It Had To End

Too much suffering on both sides. Too much division. Too much danger for Israel to be as isolated and stigmatized as it has become. Too big a rift between American Jews and the homeland we love.

Do President Donald Trump and his team deserve credit for taking a major step?

Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal said it best. He told reporters he was "waiting to exhale" when the Israeli hostages are actually returned. "There'll be credit for President Trump, which he deserves, and for others who participated in this really monumental accomplishment," the first step in securing real peace.

"There's still some obstacles on the way there, and I hope they can be surmounted." As for prizes, which would be premature at this point, Blumenthal said, "there'll be plenty of time to decide what prizes, recognitions, honors should go to world leaders who have participated." A peace plan, Blumenthal added, needs "bipartisan support."

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine sounded a similar theme. Durbin told reporters that Trump deserves credit for the deal "if it works," adding that "we're at the earliest stages of a proposed peace plan. I want it to work. Let's watch and see." Kaine applauded Trump and his team for taking the first step: "Obviously, we have to see how it progresses, but ending the war, hostage release, humanitarian aid, and then the next chapter."

Of course, these Democrats are right to praise the president for the breakthrough, although a Nobel Peace Prize, which Trump covets, would have been strikingly premature. But it's hard to praise this president for anything when there is so much else going on that needs to end. The war on big cities in blue states. The war on colleges and universities. The war against Trump's "enemies" -- that is, prosecutors doing their jobs. The shutdown of the federal government, occasioned by the administration's war on Medicaid and Obamacare. The war on federal employees doing their jobs and not pursuing the president's vengeance agenda. How do we stop those wars?

The answer is three-fold: the courts, the Congress and we the people.

So far, the courts are the heroes of the Trump revolution. This week, the courts barred Trump's proposed deployment of troops against the will of state and local officials in Oregon and Illinois. Sadly, such courageous decisions by judges these days almost always bring threats to people who shouldn't have to risk their lives to enforce the Constitution. And will the administration even respect these decisions? So far, they haven't.

In California, a courageous federal judge ordered a halt to the Home Depot-style roundups, where ICE targeted people based on racial profiling, not individualized reasonable suspicion. ICE ignored the order and continued the raids, and the administration ran to their friends on the Supreme Court to stay the order. In the civil rights era, the Supreme Court steadfastly stood in support of the federal district courts enforcing the Constitution's command that separate but equal is inherently unequal, an important part of Chief Justice Earl Warren's legacy. Will John Roberts' legacy be that he abandoned the lower courts and exposed them to greater danger in a constitutional crisis? Will they allow the president to order the vindictive prosecutions of James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both likely to be thrown out by lower courts?

And what about Congress? Will they continue to stand by silently as clearly unqualified people are being appointed to positions in which people will literally die or be permanently hurt because of their uninformed decisions? Robert Kennedy Jr. -- with his groundless views that Tylenol, life-saving vaccines and circumcision cause autism -- is a clear and present danger to all Americans. How could the Senate have ever approved him? How can they let this shutdown continue when health care for millions of Americans is at stake? Are there no Republicans who are courageous enough or independent enough to stand up to their president when he is clearly wrong and tries to strip Congress of their constitutionally based power of the purse?

And then there's us -- or 3.5% of us. As Wikipedia explains it, the 3.5% rule is a political science concept that states that when 3.5% of the population of a country protest nonviolently against a government, that government is likely to fall from power. The rule was formulated by Erica Chenoweth in 2013 based on concepts originally published by political scientist Mark Lichbach in 1995. By comparing the success rates of 323 violent and nonviolent campaigns, Chenoweth and political scientist Maria Stephan demonstrated that only 26% of violent revolts were successful, whereas 53% of nonviolent campaigns were successful. Attendance at the June 2025 "No Kings" rally was, by some estimates, "somewhere in the 4-6 million people range," or roughly 1.2-1.8% of the U.S. population. We are getting there.

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To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.