Editorials from The Washington Post, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and others

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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Oct. 5 – The Washington Post on militarization of Portland being blocked by a Trump-appointed judge

The 10th Amendment says that powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution belong to the states. A federal judge, nominated by President Donald Trump, ruled Saturday that he likely violated Oregon’s 10th Amendment rights, infringing on its state sovereignty and police powers, by federalizing its National Guard over the objections of its governor. Her temporary restraining order, which the administration will appeal, offers a template for how other states, including Illinois, can challenge similar deployments.

U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut noted that the Constitution leaves policing powers to state and local governments while granting Congress the power to provide for calling up state militias to execute federal laws, suppress insurrections and repel invasions. She said Trump’s determination that troops were needed was “simply untethered” to “the facts on the ground,” including that “it had been months since there was any sustained level of violent or disruptive protest activity in Portland.” Naturally, protests grew after Trump’s order inflamed tensions.

“This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” Immergut wrote in her 31-page opinion. “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law.”

Trump nominated Immergut to the bench in 2018. She worked for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr during his investigation into President Bill Clinton and personally questioned Monica Lewinsky during her 1998 deposition. President George W. Bush appointed Immergut as Oregon’s U.S. attorney. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. gave the 64-year-old a slot on the prestigious Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court last year.

Federal lawyers argued that courts have no authority to second guess Trump’s determination that conditions in Portland warranted a federal military response. While the president certainly deserves general deference when it comes to public safety, not allowing judicial review of sending the military into U.S. cities would create a recipe for dictatorship.

There are certainly times when a president needs the authority to call up the National Guard over a governor’s objections. Think about the South during the civil rights era. Presidents were right to send in troops to enforce school desegregation after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

But that high bar was not cleared in Portland. The judge notes that local and state law enforcement officials have demonstrated a willingness and ability to address illegal conduct at protests. She pointed out that the people of Multnomah County, which includes Portland, elected a district attorney last year who ran on a strong commitment to prosecuting political violence and public criminal activity. He defeated an incumbent who was soft on crime.

Even if voters did not do that, though, they have a right to be wrong. The approach of the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois to crime is wrongheaded, but that’s what people who live in those places voted for. Residents who are unhappy with the popularly elected governments are free to move to states with better policies. That is what federalism is all about. (Trump’s deployment of the Guard in D.C. is a different situation because the nation’s capital lacks the rights of a state.)

In Oregon, the judge issued a temporary restraining order through Oct. 18 because of her view that the state would likely win on the merits. On Sunday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) filed a separate lawsuit seeking to prevent Trump from imminently sending 300 of his state’s National Guard troops to Oregon despite Immergut’s ruling. Ultimately, the question of how much power the president has here seems destined for the Supreme Court. It’s one of several major questions about executive power that the justices will face during the new term that begins Monday.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/05/national-guard-takeover-oregon-trump-immergut/

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Oct. 1 – The New York Times on the stakes of the government shutdown

As Republicans and Democrats trade blame for the government shutdown that began at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, and pundits opine about which side is winning, it is easy to lose sight of the real stakes. What the two parties are fighting about is whether Americans should have access to affordable health care.

President Trump is seeking to deprive millions of Americans of their health insurance, and Senate Democrats are refusing to acquiesce.

The president and his congressional allies want to end some federal tax credits that reduce the cost of health insurance purchased on Affordable Care Act marketplaces. Under current law, those credits will expire at the end of the year. Without them, average monthly premiums will more than double, to $159 from $74, according to KFF, a health research group. Some Americans have already received notices of the coming price increases.

Democrats have limited ability to extend the tax credits because Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House. But the need to pass a bill that funds the government’s operations for the fiscal year that began Wednesday offers a rare point of leverage: Republicans require the votes of at least seven senators in the Democratic caucus. This situation is not unusual. The majority party often lacks the votes to pass funding bills without help from the minority party, and the typical solution is a negotiation.

In addition to extending the tax credits, Democrats want to reverse cuts in Medicaid funding that Republicans passed earlier this year. And they want assurances that Mr. Trump will abide by the terms of any deal. The president has claimed he doesn’t have to spend the money that Congress disburses – asserting that he has the power to “impound” appropriations – which would mean any legislative deal isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

When Democrats controlled the White House and Congress only a few years ago, they made policy compromises with Republicans to avoid shutdowns. Mr. Trump, characteristically, instead has demanded that Democrats bend the knee, as he mixed bombastic social media blasts and threats to fire thousands of federal workers if Democrats did not provide the votes for his plan to keep the government open.

In effect, Mr. Trump’s position is that Democrats must either support his plans to slash important public services, or else he will slash important public services. He is confronting Congress, and the American people, with a pair of bad options – and no alternatives.

In refusing to grant Mr. Trump’s wishes, Democrats are making a painful choice. There is never a good time to shut down the government. It will cause immediate pain as federal agencies suspend important functions. Not everything broken during a shutdown can easily be fixed once the government returns to work.

But debate over the tactical wisdom of the Democrats’ decision should not obscure the responsibility of Mr. Trump and the Republican Party. Mr. Trump is threatening to hurt Americans in two ways and forcing Democrats to choose which one to prevent. The American people deserve and ought to demand better options.

Shutdowns are a relatively recent phenomenon in American politics. Until 1980, if Congress missed the annual deadline for funding government activities, federal agencies continued to operate in the expectation of a resolution. But in that year, the attorney general, Benjamin Civiletti, concluded that in the absence of a funding bill, federal law dictates that many government functions be suspended. Since then, an increasingly polarized Congress has struggled to hit its deadlines. Fifteen times since 1981 the two parties have failed to resolve their differences in time to keep the government open.

The current episode, however, stands apart in some important respects.

First, Mr. Trump has made almost no effort to negotiate with his political opponents. Last week, he canceled a scheduled meeting with Democratic leaders, declaring that he did not believe it “could possibly be productive.” On Monday, less than two days before the deadline, the leaders from the two parties finally met to discuss the situation for the first time. Vice President JD Vance emerged from the brief and unproductive meeting at the White House to declare, “I think we’re headed to a shutdown because the Democrats won’t do the right thing.”

Rather than engaging Democrats on the merits of their position, Republicans have falsely and absurdly accused them of seeking to fund free health care for unauthorized immigrants.

A second difference is that presidents have typically sought to limit the impact of shutdowns on government workers and on the American people. During shutdowns in the 1980s, the Reagan administration classified many federal workers as essential employees so they could continue to do their jobs. During the most recent shutdown, in January 2019, Mr. Trump signed a bill guaranteeing back pay for federal workers.

This time, by contrast, Mr. Trump is threatening to use the shutdown as an opportunity to get rid of federal workers. Russell Vought, who runs the White House budget office, has publicized a plan to fire thousands of civil servants in the event of a shutdown, on the theory that the absence of a budget allows the White House to make spending decisions. Some experts question the legality of the plan, but that is unlikely to impede Mr. Vought.

Mr. Trump’s threats are making it harder to resolve the legitimate disagreements about public policy that divide the two parties. Now that it is too late to avert a shutdown, it is incumbent on the president and Congress to reopen the government as soon as possible – and commit to preventing Americans from having to pay too much for health insurance next year. The only way forward is to negotiate a compromise. It’s time to start talking.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/opinion/government-shutdown-health-care-democrats.html

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Oct. 6 – The Wall Street Journal on SCOTUS and conversion therapy

Is counseling free speech? That’s the question at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, in a dispute over Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy.” A 2019 law says counselors can’t try to change a minor client’s gender identity or sexual orientation, including “behaviors or gender expressions.” The statute explicitly permits, however, “assistance to a person undergoing gender transition.”

Kaley Chiles is a licensed counselor with a master’s degree in clinical mental health. She’s also a Christian who “believes clients can accept the bodies that God has given them and find peace.” She fears being punished if she discusses such things with minors experiencing gender dysphoria, according to her brief in Chiles v. Salazar. That’s a constitutional violation, she argues, because the First Amendment protects “private conversations between counselors and their clients.”

Colorado responds that she’s “overreading” the law, claiming that none of what Ms. Chiles says she wants to do is banned. Rather, the state prohibits a range of treatments-“from electric shocks, to hypnosis, to role-playing, to cognitive behavioral therapies”-if they’re done in an effort to alter a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation. The state argues such “conversion therapy” is harmful, substandard healthcare, even if it involves only talking.

But the plain text of the law appears broader than Colorado now prefers to admit. “A therapist treating a minor who seeks to understand whether they identify as a girl or boy should help that patient explore that question,” the state says. Explore how? Ms. Chiles believes that most children with gender dysphoria before puberty eventually resolve those feelings. In that case, she’s in a bind.

Imagine a family coming to counseling with a little boy who has dysphoria and likes trying on his sister’s dresses. If a therapist discourages this for now, how is that not an illegal effort to change “behaviors or gender expressions”? Yet Colorado’s legislators made sure to add a line making clear that giving “assistance” for a gender transition is acceptable.

Ms. Chiles also says some of her clients are referred by local churches, and some want to discuss issues that “implicate Christian values about human sexuality,” including if they’re living inconsistently with their beliefs. She no longer feels she can get near such conversations with clients under 18. Colorado says it has so far never enforced its law against any counselor, but forgive Ms. Chiles for not wanting to take it on faith. How many years has the Colorado cake baker Jack Phillips been under siege?

The lower courts ruled against Ms. Chiles, and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held 2-1 that Colorado’s law only “incidentally” involves speech, since it merely regulates “professional conduct” and bans “a type of prohibited treatment.” The state argues that this is a “routine” regulation of healthcare, not a free speech question, akin to oversight of “a surgeon who incompetently closes a suture.”

The comparison is hardly apt. Ms. Chiles argues strict judicial scrutiny should apply, since Colorado is prescribing orthodoxy in the counseling room. She says the law can’t pass that test, since it’s a restriction that “cuts off distressed kids and their families from the counseling they seek.” The state predicts, with what reads like unwarranted confidence, that its law can survive any level of scrutiny.

But the idea that talk therapy is conduct, not speech? That could get a chilly reception from the Justices, who are always wary of claimed exceptions to the First Amendment.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/chiles-v-salazar-supreme-court-colorado-conversion-therapy-gender-dysphoria-efe6c3b4?mod=editorials_article_pos6

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Oct. 6 – The Guardian on Trump’s plan for Gaza

Two years after the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023, in which militants killed about 1,200 Israelis, and amid the genocide in Gaza, in which Israel has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, the need for peace has never been more urgent. Palestinians are desperate for an end to starvation and airstrikes. Israelis want the war to end for the sake of remaining hostages and soldiers. Violence has reverberated across the region. Momentum has been growing around Donald Trump’s proposal, with both Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas grudgingly indicating acceptance under US threat.

With indirect talks between Israel and Hamas beginning in Egypt on Monday afternoon, there are frail hopes of progress at last. Yet both parties have made it clear that they reject major parts of the 20-point US plan, which begins with an immediate ceasefire, the return of all hostages – followed by the release of Palestinian prisoners – and the resumption of full aid.

For Netanyahu, perpetual war in Gaza and beyond extends his political survival. His far-right coalition partners want to expel Palestinians and settle Gaza. Hamas has no desire to sign itself out of existence, and handing back the last hostages would remove any leverage it retains. It has seen much of its leadership destroyed, as well as life in Gaza – but has also watched international public opinion shift unprecedentedly towards support for Palestinians, pulling governments in its wake. It can recruit from a huge pool of angry and traumatised young men.

The full peace plan is still more contentious. Pledges of broad support from governments in the region and in Europe do not mean that they think it feasible – still less that they want to commit troops to an “international stabilisation force”. But some hope that a more plausible and just way forward might somehow emerge from all this.

True, this proposal is less grotesque than the initial Trumpian vision of a “riviera” built on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Palestinians would remain, but would be sidelined, as they were in drawing up the plan. The “board of peace” overseeing Gaza appears to be a colonial administration headed by Mr Trump himself and, disturbingly given his history in the region, Tony Blair.

The plan pays lip service to eventual self-determination and statehood as a mere “aspiration” – not a right – of the Palestinian people, via a path that could not be more vague, conditional or tentative. It states that Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza. Mr Netanyahu has already said that the military would stay in most of it and would “forcibly resist” a Palestinian state.

Mr Trump has strong-armed the Israeli prime minister at last, but deadly strikes continue and he, like Joe Biden before him, could have halted the slaughter long ago. Telling the two parties to “move fast” now reflects his short attention span as much as the pressing need for peace. He will surely settle for whatever allows him to claim credit. If Israel does stop, it could resume the offensive at any time – just as it broke the ceasefire early this year.

Any opportunity to end this war of annihilation must be seized. Something better may emerge from this path, if – a huge if – Mr Trump and others apply heavy, sustained pressure to Mr Netanyahu and forge a deal that Arab nations can fully support, ensuring pressure on Hamas. But lasting peace should not and cannot be built upon an abandonment of basic Palestinian rights.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/06/the-guardian-view-on-trumps-gaza-plan-the-bloodshed-must-end-but-this-proposal-betrays-palestinians

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Oct. 7 – The Boston Globe says, if the conflict is actually near its end, rebuilding peace in Gaza will be harder than ending

The war in Gaza needs to end for the sake of Evyatar David, the emaciated 24-year-old Israeli being held hostage in Gaza who was forced, in a video filmed under duress, to dig his own grave. It needs to end so all the Israeli hostages, alive and dead, can return home.

The war in Gaza needs to end for the sake of Rahaf Al-Dalou, the severely burned Palestinian teenager who flew to Boston for medical treatment but will need a home to return to. It must end for the sake of all Palestinian civilians suffering from injuries, illnesses, and hunger who need treatment in a stocked hospital not besieged by war.

If the current deal stands, President Trump will deserve credit for brokering an end to a horrific two-year war – a deal that came too late to prevent untold death and destruction, but a deal nonetheless that was able to obtain support from Israel, the surrounding Arab states, and, it appears, Hamas, although the final details are still being negotiated.

The agreement, however, even if it moves forward, cannot be an end. For the sake of the Israelis and the Palestinians, it must be a new beginning, one that leads to peace and security.

There can never be another attack like Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault, two years ago Tuesday, which killed 1,200 people in Israel. That attack sparked Israel’s retaliatory war, which killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

It remains very possible that even if the first phase of Trump’s plan – trading the Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel – goes through, which in itself isn’t a sure thing, the deal will fall apart later on. That would be a shame. If Gaza is left in its war-torn state with a power vacuum, that will invite Hamas or its offshoots to retake power and perpetuate the cycle of violence.

What is needed is a political and diplomatic solution to hold the peace, not just end the war.

To achieve that, the end of the Gaza war must include commitments by the Israelis and the Palestinians to end violence more broadly. The Israeli police and judicial system should identify and punish any settlers who attack Palestinians or destroy their property. The Palestinian Authority must end any lingering vestiges of its ” pay to slay” system, which compensates families of those who commit terror attacks against Israelis.

Looking forward, Trump’s plan calls for an influx of aid into Gaza and its redevelopment. Gaza would be governed by a technocratic Palestinian committee until the Palestinian Authority – widely considered today to be weak and corrupt – can reform itself enough to take over. The temporary government would be overseen by a Board of Peace headed by Trump, while security would be provided by an International Stabilization Force.

If implemented, this plan gives the United States and other Western and Arab governments – including those that have called for the establishment of a Palestinian state – an opportunity and a responsibility. But none of it will be easy, and Trump has hardly shown an interest in the past in the type of sustained nation-building and international diplomacy that would be required.

The Board of Peace and the International Stabilization Force – or whatever governing and security apparatus are ultimately created – must be built from scratch. Any governing force will have the challenge of ensuring that Hamas doesn’t retake power and rearm while simultaneously rebuilding the territory. It will also need to keep an eye out for destabilizing foreign actors – especially Iran, Hamas’s benefactor.

It will take an influx of time and treasure to turn a war-torn strip into a territory where the Palestinians can safely live and thrive. That will require the expertise of international aid organizations and significant foreign aid money and humanitarian aid. Rebuilding can’t mean building a Trump-branded beachside hotel but must mean partnering with local Palestinians to determine community needs and rebuilding schools, universities, a health care system, utilities, agriculture, and industry.

The plan says anyone who wants to leave Gaza will be allowed to do so – but that puts the onus on Western and Arab countries, including the United States, to accept refugees.

Meanwhile, at home in the United States, divisions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have torn apart our communities.

Antisemitism has exploded, and a cultural shift is required to ensure antisemitism doesn’t become normalized.

Simultaneously, Trump has used antisemitism as an excuse to crack down on free speech, eviscerate elite colleges, and deport immigrants. As a country, we must be vigilant to protect our First Amendment rights, our tradition of educational independence, and the rights of immigrants to due process.

In short, it will take years of commitment and hard work by the Palestinians, Israelis, international nonprofits, and world nations to turn the end of active conflict into a sustainable peace. And it will take soul-searching within American campuses and communities to repair the fissures in our own national psyche.

So if the end of the conflict is actually near, let’s take a moment to breathe a sigh of relief, mourn the war dead, and commit to helping Israelis and Palestinians heal from national trauma. Then let’s get to work.

ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/07/opinion/gaza-hamas-israel-peace/