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Fifty-four years ago this month, former President John F. Kennedy delivered the Strategy of Peace, a powerful address that captured Americas indispensable leadership at the height of the Cold War. Kennedy knew that our country could not guard against the Soviet Union alone, for he believed that genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts.

Incredibly, the man who now leads the United States seems to find himself locked in an alarming and perilous embrace with the Russian government. These ties threaten to weaken a system of alliances that have held Russiaand countless other threats to the international communityat bay since the conclusion of the Second World War.

Watergate Lawyer: I Witnessed Nixon's Downfalland I've Got a Warning for Trump

In his Senate testimony two weeks ago, former FBI Director James Comey affirmed a disturbing suspicion: that Donald Trump first undermined Comey, by leaning on him to drop his investigation of former National Security-Adviser Michael Flynn, and then removed him from his post. Since then, events have escalated at a dizzying pace: Trump accused Comey of lying under oath about their interactions earlier this year, even as he cheered Comeys public assertion that the president wasnt under FBI investigation. Soon, reports emerged that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating obstruction-of-justice allegations against the presidentrevelations Trump was none too happy about. And all the while, rumors have continued to swirl that Trump may fire both Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, whos overseeing the special counsel inquiry.

But Trumps reckless handling of these events should not distract from a startling reality: As the president faces accusations of colluding with the Russians during last years campaign, his policies in office have aligned almost perfectly with the Kremlins goals. If Moscow wanted its interference in Americas election to yield dividends, it could hardly have hoped for more.

Just as importantly, while Trump has expressed concern over the cloud the Russia investigation generated, he has seemed indifferent overall to Russias direct attempts to interfere with the American democratic process. According to Comeys testimony, Trump never asked him about the meddling, or how to prevent similar interference in the future. Not once.

Trump himself has seemingly courted the favor of Russian President Vladimir Putin since the 2016 presidential campaign. Hes repeatedly praised Putins leadership, refused to condemn Russian efforts to disrupt the U.S. system of free elections, and openly encouraged Russian hacking of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Fridays explosive report from The Washington Post confirmed that Putin was deeply and directly involved in an operation to hurt Clintons candidacy and help elect Trump.

Whats more, in every way he can, Trump has deferred to Russia on matters of foreign policy. After Russian forces deployed their hacking tools during the recent French presidential election, Trump invited Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the White House and failed to repudiate the attack against a vital American ally. Instead, during his meeting with Lavrov, Trump divulged highly sensitive classified information provided by Israel, another crucial U.S. partner. (That May 10 meeting also came a day after Trump removed Comey, who was leading the inquiries into collusion; Trump told the Russians that the directors dismissal had alleviated great pressure on him.) Even more recently, the Trump administration has reportedly taken steps to return two diplomatic compounds that former President Barack Obama stripped from Russia following its actions during last years election.

To make matters worse, Trump has done far more than just extend open arms toward the Russian government. He wavered on the United States commitment to defend its fellow members of NATO; his aides have reportedly tried to undermine the European Union; and he himself has alienated key partners by lashing out at individual leaders and pulling out of the Paris Agreement.

When Americans step back and consider this stunning series of actions, they should be left with unsettling questions: What are Donald Trumps reasons for doing this? What exactly does he have to hide?

In the Strategy of Peace, Kennedy described his belief that peace must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. We must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together.

Today, it is the responsibility of this generation of Americans to help preserve international peace, to honor the allies who have stood by their side for decades, and to maintain the United States place as the leader of the free world.

The American system of checks and balances is only as strong as the leaders who have the character and courage to enforce them. Unless they denounce and punish any attempt to interfere with the special counsels investigation, demand accountability from the administration, and put their duty to their country over their duty to any political party, those checks and balances wont protect Americas democracy.

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The Kremlin's Election Meddling Is Paying Off - The Atlantic

The New York Public Theaters presentation of William Shakespeares 400-year-old play, Julius Caesar was embroiled in controversy this month, with protests over a choice to costume the titular character as President Donald Trump. This wardrobe decision was controversial because senators plot to stab Caesar to death in the play.

Now that this run of Julius Caesar has come to an end, actor Corey Stoll has written a piece for Vulture about what it was like to star in the play. Stoll had the role of Marcus Brutus, a reluctant assassin of Caesar.

Although the play is explicitly about the pitfalls of assassination, Stoll wrote that following through with the play amid the protest eventually felt like a contribution to the resistance. These days, that term is loaded to evoke the phrase #resist which refers to a rallying cry against Trump.

The protesters never shut us down, but we had to fight each night to make sure they did not distort the story we were telling, wrote Stoll in the piece that was published Friday. At that moment, watching my castmates hold their performances together, it occurred to me that this is resistance.

Watch video of two protestors disrupting a performance:

Stoll, who memorably played an eventually murdered politician in the first season of House of Cards, said that he had no idea this production would portray Trump so explicitly before signing on to the role.

Stoll was frustrated by the choice at first, as he feared involving Trump would overshadow the rest of the performance.

A passage from Stolls piece:

When I signed on to play the reluctant assassin Marcus Brutus in this production, I didnt know Caesar would be an explicit avatar for President Trump. I suspected that an American audience in 2017 might see aspects of him in the character, a democratically elected leader with autocratic tendencies. I did not think anyone would see it as an endorsement of violence against him. The play makes it clear that Caesars murder, which occurs midway through the play, is ruinous for Brutus and his co-conspirators, and for democracy itself ...

After four weeks in the rehearsal room, we moved to the theater and I saw Caesars Trump-like costume and wig for the first time. I was disappointed by the literal design choice. I had little fear of offending people, but I worried that the nuanced character work we had done in the rehearsal room would get lost in what could seem like a Saturday Night Live skit. I was right and wrong.

chudakov2 via Getty Images

After the presidents eldest child,Donald Trump Jr., blamed this production for the actions of the gunman who fired on a baseball team made up of Republican congressmen, Stoll began to fear for his own life.

Like most Americans, I was saddened and horrified, but when the presidents son and others blamed us for the violence, I became scared, wrote Stoll.

The production was plagued with disruptions from protestors, but fortunately had none that caused physically critical harm.

Read the whole piece at Vulture.

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'Julius Caesar' Star Considered The Play To Be Donald Trump 'Resistance' - HuffPost

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Just in time for the renewed, fast-tempo debate over health care in Washington, public health researchers at Georgia State University have produced a pair of studies that help underline just whats at stake.

The more provocative of the two papers has intriguing national implications: In large swaths of the United States, swing areas that handed the presidency to Donald Trump last year, a white womans chances of dying from breast cancer have skyrocketed.

One common factor linking politics and womens health is suggested but unproven: a fatalistic despair that better times will ever come.

First, some background.

After much secrecy, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Thursday unveiled the Senate version of the Republican attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. There are multiple differences that are still being analyzed, but the Senate plan walks much the same path as the one passed by House Republicans in May.

Protections for those with pre-existing conditions would be weakened. Government-assisted coverage for those with lower incomes would shrink and eventually be subject to a cap.

Obamacare had put us on the road to health care as a right, paid for by the wealthy. The current Republican effort would return us closer to the status quo ante. A safety net would remain in place to help the most abjectly poor, but the rest of us would again have to prove ourselves economically worthy of good health.

Rural Georgia would continue to be a desert of health care, and thus economic development. Earl Rogers, a good Republican and president of the Georgia Hospital Association, referred to the proposed Senate cuts to Medicaid as devastating.

Which brings us to that first study by GSUs School of Public Health. A team led by Lia Scott has discovered a cluster of an aggressive form of breast cancer in South Georgia. Its one of four in the nation. Inflammatory breast cancer cant be detected through mammograms and thus is often caught only in its late stages.

African-American women are at greater risk. Poverty may lie at the root of the situation. In that sense, the cluster fits a well-worn stereotype of breast cancer victims.

It is the second GSU study that shatters the breast cancer clich. Lee Rivers Mobley, the lead author, also had a hand in the first study.

The science of public health is the study of disease and treatment outcomes in community settings. Mobleys team realized that while many researchers had examined the health care access made available to minorities in largely minority neighborhoods, something was missing.

Mobley looked at hyper-segregated communities in which 90 percent or more of the residents are white. Few of them are in the South. We are a racial jambalaya that way. Rather, the 522 counties in 40 states that Mobley looked at stretch from the tip of Maine, run through Appalachia, then shift to the upper Midwest and West.

These arent poverty-stricken counties far from it. But neither are they home to big cities.

What Mobley has found turns breast cancer assumptions upside down.

If you just look at someones race or ethnicity, the white person is less likely to be diagnosed late, she said. But if they live in one of these hyper-segregated communities, theyre more likely to be diagnosed late.

And thus more likely to die from the disease.

Im really wondering, what is it about the lifestyle of these females in these highly segregated white communities that is detrimental to their health? Mobley said.

Mobley isnt a student of politics, but I am. So let me be the one to say that, Southern states aside, her map of highly segregated white communities in the U.S. looks very much like the coalition of Rust Belt states that Trump united last year to win the White House.

Source: Georgia State University School of Public Health

One year before Trumps victory, two Princeton University economists completed a study, since updated, that showed mortality rates among Americans of all racial and ethnic backgrounds and most age groups in healthy decline.

The study found only one exception, a group in which deaths by suicide, alcohol, drug poisoning and liver disease were increasing at a rate unseen anywhere else in the world.

That group: middle-age white Americans whose educations went no further than high school and thus were most likely to be displaced by automation or watch their jobs moved overseas. People who thought they had nothing more to lose became the backbone of the Trump electorate. When Trump said, Make America great again, they were his primary audience.

In an interview, Mobley said more research is needed to figure out why so many of these women are dying of breast cancer. Going in on the ground is expensive, but its really the only way to know whats going on, she said.

But her teams paper hints that a resigned attitude toward breast cancer and its treatment may be just one more symptom of death by despair. It is peculiarly limited to white communities. In highly segregated Asian communities, for instance, residents have lower instances of late-stage breast cancer diagnoses.

The GSU paper identified one theory worth exploring:

In recent decades, whites have gained less relative to their parents while minorities have gained more, which has eroded the relative position of whites, and may explain why whites, who actually have more in the U.S. than minority groups, may feel that they are losing ground.

This sense of pessimism can lead to despair and a sense of failure, which can manifest in unhealthy behaviors and a fatalistic attitude.

Thats just a theory. But its also a solid reminder that health care, economic development, politics and individual self-worth are all of a piece. Theyre all tied together.

The question is whether these pockets of despair, this deep well of Trump support, will be helped by the Obamacare repeal measure that now sits in the U.S. Senate. One suspects not.

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A new health care debate, Donald Trump, and a spike in breast cancer deaths - Atlanta Journal Constitution (blog)

While in Russia, Stephen Colbert sent a tweet to President Donald Trump and announced he was considering a White House run.

"I am here to announce that I am considering a run for President in 2020, and I thought it would be better to cut out the middle man and just tell the Russians myself," Colbert said on the Russian late-night show Evening Urgant on Friday.

As the American TV host continued poking fun at allegations that President Trump's campaign may have colluded with Russia , Colbert added, "If anyone would like to work on my campaign, in an unofficial capacity, please just let me know."

Russian host Ivan Urgant joined in on the fun saying, "Its a pleasure to drink with the future U.S. President. To you, Stephen. I wish you luck. We will do everything we can so you become President."

Colbert tweeted a picture of himself in Russia to the President Thursday with the caption, "Don't worry, Mr. President. I'm in Russia. If the 'tapes' exist , I'll bring you back a copy!"

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Stephen Colbert Tweets at Donald Trump and Mulls 2020 Run - TIME

Qatar is home to the USs largest military base in the Middle East and a long-time US ally. Since its Gulf neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia, imposed a blockade two weeks ago, president Donald Trump has enthusiastically praised the blockade and attacked Qatarcontradicting the messages from his own Defense Department, State Department, and Senate Republicans. His ex-ambassador to Qatar, who abruptly stepped down last week, this week took to Twitter to cheer the State Department for chiding the Saudis.

That same day, Trump chastised Chinas attempts to rein in North Korea, tweeting that it had not worked out. That must have made for an uncomfortable meeting, just hours later, between top Chinese defense officials and diplomats and the US secretaries of State, Rex Tillerson, and Defense, James Mattis.

US foreign policy experts who spoke to Quartz, many of whom work or worked in the National Security Council, State Department, or Pentagon in the past, say theyve rarely seen such a wide-open divide between what a US president is saying and long-stated US government agenda, or between the president and his own top policy and security advisors. It looks like we have two governments at the moment, said Edward Goldberg, a professor at New York Universitys Center For Global Affairs, and author of The Joint Ventured Nation: Why America Needs A New Foreign Policy.

Aside from contradicting his own officials, Trump has made a habit of bypassing them. This week his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and the Trump Organizations former legal counsel are in Israel for peace talks with Israeli and Palestinian authoritiescutting out the State Department and its decades of experience. Kushner will brief Trump, Tillerson, and national security advisor HR McMaster on his return, according to the White House. During Trumps last visit to the Middle East, Kushner sat in on a meeting with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, while McMaster was left outside, reportedly for hours.

White House officials seem to have given up trying to reconcile the conflicting approaches. Asked on Air Force One on June 21 how the presidents tweets affected Mattis and Tillersons meeting with Chinese officials, a spokeswoman had only this enigmatic response: The president is not going to project his strategy. And tweets speak for themselves. While Trump has focused on a few hot spots, the result is that the bureaucrats and generals are running much of US foreign policy.

Traditionally, the National Security Council (NSC) is supposed to serve as the presidents chief advisory body on foreign policy, funneling information from State, Defense, and intelligence agencies into a cohesive action plan. Some tensions are normal; in the Barack Obama administration, friction between the Oval Office, NSC, State, and Defense ran high over how to respond to ISIL and the Russian invasion of Crimea, among other topics.

But this time is different. Mattis, McMaster, and usually Tillerson are increasingly united around traditional US policy goals, as in Qatar. Trump, backed by a tiny group of personal confidantes with no foreign-policy experience, including Steve Bannon and Kusher, is disregarding them.

Not only are officials from these agencies openly contradicting the president; more quietly, some are recommending that his public statements be ignored. US foreign policy still works fine if the international community realizes they dont have to react to every Trump tweet, explained one defense department official, who asked not to be named.

The message to the rest of the world is that it is not a systematic policy development process, said Stephen Biddle, a defense policy expert at the Council of Foreign Relations and a former advisor to the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is poorly managed, poorly coordinated, and is going to be a challenge for any US embassy to try to understand and explain. You cant take a garden variety statement from the president or the secretary of State as US policy, said Biddle.

In the worst case, this confusion could cause the US to bumble into a war. We might find ourselves in a major military conflict with Assad, Iran, or Russia, without knowing why, exactly, or what US interests are, said Ilan Goldenberg, a director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, and a former State Department chief of staff.

Some military heads of command have already had a conversation about what to do if Trump gives an order they cant comply with, said a former National Security Agency analyst who still consults for the US government, citing direct conversations with military agency personnel. If it gets to a point beyond their comfort level, theyre well trained by the military not to disobey, said the defense official. Instead, expect the military leaders to just say Im out.

Kushners close relationship with Saudi prince Mohammad bin Salman, the 31-year old who has just been named successor to the aging King Salman, has shaped Trumps embrace of Saudi Arabia, analysts say. He has also helped moderate the presidents views on China. Because he has the presidents ear at any time, his influence has proven hard to counteract. Kushner has proven tough to work around, one lobbyist in DC with foreign clients said.

But Kushners foreign-policy inexperience is a risk for the situation now developing in the Middle East. Its much more dangerous than other previous spats, said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. What the Saudi royal family is doing is arguing whether the ruling family of Qatar has legitimacy, he said. If the Saudis want to push it all the way to its logical end, this could become a very dangerous crisis in the Gulf.

Moreover, the special prosecutor investigating the Trump campaigns possible ties to Russian election hacking is now investigating Kushners business dealings. If he becomes a bigger focus of the probe his star, and his influence, is likely to fade.

One Washington, DC consultant to Middle East governments compares Trumps stance on Qatar to a car with no driver but only a set of brakesin the form of State, Defense, and the NSC. The brakes are all that is stopping the tensions around Qatar turning into an all-out war against a US ally.

One emerging outcome of this is that foreign policy in general is increasingly under the control of the military. Mattis has a tremendous amount of autonomy, billions of dollars of weaponry at his disposal, and political capital, said Goldenberg. He can make decisions and back them up with real action. In particular, Mattis has been given full responsibility for troop levels in Afghanistan, normally something the president decides.

Described as both deeply thoughtful and extremely aggressive, Mattis earned a fearsome reputation for leading Marine troops in the bloody 2004 attack on Fallujah, but said last year he thought the Iraq war was a strategic mistake. Since taking the Defense job, he has urged for the US to provide more military support for anti-Iranian forces (paywall) in Yemen, and has armed Syrian Kurdish fighters.

McMaster, himself a general with experience in the Middle East and Afghanistan, has ex-Army officials Derek Harvey and Joel Rayburn on his team, giving even more heft to the military point of view. In contrast, Tillerson, as a civilian voice on foreign policy, is hampered by running a department with large numbers of senior posts and ambassadorships still unfilled, while trying to defend its budget, which Trump has targeted for nearly 30% cuts.

Taken together, the team is smart and well-respected, said Goldenberg. But, sometimes things cant be figured out with a military solution, he said. Sometimes they are grayer and murkier and uglier than good guys and bad guys.

A White House spokesman, Michael Short said that questions about a disconnect between the presidents words and the State and Defense departments actions were nebulous claims. Trump and Tillerson, he said, have both stated publicly that there are steps that Qatar needs to take to address concerns about support for terrorists and extremists. Given the high stakes involved, the United States is disappointed that this dispute between our partners in the Gulf has not been resolved.

The State Department is still pointing to a diplomatic solution. The president and the secretary both want to see the Qatar dispute resolved quickly, one official said. Through the secretarys phone calls and meetings, he believes it can be resolved.

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Under Trump, US foreign policy is increasingly being left to the generals - Quartz