The chart was updated on Mar 4, 2026.
The $9.248 trillion owned by foreigners in 3Q2025 was about 24.5% of the total public debt outstanding at the time.
The latest data available from the U.S. Department of the Treasury indicates that in Dec 2025 foreigners owned $9.2709 trillion.
Iranian projectiles continue to strike Gulf countries; Tehran says new leader appointed
... Iranian media said a new leader has been appointed, replacing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the opening salvos of the war. ...
Iran’s Mehr news agency quoted Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Alam al-Huda as saying Sunday elections have been held to replace Khamenei and that a new leader has been appointed. It did not give a name. “All the rumors and news that tried to pretend that the Assembly of Experts has not yet made a decision are pure lies,” al-Huda was quoted as saying. Iranian state media reported on Saturday that two influential Iranian clerics have called for the swift selection of a new supreme leader. ...
The Israel Defense Forces said Sunday it would “pursue every successor and every person who seeks to appoint a successor.” ...
Win or lose, Donald Trump has begun the last war the United States is ever likely to fight in the Middle East. ...
That's what we thought in 1991 about the victorious George H. W. Bush. And then somehow we lost our minds and elected blow-job Bill with his Sunday-go-to-meeting Bible under his arm, big enough to choke a mule.
The state of mind – and the state of the world – that made possible the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, has passed, never to return. ...
There wasn't a single state of mind from 1991 to 2003.
We didn't choose 9/11. It chose us and changed our minds. And the lunatics in Tehran are crazier and far more dangerous than Osama ever was.
Hell, we didn't even choose the Gulf War. Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and set it on fire as it withdrew in January 1991.
We didn't choose this Iran War, either. Iran chose it for us when its proxies invaded our ally Israel in October 2023.
The state of mind and the state of the world . . . hasn't changed at all, except that Trump's a little slow on the uptake.
The passions that involve us in foreign conflicts in the future will be those of a younger cohort. ...
Yes, it isn't just about a state of mind, is it? Things happen which we can't control. You can't predict "no more wars" anywhere, even though you can pretend for a long time, for example from the summer of 1939 to late 1941, and then something forces your hand.
... if the Iran war goes badly – as badly as the Iraq War did for Bush – Trump’s new style of interventionism will be repudiated by voters as thoroughly as Trump’s own election repudiated the neoconservatives.
Bush 41 was popular because he won the Gulf War and suddenly wasn't because of the economy. And Bush 43 was re-elected convincingly in 2004, hello. If America didn't support his Iraq War, it had a funny way of showing it. There is no comparison with Trump.
Trump's economy already sucks and unsurprisingly right out of the box polling indicates Americans are against his attack on Iran. We're blowing up $1 billion a day over there and can't afford a lousy hamburger at home. We don't have to wait for Iran to go badly for the voters to repudiate Trump.
The only thing Dan is probably right about is this, unfortunately:
. . . what comes next will be an even more radical phase in domestic politics. ...
Here.
February 2026 might as well be July 1969, when the percentage of Americans working hit 59% for the first time.
America does not even come close to working up to its potential.
(geek note: population estimates get updated at the beginning of each year, which means current percentage calculations and comparisons such as this one will not exactly match previous ones posted here in 2025, 2024, 2023, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera)
I used peak ! foreign born under Trump I in Mar 2019 just to be fair!
Republicans claim to be against more wars, but they let them happen anyway.
House rejects war powers resolution to rein in Trump on Iran
... The vote was 212-219, with four Democrats joining Republicans to torpedo the measure and two Republicans joining Democrats in voting for the measure. The Senate shot down a similar measure on Wednesday. ...
War powers vote fails in the Senate, allowing Trump to continue Iran strikes
... The measure, brought by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Rand Paul, R-Ky.,
faced steep odds and was largely symbolic even if it passed — Trump is
almost certain to veto any bill aimed at decreasing his authority to use
the military. The vote was 47-53, under the 50-vote threshold needed to
advance the resolution. ...
