Opinion: The cost of omission
Published 1:30 am Friday, March 27, 2026
On March 24, Senator Dan Sullivan sent constituents a letter about the Trump Administration. It was polished, confident, and politically shrewd. It was also a masterpiece of selective framing. That framing has a cost, and Alaskans are the ones paying it.
Sullivan invokes Alexander Hamilton, Marbury v. Madison, and the rule of law. He writes that “valid laws and valid orders are followed, even when it is inconvenient.” He assures us that President Trump “always abides by the courts.” He promises to take his oversight responsibilities seriously regardless of the Administration in the White House. These are fine words. They do not describe what is actually happening.
The Trump Administration began military operations against Iran on February 28 without a declaration of war, without congressional authorization, and without an articulated strategy. Total costs have surpassed $25 billion and are projected to exceed $26 billion within days. The Pentagon is now seeking a supplemental appropriation of more than $200 billion, a request Republican fiscal hawks in Sullivan’s own party have called indefensible.
Sullivan’s letter mentions none of this. He praises economic growth without acknowledging that the war he has declined to challenge has sent gasoline prices surging and added staggering new charges to a national debt that crossed $39 trillion on March 18. That is not prosperity. That is growth financed by borrowing, with the bill deferred to the next generation.
Then there is the question of who benefits.
At around 6:50 a.m. on March 23, S&P 500 e-Mini futures recorded a sharp and isolated spike in volume. The notional value of the contracts executed in that one-minute window totaled approximately $1.5 billion. A separate cluster of oil futures contracts worth roughly $580 million traded in the same window. Fifteen minutes later, at 7:05 a.m., President Trump posted on Truth Social, announcing a five-day pause on strikes against Iran’s power infrastructure. The timing raises serious questions about whether advance knowledge of a presidential decision was used for private gain. Sullivan’s letter is silent.
His letter is also silent on the $220 million in contracts awarded during Secretary Kristi Noem’s tenure to politically connected firms. It is silent on Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, whose acceptance of $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents was captured on recording in exchange for a promise to steer government contracts if Trump won the election. A majority of investigators who reviewed the case believed there was sufficient basis for criminal charges. The investigation was shut down after Trump took office.
Sullivan assures us this administration always abides by the courts. The record says otherwise.
Minnesota’s chief federal judge documented 96 court order violations across 74 cases in which ICE defied judicial orders in January alone, writing that ICE had likely violated more court orders that month than some federal agencies have in their entire existence. One Trump-appointed judge held DHS in civil contempt after the agency transferred a detainee in direct violation of a standing order.
The pattern holds at the Department of Justice. Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Trump signed it. The law required the DOJ to release all Epstein-related files within 30 days, with only narrow exceptions. The DOJ missed the deadline, released heavily redacted files while withholding millions of additional pages Congress explicitly ordered released, and restricted lawmakers to a DOJ annex where they were required to use government-controlled computers and were watched by DOJ personnel throughout. Members of Congress from both chambers, including Republicans, have formally demanded compliance. The law the President signed is being defied by the President’s own Justice Department.
Sullivan writes that valid laws are followed even when it is inconvenient. He is right about that. But the principle must apply to statutes the President himself signed, to procurement law violated at DHS, to war powers bypassed without a vote, to crimes committed by his appointees, and to scores of immigration court orders defied since January. Cited selectively, principle becomes decoration. Applied consistently, it becomes accountability.
Alaskans deserve a senator who knows the difference. They deserve a senator who does not wrap accommodation in constitutional language and call it oversight. They deserve the candor that the moment requires and the record demands.
On March 24, Senator Sullivan sent a letter full of reassurance. It was confident in tone and careful in language, but incomplete in substance. What it includes soothes. What it omits matters. At the outset, that omission carried a cost. Now it can be seen in wars begun without consent, laws ignored without consequence, and trust eroded without acknowledgment.
Van Abbott is a long-time resident of Alaska and California. He has held financial management positions in government and private organizations, and is now a full-time opinion writer. He served in the late 1960s in the Peace Corps as a teacher.
