President Trump

Late to the No Kings Day 3.0 protest in Portland as war rages in the Middle East

(Click on each photo to see a larger image.)

Today, March 28, 2026, marked the likely largest day of protest ever in the United States. No Kings Day, 3.0, took place in over 3,000 locations and all 50 states, U.S. territories, and globally. The day of protests, all over, was a defiant rejection of authoritarianism represented by President Donald Trump and a call a restoration of American democracy.

I arrived late to the protest in downtown Portland, Oregon, my current home. I spent about an hour and left, a bit deflated. I appeared to have missed the main events at midday.

I mostly focus on weekly protest events against the illegal acts by this administration, like the four-week-old illegal war on Iran, the illegal blockade of Cuba, efforts to end voting rights with dangerous voter suppression bill called the SAVE America Act now in the Senate, and dozens of other destructive, corrupt, authoritarian, and fascist acts of this administration and its senior officials like the use of modern-day concentration camps housing unlawfully arrested persons.

It’s a dangerous time too. The Strait of Hormuz remains mostly closed to marine traffic, as we entered in the fourth week of the horrific war on Iran, launched without lawful justification and without constitutional authority by this dangerous administration, with Israel. This is creating global economic disruption, spikes in global energy prices, and disruption to the flow of raw materials like fertilizer that help feeds the world. There is no end in sight.

The war is also far more dangerous than Americans are being told by this administration and the corporate and legacy media in the United States.

There was almost no coverage of a shocking drone “attack” on the Barksdale U.S. Airbase, in Louisiana, the week of March 9, 2025, that U.S. media mostly ignored. The incident was alarming for its implications to a strategic U.S. military base and the possible level of sophistication that points to a national actor, possibly China. News broke March 22, 2026. There were multiple waves of drone infiltration over several days, reports the Asia Times.

“The attack disrupted B-52H aircraft launches in support of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. It is the first time a US airbase was temporarily put out of operation in wartime, something that never happened even in World War II,” reported the Asia Times. “Each wave forced the Air Force to halt operations and send its personnel to shelters. Barksdale is the command hub of the US Air Force Global Strike Command.”

Also in March, reports have emerged of two separate missile strikes on the Saudi Prince Sultan Airbase, in mid-March and again on March 27, 2026. In the first attack reported on March 14, 2026, five large aviation refueling aircraft, KC-135s, were hit or damaged, and possibly three more KC-135 refueling aircraft were destroyed in the second strike at the same base, which injured 12 U.S. service personnel. Again, U.S. media coverage was apparently suppressed by corporate media.

However, NBC News reported on March 28, 2026, possible involvement of Russia in the latest Iranian attack on Prince Sultan Airbase a day earlier: “Russia took satellite images of a U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia three times in the days before Iran attacked the site and wounded American troops, according to a summary of Ukrainian intelligence shared with NBC News by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.”

All of these developments happened as the United States, per the direction of the Trump administration, is reportedly planning to stage up to 10,000 more troops in the Middle East, for possible use for a direct land-based attack on Iran. There is no clarity how the belligerents will bring hostilities to an end.

Greenlanders: Nobody’s Fools
This is my friend, Lars, who I had the great pleasure of meeting in 1998 in Sisimiut, Greenland. He took me seal hunting with his family, at a fjord just north of the coastal city. I did this trip with his brother and father.

This past week, from March 23 to 28, 2025, the world again saw Greenland and Greenlanders at the center of a global security debate if the United States could assert control of Greenland, beyond longstanding and existing security arrangements that have seen U.S. military on the island continuously since World War II.

After the snow settled, one outcome was clear: Greenlanders are nobody’s fools.

The mostly ethnical Inuit population have called the more than 830,000-square-mile arctic island, the world’s largest, their home for nearly 5,000 years. Today, Greenlanders number about 57,000 residents, of which nearly 90 percent claim ethnic Inuit identity.

They are smart, resilient, and fiercely grounded in their identity as descendants for nearly five millennia of their homeland, what they call Kalaallit Nunaat in their Greenlandic language.

They are not pawns, patsies, or stupid.

I can say this based on my own experience, having befriended many residents there during my visits in 1998, 1999, and 2000. During my trips now more than a quarter century ago, I had lively discussions with Greenlanders who shared divergent views of becoming independent or staying aligned under semiautonomous status with Denmark.

What is clear is that Greenlanders made abundantly clear to the world they are opposed to coming under greater military and political control of the United States, as announced by the Trump administration.

(See my full story on the significance of Trump administration’s plan to take full control of Greenland on my website.)