On May 9, 2026, Vladimir Putin staged his Victory Day parade in Moscow — marking the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany — as a three-day ceasefire brokered by President Trump held across Ukraine's front lines, according to Bloomberg Politics.
Eisenhower understood parades. He also understood, in his January 1961 farewell, that the machinery of war acquires its own momentum — institutional, financial, political — and that statesmen must govern that machinery rather than be governed by it. A ceasefire, however fragile, is not surrender. It is the opening of a ledger.
The republic's interest is plain: stop the bleeding, account for what was spent, and let Congress — not contractors, not think tanks — decide what comes next. Article I gives that power to the people's branch. The harder right is using it.