatic harm engineered by this coalition should have removed it from power. Yet Netanyahu survived by exploiting deep social fractures and relying on unconditional support from Washington.

This survival shield was further fortified by the initial impotence of a fragmented political opposition and a perpetual wartime atmosphere that Netanyahu cultivated to freeze dissent. Not even his corruption trials derailed his career; he adapted state institutions into instruments of personal survival.

Yet the ultimate irony of Israeli politics is that pressure came not from mounting casualties or international isolation, but from compulsory military conscription of the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim.

For decades, secular Israelis complained about the sweeping draft exemptions granted to yeshiva students, but the political elite routinely shrugged it off as a secondary culture war that could be managed via backroom political dealings.

Israel’s overextended, multi-front war of attrition completely smashed that equilibrium. The issue was violently pushed back to the surface because the military quite literally ran out of bodies. The true gravity of this manpower crisis was exposed when the army Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, explicitly broke ranks during a closed-door security cabinet meeting to warn that “the IDF is going to collapse in on itself.”

Zamir reportedly raised “ten red flags” before the political leadership, stating bluntly that after months of intensive combat across Gaza, the northern border, and regional theaters, the military was facing an immediate, unsustainable deficit of over 12,000 combat soldiers.

For over two years, Netanyahu postponed a legal verdict on the Haredi draft. But mounting military setbacks, particularly on the Lebanese front, made further delays impossible.

The opposition seeks elections while Netanyahu engages in legislative theater, using loyalists and parliamentary procedures to slow the process.

Yet this political drama is secondary to the deeper crisis. No coalition maneuvering can salvage a state facing structural decline. Nothing will heal Israel’s fractures until it confronts the root cause of its crisis: endless, unwinnable military campaigns that have devastated Gaza and the wider region.

The crisis engulfing Israel is self-inflicted – and there can be no lasting peace until the state’s deep-seated criminality and ongoing genocide and wars against Palestinians and the wider Arab world come to an end.

[…]

Via https://original.antiwar.com/ramzy-baroud/2026/05/28/self-engineered-decay-why-israels-political-collapse-cannot-be-separated-from-its-war-crimes/