Updating the status of national policies discussed here in the last 12 months

By Herbert Rothschild

Every week I have the privilege of writing about what I care about, and my concerns aren’t exhausted once the columns are published. Yours, I hope, aren’t exhausted either. So, from time to time I devote a column to updates on subjects I’ve treated previously. Today’s is such a column.

I’ll begin with two things I’m glad President Donald Trump did. One regards the de minimis rules on packages shipped from abroad to the U.S., the subject of my column on Feb. 27. For decades, packages valued at less than a certain dollar amount had been exempt from duties and inspection. President Barack Obama unwisely raised the maximum from $200 to $800, which led to a huge increase in such shipments — from 255 million packages in 2016 valued at $9.2 billion to 1.3 billion packages in 2024 valued at more than $60 billion. This policy helped foreign retailers and manufacturers undercut domestic firms and deprived the U.S. of tariff revenues. It also was a main conduit for fentanyl.

Beginning today, all packages from China will be inspected and subject to duties. The White House announced the policy change on April 2. It might have been better to revise the de minimis rules for all countries, but China accounted for two-thirds of shipments covered by the policy, so the change will have a major impact for the better.

Regarding the second good thing Trump did — refusing to help Israel bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities — I can only give him a one-handed clap. It would have been dreadful had he done otherwise. Further, he is mainly to blame for Iran’s still having a nuclear weapons capability. During his first term he rescinded our participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which Iran entered in 2015 with China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. Under that agreement, effectively monitored by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran pledged not to enrich uranium beyond about 20% U-235; a weapons-grade mix is at least 90% U-235.

The other villain in that story was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He worked hard to scuttle the JCPOA both before and after Obama signed it. One might wonder why he did that, since Israel is Iran’s most obvious military antagonist. The answer, there’s good reason to believe, is that Netanyahu actually wants a war with Iran, but he needs the U.S. as his partner. I wrote about that in a column entitled “Netanyahu keeps pushing the U.S. to attack Iran,” published on Aug. 22. Israel can’t bomb Iran if the U.S. won’t refuel Israel’s planes in midflight. Thus far, that is the only requested assistance to Israel’s war making that Trump has refused to provide.

Here is an update on another U.S. obeisance to Israel. I published a column on Jan. 16 about a congressional attack on the International Criminal Court because it had issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and for Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister during the first phase of the war on Gaza. Congress had applauded the court when it charged Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin with war crimes, but not when it charged our friends with similar offenses. The Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, HR 23, passed the U.S. House 243 to 140, which meant that AIPAC, Israel’s powerful lobby, secured the votes of many Democratic members of Congress as well as Republicans.

When HR 23 went to the Senate, however, Israel and AIPAC didn’t fare as well. On Jan. 28, the bill fell seven votes short of overcoming a threatened filibuster. All but two Democrats — John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who voted yes, and Jon Ossoff of Georgia, who didn’t vote — voted no. Senators like Chuck Schumer and Oregon’s Ron Wyden, who usually toe the AIPAC line, were among them. The cloture vote could come up again, but passage is unlikely.

On May 23, I wrote a column on the appalling injustice of the Indian boarding schools. Between 1819 and 1969, the U.S. ran or supported 408 boarding schools designed to eradicate Native American identity. Children were forcibly removed from their families and put in schools often hundreds of miles away, There, they were subjected to rigid, often violent discipline to “kill the Indian in him, and save the man,” as Brig. Gen. Richard Henry Pratt, head of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, put it. Often, they died simultaneously. Mass graves have been discovered on the sites of some former schools.

At the time I wrote, there was legislation pending in Congress called the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act. Numbered S 1723 in the Senate and HR 7227 in the House, the commission would investigate the impacts and ongoing effects of the Indian boarding schools. S 1723 passed by voice vote in December, but after HR 7227 passed the relevant committees in the House, it didn’t come to a floor votes before the 118th Congress adjourned sine die.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, filed a similar bill in the current Congress on Feb. 26. On March 5, S 761 was unanimously approved by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. It’s likely to pass the Senate again. The challenge will be getting a companion bill through the House. Those to whom the now-customary land acknowledgements have come to sound merely performative might find it meaningful to promote passage of the legislation. Our two U.S. senators are already on board. So, U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz should be our focus. Urge him to co-sponsor a House version of S 761, the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act.

Last, an update on military spending in the budget currently working its way through Congress. The amount that will go to the military in fiscal 2026 (Oct. 1, 2025 through Sept. 30, 2026) is still in flux. It may exceed $1 trillion. Meanwhile, all the essential domestic programs such as health and education that Congress funds each year are slated for big cuts.

In my column on April 18, I used the best data I could access to project that military spending will account for 50% of what Congress has the discretion to fund and domestic programs only 38%. I regret to say that the spread may be even wider as Washington continues to make war on the American people.

Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear Fridays. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at herbertrothschild6839@gmail.com.