RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Trump’s Endgame: It’s Not What He Thinks It Is by Marjorie Arons Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog.

A week into Operation Epic Fury, the administration’s stated objectives have shifted by the hour and by the speaker: eliminate the nuclear program, roll back ballistic missiles, defang the proxies, respond to Israeli pressure, achieve regime change. The timeline is “four weeks or more,” with hints of ground troops “if necessary.” What constitutes a win has never been defined. But on one point, Trump has finally been specific. He told CNN this week that Iran would work out “like Venezuela.” He means it as a promise. It reads more like a warning.

The Venezuela he is describing is not the Venezuela of democratic transition. The “wonderful leader doing a fantastic job” he has praised by name is Delcy Rodríguez — Nicolás Maduro’s former vice president, a loyalist of the Chavez revolution who was sanctioned by both the United States and the European Union before U.S. military intervention made her Venezuela’s interim president. She told NBC News as recently as last month that Maduro remains the legitimate president of the country she now runs. She cooperates because Trump made the alternative explicit: “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” This is mob language. The democratic opposition — the figures who actually fought Maduro, who won the moral as well as arguably the electoral argument — were shunted aside. They lacked, Trump said, the “support to govern.”

This is the model. Remove the hostile leader. Install a compliant insider from within the existing system. Extract concessions. Normalize. Declare victory. Trump shockingly confirmed his religious flexibility when asked about Iran’s next government: “I don’t mind religious leaders. I deal with a lot of religious leaders and they are fantastic.” A secular democracy, it turns out, is optional.

The problem is that Iran is not Venezuela, and the conditions that make managed substitution even minimally workable there do not exist here. Venezuela had a single authoritarian whose removal created a political opening, however imperfect. Iran has a layered institutional architecture – a deep state, if you will – that was specifically designed to survive the loss of any individual. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the Iranian economy. The militia networks, the conventional armed forces, the clerical establishment — these are not a support structure for one man. There are, as yet, no signs of fracture among Iran’s security forces. Leaders at the top are replaced as easily as the head of a hydra.

Meanwhile, the opposition that would need to fill any vacuum is, in the blunt assessment of Foreign Affairs, “an archipelago of political islands divided by geography, generation, ideology, and exposure to repression.” The organized political opposition was largely dismantled after the 2009 Green Movement crackdown. What remains is decentralized, leaderless, and profoundly fragmented. Protest waves in 2019, 2022, and again in 2025-2026 — the last suppressed with catastrophic violence, with credible estimates of those killed reaching into the tens of thousands — have been spontaneous and broad but strategically incoherent.

Ethnic minority movements (such as the Kurds) have genuine organizational capacity but want decentralization and autonomy that no successor central government, American-backed or otherwise, is likely to grant. The exiled figures, including Reza Pahlavi, the former Shah’s son, have diaspora visibility and limited demonstrated domestic traction. There is no cohesive democratic alternative waiting in the wings. There was none in Iraq in 2003 either.

Last week, he told the Iranian people with a flourish, “the hour of freedom is at hand. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” Trump now says he wants to be involved in choosing Khamenei’s successor.

The United States has repeatedly demonstrated that it knows how to destroy regimes. Successful transitions are a different matter. Iraq was supposed to be regime change without nation-building — a welcome reception, rapid power transfer to exiles, early elections, troops home by summer. What followed was insurgency, sectarian fragmentation, and the expansion of Iranian influence across the Arab world. Iran is physically larger than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, with a population of 92 million, second only to Egypt in the region. The scale of what “next” means has not been addressed because it may not have been seriously considered.

There is a version of this that Trump can call a win without resolving any of it. Find an acceptable cleric or general from within the existing system who will make the right noises about peace with Israel and cooperation with Washington. Recognize him. Ease the strikes. Claim the nuclear threat is gone and the proxies are defanged. Let oil prices fall. Tell the base there will be no forever war. Meet Xi at the end of the month with something he can call victory.

Whether that settlement holds — whether a leadership installed under American military duress retains the domestic legitimacy to govern a traumatized and furious population, whether the IRGC accepts a new arrangement that threatens its economic empire, whether the regional proxy networks simply reconstitute under new management — these are questions the Venezuela approach does not answer. They are questions that will be answered eventually, at a cost that will not be borne primarily by Americans.

Ayatollah Khamanei’s Iran was the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism. No tears should be shed for his demise. The Iranians who spent January in the streets, who were killed in numbers that may never be fully counted, were not fighting for a friendlier theocrat who will negotiate oil contracts with Washington. They know what the Islamic Republic is. They have been living under it. What the Venezuela template offers them is the same bargain the United States has offered oppressed populations before: your aspirations are a logistical inconvenience. We have a deal to close.

Trump, eager for quick results, risks the quagmire he has railed against his entire political life. The questions he hasn’t answered beget questions he hasn’t even cared to ask.This is not a time for magical thinking.

Lowell Politics: March 8, 2026

The Lowell City Council met on Tuesday night (March 3, 2026). The meeting was dominated by a discussion of a joint motion by Councilors Corey Robinson and Rita Mercier requesting the city manager to “provide the city council with a detailed report on a pathway to secure independent legal counsel of our own choosing to review and advise concerns the council may have.” In the end, the motion passed by a large margin, but only because it requested a report on how to do it. The question of whether the council may hire an independent attorney is more divisive and will be fought out when the report comes back.

As for the “legality” of this request, clearly the council cannot hire a city employee beyond the city manager, the city clerk, and the city auditor, but this move does not try to hire a new city employee. Instead, it seeks what is essentially a consultant to advise the council. Procedurally, the council might request the city manager to issue a request for proposals for private legal work and then make the person or law firm so hired respond to the council. I don’t think that passes strict scrutiny under the limits of the Plan E form of government, but this council has freely blurred those limits before, and the city manager has chosen to acquiesce rather than take a firm stand in opposition and force the issue. The fact that other communities may have done this previously isn’t dispositive since if no one chooses to enforce a law, that precedent doesn’t make it legal or proper.

Setting aside the question of its legality, I don’t think this is a good idea for a variety of reasons. Hiring an independent attorney to advise the council is an issue that arises repeatedly, most often when the city solicitor renders an opinion that a block of councilors doesn’t like. In seeking outside counsel, they are looking for permission to do what they want to do in the first place even if that goes against the advice of the city’s lawyer. (The current trigger is the lease for the senior center.)

Legal issues are rarely black and white. This is my fortieth year as an attorney in Massachusetts and through those four decades my most frequent response to legal questions is, “it depends,” because so many variables come into play. The primary job of a lawyer is to be an advocate, to take a side and vigorously argue that side. In the setting of a trial, that zealous advocacy by the opposing sides allows the impartial tribunal – the judge or the jury – to reach the best decision. Because that’s the nature of the profession, it will be easy for the city council to find someone to render an opinion different than the city solicitor’s. But what then? The current city solicitor has always been clear that the council can do whatever it wants notwithstanding his legal advice, so this seems more about seeking political cover for councilors than anything else.

Another objection I have is a practical one: who gives the outside attorney direction? The mayor? A subcommittee of the council? A majority of the council? Or will this become 1-800-Dial-a-Lawyer every time a new idea pops into the head of a councilor? Knowing how much lawyers charge, that could get very expensive for the taxpayers of Lowell, especially considering that we are already paying for seven lawyers in the city solicitor’s office.

Back in 2008 when some newly elected city councilors began criticizing then City Manager Bernie Lynch for “failing to communicate” with councilors, Lynch presciently observed that such complaints are often a pretext for replacing a city manager. In that case, Lynch lasted another six years while the complaining councilors were gone in the next election.

In the present case, this quest for an outside lawyer could be a proxy for dissatisfaction with City Manager Tom Golden. He remains very popular so rather than firing him, which is what Plan E empowers city councilors to do, councilors express their dissatisfaction in more subtle ways.

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Last week I promised to revisit the February 24, 2026, city council meeting to discuss a couple of things. One was a joint motion by Councilor Belinda Juran and Mayor Erik Gitschier requesting the city manager “ask city solicitor to meet with rules/election subcommittee, as a follow-up to the November 19, 2024, rules subcommittee meeting, to discuss status, next steps and possible voting methods for the potential amendment of the city’s consent decree to allow the voters to elect the mayor.”

This is another recurring issue for the city council. Since the adoption of Plan E in the 1940s, the mayor of Lowell has been elected by the newly elected council by majority vote at the start of each term. Since then, the selection of a mayor has often been a divisive exercise that shatters the good feelings of the new council before it even takes office. In the aftermath of such an experience, some councilors would understandably feel, “there’s got to be a better way to do this.”

Allowing the voters to elect the mayor has come up before. The most recent proposal would allow anyone running for city council, either at large or in a district, to simultaneously run for mayor. Whoever won the mayor’s race would be the mayor, provided they also won a seat on the council.

This proposal was put to the voters in 2021 in a nonbinding referendum. The Yes side won overwhelmingly with 7,429 votes to 2,411 voting No. Of course, in that election, only 12,145 of 67,867 registered voters participated, so when councilors today say a “majority” supported this, it would be more accurate to say that a majority of the minority who vote in city elections support it. We don’t know what the vast majority of registered voters think about this issue because they didn’t vote on this referendum.

And that’s where the benign sounding “let the people elect the mayor” collides with the spirit of the voting rights lawsuit that led to the current hybrid method of electing councilors. The premise of that lawsuit was that in an all–at large system, a single neighborhood, Belvidere, decided the outcome of the election. The evidence must have supported that claim because the city settled the lawsuit and entered a consent decree granting the US District Court jurisdiction over future changes to the city’s election procedures.

The office of mayor is an important post in Lowell. The mayor automatically becomes a voting member of the school committee; chairs all council and school committee meetings; appoints all subcommittees of both bodies; and represents the city at public functions. A system that elects the mayor by a citywide vote would again be dominated by residents of that single neighborhood, an outcome that seems in conflict with the consent decree. Thus, a proposal dressed up as “letting the people decide” would instead represent backsliding to a less representative, less inclusive system.

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Some very good news from the February 24, 2026, council meeting is that MassDevelopment has designated Lowell’s Cambodia Town as a new Transformative Development Initiative (TDI) district.

Here’s how MassDevelopment describes the TDI program:

We commit intensive resources to a district for a defined time—simultaneously working on real estate development, small business stability and growth, arts, and cultural amenities, placemaking, and targeted technical assistance and strategic planning. This work is laid on a platform of community engagement and partnership development; we require that cities assemble a cross-sector partnership to apply in the first place, and over the course of the program we work to make the partnership more representative of the neighborhood and use it as a platform to grow sustaining, working relationships.

This is a very competitive process, and this is Lowell’s second TDI with the Acre having won that designation in 2022. It’s a three-year program so just as that one is coming to an end, this new one will begin. Much of the TDI work happens under the radar of public notice, but it’s critically important work done at the neighborhood level that yields great results for residents and business owners.

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Congratulations to Vanna Howard, our new state senator. In Tuesday’s special election (March 3, 2026), she defeated Republican Sam Meas and unenrolled candidate Joe Espinola. Here are the unofficial results with the district and then each community’s numbers, shown in order of finish:

Districtwide:
Howard – 4276
Meas – 1693
Espinola – 1370

Lowell
Howard – 2519
Meas – 545
Espinola – 504

Dracut
Espinola – 627
Howard – 485
Meas – 450

Pepperell
Howard – 645
Meas – 332
Espinola – 67

Tyngsborough
Howard – 382
Meas – 226
Espinola – 141

Dunstable
Howard – 245
Meas – 140
Espinola – 31

Because the senate seat is now vacant, I assume she will be sworn in as soon as the vote is made official after which she’ll immediately launch her reelection campaign since she’ll be on the ballot again this fall.

When Howard takes office as a state senator, she will resign her seat as state representative. There’s not enough time for another special election so that seat will be vacant until November. And because State Representaitve Rodney Elliott recently announced he would not seek reelection, that creates a second open state representative seat in Lowell which together should attract more candidates and greater interest among voters.

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The Pollard Memorial Library Foundation recently announced that submissions are now open for the 2026 Elinor Lipman Award for Writing. Born and raised in Lowell, Lipman is a prolific and much-loved author who graciously returns to the city each year for this contest’s awards ceremony.

More information about the rules and deadlines are available on the PML website.

Erosion of Democracy’s Norms is Dreadful to Behold

Erosion of Democracy’s Norms is Dreadful to Behold

Rev. Steve Edington

This Op-Ed was originally published in the Union Leader on March 6, 2026.

Several years ago, I watched a production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” by a community theater troupe in Belfast, Maine.  The play portrays the events in Salem, Massachusetts leading up to the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials which took place in 1692-93. Nineteen young women were hanged on charges of “witchcraft,” with other imprisonments and executions taking place before the religiously fueled madness ended.

Miller wrote the play in 1953 as an allegory for the McCarthy era, but its message is universal. The play is about what happens when the norms — both legal and cultural — that hold a society together break down. This was the unspoken, but still very real, message contained in the drama by way of a profound staging device.

The performance took place on a bare stage with furniture and props moved in and out as each scene required. The stage’s backdrop consisted of a series of large rectangular panels.

But the panels were more than a backdrop. At times during the play a stagehand would come out and remove one of them. This continued until the play was over, by which time all the panels were gone.

The panels symbolized the norms by which a society lives, be they for a village like 1690s Salem, Massachusetts, or a nation. They represented the structures any society has to have in place so that its citizens can live reasonably normal, safe, and sane lives.

Some of these norms take the shape of laws that can be legally enforced. Others are more undefined: Behavioral practices, how people are to be treated, etc.

What happens in “The Crucible” is that what had initially been unthinkable becomes increasingly set in place as the panel/norms come down; and full-blown madness, much of it religiously generated, sets in.

The image of those panels coming down has been much on my mind lately. I am convinced that the future of our democracy, our rule of law, and our general stability as a society, rests on how many of our panels we keep in place even as others come down.

Among the panels we’ve seen threatened over just the past year are those having to do with the rule of law as set forth in the Constitution and its subsequent democratic processes. Consider these words by Trump aide Stephen Miller in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper: “We live in a world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” No mention of being governed by any Constitutional rule of law or due process; it’s all strength, force, and power. A panel down.

Confirming Mr. Miller’s words, President Trump has launched a war against Iran that may involve American ground troops, but with no clearance at all from Congress, as the Constitution requires. A panel down.

There are the panels of simple human decency that are brought down by Trump’s juvenile name-calling of any political opponent with whom he’s upset. A despicable example of this was Trump using his social media outlet to depict former President Obama and his wife, Michelle, as apes and then refusing to apologize for it. A panel down.

For all the panels that are coming down, however — and more could be cited — I continue to believe that enough of them remain in place that will spare us the kind of madness portrayed in Arthur Miller’s play. Examples:

A Washington, D.C. grand jury has rebuffed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi — acting on orders from her boss President Trump — by refusing to indict Senator Mark Kelly and others for the so-called “crime” of pointing out that members of the military do not have to obey unconstitutional orders. A panel up.

More recently, the Supreme Court has rebuffed the president by ruling that he does not have the authority to levy tariffs in the way he has attempted to do so. A panel up.

There is the widespread resistance to the monarchial designs of the president as seen in the “No Kings” and “Indivisible” movements and rallies. A panel up.

The citizens who gathered in Merrimack last February 21 to protest the attempt to place an ICE detention facility in their town constitute another panel of resistance. Plans for such a facility have since been withdrawn.

My hope and faith are that our 250-year tradition of democratic rule, with all its acknowledged flaws and failings, will keep enough of our legal and societal panels in place in a way that will spare us from the bare stage seen when “The Crucible” ends.

This is the question for “We the People” in this 250th year of America’s founding: Who will be the enablers in pulling down the panels, and who will strive to keep them standing?

Rev. Steve Edington is the Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua.

2026 Elinor Lipman Award for Writing

The Pollard Memorial Library Foundation recently announced that submissions are now open for the 2026 Elinor Lipman Award for Writing. Born and raised in Lowell, Lipman is a prolific and much-loved author who graciously returns to the city each year for this contest’s awards ceremony.

More information about the rules and deadlines are available on the PML website.